Through a mirror, darkly

people who aren't Kate Bush need not respond

To help cure you of the Halloween blues, I offer these, from a new book called "They Call Me Naughty Lola", of funny/random personal ads:

:: I like my women the way I like my kebab. Found by surprise after a drunken night out and covered in too much tahini. Before long I'll have discarded you on the pavement of life, but until then you're the perfect complement to a perfect evening. Man, 32, rarely produces winning metaphors.

:: Your buying me dinner doesn't mean I'll have sex with you. I probably will have sex with you, though. Honesty not an issue with opportunistic male, 38.

:: Not everyone appearing in this column is a deranged cross-dressing sociopath. Let me know if you find one and I'll strangle him with my bra. Man, 56.

:: Are you Kate Bush? Write to obsessive man (36). Note, people who aren't Kate Bush need not respond.

:: Stroganoff. Boysenberry. Frangipani. Words with their origins in people's names. If your name has produced its own entry in the OED then I'll make love to you. If it hasn't, I probably will anyway, but I'll only want you for your body. Man of too few distractions, 32.

:: Ploughing the loneliest furrow. Nineteen personal ads and counting. Only one reply. It was my mother telling me not to forget the bread on my way home from B&Q. Man, 51.

:: Mature gentleman, 62, aged well, noble grey looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society seeks...damn it, I have to pee again.

:: Slut in the kitchen, chef in the bedroom. Woman with mixed priorities (37) seeks man who can toss a good salad.

:: Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.

:: Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth.

:: I've divorced better men than you. And worn more expensive shoes than these. So don't think placing this ad is the biggest comedown I've ever had to make. Sensitive F, 34.

:: Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away. Man on the inside seeks woman on the outside who likes milling around hospitals guessing the illnesses of out-patients. 30-35. Leeds.

I don't know why but these gave me a much-needed laugh today.

So did this.

Too little, too late

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement after New York Times public editor Byron Calame declared his newspaper wrong for publishing a story on the illegally disclosed Terrorist Finance Tracking Program:

"The mea culpa of the New York Times public editor comes too late to stop the damage done to one of our nation's leading tools to track, understand and prevent the money transfers that enable terrorist attacks. While the editor should be recognized for being the only one at the paper to recognize this was an irresponsible action, he should have been harsher on his fellow editors for ignoring pleadings of congressional leaders, the administration, including the Treasury Secretary, and the leaders of the 9/11 commission, which recommended America implement exactly this type of program, not to publish this story.

"Of course the mea culpa was buried deep in the paper and at the end of a piece about the newspaper's magazines, so it's not surprising few people noticed. But more Americans need to notice, and they should be outraged by this, and all, illegal disclosures of vital national security information. The New York Times will suffer no consequence from the illegal disclosure of this program, but the American people could pay the ultimate price because our nation's ability to track and defend itself against terrorists has been harmed.

"In the war against radical Islam, intelligence is more vital than it has ever been before. The endless, politically motivated illegal leaks about our nation's terrorism prevention programs must stop. Attempts to exploit these illegal disclosures for political gain also have to stop, and Republicans and Democrats should unite in universal condemnation of all illegal national security leaks.

"At the end of the day, no American has benefited from any of these illegal disclosures, only al-Qaeda, which can count on learning about America's intelligence capabilities through a subscription to the New York Times."

Stop me if you've heard this one

Now this is awesome

To paraphrase Fred Willard: Finally the internet lives up to its potential!

Found!!

I finally found the image I want of Chicago to fill the space on the wall in my bedroom. I found this stunning panoramic view of downtown, exactly the kind of image I was looking for. The image above is just a portion of it (click it to see the whole thing). I'm going to frame it and hang it and look at it every day until I graduate and get the hell out of this lousy little town.

My new digital girlfriend

Ms. Dewey is what I call an infobabe.

Anger management issues

Man, this is one scary cat.

The only valid use of the HTML blink tag

Virtuality's revenge

As if the old Virtuality video game hardware wasn't clunky enough .. in today's paper we see this monstrosity:

And they're calling it "one giant step for home entertainment?" It's giant all right. That poor girl. I don't see any kind of support apparatus in the picture, it looks like she's actually holding that thing up with her neck and shoulders.
Makes the Virtuality game gear look positively svelte:

The cool thing about the Virtuality game was that it was social .. you entered a shared cyberspace and competed. It was loads of fun for me back in high school when they had that fantastic arcade of these things in Union Station, downtown St. Louis. (I still have one of my "boarding passes" from way back then.) That ridiculous "new" contraption on that kid's head doesn't look big enough for more than one head in there. And to make the idea even more ridiculous .. imagine a family seated in their living room, each sporting one of these bulbous things on their shoulders?

Sheep deprivation

This is from the London Daily Telegraph, as quoted in WSJ's Best of the Web:

It has taken more than 12 months and cost about £10,000 but a council is finally on the verge of discovering the identity of a man who kept saying "baa" during a planning meeting.

After a wide-ranging investigation, Havering council, based in Romford, Essex, has prepared a 300-page report, according to the Romford Recorder newspaper.

Unfortunately, the downside is that the prime suspect is no longer a councillor and is, therefore, beyond the scope of any punishment that it might want to mete out.

The incident has it roots in a planning meeting in September last year when an application was being heard to put a mobile home on a farm housing rare breeds of horses and sheep.

The solemnity of the debate was, apparently, interrupted by a male councillor making unhelpful "baa-ing" noises.

As opposed to helpful ones, like the ones I make in class. I wonder if they will spend another 10,000 pounds prosecuting everyone who giggled after each "baa".

The Apple Jihad

Now Muslims are angry at an Apple Store? Should Apple employees be put on higher alert for possible terrorist attacks?



Little Green Footballs: And Now, the Apple Jihad

Mystery solved

Kay Chandler (Kirsten Scott Thomas): Before you told me my husband was screwing your wife, did it occur to you that that might be a hurtful thing to do?

"Dutch" Van Den Broeck (Harrison Ford): You knew already.

Chandler: Suppose I didn't.

Dutch: How did you know, Mrs. Chandler?

Chandler: He told me he was going to New York.

Dutch: He's on the wrong plane, so it must be another woman, just like that?

Chandler: Well, it could've been amnesia.

Random Hearts, 1999

Lets hope this page never expires

Ok, this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I know it is silly and stupid and serves no real purpose, but to me that's funny. The complete and unapologetic silliness of it is what makes me laugh. If you gotta ask, you won't get it.

Makes me want to go buy some. It really does. Just not from Amazon though.

Tuscan Whole Milk

Season 3 forecast: dark.

Just watched last night's BSG.

Holy crap. They are really taking this story to a dark place. That scene of Baltar signing the death warrant was horrific. So was the execution scene. Obviously we see Roslin survives, but I guess it wasn't because Zarek saved her. I saw him stepping behind her (rather than shielding her) when the Cylon centurions arrived. I had this very sickening feeling the whole time. Apollo sure developed into a real pig. The idea of Adama going back to the planet (with the lesser ship) while the Pegasus continues the "search for Earth" is really tough to swallow too. Gahh. The whole situation just sucks.

I don't like the overt implication that this story is drawing deliberate parallels with the situation in Iraq. Obviously they are not equivalent at all, especially in regard to the rationale of suicide bombing. I know Moore is a liberal but all though seasons 1 and 2, the BSG stories were always very carefully written across that razor's edge between two sides of a given issue, presenting neither as "right". Here they are justifying an insurgency against an occupying force, including suicide bombing, based on a completely fantastical situation, expecting it to generate and influence conversation about what's going on in Iraq. I don't read any BSG discussion boards but I bet that's what's being talked about there in earnest.

Oh, Evanescence! Data, turn it UP!

Remember kids, it's only WRONG if Republicans do it

This is just jaw-droppingly staggering.

The unrestrained, unassisted implosion of the left continues on. Read this.

Future women leaders of America: Beware of Photoshop

Lacuna Coil

This is my new favorite band.


I bought In A Reverie and Karmacode tonight at Streetside. (I already own Comalies and Unleashed Memories.) Sometimes you just gotta rock out. (5 years ago I never would have figured myself as a fan of a metal band, but there we are.)

Favorite song is still "Falling Again". I am still looking for this image as a desktop picture.