Finally Some Good News

Not-So-Horrible Thing Happens In Iraq

BAGHDAD—In a development Pentagon officials are calling not nearly as horrifying as usual, three car bombs ripped through a Baghdad marketplace Monday, killing fewer than 15 innocent civilians, severely injuring no more than 30, and merely maiming one U.S. soldier.

The car bombs, which were detonated by Iraqi insurgents at approximately 2 p.m., left slightly less than complete and utter devastation in their wake. As of press time, barely five families were believed to be trapped beneath the resulting wreckage, although upbeat U.S. authorities have estimated that number could be as low as four.
“Not bad—not bad at all,” said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, who claimed the attack is conclusive proof that the tide in Iraq is somewhat turning in a vaguely less-ghastly direction. “This is hardly the parade of death and destruction we’ve grown accustomed to. In fact, I’ve recently received word that our injured soldier isn’t even going to lose his other leg.”
“Things are definitely starting to almost look up,” Donnelly added.

More About Patty Cooper

I just got an email from Patty Cooper. I guess she read my post about her situation with Earl the horse. She says that she didn’t ask the landlords to pay for hay or the stall and that the horse can be housebroken. I tried to email her back and tell her that if that’s the case, she needs to wring some reporters’ necks, but my email bounced. So hope she’s still reading.

She gave me the address of her blog so I could follow along. Since a ton of people have been searching for that very blog and landing here, I figured I’d point them in the right direction.

I love it when the subjects of my posts actually pop up and say hello.

Close, but No Cigar

Well, this one’s just too close to not go into the fitting names in the news files. There’s a doctor who has designed a device to use to see if someone who said they’ve quit smoking actually has stayed away from the bad stuff, or if they’ve been sneaking a few ciggies. The doctor’s son’s name is Ashray! Come on, you can find what letter’s missing.

A Crappy Invention

Wow. Here’s a new one. I just got emailed a link to the weirdest USB thingamabob I’ve ever heard of. And, you can’t just buy this little gizmo, you have to build it yourself! So what are you building? That would be, drum-roll please, a USB tird!

Tird? Yup, tird. Apparently if you connect enough lights and cables and wires and resisters with the right voltage to a fake tird, which is never really clearly defined, you can have yourself a nice glowing USB tird. Why you would want that, I don’t know. But there it is.

Have You Hugged Your Boss Today?

Man this story killed me.

I guess somebody in Taiwan read some psychology books and gathered that military personnel were more likely to be more comfortable if there was an atmosphere of love and camaraderie. So, they decided to manufacture one by ordering the new recruits to hug their squad leaders on a regular basis.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long before they were getting feedback that the recruits weren’t fans of this. How did they put it? It made them feel sick and uneasy?

The funniest part of this whole story was the way the program’s creater, Lee Tien-yu (李天羽), reacted to the criticism. He tried to defend it…until a minister in the opposition asked him to hug the Director General of the Political Warfare Bureau. then, everything turned on its head and after stammering that he wasn’t that close to him, the policy was brought to a screeching halt.

Damn, some news stories are just too funny.

Which Is Worse? Plane Crashes Or Confidence Crashes?

Ok, let me get this straight. NASA is commissioned to do a survey about air-travel safety. They survey 24000 pilots over 4 years. they find out that incidents of near collisions and runway interference is much higher than government statistics, so…they decide to withhold the results and purge them?

Apparently, they just don’t want us to know because it would undermine the economy. Um, don’t we have a right to know? Or, at the very least, doesn’t the data need to go to someone who can do something about lowering these horribly high statistics? God, maybe the things that happen on Mayday happen more than we think!

Sing A Song of Synth Clips

We have known about something for years that just has to go up here. Hell, I think we knew about it before there was a vomit comet. Why it wasn’t already up here, I don’t know, but better late than never, I guess.

There is a site, the owners of which have way too much time on their hands. On the site are mp3’s of their creations. They have gone to dictionary.com, with lyrics of songs in hand. When this site was created, you could hit a button after looking up a word and dictionary.com would use synthesized voices to let you hear how it should be pronounced. Apparently, you have to pay for this now, but that’s beside the point.

So, the strangely talented makers of this site, who are funny but must be very, very odd, captured all the synthesized representations of all the words to a song, set them to music, and voila! We have dictionaraoke.org!

Um, yep. I don’t know what’s funnier, Take On Me, or Waterloo. Yeah, these folks are total geeks. Enjoy, if you can stand to listen very long.

Wacky Word Fact Of The Day

Irregardless, the almost universally hated bit of English that it is, is a real word that is recognized by more than one dictionary. But before you start thinking that all those people who ever called you stupid for using it are the dumb ones, consider that the dictionaries that list it actually all but tell you not to use it because it’s so ridiculous.

I never would have thought in a million years that irregardless was in any way thought of as real vocabulary, but then I saw this in my email and figured it had to be some kind of joke. Guess not.