Happy New Year's Eve!

And you think you had a bad year -- from Wikipedia :

"Recently, the independent movie Zyzzyx Road made just $30 at the box office. The film, starring Tom Sizemore and Katherine Heigl and with a budget of $1.2 million, may owe its tiny revenue to its limited box office release: just six days in a single theater in Dallas, Texas, where, according to director Leo Grillo, it sold 6 tickets, 2 of which were to cast members."

Spartakia Anyone?

Spartakiad initially was the name of an international sports event that the Soviet Union introduced as an alternative to the Olympics. The name is derived from Spartacus, the rebel Roman slave leader . Today the name is used for internal competition within Russia and other former Soviet countries. I have no idea what the events in the two photographs could possibly be.

What strange sense of irony God doth have!

Fire destroys home belonging to 6 southern Ill. firefighters

ASSOCIATED PRESS

12/27/2007

CAHOKIA, Ill. -- Investigators say they believe a space heater is to blame for a southern Illinois fire that destroyed the home of six volunteer firefighters.

The six volunteer firefighters from the Prairie DuPont Fire Department lived in the Cahokia home with family members. No residents were injured. A firefighter from Cahokia was treated and released.

Cahokia Fire Chief Dave Nulsen says the space heater was too close to combustible materials such as clothing or draperies, sparking the fire that consumed the home's entire interior.

Nulsen says residents should keep such items at least three feet away from space heaters.

I burned the dumplings...

Hope you had a great Christmas!!!

And, yes, the dumplings were in chicken broth. And, yes, I still managed to burn them.

Have a great Christmas!

Am I wrong, but...

I was searching the web tonight (Friday) looking for information about pulse and heart rate. I found the above. I think if your symptom is "No Pulse" you're probably past the point of caring.

Don't know why...

My car keys have a red "Panic" button, I don't know why, I don't know what exactly the red "panic" button does, I haven't read the manual, I don't remember where I put it.

I don't know what that little white thing is either. It's magnetic. No one seems to know. I'm thinking maybe space debris.

Oh and yes, my car keys are not actually keys. I don't know why. I haven't read the manual. I don't remember where I put it.

I'm a bum!!!!!

I have always been the guy who had his Christmas shopping finished in October. This year nadda!

I've been bad about posting, and responding to comments, and to visiting the sites that I usually visit.

It's going to get worse.

Bad Jim!!!!!!!!!

From now until Christmas is going to be a madhouse -- but I promise I'll be back in touch will all of the regulars between Christmas and New Years.

Meanwhile, I had a thought about my previous post, about the No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service sign at the gas station. What if I filled my car with gas -- which now takes about $60 to do -- and then took off my shoes and shirt. Would that mean the gas was free since I would not be allowed inside to pay? If it weren't 27 degrees I might try it.

The first sign of Spring, maybe?

Rooty and I stopped by our favorite gas/convenience-store late last night. Since we were there last, a few days ago, a new, big, red and white sign has appeared in the window: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service. It was twenty-something degrees and snowing. Just who, except for maybe some fraternity pledges, were they expecting to be bare-chested and shoeless in December.

I thought of some signs more appropriate for the place and its clientele:
No Service If Your Parents Were First Cousins
No Service If You Haven't Washed Your Hair This Millennium
No Service If You Ask For a 'Sam-itch'

It's all about bats. Again, don't warn them, help improve the gene pool.

Squeeeeeel

My new car has sensors that let you know when you're close to something. An option well worth having.

There are sensors on the front, and back, and sides.

When you get close to something, little trials of yellow lights start to appear. When you get too close, a red light appears and a buzzer starts. Each sensor has its own set of lights and a buzzer.

It's all a really good idea.

Except in an ice storm, since the ice covers the sensors.

Unfortunately, we're having an ice storm.

Rooty and I drove all the way through town with all of the sensor buzzers going off at the same time. People in Guam probably heard it!

When driving through the ice storm this morning..

..I wondered why no one has ever invented a better windshield wiper, or even one a little different from those rotating sticks.

I just woke up from a nap

I dreamed that I was sleeping.

Does not mean I have to skip tomorrow's nap?

Do as I say, not as I...

Rooty and I went to the grocery store tonight (he waits in the car), then we headed for McDonald's. The road to McDonald's (a state highway) is five lanes wide. As we approached the intersection where we needed to turn onto a cross street to get to the drive-thru, I noticed a car in the lane to my left. The light changed and I slowed for the red, and to make the right turn. The car along side of me just kept going, it was a cop, he went right through the red. Rooty and I parked to eat after we finished with the drive-thru, facing the state highway. The cop was going back the other direction now, he probably got to the nearby city limits and turned around. Attention teen-age drivers: do whatever you want.

It's why they shoot so many cows.

Rooty I came back from Missouri last night -- we had been out state, an odd Missouri term meaning any place in Missouri outside of St. Louis. It's deer season in Missouri. One big truck stop along I-44 had a giant readerboard that said "Get your beer hunting supplies here." That's what I like, truth in advertising.

Where went all the water.

When Lewis & Clark went up the Missouri, the river was three times as wide and carried three times as much water.

When Robert E. Lee, before the Civil War and when he was in the Corp of Engineers, built the levees and dikes that keep the Mississippi out of E. St. Louis and the St. Louis waterfront free of silt, the river carried three times the water it does now.

There is a creek near where my mother lives in Missouri. When Missouri was Spanish territory, before the Louisiana Purchase, the Spanish considered it to be a river, a rather important one that required them to build a fort at its mouth. When I was in grade school, it was waste deep. Today, you can wade across it in most spots and never get the top of your socks wet.

When I was a kid, we would visit my aunt and uncle in the country many times every summer to swim in the wonderful creek that flowed through their farm. There were several clear, deep swimming holes, with fish of considerable size who were less than thrilled to share their home. I saw one of my cousins recently and asked if he and his kids still swam in the creek. "Nope," he said, "it's been dry for years, the swimming holes have all filled in."

Where went all the water?
===============================
:P fuzzbox said...

Did it become Budweiser?

LOL LOL even Rooty laughed!!

Further proof that guys can turn anything into a sport.

"Blair Matheson wins the cheese during the Whitestone Cheese Rolling New Zealand championships at Waikaka, near Invercargill.

Competitors chase large cheese wheels that are rolled down a hill."

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

I is so confused

I do not understand the point of taking leftovers from the dinner table and switching them from the bowls they were served in to other bowls to put in the refrigerator. Why not just put the bowl they's in in the frig and not dirty two bowls.

Of course, it's not just two bowls, since when they get served again they will have to be put into yet another bowl. For some things, this can be an almost endless process.

TUMS are made of ground-up marble...

...so why do the bottles have expiration dates? What does marble become when it goes bad, Formica?
=================================
David Amulet said...

And here I thought Tums were made of ground-up quaaludes.

-- david

------------------------------------------------------------

David -- I know not what of you speak, but don't the good ones come from Mexico???

Oh sure, you're full of turkey...

...but how much will it cost you to get home!

Click HERE or the image for the AAA Trip Gas Price Calculator.

gobble, gobble, whack

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving Day!
I don't have to bring nothin' since last year's
Jello & Peanut Surprise.
(Give the photo a little thought, it will come to you.)

And, the holidays are just beginning...

1. A woman in Dierberg's (regional supermarket chain) was berating a cute, young clerk because she didn't know if the Dierberg's price on some stupid thing was higher or lower than at Shop 'n Save (another regional chain).

2. The driver ahead of me in the drive-thru line at McDonald's at lunch time was putting her hair up in curlers, in the drive-thru line.

3. It was 75 yesterday, 74 today. Some time overnight the highway department sprayed the road into town with salt, lots of it.

Never a donor nor contributor be

Giving away money is not easy, perhaps because the amounts that I have to give away are so small.

As most of you know, I taught for many years. When you teach, your employer is your principal charity -- there are always fund drives going on plus incessant student bake sales and other annoying ways to pick your pocket.

A few years ago, it was discovered that the BIG CHARITY is St. Louis was spending 90 cents of each dollar it collected on overhead. Since the BIG CHARITY does not itself engage in any charitable activities that mean that only 10 cents of every dollar was being given to an actual charity. Since some of those charities, in turn, spend up to 50% of income on overhead, for your buck you got something between a nickel and a dime of actual good. (After the publicity, the BIG CHARITY changed it ways.)

More recently, one of the St. Louis TV stations reported that one of the Catholic Charities in St. Louis had raised $100 K on a trivia night. Very impressive -- until it was revealed that the head of the charity was paid $115 K per year. They were still down $15 K before they even covered his salary.

A few years ago I started to send small, very small, contributions to rural churches that I would see when driving around. Usually $50, and never more than $100. I stopped doing that when I finally realized that not one of the churches had acknowledged my gift or send a thank-you note.

So recently, all my giving has been going to various groups that support either active duty troops or disabled veterans. There are a lot of these so I have been giving a little to as many as I could (in effect, spreading the risk or increasing the chances that my few dollars would be used for some good purpose).

One such group offered a free t-shirt with each $30 contribution. I sent them $50. The receipt of the $50 was acknowledged through PayPal but the t-shirt never arrived. It has been about a month since they got my cash, so I sent an inquiry last night. Today I received an email that said "Clearly its got lost on the way." This, I assume, is the charitable equivalent of "My dog ate my homework!"
==============================
The Phoenix said...

You should still get your t-shirt, though.

Foen -- what would I do with it, not exactly a charity that I would want to promote. The quote in the post was a copy and paste, odd grammar and all. The guy also wanted me to resend my address -- which suggests that they are not even keeping records of what money comes in!

It was deja vu all over again.

I have not really kept in touch with the people that I went to college with, and not just because I probably owe some of them money. Three of them, however, have popped up on TV.

The first was the crabby next door neighbor who caused grief for a cute young couple building a house (with help from a TV show).

The second was a witness in a criminal case involving several of his relatives, so he was interviewed on one of those cable crime shows.

The third, I found out today, was on a reality TV show, one so obscure that I never heard of it, nor could I find its web page.

The third was a real wheeler-dealer when I knew him, and apparently still is. When last I heard of him he had left his employer and started a business in direct competition. What I read today was that he had left his most recent employer and, surprise surprise, started a business in direct competition. Surprise, Surprise!

Comments about comments

Moni left a comment about my post about the Here Comes the King jingle:

moni said...

Oh my yes, Anheiser-Busch is such a part of St. Louis as are the Cardinals. We use to ride out to Busch Farms and we'd see old man Busch riding his little horse drawn buggy down the road and this was before Busch Farms was open to the public. My uncle was a batboy for the Cardinals and my grandmother had large framed pictures of the Cardinal teams back in their very winning days. Good memories.

Grant's Farm, operated by Anheuser-Busch, is in St. Louis County. It's "ancestral home" of the Busch family. The important part ==> there are baby Clydesdales. Jim
--------------------------
Fuz questioned by claim to inventing the radio:

:P fuzzbox has left a new comment on your post "How I reinvented radio.":

Sure you weren't smoking anything?

Fuz, I didn't receive your package last week, be sure to include a Whataburger!!! Jim
--------------------------
Here's what Moni said about my question about babies dreaming, Moni major sweet:

moni has left a new comment on your post "do babies dream?":

I think they dream about food, mommy and kisses.

Nothing I can add to that! Jim
-------------------------------
Foen commented on waiting for service people:

The Phoenix has left a new comment on your post "Do a little, crappy, charge a lot.":

It's not as bad as furniture or appliance delivery people. "We'll be there between 7AM and 7PM."

I will tell all about that day. Here's a hint -- he started at 9:30 AM and finally left at 10:45 PM. Jim
----------------------------------
"Way past due" drew three comments:

sleepyrn has left a new comment on your post "way past due":

I was stopped last week on the way home from work. It was around 9pm and I was exceeding the posted limit by about 14 mph. Add to that I was in my husband's car and had NO earthly idea where he had his registration, insurance... The officer comes to the widow all ready to tell me the errors of my ways. He shines his light in and sees me in scrubs and my work ID badge and his whole attitude changed - instantly. He asked for my license, reg, ins... I told him I couldn't find the second two. When he came back with my license I was still rooting around.... He said not to worry about it - "no big deal", and just told me to slow down. SInce when is not having a registration card and proof of insurance "no big deal?" He said he wasn't worried so much about me but I was "encouraging the other drivers to speed also." We talked about my work for a few minutes and he sent me on my way.

Officers will not give tickets to nurses in uniform. I swear - it's true. I've had one officer tell me that they know that their life may be in our hands one day and they want them to be friendly hands.

The moral of the story is that everyone should drive around in scrubs and have a hospital ID.

sleepy, I only wear scrubs around the house haha

Metal Mark has left a new comment on your post "way past due":

I got a ticket once for turning on a red light. I was exhausted and not paying attention. That's the only ticket I have ever gotten.

Everyone who wants to turn MM into the cops raise your hand.

Amy in StL has left a new comment on your post "way past due":

My car attracts way too much attention for me to speed more than 9 MPH over the legal limit. Guys always ask me how I avoid getting in more trouble and I always tell them, "I pay for my own insurance." I leave out the part about being a cheapass.

Amy, what the hell do you drive, an Enzo Ferrari????? If so, I will marry you.
-----------------------------------------
About ASCII self art, Stan wrote:

stan has left a new comment on your post "ASCII self art":

I can't quite make out the face. Is that Matt Damon or a young Frank Sinatra?

Stan, it's Matt Damon, from the Google News page, making it 60x50 distorted it some.

ASCII self art

At typorganism.com you can upload a picture and turn it into different types of ASCII art. Be sure to resize your photo to 60 x 50 pixels before you upload. The site will even generate a HTML page for you. Note: You must allow popups for the typorganism page.

way past due

I got stopped the other night, by the Illinois State Police (Highway Patrol). The trooper looked like Opie, he was 27 (I asked him). I was going to make an Aunt Bee joke but thought better of it.

I was breaking the sound barrier, at night, on I-55, in a 65 zone. I had been exceeding the speed of light in Missouri, on I-44, in hills north of Pacific, just a short time before so I had actually slowed down some.

The cop was polite, professional, and somewhat confused by Rooty (who loves all cops and thought one had come up to the car to play). Beside avoiding any Opie references, I restrained by self and mentioned neither 'what was he doing out after curfew' nor Ovaltine.

I have always found that if you're friendly, cooperate, and use your turn signals you'll usually just get a warning, and so I did.

do as jay do

Years ago, I heard Jay Leno, as part of his stand-up act, say that you should buy yourself whatever you bought for your parents. This he said would save untold amounts of time as you tried to explain to them over the telephone how to cook something in a microwave or stop the VCR from flashing "12:00" incessantly.

Over the years, this has proved to be excellent advice, saving an Everest of port sausage links from being turned into charcoal brickettes and enabling countless baseball games from going unrecorded.

And then there was TIVO.

There is no way to explain TIVO to a parent -- they either get it or they don't. My mom don't!

Just when you think you've gotten her pointed in the right direction and back to live TV, she'll press the TIVO button at the top pf the remote, probably because it's big and shiny. Once into the TIVO menu, she might as well be lost inside a Medieval maze.

Do a little, crappy, charge a lot.

My attitude towards work has always been "Don't do, over do." That has served me well over the years, the folks who have gotten more than they thought they would have been very generous with praise and with referrals. If you focus on the work and not the money, the money becomes the easy part.

On the other hand, the satellite TV guy was supposed to be here between 8:30 and 9:30. He did call, to say he had the wrong equipment -- insert your own 8th grade joke here -- and would be 45 minutes late.

Meanwhile, the new lawn sprinkler people were supposed to be here at 8:00 but, of course, have not been seen. I had the sprinkler system put in this summer because of the the drought and because of the lake full of free water just sitting out there. The sprinkler system has never worked properly -- every time I turned it on, it spring a leak leak or two. The last leak rivals Old Faithful. It case the Yellowstone caldera blows, at least we'll have a back up geyser. The sprinkler people, had they arrived, were not going to fix the leak. At this point, there seems little point in that. They are just going to "winterize" the system and then in the spring tear the whole damn thing out and start from scratch. I certain they'll show up eventually, after they down a few extra Sausage McGriddles.

How I reinvented radio.

You have probably seen pictures of families sitting around listening to the radio. Mom might be knitting, dad might be reading the newspaper, but usually they are just sitting there staring at a big piece of furniture, apparently engrossed in some story or news report.

My parent had such a piece of furniture, as did the parents and grandparents of every kid that I grew up with, but the glory of network radio was well past before I came along. To me, the big, elaborately carved, inlaid-encrusted thing was simply something else to play with. It played records, but big clumsy things that contained music that no one under 90 would want to listen to. Besides what was then just "radio" and now called "AM," the big thing also received shortwave and "ship-to-shore." The latter was a bunch of beeping that I now know was Morse Code.

I was a TV kid, and have always looked upon those photos of people staring at a radio with great amusement and, as some of you know, nothing amuses me more than Edgar Bergman becoming a multi-millionaire back when that meant something by doing ventriloquism on the radio. The whole thing has always seemed to me to be nothing short of sheer idiocy.

Enter books on tape, actually books on CD, now actually books downloaded to my ipod.

I spend a lot of time in the car, hate commercial radio, and dislike the tight rotation of satellite radio (meaning they play the same playlist over, and over, and over on any given channel).

So I bought a book on CD from Amazon. A mystery. Great for driving, it makes the time just fly by on the Interstate. Bad for in-city driving since I find myself sitting in the driveway just to hear "just a little more."

Books on CD are a nuisance, however, since a single book often arrives spread across 17 discs. Arg!

Then I discovered that they can be downloaded directly to the pc, and even more directly into the ipod. Wow! The dealer was able to install an ipod adopter in the car, an option that I had ironically declined when I ordered that car.

Meanwhile, a truck knocked down the cable wire that crosses the street and enters my house. It's happened before. What has also happened before has been my being annoyed with the cable company. Charter! For many of you, that's all I have to provide in way of explanation. I promised myself that the next time they annoyed me would be their last. I had already switch the Internet connection to ATT when the Charter tech people annoyed me for the 100th time. I called about the down wire and, cutting out the unpleasant part, the satellite TV system is being installed on Tuesday.

So I sat in the family room last night, Rooty sleeping in a chair with his four feet straight up in the air, me with my ipon headphones in place, and I listened to a mystery that I had downloaded. As I sat there listening, I realized that I was staring at the TV set, just like those long dead people in the pictures had been staring at their 3 1/2 feet tall radios.

It may have just been the trance from staring so long at a single object, but the characters in the detective novel came alive, really alive, and their world and the objects in their world became real. I was amongst them as they talked, and moved about, shaved and showered, and merged lies and truths and possibilities. This morning I actually had trouble realizing that I had only heard a description of one piece of evidence and not see it (although I can still see it vividly, in detail, in my memory). Network radio must have been grand, sorry I missed it, but glad that I reinvented it again.

Please raise your hand...

Does anyone know how to say
"Stop using lead paint!"
in Chinese?

There's a reason for this, that need not concern you.

There are some things that are very St. Louis, like explaining where you live by parish even if you're not Catholic. Another is the Here Comes the King advertising jingle written for Budweiser, the flagship brand of Anheuser-Busch.

The song is played at the top of the eighth inning during all St. Louis Cardinals home games and during the third period at St. Louis Blues home games. Saint Louis University plays it, and the students sing the lyrics, during half-time of home basketball games. [Note: It's St. Louis and St. Louis Blues, but Saint Louis University.]

The first ad was in 1976. Below is that spot, and the the song being used during the 2007 Cardinals opening day festivities at Busch Stadium.

Welcome home Timmy.

do babies dream?

if so, what about?

Some idiot called me at dawn...

...on my cell phone...
...it was a wrong number...
...so I took a picture of Rooty sleeping...
...yes, it does freak me out some...
...especially when he sleeps that way in the car.

no title needed

Some Monday morning things to think about...

Native Americans in the western U.S., at the time called Indians, were scandalized by skinny-dipping soldiers. Not because the soldiers were naked but because many of them had been circumscribed. It seems the Indian men walked around naked much of the time but that was okay as long (no pun intended) as their foreskin stayed in place. To stay politically correct, the braves (and this might be why they were so called) used "string" made of thin strands of tree bark tied in knots to keep them foreskins in place

Cowboys in the west were called "Pikes" because, when asked from whence they came, many replied "Pike County." There are Pike Counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania -- which appear to have collectively contributed more than their fair share of native sons to the cowboy calling.

The Great Plains Indians called a double tornado "a dead man walking" (see photo at top).

And, yes, I do watch way too much TV.

Something nice for a Sunday...

Kick 'm the coin purse

You might have read about the father of a Marine killed in Iraq who won a multi-million dollar judgment against a Kansas church whose members protested at his son's funeral -- carry signs such as "Thank God for dead soldiers." There will be appeals, and it is unlikely the father will ever collect a nickel, but good for him!

The best way to stop fanaticism is to make it costly for the fanatic. The Salem witch trials -- 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, 29 convicted, 19 (fourteen women, five men) hanged, 5 accused people died while in prison and one man was crushed with large stones because he refused to enter a plea -- finally stopped when one of the accused filed a counter suit for libel and slander. Whoops, suddenly calling your neighbor a minion of the devil could cost you a few chickens and your cow.

My last boss once said among a group that my eccentricities were thoughtfully developed and carefully rehearsed. What he was saying of course was that I was a fake wacko, with the 'fake" part being what I objected to. Although I could use the eggs and milk, I didn't sue.

The road to hell is paved

Above is a picture of our beautiful new downtown fountain. Isn't it lovely?

Above is a picture of the handicap ramp on the new sidewalk that was built when our beautiful new fountain was installed. So wonderful to be considerate of the handicap.

Above is the new sidewalk just beyond the new handicap ramp that was built when our beautiful new fountain was installed. As you can see, we also have beautiful new light posts and an equally new wastebasket.

You have to really ask yourself "Self, what was the point of the handicap ramp?" Crippled midgets perhaps, in tiny little wheelchairs?.

I was so bored...

...I took a picture of may hand.

It's not easy being Ethnic Tom

Tom is our friend from the Ilse of Man who's lip-sync of the disc hit "I will Survive" is a YouTube favorite and the subject of a previous post on this site.

Here Tom does not lip-sync, although reading his lips near the end of the video might be interesting.

Being cool is sometimes just plain painful.

Fade to black...

A previous post – on October 26 below – listed the most frequent Google Searches that produced visitors to It’s Jim. High on the list were searches for videos by some college guys, who had a new video camera to play with and clearly time on their hands. I thought the videos were very, very funny and did not one but two posts about them. I actually exchanged emails with one of the fellows to make sure the first post was okay, something I do whenever I mention someone and I can find their email address.

All of the videos that those guys produced in their college dorm – lip-syncing, choreographed, and shirtless – have been removed from both YouTube and Google Video. At YouTube, there is a note that the videos have been removed at the request of a third party who holds the copyright. Since the video camera belonged to the guy wearing the puka shells necklace, a star athlete in college, I assume he would be the copyright holder and the person who requested that the clips be removed

These were classic, silly, early YouTube videos – the kind of goofy stuff that made online videos so popular in the first place -- and they generated a lot of press coverage and online chatter. I can understand that the guys are now older, with careers, probably married, most likely with children. I can also understand that you might not want your kid to see daddy dancing shirtless online and lip-syncing an early-80’s hit by British pop singer Bonnie Tyler. So I have been very careful in this post not to include any term that might bring folks searching for those famous videos to this site, and I have removed or altered all previous posts to obliterate any mention of them

But, I do have this observation to make: once again we see the difference between being a good athlete and a good sport.

There just weren't no page left to turn.

I just finished a really long novel. A really long novel. I didn't read it, it was an audio book. After 17 CD's -- including a description of every donut in an assortment of donuts -- it just ended. There were no logical conclusions. None of the main plots or subplots were resolved. It just ended. My theory is the author finally ran out of printer paper and just stopped. Even Monty Python had the courtesy to yell "And now for something completely different!" when they had no ending for an otherwise terrific idea. This book had no third act. There was a first part, that introduced the characters and plot lines. There was a a second part were really interesting things happened. All of this created actual anticipation about how the author would tie if all together. Instead, zero, zilch, zip, zippo, zot! I actually longed for the famous Soap Opera episode in which all of the characters were loaded on a bus and driven over a cliff. Come the next Monday, the soap had all new characters. Will someone please call Greyhound for me, I need closure.
====================================
Willow said...

You've given me a new outlook on life. Now, when twenty of my coworkers are fired, and replaced by twenty replacement workers the next day, I can think of the first group as disappearing due to a Soap Opera ending!

-----------Willow, from what I know of your coworkers, a 'bus trip' would definitely improve the gene pool

Our Monday Morning Waste of Brain Cells --

-- how about a test on what you remember from last week's news?

Test your nose for news

from Reuters News Service

(I got 8 out of 10, but I have no life.)

My grandmother wants her school taxes back, posthumously...

I was at my mother's yesterday.

A woman rang the doorbell.

"How do I get through to the yard sale?"

"We're not having a yard sale."

"Does your yard go through to the next street?"

"Yes."

"How do I get through to the yard sale?"

"We're not having a yard sale."

"Could you open the gate for me?"

"No."

I closed the door.

This guy went to a Widget Summit, and had a good time!

Frank's blog -- Somewhat Frank -- overflows with info about new web-based services. It's fun stuff for most of us, probably serious stuff for people who live on VC-funding (venture capitalists). Here are some of the current posts:

YowTrip -- a social network for travelers who are traveling alone to meet up with other travelers and locals in the same area at the same time. Except for the Jeffrey Dahmer aspect of it, this looks like a great idea

LinkDoozer -- allows you to access and manage your bookmarks and favorites remotely, and make you and them part of yet another social network. Also a good idea, especially for people with few actual friends and fewer chances of making any [sorry, editorial comment based on my being rejected in so many virtual spaces].

Propertize -- an online property management suite. As you get older and start inheriting houses this might be just what you need.

"SmartLinks offer site owners the ability to link to a widget that when clicked displays related items (i.e. books, music, people, etc)." Phoenix would like this, he could add links to books about spooks -- it also answers the question what they do at a widget summit.

Rememble -- "makes it easy to tell a story in a memory timeline and share it with your friends in a number of ways." Sounds good, but from the examples it just looks like you have to takes pictures of all your crap and add it to yet another social network. Stan, this puppy may be for you.

Xpenser -- makes remembering business expenses easier. [INSERT your own hooker joke about here.]

MyDaySpace.com -- enables users to create a web page dedicated to their own special day in history. Stan, there's probably a limit on how many day-pages you can create.

how my day went, and where I went <== a pun that will soon be obvious

I was going to spend today in the country in Missouri, so that's where I was.

About noon, the alarm company called and said that not only one but two doors had been opened at home (in Illinois).

So I went back home. If any doors had been opened, whoever did so clearly looked inside and said "what a mess" and left. There were no doors or windows unlocked and nothing missing. I reset the alarm and headed back to Missouri to retrieve Rooty who was still there visiting with his doggy friend Ozzie.

Back in Missouri, I exited at the Pacific exit to get gas and switch to Old US 66 since super-freeway I-44 was creeping along in the rain that had started to fall. After filling the car, I decided to unfill me. It was my first visit to a public restroom since Larry Craig had skipped the light fandango and turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor in the Minneapolis airport. I decided to bypass the urinals and opted for a stall. Standing there, I consciously made sure that my feet were not visible from the adjacent stalls, and that if I dropped something I would just leave it where it fell and buy a replacement whatever.

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale

The binds that tie us

These are the Google searches that lead the most visitors to this site, which I know is an awkward sentence but it's been a long, long day so suck it up and forget it, and their respective posts.

nickname creator<== by far #1

dorm videos that have been removed from YouTube*

Kosovo videos<==fun in a war zone

Steve Coombs<==actor, but he removed 'licensed driver' from vita

Fat Biker Chick<===how scary is that?

And, thanks to The Riverfront Times for the mention in the STLOG on the RFT website.

*The videos have been removed from YouTube and Google Videos because of a "copyright claim by a third party".
========================================

:P fuzzbox said...

Fat Biker Chick is one of my favorite posts that you have done.

---------------fuz, it needed some of your artwork

This is new...

Rooty just crawled under his bed and went to sleep. I would take a picture but it would just be of his, you know, bed.

I want my school taxes back. Vol. 16. Part 4a.

One of today's visitors got here by Googling "how to read a car odometer."

===================================
:P fuzzbox said...

Think they learned anything?

--------------fuz, yes, but probably from visiting other sites like howtoblowoutbirthdaycandles.com, howtouseatoothpick.com, and (my personal favorite) howtotellwhichisyourleftshoe.com.

Here's one to think about...

My car has an indicator light in the instrument cluster that shows when the wipers are on. As opposed, I suppose, you know, actually looking out the window and seeing if anything is going swish swish.
=======================
stan said...

Is there one that tells you when the horn is honking, too?

-----------Stan, that might make some since for deaf drivers. The spooky thing is the wipers turning themselves on when rain hits the windshield. Spooky.

"Honey, check and see if we left them lights on."

Except as a security cameras for the people who live in that house, the value of this particular traffic cam escapes me!

This is near downtown St. Louis. I-44 is in the background.

If those folks leave their shades up you could see what they are watching on TV.

Source: Gateway Guide cams.

====================================

moni said...

Maybe the DEA has a plan, lol. BTW, thanks for the comment Jim, :)

-------------Hi Moni!!! -- don't get the DEA after me, my "army cloning experiment" post prompted a look-see from Homeland Security (true).

The Phoenix said...

Hopefully, seeing what they're watching on TV is all we can see.

--------Hi Foen -- anyone who did not see this comment coming from Phoenix raise your hand! :)

:P fuzzbox said...

I wonder if they are exhibitionists. That would be one reason to live in the house.

--------------fuzz, the house was there before the freeway, the freeway was there before the traffic cam -- OFF TOPIC, saw TV show about tornado chasers in West Texas last night and thought of you.

Another Monday morning waste of time.

Click HERE or on the image.

Note: The game is on one of my sites but the ad is from the game site.

Just in case your attacker is near-sighted and very, very stupid

Crime-fighting camouflage clothing!

Link to a slideshow with more examples.

In a confusion of mass vs. velosity...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A thief caught shoplifting a packet of cheese from a supermarket in Germany tried to make his getaway in a cement mixer, but he was quickly nabbed by police.

The holely may not be the saved!

I had two 12-pak cases of root beer in a lower kitchen cabinet. Today I noticed a few black spots on the carpeting. I opened the cabinet -- MOLD, and lots of it.

Eight of the 24 cans had popped open. Not exploded, their tab-tops were just open a tad.

I had to wash the cabinet.

I had to wash the soda cans.

A box of crackers and a box of dog biscuits were lost to the MOLD.

The photos above are of the saved (on countertop) and the damned (in the sink).

It's just like that Duke of Windsor thing

He gave up his crown for the woman he loved.

Eric Affholter, 41, a lawyer and public defender in St. Louis put love ahead of the law.

He got a year of probation and a $2,000 fine. He had faced up to six months in prison. But, alas, his true love done got deported.

Affholter's crime? He arranged a sham marriage so that his gay Peruvian lover could remain in the United States.

Ain't love just swell!

Could there be more of a Monday morning waste of time!

Write your own love poem -- CLICK HERE.

Here's mine:

Once More, My Love

This night I shall dream of your bedazzling blue hair and lion-eyes.
Wrapped in echoes of your mellifluous arm-music,
I long to sip from your appleful lips.
In my dreams, we fly on the exquisite winged pea of greenness -- skimming vast continents of legs and dogs.
The depths of all the oceans of the universe shall never separate our peachs.
Brilliant as plateing houses, the seas greet us from afar.
In the twilight we feast on chocolate-coated cows and tender pianohearts of love
Adorned in white silk, we pluck our banging love chimes from our toes.
I press the pillow that you wear around your neck against my leg-muffin so that our apples melt into one.
You will always be my little Fat Head-cakes face, the lion of my own plateing eye of love.

My new car knows who I am!

When I approach it, it unlocks its doors.

To start it, I push a button, no key is required.

I find myself walking into other doors, expecting them also to recognize me and unlock themselves.

Yes, my new car has actually made me dumber.

I want my school taxes back. Vol. 16. Part 3.

Went to OfficeMax to buy envelopes, paper, and (oddly enough) a padlock.

At check-out lane, I'm watching the little credit-card screen while the clerk is scanning my items.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Me: "It's not reading the scans, nothing shows on the screen."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Her: "The total will appear when I finish."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Me: [Glancing over at the nothing.] "Nothing is showing up on the register."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Her: [Annoyed.] It will when I finish."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

After the last beep, she looked at her register and realized that nothing she had scanned had been recorded by the register, much less totaled.

She pressed a few keys.

Her: "I'll have to scan everything again, there was something wrong with the computer."

And, Chevy Chase would turn to Jane Curtin and say "Jane, you ignorant sl*t."

Maybe a defense for Larry Craig (R-ID)

The Ig Nobel Prizes are organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

Some for the 2007 Winners:

PEACE: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon -- the so-called "gay bomb" -- that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other. [In case you missed the news stories, this is not made up.]

MEDICINE: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects."

PHYSICS: L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled.

LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

LITERATURE: Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.

and my personal favorite:

AVIATION: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters. [ REFERENCE: "Sildenafil Accelerates Reentrainment of Circadian Rhythms After Advancing Light Schedules," Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 23, June 5 2007, pp. 9834-9.]

Here a really good idea...

Tired of that annoying razor stubble in your bathroom sink, leave it lodged in your computer's keyboard instead.
USB Powered Rechargeable Shaver, $19.95

odd

the old itsjim blog, that I once had, then some Lesbian had (not that there's anything wrong with that) is now in another language.

http://itsjim.blogspot.com/

IDOT Paints Yellow Stripes Over Dead Raccoon

Here's the full story.

How bad was it?

Twice during one inning, Astros third base coach Doug Mansolino held Astro players at third base rather than let them score certain runs.

The Cardinals still lost 18-1.

Rooty the Dog is Trilingual

He speaks Dog: "Arf"

He understand English: "Dinner"

And, he understand German:"Sitzen Sie hin" (sit down)

Here's a scary thought

My shampoo and soap leave a soap-scum on the shower walls after I shower -- does that me I have the same soap-scum on me after I shower?

Something to do at work on Monday morning...

Movie Blunders
Note: It's a slideshow, but the photos usually do not contain the blunder being described.

Olden Days

The town that I grew up in was very isolated -- the bus to St. Louis was one foot wider that the lane it traveled on the highway to reach to US 66. Because it was so isolated, I can usually out old people thirty or more years older than myself.

There were still hitching posts along main street when I was in high school.

My grandparents (mother's side) had a phone on the wall, one of those big wooden things that you turned a crank on to get the operator.

My grandparents (father's side) did not have a phone. They did at one time but the lines fell down and the company went out of business. Still today, on their farm, you have to go up a hill to a field where the electric meter is on a pole. You put the reading on a postcard and mail it to the power co-op.

My grandmother (father's side) always rode in the backseat even when just my grandfather was in the car. It was a throw-back to the days when women rode only in the backseats of buggies.

Our family doctor's phone number was 3. City hall was 1. I don't remember who was 2. The phone company was Ozark Central.

The factories and the city sounded noon whistles, I never knew why.

On Good Friday, no one talked between noon and 3:00 PM.

Obituaries were read on the local radio station three times a day ("Chapel of Memories").

Parking at a meter cost 1-cent. The fine was 10-cents.

The speakers are waterproof (No joke).

The iCarta iPod Toilet Paper Holder from www.old-fashioned-values.com, only $99.95.

Not geek enough for you, how about a bulletproof iPod case (below). See the full article about the $1 billion iPod accessory market at Business Week.

Probably not my best idea

My new car has a little camera that shows where you are going when you are backing up. When you go forward, it goes out. I wish it would stay on all the time, I'd like to keep track of where I've been.

How long til...

How long until a woman picks up a single Cheerio off of the kitchen floor? One billionth of a nanosecond!

How long until a man picks up a single Cheerio off of the kitchen floor? Don't know, it's still there! I guess until I feel like a small snack.

Dog Day Afternoon Nap

The picture above is Rooty sleeping amongst his pillows in his living room bed. That's his left leg sticking straight up (I know, it's never looked comfortable to me either).

I said his name and he turned over to look at me, but he didn't quite wake up, and didn't quite open his eyes. He's taking holiday weekend very literally!

Here's the cop.

I know cops hate to direct traffic, but that has to be better than the airport mens room detail.
[The officer is Sgt. Dave Karsnia.]

Ignore that big truck headed right at you!

One of the goofier -- and deadly -- concepts in highway engineering was the three-lane highway. Not the three-lane roadways that most of us are used to, with the center lane for left-turns , but highways built with a middle lane for passing in both directions. You're correct, the very idea is mind-numbing. Long stretches of old US 66 west of St. Louis used to be three-lanes. This was not perfectly straight roadway but rather a concrete ribbon that curved, climbed, and descended with every fluctuation in the hilly terrain. There was also a long three-lane stretch south of Austin on old US 81.

Fortunately, the Interstate system removed most of the traffic from these three-lane highways and most were abondoned or repaved as two-lane roads.

You would think that would be the end of it, but you'd be wrong! Never underestimate the Missouri Highway department when it comes to goofy.

The image at the top of the post is not old, it's what MODOT plans to do to 18 miles of Missouri Highway 5 between Camdenton and Lebanon in central Missouri. And, this is my favorite part, rather than call it a three-lane road, MODOT calls this a Shared Four Lane highway. Now that's spin!

I didn't...

but I almost did!

====================
:P fuzzbox said...

Good thing it doesn't look like hand lotion.

Fuz, I have no idea of what you speak, and I didn't in junior high school either. Jim

=====================

NOTE: Fuz posted the following on an earlier post:

:P fuzzbox said...

Speaking of McDonalds, I read that in Montana they are outsourcing the drive in window to somewhere in Texas. I guess that is better than India.

Fuz, didn't someone have a post about McDonald's outsourcing the order-taking to women's prisons, it might have been me. Jim

Are they 'baggy pants' or 'saggy pants'

Cities (Atlanta for one) and school districts (Dallas for example) are considering or have passed laws or rules against saggy or baggy pants -- guys wearing their pants just below their buttocks so most of their underwear shows. It may be the only fad ever to have started in nursing homes and spread to the Y Generation!

[Note: A city ordinance would probably be unconstitutional. School dress codes are usually upheld. A federal court recently ruled that a student could be suspended for wearing a cap with a Confederate flag. Conservatives and the ACLU, oddly enough, both supported the rights of the student.]
======================
Willow said...

This photo could have been taken at my job. I see this every day. I've seen the baggy pants thing with NO underwear, which is really really horrifying to confront while you're trying to have lunch. There are supposed to be rules, but they are never enforced. I also see the female version of this, mega boobage on display.

For those of you not familiar with Willow's career choices, she used to work in hell but has since got a better job in purgatory! :) Jim

==========================

:P fuzzbox said...

Oddly enough, law enforcement officials are 100% in favor of the wearing of baggies. As apprehension of fleeing urban youth after a short foot chase has gone up exponentially.

Fuz clearly has had more experience fleeing from the fuzz that most of us!!!!!! Jim

Gazebo denied is gazebo delayed

[Oops! This was originally posted to the wrong blog.]

Meet with attorneys today about suing the Lake Board over the denial of the gazebo permit. I was very impressed. We have to give the Lake Board 14 days to reconsider, however. On the bright side, that should be about how long before the temperature gets above freezing again!

I will keep you posted.

Send your contributions to the defense fund to the Free Jim's Gazebo Fund, Box 666, Nassau, The Bahamas.
=================================

Anonymous said...

Been wondering how that was going. How anyone could stop you building such an aesthetically pleasing structure on your own land is beyond me!

A, thanks for asking, the Board filed a motion with the Court to dismiss our Complaint (lawsuit), just today the Court ruled against their motion to dismiss. We now enter Discovery -- the gathering of documents and other information. The trial will probably not be until Spring because each side usually has 30 days to respond to everything that happens. Jim

==================================

moni said...

Next time, run for the Board Jim. Remember when Clint Eastwood couldn't get an ice cream cone in Carmel?? He ran for Mayor, then made the cones legal. The previous Mayor and city council considered it "tacky" to eat ice cream while walking. They had restricted ice cream to "ice cream parlors" and no cones were offered.

11:42 PM

One and 1/2 degrees east of the 90th Meridian West

That's the location of the drive-up window at the local McDonald's. Oddly enough, the window is exactly 400 feet above mean sea level.

Useless facts. You bet! I finally bought a new car and most of the technology seems to be either useless, redundant, or unfathomable. Does anyone really need to know 24/7 what spot on the earth is exactly beneath their butt?

If you only buy a new car every ten years, the technology is bound to change, but give me a break. The new car not only talks to me, I can talk back to it -- then it either does something or asks another question. Rooty is very confused. He has no idea who's taking to us or whom I'm talking to. Just to mess with his mind, every now and then I switch it to Spanish.

So that's pretty much what I have been doing all week, reading the five main manuals that came with the car -- then I had to get a new cell phone that is Bluetooth enabled so the phone and the car can chat with each other -- then I had to wade through the mind-numbing labyrinth of Sirius radio menus ("cartas" in Spanish).

So, for a change of pace, today I cut the grass: pull cord, walk behind mower.

This is an odd bit of technology:

I ordered a new car. A 2008 model. About a month ago. They cannot tell me when it will be delivered. But they can tell me precisely when it will be built -- today. That's right, today is my car's birthday.

David Beckham made his long-awaited Major League Soccer debut Thursday

"The sellout crowd of more than 46,686 at RFK Stadium let out a thunderous roar as the 32-year-old English midfielder with the tender ankle stripped off his warmup jacket and T-shirt, displaying his bare chest in a steady rain." [Source: USA TODAY]

Did you really expect this guy to remain fully clothed?
=======================
This today from soccertimes.com: "In the end, the 46,000 plus went home happy. They got to see Becks' debut, they got to see him take off his shirt not once, but twice (and then again when he swapped jerseys with United captain Ben Olsen), and they saw United get an important three points. Now the test will be whether United can get those fans -- the average attendance is around 17,000 -- to pay for a return visit when Beckham is not in the house."
===================================
Pixie said...

EWWW nasty!

Pix here's a pix from the game just for you:

Your help is greatly anticipated.

Like many states, Missouri and Illinois have placed large reader boards above their urban Interstate highways. I past five today. The first said "Test Test Test." The second said "Right lane closed at Soccer Field Road." This appeared to be important news since the Soccer Field Road exit is just west of the complex I-44, I-270, and MO 366 (old US 66) interchange. Traffic exiting I-270 and 366 actually uses that lane to head west on 44. I immediately began planning alternative routes depending upon how far traffic was backed up. I did not need to bother, when I got there the lane was not closed and there was no evidence that if ever had been. The next three big reader boards were blank. Ain't technology great?
-------------===========
The Phoenix said...

Technology is only as good as the people charged with using it. My favorite is the one on 270, just before the Chain of Rocks or Canal Bridge that reads "Congestion Ahead."

Gee, ya think??

-----

Road signs are put up for people who already know where they are going. Jim

Headline: "Death row inmate dies of cancer but lawyer wants to continue appeal"

From today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Kind'a says it all, doesn't it!

Dog days of August

Carson: "It was really hot in So. Calif. today."

Audience: "HOW HOT WAS IT?"

Carson: "It was so hot, musicians were snorting ice cubes."
====================
stan said...

Just for clarification, you meant Johnny Carson, not Carson Daly, right?

Stan, Johnny Carson was a comedian, Carson Daly is a tool. -- Jim

===================

Tim said...

That one actually made the ribs hurt. :D

Tim, ribs sound good for dinner, thanks for the idea. --Jim

Dear Santa, this is what I want

The larger sticker above is available from the Left Lane Drivers of America ("It’s time to get that Left Lane back! "). You attach it to your windshield -- the photo below shows what the driver in front of you would see. If you travel I-270, don't bother. As we all know, 270 drivers (1) never look in their rear view mirrors, (2) even if they did, it would be a big assumption to think they can read, and (3) even assuming they can read you know the sign would just make them more obstinate and determined to annoy as many people as possible.

NOTE -- Is it just me or is the arrow pointing in the wrong direction?

=========================
:P fuzzbox said...

There is a special corner of hell reserved for people that drive too slow in the fast lane. I would think that if a sensible punishment plan for such a criminal offense then it could be stopped. Perhaps flogging would be sufficient.

Fuzz, flogging would be good,or perhaps having to watch Porky's III for all eternity.

===========================

Amy in StL said...

If I saw that in my rearview mirror, I would totally stay in the left hand lane. Possibly slowing down to pace the car next to me. Because I think obnoxious signage deserves obnoxious behavior!

Amy, I had the same reaction to those annoying "Baby on Board" signs -- every time I saw one I wanted to go impregnate someone. --Jim
============================
The Phoenix said...

Move over into oncoming traffic???

Maybe the decal's designer is dyslexic.

Foen --Do you image that people all over the country are reading those signs and obediently are driving into the guardrails. -- Jim

Hence the phrase...

...The dog-days of summer!
Rooty asleep in the front seat, stopped at a stop sign.

======================
Metal Mark said...

Glad Rooty is doing well.

MM, he hates the heat but otherwise he's doing great! -- Jim

====================
Carnealian said...

I think you should do an entire series of photos of Rooty asleep here and there. He is too stinkin funny!

Carn, he even funnier awake, I'll post some videos soon. --Jim

Five Years at Hard Labor and Doing the Rumba

It a novel approach to running prison in the Philippines. There are bunches of these music videos from the prison on youtube. Click the picture to see the video.

"Fortune Cookies"

What male prostitutes on the West Coast call Japanese sailors.

[I know, but I heard it on TV and it made me laugh.]

===================
Pixie said...

Haaa Haaa I will have to remember that one!

Pix,

Pix, the only other one that I remember is BRAIN BUCKET. a general slang term for a motorcycle helmet. -- Jim

T U.S. researchers create schizophrenic mice

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists have genetically engineered mice that develop the physical and psychological characteristics of schizophrenia, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

In other words, mice who like to ride mass transit.
=======================
:P fuzzbox said...

Disney Mice that can hear voices in their head would be really confused. They wouldn't know if they were Mickey or Goofy.

Fuzz, I hear voices in my head, but mostly it's Hugh Downs, go figure. -- Jim

=====================

David Amulet said...

What's next? Maybe mice wwith A.D.D.

David, excuse me, I wasn't listening. -- Jim