match.CON

Looking for that special bank robber or ax-murderer to fill the void in your life?

Well, the Dutch government has a website for you.

You can find the inmate of your dreams, and them inmates can find you.

Just fill in the usual WLTM info and not only do you get a new buddy behind bars but liberal conjugal visits.

The article does not say but, hey it's The Netherlands, your gender is probably not an issue.

It gives "Prisoner of Love" a whole new meaning. Sorry.

If the build it, bass will come.

The structure in the back is Busch Stadium.
The new Busch Stadium.

The big hole is where the old Busch Stadium was.
We've had bunches of rain.

So now it's a really, really big puddle.
Here the story from KSDK-TV.

My favorite thing -- music videos for war zones!

AUSSIES IN IRAQ
WALTZING MATILDA

Australian National Anthem

Our Spring Fever, Monday Morning Time Waster

Oh, look!
It's Jean-Claude Camille Franois Van Varenberg

Real names of famous people.

To absent friends, and old enemies, the best last-call song on a Saturday night!

Procol Harum - A whiter shade of pale 1967

"David won't turn down his damn hifi!"

I'm just trying to get in David's "About Me" -- he likes to quote what people say about him. I would quote what people say about me but it would violate my no-profanity rule, damn!

I bet I know whose going to Summer School

Yesterday, I saw one of those cars full of high school students with a "Student Driver" sign on top. We met at an intersection. It had a crumpled left front fender. I'm not certain, but my bet is that if you dent the Student-Driver Car you am not gonna be a "student driving" any time soon.

Hello World!

Rooty and I have been in Missouri.

The power cable (transformer) on my laptop went bad.

I did not know they could do that.

When it does, you have to pay Dell $70. Yes, $70, for the electric cable.

So, except for my iPod I had no way to connect to the Internet!

I am not a pleasant person to be around when I have no Internet connection, much like most of the time I suppose.

Yes, $70, for that electric cable.

How I came to have no TV

I had Charter Cable.
A truck knocked the line down.
I called them. Was told they could not come and fix the line because I was not a subscriber. I explained that not only was I a subscriber, and had been for years, but that I was a subscriber in both Missouri and Illinois. I was passed to a supervisor who essentially accused me of trying to get cable for free.

So, I called DirecTV. I may have mentioned this before -- the installer left during the installation to go play in a basketball game. He returned much later wearing his basketball shorts. The system never worked properly, big surprise, so I called and asked what it would cost me to throw all four of their receivers and the antenna into the lake. We compromised and they sent boxes so I could return the receivers. The antenna is still on the roof.

Enter Dish Network. The installer was very nice. He said I needed a telephone jack for each of the receivers. I explained that no one had mentioned that and that none of the TV's were near phone jacks. I talked to his supervisor who said I needed to run telephone cables along the baseboards to all the TV's. I suggested that was not going to happen.

Hello again Charter Cable. I had it for a couple months and then I started receiving telephone calls from them saying my bill was past due. I explained that was impossible since they sent an ebill each month to my bank and my bank automatically paid the due amount. They kept insisting so I kept sending them more money. Then last week I got back from Missouri late one night and no cable. I called. It had been disconnected for nonpayment of the bills. I explained that I was looking at my bank account and they had been cashing my checks, two in April alone. "Oh gosh," was the explanation, they had me in their computer twice, and they would have the cable back on between 8:00AM and 10:00AM the next day. When it was not back on by 3:00PM the next day, I called again. I was told, oh gosh, that it was not scheduled to be reconnected for a couple days. I told them not to bother. So, after cutting off the cable for delinquent bills, they now have to send me a $87 refund because, oh gosh, they had been getting my money all along.

Baseball I watch on MLB.com. Many other shows and the local news are also available online. CNN is also streamed live. Charter, DirecTV, Dish Network, you can

I have nothing to fear but all of the below

I used to have a fear of the actor Randolph Scott. I have no idea why, but I'm 99% over it.
I also had a fear of men in those old-fashion white t-shirts. I don't know why, but I'm 98% over it.

Randolph Scott in a white t-shirt and I would have probably passed out.

I also used to fear brown paper bags, like those in grocery stores. I'm 95% over that.

Had I ever seen Randolph Scott wearing a white t-shirt carry a brown paper bag I probably would have died on the spot.

I also used to have a fear of chickens. The live ones, not those that come in a bucket. I'm around so few live chickens anymore I don't know if I'm over it or not.

So, Randolph Scott wearing a white t-shirt carry a brown paper bag with a chicken in it would pretty much be my idea of Hell!

runrig & tartan army - loch lomond

Scotland has no national anthem.
No pope can be Scottish, the Scots have a law against it.
I'm 1/4 Scottish.
My Scottish/Presbyterian grandmother married my Irish/Catholic grandfather. Overall, it was not a good idea.

Why do I pick on Missouri?

It's just so damn easy.

Missouri has stamped and painted new license plates, they will be issued starting June 16, 2008. Twelve million plates are being produced.

Oops! They left out the hyphen in Show-Me State (" show-me" is a compound modifier and needs a hyphen.)

The Joplin Globe broke the story, with the line "Show me the hyphen!")

We had an earthquake this morning

at 4:36 AM. I was up, eating left over pizza, but didn't feel it. I don't believe there was any damage. Just to be on the safe side, however, they raised the price of gas 20 cents.
-------------------------------------
UPDATE: The quake was a 5.2, strong for the Midwest. There was an aftershock at 10:14 AM, it was a 4.5. (A 5.5 would be ten times a 4.5; a 6.5 would be 100 times stronger than a 4.5.)

COMING ATTRACTIONS

I am going to take the blog "private" sometime soon, so I can turn the web cams on and talk a little more about myself -- plus, more pictures of Rooty!

I will find a way to get a password to those of you who visit on a regular basis.

Anyone who cares anything at all about Ashlee Simpson raise your hand

now slap yourself with it

This explains so much

Missouri does not require public school students to take a geography class. Wow!

This does explain a lot.

Often when I have a meeting in downtown St. Louis, someone will ask me if I'm spending the night. I live 20 miles from downtown, on the Illinois side -- I probably live closer than they do! You can see downtown St. Louis from parts of town.

I had a young woman from Missouri become irate in a junior-level college class because I referred to Africa as a 'continent.' She insisted, quite vigorously, that Africa was a country.

I also always wondered why the folks in Missouri do not get more upset about their jobs being exported to Mexico. At best, I guess they think the jobs are moving to Mexico, Missouri. On the other hand, they might think the jobs are going to the Isle of Tapioca. Who knows?

[There is an explanation:Missouri does not test for geography on their standardized tests.]

Let's start the week with a joke.

What did the O say to the 8?

Nice belt.

the dental surgery went fine

I almost fell asleep, from the laughing gas (no kidding) -- never felt a thing and no pain afterwards

This seems like a really good idea, but I don't know why!

Welcome to TinyURL!™

Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

An example

Turn this URL:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

into this tinyURL:

http://tinyurl.com/6

The bad news: dental surgery today (Tuesday)

The good news: Tylenol 4

How to drive the cat crazy!

Play baby-sounds on your pc.
CHICK HERE
Then click on: Learn about and listen to vocalizations from different developmental levels

"Tsvangirai Accuses Mugabe of Preparing 'War' Against Zimbabweans"

huh?

I started out stupid and it's been down hill ever since

These are some of the things that I believed when I was a little kid:

White milk comes from white cows, chocolate milk comes from brown cows. This one is entirely my sister's fault, it's what she told me. In my defense, it had some face validity since on grandma's farm the white chickens laid white eggs and the brown chickens laid brown eggs.

When the doctor took your blood pressure he was measuring how much air you had in you. I assume this came from seeing a tire gauge being used to see how much air was in a tire.

All dogs are boys and all cats are girls. Hey, all the dogs that I knew personally were male, and all the cats that I knew personally kept having kittens.

Remember, until Sonny explained it to her, Cher thought the moon was the backside of the sun. I was not alone in my ignorance.

Read all the way to the end!

Fifth-Grader Corrects Error at the Smithsonian Museum

Created: 4/4/2008 2:15:25 PM

Last updated: 4/4/2008 5:14:50 PM

(NBC) -- A Michigan fifth-grader received a letter of thanks from the Smithsonian last week for correcting a mistake in one of the museum's exhibits.

Kenton Stufflebeam and his family went to the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. during his school's winter break.

The 11-year-old student noticed that a display in the "Tower of Time" exhibit identified the Precambrian as an "era." Stufflebeam said his earth-science teacher had emphasized the word "era" did not apply to the Precambrian.

"And I knew it was wrong," Stufflebeam said. "The Precambrian is not an era, it's just the Precambrian."

Stufflebeam pointed out the error on a comment card and the museum responded with a letter acknowledging the mistake.

The letter read, in part, "The Precambrian is a dimensionless unit of time, which embraces all the time between the origin of earth and the beginning of the Cambrian period of geologic time."

And Stufflebeam pointed out his name and hometown were misspelled in the letter.

Give me a break!

I went to one of Moni's blogs -- this was the Word Verification:
I did not change the size, I did not squeeze it together.

ps. Hi Moni!

I get dumber every day

I realized yesterday, and I'm at least 800 years old, that "Cape Girardeau" -- as in Cape Girardeau, Missouri -- is not someone's name. Yes, that's right, I thought the town was named for someone whose first name was "Cape" and whose second name was "Girardeau."

In my defense, a "cape" is a piece of land jutting into the sea. The nearest sea to Cape Girardeau is at least 500 miles (810 km) away.

My vacant lot juts out into the lake a little. Maybe I should have signs made that say "Cape Jim" -- but, the Lake Board has a rule against signs. Maybe I could get by with flags that say "Cape Jim" -- but we'd just end up back in court again, remember these are people who argued in court that a gazebo is not a building (that it's a unattached covered patio).

My mother has no middle name!

Just like Harry Truman, my mother has no middle name. Harry had none because his parents thought it too papish. He got the "S" when he joined the army, it seems the army requires that you at least have a middle initial. In recent years it has become common for his name to be written "Harry S. Truman" -- this is incorrect and an insult to the man's religion.

My mother has no middle name, or initial, because she is one of 13 children and my grandparents got, you know, bored with the whole kid-naming thing. I have an uncle "Fidelious" and an uncle "Levern Edgar" -- let's face it, grandma and grandpa were just throwing darts at phone books by that time. Mother uses the first letter of her maiden name as her middle initial, I guess in case she ever decides to join the army.

I NEED TO RAISE MONEY

To pay my massive gazebo legal fees -- having three lawyers seemed like a good idea at the time.

To buy pictures of naked jim CLICK HERE -- $5.00 and up (literally)