I don’t have time to post anything substantive, but I wanted to wish the internet a very happy International Bacon Day.
Happy International Bacon Day!
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Author Archives: wellsdc
My reasoned, erudite, and entirely objective take on the 2012 Republican National Convention
Even self-styled Nordic gods have a hard time keeping hold of their hammer now and then.
This Week in WTF, August 31, 2012
The Ghillie Suit: For When You Absolutely, Positively Have to Look Like Bigfoot
– A debt collector wouldn’t stop calling an alleged debtor at her place of work. She works at the Texas fast-food chain Whataburger. As we now know, you do not f*** with Whataburger.
Everyone hates harassing calls from unrelenting debt collectors, even the folks at Whataburger Restaurants.
Exasperated officials at the San Antonio-based burger chain have gone to court in an attempt to stop persistent collections calls made to its corporate headquarters to get an unidentified employee to pay up on a debt allegedly owed.
Whataburger last week sued NCO Financial Systems, saying the collection efforts of one of the nation’s largest debt collectors “amount to a campaign of harassment against Whataburger that is unreasonable … and reckless.”
– Speaking of fast food, a Canadian woman is angry because a Dairy Queen in Alberta allegedly sold her daughter a “rancid” hot dog with a moldy bun, and now isn’t saying it’s sorry enough. Dairy Queen says it sent her $100 in gift certificates and an apology, and it insists it was an “isolated incident.” This makes me very curious to know how they store their buns in Alberta, but I think I’ll just let this one go.
– A San Francisco police officer has been suspended because the powers that be disapprove of his hobby, which involves artistic photography of nude women dressed as mermaids, sorceresses, etc. I suspect the department is just worried that they have a nerd on their hands.
– After she got a particularly nasty sunburn on her rear end, the boyfriend of a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania woman probably shouldn’t have swatted her there. You know, because it’s not nice. Also, because the sunburned-and-swatted person might fly into a rage and try to stab you in the chest repeatedly with a kitchen knife. Fair warning.
– Fox News outed one of the guys who killed Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda noticed. Hooray patriotism, you jackasses.
– Police in Adelaide, Australia arrested a couple and fined them $4,000 after receiving multiple complaints of their excessively loud sexytimes.
– Woman shoots at skunk, hits husband. I think the headline can stand alone.
– A judge in England has banned a repeat sex offender from having “one-night stands” without first running it by his probation officer:
A judge has banned a dangerous sex offender from having “one-night-stands” because of his violent history towards women.
Richard Ford, 41, from New Road, Croxley Green, was told by Judge John Plumstead that he must refuse any “offers on a plate” as unsuspecting women would not be aware of his background.
***
“He is not allowed to take advantage of a one night stand offered on a plate by someone who doesn’t know his background. He is not allowed to form relationships until probation know who with. The choice is that or jail – hard luck.”
He ordered that Ford is not allowed to stay at a woman’s house, have a woman stay at his house, or stay elsewhere with a woman, unless the probation officer knows her name and address beforehand.
My only question here is how to enforce the order. Does this guy have a probation wingman that follows him everywhere? It seems like it would be cheaper to just put him in jail–England doesn’t have that pesky Eighth Amendment, after all.
– There are many ways to deal with the feeling of approaching a woman at a bar and getting shot down. This is not one of them:
Boulder police arrested a man who witnesses say approached a woman and when she rejected his advances, he urinated on her.
And with that, I’m out.
Photo credit: ‘AxelS mit Bushrag’ by Postmanleader (picture by Tekker) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
An Open Letter to America’s Hipsters
Punkartkaietsi has created tutorials on how to make two kinds of bracelets (1, 2) out of expired pills that are still encased in their original blister packs. She used her expired ferrum pills for both craft projects. (via Laughing Squid)
This is it, hipsters of America. This is the moment that you Went Too Far. Please stop now. Your glasses look stupid, and the mustaches are even worse. Your poetry and your photography were never very good, and many, many engineers worked very hard to develop multi-geared bicycles to facilitate travel within urban areas. It’s over. Go take a shower.
(Cross-posted on Tumblr.)
Trees? Or fog?
At first I thought fog was rolling in on either side of this quad on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, but they’re actually trees. I dub this the Stock Photo of the Day.
“Touring the campus of the University of Washington.” By Jade Gordon
Photo credit: ‘University of Washington 2’ by JadeGordon on stock.xchng.
Stop! Grammar Time! As-/En-/Insure
This is my first post done by request. Clearly my power is growing…
The request specifically covered insure and ensure, but I am making an editorial decision to include assure as well, because it has been dragged into the eons-long feud between insure and ensure, and it deserves to have its pain acknowledged.
According to about.com, all three words mean “to make certain or secure,” but they approach the concept in different ways.
Assure is used in reference to people, and generally refers to the act of putting a person’s mind at ease about an issue. E.g. “I assured him that the barricades will keep the zombies out tonight.”
Ensure refers to actions taken to guarantee an outcome, e.g. “I welded extra plates of steel over the barricades to ensure that they will keep the zombies out tonight.”
Insure specifically refers to a financial and contractual arrangement to cover assets or expenses in the event of an injury, accident, or other loss, e.g. “I insured the house in the event the zombies get in and destroy it.”
Paul Brians (who is way better at this than I am) makes an interesting observation about “insurance” in America versus “insurance” in Europe:
European “life assurance” companies take the position that all policy-holders are mortal and someone will definitely collect, thus assuring heirs of some income. American companies tend to go with “insurance” for coverage of life as well as of fire, theft, etc.
Photo credit: ‘sua ensure nuoc’ by sammyshop2009, on Flickr.
That did not take long
Remember that Atheism+ thing I blogged about, like, five days ago?
I used to scoff at the notion that atheists could challenge hard-core religious folk in level of smugness. I now see that there may be no limit to the doucherocketry of some who identify as “atheist.” In fact, it is going on and on on the interwebz. Most people arrived at atheism after being raised in one religion or another. Once getting there, it can be tempting to feel a certain smugness, a certain enjoyment of discovering rational thought, and an associated joy in feeling right. But here’s the thing: you might still be wrong. In fact, nearly everyone still has some unexamined privilege that makes them wrong about something (yes, even me, pretty much every day.) As the saying roughly goes, though, you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
My point being, I believe the Atheism+ concept is a good thing, but some people can’t seem to help being trollish douchecanoes about it.
Richard Carrier wrote a couple of posts on the topic last week that are worth checking out, but I particularly liked Jason Thibeault’s summary of what the whole Atheism+ concept is supposed to represent. It might just be because he used pretty Venn diagrams, though.
In essence, Thibeault says that Atheism+ is the overlap of “atheists,” “humanists,” and “social justice advocates.” He points out that people who could fairly be described as humanists and social justice advocates could overlap with the category he labels “religious.” Overlapping both the “atheist” and the “religious” labels are two separate circles of what he describes as “scumbags, privilege-deniers, misogynists, anti-feminists, anti-gay bigots, people who hate social justice causes, and other miscreants.” He goes into some detail about what he means by those phrases, so you should go read what he wrote. He specifically notes that this category does not overlap with Atheism+. Finally, he adds a category that overlaps everything, including Atheism+, “loudmouthed jackholes who enjoy giving offense for its own sake – trolls.”
If you don’t like the causes that the Atheism+ people are trying to support, at least don’t be a loudmouthed jackhole.
Photo credit: Atheism+ logo, via FreeThoughtBlogs.
Monday Morning Cute: Blood-Curdling Cuteness
According to BuzzFeed, this is a “Venezuelan Poodle Moth.” I want to cuddle it in abject terror.
It doesn’t appear to have an entry in Wikipedia, so I cannot say for certain that it actually exists. The picture originated on Flickr (where it is posted “all rights reserved.” See below for photo credit information.) It is actually titled “Poodle moth, Venezuela.”
I looked for a “poodle moth” on Google, and all I could find was this monstrosity identified as Galasa nigrinodis. According to Wikipedia, however, G. nigrinodis is known as the “Boxwood Leaftier Moth” and looks nothing at all like a poodle. Also, these moths live in eastern North America, which is not where they keep Venezuela, last time I checked.
Presumably, this cute-yet-terrifying moth has been misidentified, with the “poodle” description given solely by the photographer. Or perhaps this is a newly-discovered species, revealed to the world via Flickr. History will decide.
Photo credit: Poodle moth, Venezuela by artour_a, on Flickr.
Television Magic Needs Rules, or, Why Russell Edgington Needs to F***ing Die, Already (True Blood spoilers within)
The only thing worse than an annoying character is an all-powerful annoying character with no apparent weaknesses. In preparation for tonight’s True Blood season finale, I’m going to kvetch a bit.
In season 3 of True Blood, Sookie et al had to contend with the 3,000-year-old, entirely-psychotic vampire Russell Edgington. Basically, no character could do much of anything to hurt him, at least physically, on their own. The only explanation ever given for this, as best I can recall, was that he is over 3,000 years old. Evidently, vampires only get better with age. It was only through a collective effort that the main characters were able to weaken Russell by getting him into the sun, and then they proceeded to not kill him. I still don’t get that. I suspect that the producers wanted to keep his character on the back burner for the time when they decided to start phoning it in, e.g. season 5. (Seriously, how do you bring back Russell when Roman barely had a chance to do anything yet?)
Now, in season 5, a group of religious fanatic vampires who never seem to leave their conference room have brought Russell back to assist with their whatever-the-hell-they’re-doing, and Russell has entirely predictably gone off the deep end and freaked everybody way the fuck out. Setting aside the question of how the characters didn’t see that coming, were the producers expecting the viewers to be surprised? Once again, no one can stand against Russell because (cue inscrutable accent) he is over 3,000 years old!!! Continue reading
This Week in WTF, August 24, 2012
Definitely not baby food. I now profusely apologize for any mockery and ask that you please not lacerate me.
– A strip club owner in Tampa, Florida does not expect the upcoming Republican National Convention, less than six miles from his club, to bring him much business. Time will tell.
– Speaking of Tampa, Rush Limbaugh thinks that President Obama instructed the National Hurricane Center to announce the risk of Tropical Storm Isaac possibly hitting Tampa around the time of the convention. He also said something about turning the convention into a FEMA camp, and then I think an Alien larva burst out of his chest and offered a more sensible take on the news. (NOTE: I might have imagined that last part. The comments about the tropical storm actually happened.)
– A reporter, formerly of the Houston Chronicle, is complaining to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of sex discrimination. The newspaper fired her in March, allegedly because she neglected to tell them of her other job as a stripper. In what I am certain is a total coincidence, Gloria Allred represents her.
– A casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey neglected to check a shipment of playing cards to confirm that they had been shuffled. They had not been shuffled. Gamblers caught on and won $1.5 million, give or take. The casino is suing the card company, but they’re also suing the winning gamblers for violating the “house always wins” clause.
– A so-bad-he’s-really-bad comedian launches into an absurdly racist routine in front of a young Asian couple and gets (justifiably) knocked out:
Photo credit: ‘Gerber Machete’ by Dana60Cummins (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.