surprisingly affordable

“Rise and shine, campers! And don’t forget your booties, cuz it’s coooold out there today.”
“It’s cold out there every day. What is this, Miami Beach?”
“Not hardly. So the big question on everybody’s lips–”
“On their chapped lips–”
“on their chapped lips is, does Phil feel lucky? Punxsutawney Phil. That’s right, woodchuck chuckers!”

From President Clinton’s Anti-Terror Initiative, announced in April of 1995:
- Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1968 to constitutionally enhance use of electronic surveillance to fight terrorism. This proposal would: permit any federal felony to be used as a basis for an electronic surveillance order; ease restrictions on the use, in American court proceedings, [...]

Sam Alito is a very, very smart… capable man. When you talk to Sam Alito, you think… “smart… judge.”
-world leader George W. Bush, differentiating himself from his Supreme Court nominee

Just when you were thinking, “Things seem oddly sane around here,” it’s time for people to start running for the St. Louis School Board. This stuff is like catnip to me.
One of the nice things about being childless is that stuff like this is still funny instead of f***ing terrifying.

Osama bin Laden dropped his latest live recording today. Very disappointing. His attempt to get back to his roots comes across mostly as a rehash of his old stuff. He’s just not the showman he once was.
How frustrated should I be about this?: I don’t have any experience in the field of intelligence (or, arguably, [...]

7. State two career goals for the coming year and indicate how you plan to accomplish them.
Having received this evaluation form a week ago, my two most important career goals for the year are currently to figure out an answer to this question and to make this form go away. My plan to achieve these [...]

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, [...]

I decided a while ago that I wasn’t going to sit around and ruminate about 2005 on New Year’s Eve, because in a way it felt as though I’d spent most of 2005 doing exactly that. It wasn’t necessary this year to try and reflect on everything that happened, because everything happened and it happened [...]

It’s illegal to annoy: A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here’s the relevant language.
“Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing [...]

Did You Know?:
The earliest known invention of a phonographic recording device was the phonautograph, invented by Edouard-Leon Scott and patented on March 25, 1857. It could transcribe sound to a visible medium, but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded.
-wikipedia.org
Later, Scott would invent the electric refrigerator. His “refreezetrix” could keep [...]

Somewhere, every time people talk about Kool-Aid Man or Chester Cheetah or the Jolly Green Giant, someone at Heinz wistfully thinks of Aristocrat Tomato and dreams of what might have been.

Happy New Year!
I left my head in 2005, and I left my mojo in my head.
A friend of mine called me at work today, and as I was talking to her I thought, “If a computer gained the power to speak, was suddenly reformatted, crashed in the middle, and kept talking throughout, I think it [...]