Somehow I managed to talk my boss into having me lead a brown bag lunch discussion on the topic of health care privacy in two weeks. If anyone knows how that happened, please clue me in.

Perhaps I just need to work harder at projecting an air of incompetence.

Here's a fun Fourth of July thing. (Not the easiest site to load, but nifty when it works...)

Well whaddaya know.... turns out that St. Urho's Day is the day before St. Patrick's day. And all these years I was misled into believing it was on St. Patrick's day. Guess I'll have to alert the relatives.

Competitive hellfire and damnation. This needs to be on CSPAN.

If you haven't seen the new Ren and Stimpy, then you haven't truly lived.

Here's a parody of that nifty Honda commercial.

And, especially for comic book geeks, the heromachine is a great waste of time.

This is pretty well done. Something of a cross between viking kittens and political commentary.

I knew the Chinese should never have caved. Now look what's happened. Damned PETAnese.

Eminem mocks everybody's favorite mutant.

Also, an update on "Virgin Wha?!?"

In case you thought your job sucked, it can always be worse:

There are plenty of challenges. If Hauge is too early the annoyed cow can bolt, if late then he loses much of the sample to the ground. And even when he gets it right, the pan doesn't get it all, sometimes his arm gets it, sometimes his face.

"I just have to wait until they do it. Once I sat an hour and a half with one, waiting. But there are 21 cows in the project, so I can go to the one that's ready to crap," Hauge said.

"Sometimes it just sprays in all directions. The consistency varies from cow to cow. It's important to note things like this, so that I can run away if I need to," Hauge explained to VG.

All for $10 an hour.

The Onion AV Club is running a best interviews of this week, including Berkeley Breathed. Here's a little nugget:

O: Is the liberal stance of the early strips indicative of your own personal politics?

BB: Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.

Hallelujah!

if you're trying to break into country music, make sure your publicity photo doesn't look like a drag king Corey Feldman.

"Scatalogue: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, is on display at Ottawa's SAW Gallery."

Modern art has finally realized its potential.

UPDATE: Be sure to recommend the book "in addition to" rather than "instead of."

Upon recommendation from a certain non-blogging luddite, via Michael Malice, I have joined the crusade to link Hillary Clinton's Living History with ASIN #0395925037 on amazon.com. Shoppers looking for supplemental reading material will now know where to look. Feel free to join in the fun by filling in the ASIN number in the customer advice section.

Kyoto 'Flatulence Tax' Plan Causes Turbulence in New Zealand

You know, as a member of the House Environment Committee at Buckeye Boys' State, I pushed to introduce a bill mandating the research and implementation of methane containment devices for livestock. We were prevented from introducing the bill by the Speaker, who wanted to preserve the seriousness of Boys' State legislation. While that was exceedingly lame, it's good to see those Kiwis know where to look for their greenhouse gases.

Casablanca is one of my favorite movies, perhaps that's why I really enjoyed this deconstruction of the recent Al Qaida bombings as an attack on a city symbolic of civil society. Having visited the city, however, I think we could do better.

I'd snicker too.

In honor of a weekend where I will be sitting home piecing together an outline for an article tentatively titled "The Horror of HIPAA: You Don't Know What They Can't Tell You" - or something like that - I thought it would be appropriate to post a list of some of the places I'd much rather be right now.

My soon to be realized dream themeparks:

Habitat for Humanity Poverty Park
Transylvania's Vlad Tepes Funland

And of course, the ones that have been on my pilgrimage list for some time now:

Dollywood
Branson, MO - if only for the Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum and the possibility of catching a Yakov Smirnoff show (and didja know, Yakov is the one responsible for the giant heart mural that is at the World Trade Center site?!? What a country!)
The Winchester Mystery House

And things I would see if I happened to be in town:
The Corn Palace (which, btw, has its own webcam)
Dale Earnhardt Tribute (I have faith that the NASCAR fans will eventually ban together and create something outrageous and garish... for now, its just a lonely sign in a park... but time will tell....)
The World of Coca-Cola Museum

And in case you're wondering, I have no interest in seeing the Spam Museum, any of the 4 or 5 giant balls of twine littering the countryside, or any kind of frontier anything museum. (Although I might be talked into visiting Pioneer Village just outside Kearney, NB, as I owe them a favor, but that's another story.)
And, if your tastes are anything like mine, I can't recommend www.roadsideamerica.com too highly.

Virgin wha?!?



I guess I just don't believe hard enough.

But will he take it to the next level?

After seeing this, I figured it was only fair to subject everyone else to the image.

Also, as if that was not enough, here's the story's final sentence:
"But for believers in modification, a split tongue is merely a start. Split penises, sliced lengthwise in half, are not unheard of among aficionados."

W T F?

Thanks to Nick, I actually own the earlier cd.

How can you not like Lounge Against the Machine?

Woo-hoo! finally got into this fortress of cyberspace.

Re the site mascot, check out this one. There's something very po mo about a cat dressed up as a cat.

I assuming everyone saw this from last week. Rumor has it there was a pretzel caught in the wheel.

Attn: Mr. Glass

Re: Search for archnemesis

We've found him. He looks nothing like Bruce Willis.

"If they don't get minimum wage, this is exploitation," he said.

...but its so much better than using them for compost.....

"A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons."

According to this article, at least one person on this blog is in serious denial.

You know, I'm not much of a fashion monger.. but someone really ought to intervene here...

I think we've found a mascot for the blog.

Credit goes to Sheldon for the find.

Seems like a good time to revisit www.mycathatesyou.com.

Although I don't care for the message.. Atheist, the game, is still pretty amusing. Lots of other funny bits on www.zefrank.com.

And we thought China had finally embraced freedom. Next thing you know they'll stop awarding points for running over pedestrians too.

In lieu of the recent email debate that has erupted over the title and sitename of this web-backwater of a blog, I thought it might be helpful to post the initial "mission statement" that prompted the whole thing:

...the idea of starting a group-blog. This might prevent the regular spamming of inboxes with pointless, albeit amusing, websurfing gems, provide a repository for the occasional pithy insight, spark juvenile debates, and spread enough of the blame around so no one actually feels responsible for maintaining legitimate content. I have no real interest in spouting off on my opinions or making any kind of known presence on the web (though I’m open to such suggestions). Really, I’m thinking on the much smaller scale of entertaining my friends and keeping inboxes crap-free. I am far too apathetic and lazy to maintain a decent site on my own, and knowing that most of my friends either fit in the same category or are just too busy/uninterested to make a site on their own, I’m thinking a group effort could work...

Given that it has certainly sparked a juvenile debate and generated some pithy insights and amusing gems, I'm calling its first week in existence a success.

So, you say you haven't seen enough of Star Wars Kid, eh? Can you handle STAR WARS KID RELOADED???

Public Service Announcement: mature adults should not be tempted to fling themselves into the netting of a moonbounce castle when supervising a 6 year old's birthday party.

hmm... keeping the streets free of trash.... maybe these really are my people...

Incidentally, I learned last week (while drinking with HC econ alums Ryan O., Tom P., and Jason O. - you never really escape...) that Mike is somewhere in South Korea teaching the local kids how to say foul things in English. Personally, I would support his career in Star Wars interpretive dance...

Ever wonder what Mike Nolan's favorite movie is? That's right, The Phantom Menace. Check him out as THE STAR WARS KID!!

Found on http://www.scrappleface.com/

First order of business... anyone got a better idea for a title? And, in case you're wondering, "freemumia" was my third choice after "manicmonkey" and "earthling" were already taken. Welcome to the web-vomit that is blog.

M