Watch it. Laugh.

My wife used to get mad when I talked about Politics with friends. Now I can't get her to stop watching the conventions. She's a dang Campaign Nazi. The video above helps keep us laughing through the posturing.

There are plenty of dumb people at FOX News...

But this man could be the dumbest. Tonight while flipping through the channels, Geraldo could be seen exclaiming in a loud voice about the craziness of Hurricane Gustav. The worst was some footage from a bridge with the camera trained on a man (who looked calm and under control) in the water with a life jacket working on a light pole. Geraldo was screaming "Oh my God, there's a man in the water! I'm gonna tell the police."

Walk two steps to also calm police officer.

"There's a man in the water. He's stranded (repeats approximately 8 times)!!!!"

Police: "Huh?"

Moron (aka Geraldo): "There's a MAN in the WAAAATER!!!"

Police: "mumble mumble" (totally nonplussed)

Camera zooms out and shows Man in lifejacket begins swimming toward the boat (about 30 feet away) by himself, still calm and under control.

Geraldo: "The man is swimming !!!! (failed attempt at pregnant pause)

Man arrives at boat safely

Geraldo: "He got a lifeline.....Oh my God."

Three words: Don't watch Geraldo.

General TravestShammockery

Seen over the weekend. This one might trouble me even more than the "Anybody but -fill in the politician-" sticker. Hope? Hope? From Politicians. Are you serious?

Don't Get me wrong. I like Barack. As a politician, I guess he's ok. I'll probably vote for him in the primary here, but mainly because I find him less obfuscating than one Hillary Rodham Clinton. And by less, I mean by just a very, very, barely intelligible margin. He is after all, a politician.

These people act like Barack Obama isn't a politician. He's been doing it for a while people. He's not different from these other people. He's a greedy power hungry, politician.

I know what you want to ask. It's ok. Go ahead. "Sam if all politicians are ethical degenerates in your book, what if somebody with actual character tries to change?" The short answer: it gets sucked out of them by the reality of our system. Our system is better than despot-led and starved countries in other parts of the world, but the reality is most all politicians are owned. Barack is no different. Change is not simply avoidable. It's nearly impossible. And Barack doesn't really care about change. He just wants to be president, so he can decide what does not change.

Hope in Politicians: Priceless.

You mean I'm supposed to be real???

Chris Matthews gets a little more than he signed up for (read: accountability) from Jon Stewart regarding his new book. Priceless.





Lastly, is it just me, or does Chris Matthews laughing make you want to scrape the back of your eyelids with sandpaper?

Black Truss Markings

While working on some stuff around the house this weekend, the question arose of what those little black diamonds were every 19-3/16." The question was brought to work today and answered by the greatness that is Wikipedia.

"One little-known feature on most tape measures is
a small black diamond that appears every 19.2 inches, known as the 'black truss'
markings. This is used to mark out an equal five trusses per standard eight-foot
sheet of building material. (8 feet, or 96 inches, divided by 5 is 19.2
inches.)"

So under a normal 8-ft piece of plywood, if there are 5 spaces, there will be 6 different supports. And you don't even have to figure out the correct spacing to be exact. How sweet is that? I for one, can't wait to build a roof in the near future, because it will be soooo much more efficient.

Ah google, you had me at "I'm feeling lucky"

The author honestly feels a little bad about his inordinate affection for google. But he's torn. He loves the company which continues to improve its offerings and thus continues to have the author's support.

The author justifies his technological romance by not clicking on the ads (but it's not really true, sometimes his interest is piqued enough to follow those crazy ads on the side).

Latest in google's laundry list of life simplifying devices is 1-800-GOOG-411. I suppose you could use 800-FREE-411 but why?

The author is a huge fan of google reader, google documents (which you can keep online), and especially iGoogle (a place to bring together all of the googley goodness), but lately has found himself checking back with google labs just to see what's in the works. Ah google, someday I'm sure you'll turn into a cruel blood-sucking mistress, but today, you are my friend.

Cornhole for Life

For those of you thinking, "that Sam is always so crass and today is simply another example!", I'm gonna need you to simma down. I am not in fact being crass, but merely supporting a good cause. Cancer is a terrible thing. Don't get me wrong; Conspiracy theorist Sam questions the support for research and discovery by pharmaceutical companies with obvious conflicts of interest. What with cancer being a multi-million/billion dollar industry. Let's look past that today.

Today is the annual ACS Relay for Life Cornhole tournament fundraiser, and I for one am excited. Not solely because it's actually warm here again. No, no, but because I'm paired with our 70+ year old golf-addicted (but a really nice guy) Janitor. "Why", you may ask "are you excited, Sam?" Because this guy is one of the few who feel compelled to mess with his bosses, especially on things like this. Probably also because this man has made phrases such as "That's what she said" things of lore, but I digress. First round matchup, we've got one co-worker, and one of the family owners of the company. Needless to say, my partner will be down on the end of this guy givin' him he (+) *2 hockey sticks all day. Life is good.