Incredibly Stupid Brain Fart - Republican Campaigns with Fake Iraq Photo

Surely, there must be some Idiot Disease seeking out and dissolving Republican brains in this country. Yes, my Democrat friends, I do believe there are for-real human beings "out there" possessed of at least a modicum of morals and intelligence who also happen to be Republican. It's just that the Republican Party seems to have gotten itself hijacked these last few years by worker ants for Halliburton and various other industrial interests. They took the White House, they've infested the Supreme Court and Tom "I'd Never Do Anything Illegal" DeLay was running Congress for the gang.

Surely, Mom and Pop Republican America of decent values and patriotism oozing out of every pore are horrified by the crime wave and shocking immorality that's overtaken their political party. It was bad enough for Mom and Pop to endure the mockery made of their beloved Republican Party by such criminals as Randy "Duke" Cunningham who sold the prestige and honor and power of the Congress of the United States of America for a few measly millions in cash and trinkets.

And, just as assuredly, Mom and Pop were praying the Republicans would replace the crook with a candidate of indisputable morals. Actually, it seems that's exactly what Mom and Pop got because there's certainly no dispute about the morals of the Republican contender set to take Cunningham's Congressional seat.

Howard Kaloogian, Republican contender, posted a photograph on his official campaign website that supposedly depicted a more peaceful Baghdad than the media "allows" the American public to see. I suppose Mr. Kaloogian was trying to counteract the effects of the many thousands of images of war and torture being done in our name, in the name of the American people... in Mom and Pop's name.

Those of Mr. Kaloogian's ilk would now have us believe the horrors of war are a media creation.

There's just one small little detail that went awry with Mr. Kaloogian's campaign. The photo was a fake. It wasn't even of Baghdad. And Mr. Kaloogian, the Republican's best shot to bring decency back to a Congressional seat still reeking with the odors deposited there by its former occupant, is himself a liar.

Poor Mom and Pop. It was horror enough to endure the brazen manner that our country and our Constitution came to be under attack by a radical neocon agenda. But now those devilishly clever cabal boys have gone absolutely soft in the brain. Idiot Disease. It's taking over. It's like watching the Wicked Witch get doused by water... they're melting, they're melting. Their brains, that is.

Goodbye, Mr. Kaloogian. Your candidacy will hopefully melt back into the rotten wormy woodwork from whence it came. Let Mom and Pop have a good guy to vote for. For a change.

Read up on the Kaloogian Photo Op here.

Sean Penn's Ann Coulter Doll

Playing with dolls?

Hollywood activist SEAN PENN has a plastic doll of conservative US columnist ANN COULTER that he likes to abuse when angry. The Oscar-winner actor has hated Coulter ever since she blacklisted his director father LEO PENN in her book TREASON. And he takes out his frustrations with Coulter, who is a best-selling author, lawyer and television pundit, on the Barble-like doll. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Penn reveals, "We violate her. There are cigarette burns in some funny places. She's a pure snake-oil salesman. She doesn't believe a word she says."

LINK

Stupid People Pages

Stupid People Pages

"Every now and then we may say or do something idiotic, but there are people out there that just can't seem to say anything intelligent. This site is about those people. Within these pages are tons of stories about stupid people that are divided into several categories. Feel free to browse throughout them or even submit a story of your own."

The categories: Classmates; Criminals; Co-Workers; Drivers; Headlines; Laws; Lawsuits; In General; PC Terms; Roommates; Stupid Test

VISIT THE WEBSITE

Size DOES Matter

Cat Bathing as a Martial Art

The time comes, however, when a man must face reality; when he must look squarely in the face of massive public sentiment to the contrary and announce: "This cat smells like a port-a-potty on a hot day in Juarez."

When that day arrives at your house, as it has in mine, I have some advice you might consider as you place your feline friend under your arm and head for the bathtub...

READ THE REST OF THIS FUNNY ESSAY

Manual of Traffic Signs

Manual of Traffic Signs

Ever wanted to know everything there is to know about traffic signs? I think I found just the spot for you. This website categories traffic signs into ten main groups plus offers an alphabetical list. It even goes into details about sign shapes and colors and more.

You know... just in case traffic signs are your "thing."

VISIT THE WEBSITE

Protest Everything!

Click Here

What's Left To Like? (A question for Bush loyalists)

What's Left To Like?
An existential question to the remaining Bushites
BY BILL COPE

<...>

...let me say that I no longer consider Bush the root cause of everything going wrong. In fact, I can no longer believe he has much to do with it at all: Stealing the election. The vicious smearing of any and all opposition. Ignoring the many warning signs of 9/11. The lies that led the war. The deficit that's going astronomical on us. The billions of reconstruction dollars disappearing down an Iraqi rathole. The daily drip, drip, drip of soldier deaths. The wholesale transfer of wealth to the ultra-wealthy. The utter disregard of jobs flooding out to the East and cheap labor flooding in from the South. The pissing away of American prestige. The shameful Valerie Plame affair. The shameful Terri Schiavo affair. The shameful Jack Abramoff affair. The falling fortunes of our middle class. The "Three Stooges do Katrina" farce. The whole issue of giving leadership positions to political cronies who would have trouble managing a normal lunch hour rush at your average Taco Bell, let alone a vital government service. The insistence that Harriet Miers was of Supreme Court caliber. The failed Social Security grab. The ignorant dismissal of global warming. The billions of reconstruction dollars disappearing down a New Orleans rathole. The pathetic restructuring of health care programs. The no-bid contracts. The torture. The Black Hole of Abu Ghraib. The insistence that spying on Americans needs no checks or balances. The complete unaccountability for the string of messes left in their wake. The lock, stock and barrel delivery of our industrial base to China. Let's see ... what else?

Oh ... and the handing over of American ports to a nation full of people who are but another Danish cartoon away from signing up with al-Qaeda en masse.

Nope, blaming all that on Bush would be like blaming Britney Spears' baby for not belting himself into the kiddie seat. Take the Dubai deal: Bush himself acknowledged he didn't know jack about it until he decided to come out swinging in defense of the indefensible, and that I can believe. All too easily, I can picture Bush sitting in the Oval Office sucking the filling out of Ding-Dongs until Rove or Cheney comes in and tells him what to think next.

So, you see? I give Bush credit for having nowhere near the sense it takes to come up with such a litany of miserable failures. In fact, I have come to see Bush as nothing more than a trademark--which is sort of like a figurehead, only as a general rule, a figurehead has more brains than a trademark. For instance, Queen Elizabeth is a figurehead. Mickey Mouse is a trademark. Get it?

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE (from Boise, Idaho)

The Kaleidoscope Painter & More

THE KALEIDOSCOPE PAINTERThis is one of my favorite places to goof off while online. The JAVA Applet allows you to move your mouse around to "paint" a kaleidoscope. You can change brush size, too. The above image was made by me using their "Dynabrush" option which changes brush size automatically and constantly as you paint. I've used this applet to make images for web graphics or at least, tiles and textures that are then used to create other images. Here are some more variations (resized to be much smaller than their original size so they don't take up too much space here):

You can also add a few images of kaleidoscopes together with an animation program to make one of these:

To have your own fun with this kaleidoscope applet, GO HERE.

To make your own kaleidoscope, GO HERE.

If you would like to have a kaleidoscope coloring book, GO HERE. Or, maybe, you would like to try some FREE online kaleidoscope coloring pages.

An interesting book called, "Kaleidoscope Designs and How To Create Them."

FEMA Screws More Katrina Victims

Demolitions on Hold
Officials mull over their next move after FEMA refuses to pay

Shortly after the Aug. 29 hurricane, FEMA announced that it would pay 100 percent to demolish structures and remove the debris as soon as the property owners signed right-of-entry forms.

The federal government at the time put no time limit on completing the demolitions and all was moving forward as planned until seven months later when the rules suddenly changed.

That's when FEMA announced that they were halting all demolitions pending individual inspections at each right-of-entry site to determine if the structures met new criteria for demolition reimbursement.

After the inspections started, the city soon learned that FEMA had started rejecting countless properties that had been on the list for demolition since shortly after the storm.

City employee David Groves was with a Crosby Street homeowner Tuesday when two FEMA inspectors walked inside and said the building seemed "OK" to them. Groves said neither of the men were trained in home inspections and were not licensed engineers.

Groves said their criteria for rejecting the demolition request was, "If it doesn't fall on top of you, then it's OK."

The Crosby Street home still needs to come down, he said, because it is a public safety hazard and has to be elevated because it's in a flood zone. In addition, he said, the home is not structurally sound and infested with mold and other bacteria. The home took in four feet of water.

The brick home has cracks in the foundation, cracks in the walls and split rafters in the ceiling. Outside, the brick walls are cracked in places and the walls easily push from side to side.

The homeowner, who wished to remain anonymous, said she didn't know what to do now because she can't rebuild until the existing structures is demolished. She's in a flood zone and has to elevate the home regardless but can't do so if the home doesn't come down first.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Do you love Mexican food?

I found a blog here at blogspot that I'll be visiting on a regular basis and I thought I'd share it here with anyone else WHO LOVES MEXICAN COOKING. Yummy in the tummy...

http://recipemexican.blogspot.com/

Those Darwin Awards

Darwin Awards
The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it in really stupid ways. Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously.

Top 2005 Darwin Awards
Failed Frame-Up
Chimney-Cleaning Grenade
Freeway Dangler
"Plug Me In"
Surprise Attack Surprise
The Nuisance of Seatbelts
What I Can Still Do
Elephant Tail

Honorable Mentions
Nighttime Fun with Bullets
Oops, Did It Again

Personal Accounts
Juice Me Up!
Medieval Flambe
Wild Wheelchair Ride
Captain Magneto

Sample Story One:

The Death of Dracula (from 1993)

A college student dressed up as Dracula for Halloween. As a finishing touch, he put a pine board down the front of his shirt, so he could "realistically" stick a knife into the board and pretend he was transfixed with a killing stake. He didn't consider the strength of the thin pine board when he tapped the knife in with a hammer. Propelled by the force of the hammer, the sharp knife tip split the soft pine and buried itself in his heart. He staggered from his dorm room into the party, gasping, "I really did it!" before succumbing before horrified friends.

Sample Story Two:

Think Before You Leap (21 July 2001, Idaho)

When his brakes failed while driving down a steep mountain road, Marco bailed out on his eight passengers and leapt from his Dodge van. Too bad Marco didn't alert the others to the problem before he took flight so precipitously. Another passenger was able to bring the vehicle to a stop a short distance away. Marco struck his head on the pavement and died at the scene. No one else was injured.

More Fine Ways to Waste Time in Cyberspace

The folks at CleverMedia.com have come up with free Flash games for you to play online. Here's a few:

PUZZLE GAMES

Add It Up: Quickly select numbers from a grid.
Newtons Nightmare: Flip the apples to eliminate them.
Quadramania: Drop pieces on the board to make rectangles.
Word Spell: Rearrage the letters to form words.
ALSO: Quiximity, Snaparound, Spinsect

ACTION GAMES

Bubble Trouble: Shoot bubbles into groups to make them disappear.
Chicken And Eggs: Catch the eggs before they hit the ground.
Gold Strike: Strike gold in a collapsing mine.
Zig Zag: Match pieces that are touching, or that can be connected by a line.
ALSO: Flapjack, Gopher-It, Log Runner, Worm Food

MAH JONGG TILE GAMES

Christmas Tiles: Mah Jongg solitaire with Christmas decorations.
Flash Tiles: Mah Jongg solitaire with simple symbols.
Halloween Tiles: Mah Jongg solitaire with Halloween images.
Nile Tiles: Mah Jongg solitaire with Egyptian hieroglyphics.
ALSO: Flapjack, Gopher-It, Log Runner, Worm Food

ARCADE GAMES

Alien Defense: Shoot down the alien bombs before they destroy your cities.
Astro-Blobs: Destroy the astroblobs before they steal the space bunnies.
Moon Lander: Land a ship on the surface of the moon.
River Kayak: Kayak down a river avoiding rocks and things.

MORE GAMES

Flash Arcade Bowling: Try for a perfect 300 in this bowling simulation.
MP3000: Make your own music mixes and video.
The Urinal Game: A humor game about etiquette.
Video Poker: Play a game of video poker.
ALSO: Blackjack, The Christmas Tree Game, How To Communicate With The Opposite Sex, How To Crap In The Woods, Far East Trader, Campaign Trail 2004

Who Died Today?

From the Brainy History website:

March 22, 2002 Eileen Farrell, singer, Can't Help Singing: The Life of Eileen Farrell, dies at 82
March 22, 2001 William Hanna, cartoon creator, The Flintstones, dies at 90
March 22, 1999 David Strickland, actor, Suddenly Susan, dies at 29
March 22, 1996 Claude Mauriac, writer, dies at 81
March 22, 1996 Robert Mellors, gay activist, dies at 47
March 22, 1996 Ronald George Hayward, political manager, dies at 78
March 22, 1995 Peter Woods, newsreader, dies at 64
March 22, 1994 Dan Hartman, U.S. singer/songwriter (Love Sensations), dies at 42
March 22, 1994 Igor Aleinikov, Russian director (tractors, air crash), dies at 32
March 22, 1994 Luther Diamond, radio Personality, dies at 89
March 22, 1994 Walter Lantz, U.S. cartoonist (Woody Woodpecker), dies at 93
March 22, 1993 Steve Olin, pitcher (Cleve Indians), drowns at 27
March 22, 1993 Tim Crews, pitcher (Cleve Indians), drowns at 31
March 22, 1991 Gloria Holden, actress (Dracula's Daughter, Test Pilot), dies at 73
March 22, 1987 Joan Shawlee, actress (Abbott and Costello Show), dies at 58
March 22, 1986 Charles Starrett, actor (Silver Streak, Jungle Bride), dies
March 22, 1979 Ben Lyon, actor (I Cover the Waterfront, Indiscreet), dies at 78
March 22, 1978 Karl Wallenda, falls to death walking high-wire in PR at 73
March 22, 1975 Asa Smith Bushnell Jr, Sec of U.S. Olympics (1945-65), dies at 75
March 22, 1975 Cass Daley, actress (Red Garters), dies at 59
March 22, 1975 Paul Verhoeven, director (Robocop, 4th Man, Total Recall), dies at 73
March 22, 1974 Peter Revson, U.S. race car driver (Indianapolis 500), dies at 35
March 22, 1971 Martin Bodmer, writer, dies
March 22, 1969 Ernst Deutsch, [Dorian], Czech actor (3rd Man, Golem), dies at 78
March 22, 1964 Addison Richards, actor (Col-Pentagon), dies at 76
March 22, 1958 Michael Todd, producer (Around the World in 80 Days), dies at 56
March 22, 1956 George A L Sarton, Belgian/US historian, dies at 71
March 22, 1953 James Anderson II, (Jo-Northern Exposure), dies
March 22, 1946 Clemens A von Galen, bishop of Munster/anti fascist, dies at 68
March 22, 1945 J Postuma, Dutch resistance fighter, dies
March 22, 1944 ... Pucheu, French Internal minister to Vichy, executed
March 22, 1931 Ban Johnson, founder of baseball's American League, dies at 67
March 22, 1929 Anton Beer-Walbrun, composer, dies at 64
March 22, 1924 R G Nivelle, French general (Verdun), dies at 67
March 22, 1923 Theophile Delcasse, French statesman, dies at 71
March 22, 1890 Desire de Haerne, Belgian priest/Congressional leader, dies at 85
March 22, 1838 Hendrik Fagel, Dutch/English baron, dies at 73
March 22, 1832 J W Goethe, writer, dies at 82
March 22, 1832 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Poet
March 22, 1824 Johann Melchior Dreyer, composer, dies at 76
March 22, 1820 Stephen Decatur, killed in a duel with Com James Barron at 41
March 22, 1777 John Bartram, father of American botany, dies at 77
March 22, 1758 Jonathan Edwards, theologian/philosopher (Original Sin), dies at 54
March 22, 1661 Hendrick Uylenburgh, art dealer, buried at about 73
March 22, 1639 Thomas Carew, English poet/diplomat (The Rapture), dies
March 22, 1471 George van Podiebrad, king of Bohemia (1458-71), dies
March 22, 337 Constantine, Emperor of Rome, dies at 47

Pick ANY date of the year here to see who kicked the bucket on that special date.

Amazon.com modifies ’abortion’ queries

Amazon.com modifies ’abortion’ queries
By Associated Press
Tuesday, March 21, 2006

SEATTLE - Amazon.com Inc. said Monday it had modified the way its search engine handles queries for the term "abortion" after receiving an e-mail complaint that the results appeared biased.

Until the recent change, a user who visited the Seattle Internet retailer and typed in the word "abortion" received a prompt asking, "Did you mean adoption?" followed by search results for "abortion."

Spokeswoman Patty Smith said the automated prompt was purely based on technology, and that no human had made the decision to show the question.

"Adoption and abortion are the same except for two keystrokes," Smith said. "They also, in this case, happen to be somewhat related terms."

Still, Smith said she and other company officials decided to remove the question after receiving an e-mail complaint and deciding that it raised a valid concern.

People who type in the term "adoption" do not see a prompt asking "Do you mean abortion?"

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

What's on TV tonight?

The Yahoo TV Grid makes it all plain. I'm parking the link here so I don't lose it.

When Did Nice Go Out of Fashion?

I've been puzzling on this one for some time now and it was brought back into sharper focus for me just yesterday by an incident in a supermarket parking lot.

As I turned into the Von's parking lot which is huge because it is an outdoor shopping mall with capacity for a few hundred cars (I'm guessing), I could see the frail elderly gentleman with his walker, struggling to get across the great divide between his handicapped parking spot and the safety of the sidewalk area near the Von's entrance.

He was trying so very hard to go fast that he was shaking all over and I was afraid he would make himself fall right in the traffic lane. He was afraid of being run over by the passing cars who could not be bothered to stop for him, brushing by him with not very much room to spare. These people were terrifying the old man without giving even a heartbeat of consideration to his safety or the safety of the general public if things got really clogged waiting for the paramedics to arrive.

Who were the faces behind those steering wheels as they came up to and passed my own car window? They were mostly mothers with young children strapped into car seats. Sometimes, they were Dads with Mom in the front seat and kids in the back. These weren't exactly Osama bin Laden's latest recruits. But, from that old man's point of view, they may as well have been.

And what lesson did they just teach to those children in their care? Don't imagine for a second that the lesson was not permanently engraved on young psyches. Oh, it was. Sometimes, it was only the children who were looking through back windows or sticking heads out windows to see if the old man made it to safety. But Mom or Dad never saw a thing beyond their own need to hurry.

It took a very long time for that old man to cross that divide. I waited far enough back so he would not concern himself with trying to hurry up to please me. At last, a couple of teenage girls dressed up in today's fashion de rigeur with hair and make-up that looked a bit gothic crossed the same divide, that passenger safety zone crosswalk and they slowed to the old man's crawl, each one taking up a position on either side of him, keeping pace until he made it to safety.

Somebodys' mothers obviously taught them how to be human beings.

The old guy made it into the store and I finally was able to move on to the parking rows. Later, in the store, I saw him wheeling around in the motorchair that I'm sometimes forced to use on bad arthritis days. He looked happy, pleased to reach for his own items. He only had one more trip back across the divide waiting for him outside. Hopefully, store personnel would assist although I understand extremely well the need to say, "Oh, no," when asked if help out is needed. How do you admit you are not independent? How does a person do that? I haven't got there yet.

I came home, pushed the button to flip open the trunk, and struggled to lift bags out of the car and try to move as many as I could toward my front porch. Directly across the street from my house, two teenage boys and their Dad paused in shooting their basketball hoops to watch my struggle. I must admit, when I am exhausted and in pain, I do move more like a Rube Goldberg contraption than a normal human being.

I don't blame the boys for not rushing up to take my burdens and help me. Obviously, they'd never been allowed to know any better. I don't think I even blamed the Dad. Obviously, this was a generational thing.

I moved toward my front porch sending up little prayers of thanksgiving to the divine power that, so far, allows me to get to that porch under my own steam even if I am a bit rickety and shaky about doing it. I made it to my front door and moved on inside and felt bad for all the folks who have passed from being a valued human to being just a piece of wasted litter discarded along the side of Life's little highway.

Just one simple act of kindness made that frightened old man in the parking lot feel his existence mattered. To somebody.

Just knowing that somebody cared if I was struggling with a bag of groceries would have laid down a buffer between me and my own momentary despair.

Your simple act of kindness toward another might cost you less than a nanosecond of your lifetime, a smile freely given, an offer of a helping hand, a kind word... so very little that you could expend it and never even notice your own effort.

But the good that you did could mean a whole universe of care and making that other person feel they were still connected to the rest of the human race. You just never know.

Get human. Care. Show it. Be kind because we only go around once in this life cycle and what do you want your own existence to count for? Think about it.

Fun Timewasters - Games!

Some of these are online, some for download, mostly free, some to buy... hope you find something fun to do here. It's good to take a relaxation break now and again, let the cobwebs clear, then go back fresh to the so-called important stuff. Enjoy!

Pizza Hot - deliver those pizzas!	The BP Ultimate Rally Challenge - keep your gas-guzzling 4x4 on the road across three cross-country stages, dodging all the other traffic and picking up convenient petrol cans to refuel
Bumper Ball - Fairground footy, combines the dodgem-car-driving of Backlash with the 2-player kickabout action of Flash Football	Deal Or No Deal - Gameshow gamble
Diner Dash Table-watching waitressing	Extreme Stick Death 9 Stickman kung fu
Snow Down Strategic snowball-fight	Planarity "Cat's cradle" untangler
Sudoku Mind-numbing number crossword	Mah Jongg Fortuna Tile matching mischief
Dead Case Spooky point-and-click, you play a ghost trying to figure out who you are and how you died	Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt Cake adventure
Busy Burger - Meal memoriser. The pressure is on in this diner. Test your memory with this burger-flipping, calorie-burning fast-food dash.	404 Breakout - a soothingly playable version of the old "knock the bricks out of the wall" favourite, now with plenty of modern powerups which rain from the sky to give you bonus balls, faster serves, the ability to knock out a whole column of bricks in one go
Arcadia - Multi-screen madness	Pin High CC Mountain - Pro golfer. One of the most serious online golf sims we've seen in the games chart for ages
3D Pool 1 or 2-player 8-ball	Pow Pow's Mini-Golf 3D fiddler
Hannah And The Pirate Caves Puzzle platformer	Ski Stunt Simulator - you control a skier zooming down a slope, and the idea is to make the jumps (and do the stunts) without falling off
The Doors - Realistic room-escape	Avatar High - a re-creation of American high-school life instantly familiar to anyone who's ever watched Dawson's Creek
Need For Madness 3D destruction derby	Curiously Strong All Night Long - You're "Big Bad Al", hoping to meet your online date Sheena Gothskull at "Club Nightclub" in this cautionary, yet light-hearted tale

Find more games at the website.

Astronomers detect icy 'super-Earth'

Giant planet orbits star 9,000 light-years away WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A cold, heavy "super-Earth" has been found orbiting a distant star through a method that holds promise for detecting faraway planets that closely resemble our own, astronomers said Monday. The planet weighs 13 times as much as Earth and is orbiting a star about 9,000 light-years away. Andrew Gould, an Ohio State University professor who heads the planet-hunting group MicroFUN -- short for Microlensing Follow-Up Network -- said ...""these icy super-Earths are pretty common. Roughly 35 percent of all stars have them." In the past decade, scientists have detected some 170 so-called extrasolar planets, using a variety of techniques. The vast majority are gas giant planets like Jupiter which are hostile to life as it is known on Earth. COMPLETE ARTICLE

So... my question is, do any of you believe in all the many galaxies that exist in the universe, and all the possibilities for "super Earths" or any other kind of "Earth" out there, could there be a planet capable of sustaining life such as our own Earth does? And what kind of form(s) do you think that "life" would take?

"Stupid URLs" - The Funny Stuff You Find On Your Hard Drive

I was doing a little housecleaning of my hard drive, deleting a lot of crapola when I found this crapola. So I thought I'd share. The file was named, "Stupid Urls."

UglyPeople.com (Warning: Carries "adult" advertisements on webpage)
Tonya Harding's Official Website
Rush Limbaugh's Website
Technical Support Bloopers and Customer Inanities
Top 10 Stupidest Lists (starts with ways to catch yourself on fire)
Mr. T Ate My Balls (another internet phenomenon - there are now thousands of "Ate My Balls" pages)
Blackout's Box (prank phones calls and stuff)
Bathroom Habits Study (survey of how people wipe their asses)
A Letter to Men About What To Do After They Pee
The Happiest Potties On Earth (A comprehensive listing and review of the restrooms of Disneyland.)
The iShit Project (an internet toilet)
Baja Toilets
Mr Methane ("The World's Only Performing Flatulest")
Outhouses of America Tour
When Good Toilets Go Bad (A collection of news articles about what happens when people and toilets don't get along. Also, when good toilets do bad things, when well-meaning toilet owners get out of hand, bathroom products that should have never left the inventor's garage, and much, much more!)
Somebody Selling Their In-Laws on the Internet
Internet Squeegee Guy (pay somebody to wash the inside of your monitor screen)
The Amazing Send-Me-A-Dollar Website
Airline Emergency Instructions
Dancing Herve Villachaize Page
The Illustrated Guide to Breaking Your Computer
The Deadly AOL .EXE Virus ("The Biggest Publicity Stunt The Internet Has Ever Seen.")
ASCII Macarena
Chimps on a Trampoline!!
The Bad Hair Pages
And the Bride Wore (bad bridal fashions)
Guys With Coveralls
It came from the 1971 Sears Catalog!
The horrible, sad trauma of Hideous OverdecoratedT-shirt Syndrome
The Butt Guessing Game
Virtual Bubble Wrap (Shockwave)
The Official Rock-Paper-Scissors Strategy Guide
Free Elf Bowling Game (software download)
Interactive Underwear
Jesus Dress Up
Lee's Useless Roman Numeral Converter
Name That Candy Bar
Telephone Songs

Pentagon hired contractor to advise on collecting information on churches, mosques, other U.S. sites

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.

MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.

MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.

MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Bush Keeps Katrina's Victims Homeless

Bush Keeps Katrina's Victims Homeless

At the Hope Airport there is a sea of 11,000 mobile homes set up for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. These dwellings are costing FEMA hundreds of millions of dollars; yet they remain empty even as thousands remain homeless. FEMA has been unable to use the trailers because regulations prohibit placing them in flood plains. Seeing those trailers I was mystified, disappointed and appalled. And this is just one example of dangerous mismanagement and costly incompetence.

Last week, I wrote to President Bush urging him to sign an executive order for a temporary exemption from the flood-plain regulations. With the stroke of his pen, he could give flood victims homes, yet he chooses to do nothing. In fact right now in Pass Christian, Mississippi, more than 100 hurricane victims are living in tents. Are they better off?

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Dating Horrors & Embarrassments

Well, my own story is more funny than it is embarrassing but at the time, it was plenty embarrassing.

I was 16 and had a "flexible curfew." That meant try to get home by midnight but if I wasn't going to make it, call home and give my Mom my best guesstimate of when to expect me. I actually didn't try to bend the rules too often and I chose not to stay out past 9 or 10 on a school night because, by 16, I was already past high school curriculum and was taking college-level courses. I wanted to go to college after taking a year off after high school graduation but that's another story for another day.

Back to the dating scene. My steady boyfriend at the time had a nicely appointed station wagon and, with the back seat down, we'd park backwards at the drive-in, watching the movie out the open back as we snuggled up under the covers. Funny how he liked playing the mature male (he was about 20 or so) and insisted that we meet all my Mom's rules and he wouldn't take me out if my G.P.A. threatened to droop. What an old nanny he turned out to be.

So this one evening at the drive-in, the movie must really have been extremely boring and we'd necked as far as we were going to go so we had nothing left..to..keep..us..awake. That's right. We fell sound asleep, BOTH of us snoring away.

I came slowly awake to see a long shadow beginning to loom over my boyfriend's car. I almost screamed. I nudged him. He wouldn't wake up. I nudged him again. More snoring.

Then the shadow became a live human being. It was the drive-in manager or security guard or some employee who leaned down and said, "Wake up, kiddies. Show's over. Time to go home," just as I delivered a final powerful wallop to my boyfriend's ribs and he came awake with a jolt.

We both stared out at the drive-in. Ours was the only car there. It was time to cue the "Twilight Zone" music. Very creepy.

The employee said it again, "Wake up, time to go."

We scrambled back through the car to the front seat. I quickly got over the horror and now thought it was hysterically funny and was having a difficult time suppressing my giggles. My boyfriend, however, was in a CRANKY MOOD. Either he woke up too fast or he was just pissed off at getting caught like that in an embarrassing situation but he gunned the motor and took off over the humps of the parking lot... but he'd forgotten to disconnect the speaker from his car door!

The window never cracked. Instead, the speaker was ripped off the stand and stayed glued to the car as my boyfriend roared out of the drive-in.

We were having a huge custody battle over who got to keep that speaker by the time we pulled up in front of my house. I said the boyfriend always let the girlfriend have what she wanted. That was like in the official by-laws of girlfriendship-boyfriendship. Everybody knew that.

He claimed the speaker since it was HIS car it got stuck to and HE PAID for the drive-in. I gave in, not because I thought his argument beat mine but because I saw it really meant more to him than it did to me.

As he dropped me off in front of my house, the thin fringes of daylight were just starting to break. My Mom let me in the door and all of a sudden, the whole thing got embarrassing again. It was almost 5:00 A.M. I'd spent the whole night SLEEPING with my boyfriend. I told my Mom what happened and she laughed. She knew I didn't do all that on purpose. And then she said, "Tell me again about the part where the movie speaker ripped off." Oh, we had thought about stopping to give it back but my boyfriend didn't know if he'd have to pay hundreds of dollars to replace it and he didn't have that kind of money, so... he kept on driving.

And ever after that, anytime one of my oldies stations played the Everly Bros.', "Wake Up, Little Susie," my Mom couldn't resist saying that was Greg's and my song.

---

I love reading funny stories about other peoples' dating horror stories and embarrassing moments, so here's a few links to those:

I Hate Men

That's Embarrassing!!

The Prom Site

Ecadamy

Things That Make You Go Ooof

---

Dating Relationships Embarrassing Funny

The Top 100 Blogs on Technorati

I recently joined my main blog, Writer Blog, to Technorati and will do the same for my other blogs, including this one. Meanwhile, I'm having fun exploring Technorati's Blog Search and their Top 100 list. Here's a few that made that list:

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
67,363 links from 20,147 sites

PostSecret
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
19,654 links from 12,379 sites

Daily Kos: State of the Nation
48,460 links from 10,518 sites

The Huffington Post
40,414 links from 8,294 sites

Pings.ws
7,554 links from 7,459 sites

Thought Mechanics
8,628 links from 7,441 sites

Official Google Blog
17,288 links from 7,364 sites

Blog di Beppe Grillo
Grillo's gags have tackled financial scandals and political corruption
19,100 links from 6,861 sites

Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog
14,723 links from 6,559 sites

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide
16,127 links from 6,364 sites

Crooks and Liars
22,439 links from 5,806 sites

Instapundit.com
26,069 links from 5,688 sites

A List Apart: A List Apart
A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites, is one of the longest running, most trusted, and most influential independent user experience and web design magazines.
10,393 links from 5,160 sites

Think Progress
Breaking news, research and analysis.
25,097 links from 5,016 sites

TechCrunch
14,333 links from 4,864 sites

Drew Curtis' FARK.com
7,190 links from 4,514 sites

Wonkette, Politics for People with Dirty Minds
11,011 links from 4,301 sites

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
16,372 links from 4,276 sites

Google Blogoscoped
14,146 links from 4,026 sites

Joel on Software
8,084 links from 3,781 sites

Seth's Blog
8,376 links from 3,548 sites

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth
Liberal US politics blog with a particular focus on activism and news about the Bush administration, the religious right, and gay civil rights.
15,484 links from 3,425 sites

Defamer, the L.A. Gossip Rag
6,830 links from 3,044 sites

MAKE: Blog
MAKE brings the do it yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home.
8,172 links from 2,808 sites

Andrew Sullivan The Daily Dish
8,892 links from 2,800 sites

Make Money Online with ProBlogger Blog Tips
Helping Bloggers Earn Money. Blog Tips and News for the Professional and Hobby Blogger.
9,840 links from 2,782 sites

The Best Page In The Universe.
4,276 links from 2,768 sites

Poynter Online
10,830 links from 2,654 sites

So. FEMA Really Does Have Its Head Up Its Ass

Supporters rally behind McGee
By Rachel Leif

About 150 people gathered in support of Forrest County Sheriff Billy McGee on Sunday, outraged at federal charges against him stemming from a dispute over ice trucks in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

Most who convened at the McLaurin Community Center added their signatures to a petition, which asserts that McGee acted in the best interests of residents when he seized a pair of 18-wheelers full of ice from Camp Shelby without Federal Emergency Management Agency authorization on Sept. 4.

"We had diabetic people who hadn't been able to put their insulin on ice for three days," said Lee Behrens, 53, chief of the McLaurin Volunteer Fire Department. "If it was up to FEMA, those trucks would still be at Camp Shelby."

"I didn't see anything wrong with what I was doing other than it was outside the protocol," he said Thursday.

"I believe he deserves a medal for helping the people of South Mississippi," Forrest County School District Superintendent Kay Clay told the group, which responded with thunderous applause.

Charlie Sims, 47, of McLaurin asked sheriff's deputies to relay a request from the people of South Forrest County.

"Would you please ask him to write a handbook for FEMA on how to make a decision?"

COMPLETE ARTICLE

HEY, FEMA! HOW'S YOUR TRAILER BUSINESS THESE DAYS? Good grief, according to FEMA, it would have been better to let people die... by the thousands, most likely. It seems it's a good thing that people don't listen to the government.

Yahoo Games Online & Downloadable

If you enjoy playing games on your computer, online or PC downloads, check out Yahoo Games. One of their newest games is, "The Apprentice," based on Donald Trump's TV show.

Yahoo has card games, board games, sports games, puzzle games, word games, kid games, arcade games and more.

You can visit their main website or view a list of all their games.

This post dedicated to all of the world's procrastinaters.

Strange Facts

In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes!

There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo!

The names of Popeye's four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye!

The Nobel Peace Prize medal depicts three naked men with their hands on each other's shoulders!

A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface!

Find more strange facts.

When Did the World Get Dangerous for Kids?

I was done with my visit to my Mom who is in the hospital and had made it back to my car in the parking garage. My car faced out toward the main street that ran past the hospital and the decorative garage structure used a kind of grill thing between floors so if you are inside the garage, you can see out.

As I sat inside my car and shut the door, I noticed the children's playground across the street. It was part of an apartment complex which had a tall fence around the property (the fence was made of metal poles so you could see through it). There were about three kids playing on the merry-go-round and as many mothers standing there, supervising their play. Any injury would be instantly attended (as if risky playing would ever happen in the presence of that many adults). No stranger would ever dare intrude with the intent to do harm to any of those children.

These children were safe within the safe world created for them by the adults in their lives. And that is, or should be, standard operating procedure in today's world.

Then a random memory pierced my thoughts: In the 1960's, the public park a few miles from our home always opened their large swimming pool to the public during the summer. My Mom would take me and my brother there as often as we were able to pay our own way in and we did earn our own money. She'd drop us off in the parking lot and we'd go stand in line then go off to separate Boy and Girl changing rooms and meet up again by the pool. I couldn't swim very well so I always stayed in the shallow end. My little brother swam like a fish and loved the high dive. He wanted to train to be an Olympic diver when he was seven years old. He never made the Olympics, but his diving was spectacular. And in the beginning, when he first strode up to the high dive ladder, the Lifeguard shooed him away, thinking such a little kid had no business there. We got my Mom to come in the next time to give her consent.

We'd spend hours at the public pool and when we had enough, we'd call home and my Mom would come back to the parking lot to pick us up as we stood there on the curb, waiting.

And we'd be completely on our own that entire time from drop-off to pick-up. Once in a while, my Mom would take a seat in the public bleacher section and watch us go through our tricks. But for the most part, we were two independent little adventurers. There were dozens of kids at the pool in the same circumstance. No parents present.

Being kids, it never occurred to us to wonder, what if we drown and our Mom's not here? And I guess it never occurred to the Parks Department, either. There were parks all over Los Angeles County where kids were dropped off to play games or swim and do all kinds of activities and the parents didn't have to be there.

And not once did my little brother and I ever have to deal with some perverted freak who preyed on children. The worst danger we ever faced were rambunctious teenagers who couldn't be bothered to watch out for the little kids.

In all the many times over the years that we swam in the Northridge Pool, there was only one incident that came close to being "odd" from my child's-eye point of view.

As we left to wait out in the parking lot for our Mom to pick us up, my little brother recognized a man in the parking lot as the husband of one of the teachers at his private school which was also housed in that large public park area. But this was summer and the school building was closed up tight. The man was leaning against a light pole, standing, maybe smoking a cigarette. He was alone (my brother's teacher nowhere in sight). The man saw us and started to approach.

When the man started to cross the parking lot toward us, my brother became afraid. He didn't want to talk to this man. I didn't need to ask questions, all I needed to know was that my brother didn't want to be near this man.

When the man got close enough to start talking, I told him to go back, to go away, leave us alone, we weren't allowed to talk to him. He tried to argue me out of it, to make me feel foolish or bad for not being nice. That was the first clue, I guess, that this guy was a creep. No decent adult would try to talk a child out of what that child's parents had instructed them to do.

This guy said, and it was true, that he wasn't exactly a stranger if he was Miss Sherry's husband. Even if the rules didn't apply to him, it was enough for me to know my brother didn't like this man.

I told him to stop talking to us and it was about that time my Mom's car pulled into the lot. We were eager to get into it. I told my Mom the man was trying to talk to us even after I told him not to but she didn't do anything at that moment, with us in the car. I think it was soon after that, when school started again in September, that my Mom took my brother out of the private school and put him in the same public school I attended.

I don't really remember it exactly, but I think we didn't go to the public pool again, at least not without my Mom or my older sister there with us all the time.

The incident with the man in the parking lot was an anomaly. Things like that just didn't happen. Not back then. And when they DID happen, as when a man in a car tried to get a girl at our elementary school to talk to him as she walked home, it became HUGE news in the neighborhood because it was so unusual.

Nowadays, behavior and incidents like that seem to happen somewhere on a daily basis. Or is the media just reporting them more now? Hasn't the world always been a dangerous place or did it just get that way in recent years?

Why does it seem as if the world I knew as a child was my playground for adventuring with no restriction or paranoia about who might be lurking around the next corner and yet today's world seems to demand high fences and constant parental supervision?

We've always had present in our society those elements that would hurt children and other innocents. Logically, I can't say the world was a safer place when I was a child. It just feels that way. I wonder why that is.

Brilliant Brain Farts

The Mad Scientist Network

This is a great website to tickle the brain. You can find out all kinds of "stuff" here like...

Can you evaporate DNA?
Is it possible to magnetize any material?
Why do grapes spark in the microwave?
Why does Ivory soap expand in a microwave oven?
Why do men shiver when they urinate?
What is color?
How do we know what the inside of the earth is like?

This place is a great resource for the curious and for others seeking specific answers and/or inspiration.

From the website: MadSci Network represents a collective cranium of scientists providing answers to your questions. For good measure we provide a variety of oddities and other ends as well.

Visit our archives to see what we do: >35,000 answered questions at your fingertips!

Locate information with our Search Engine, the Random Knowledge Generator, or in the MadSci FAQs

MAD Labs: Have More Fun With Science.

MadSci Library: Find resources on the web.

Ask-A-Scientist: Still have a question? You can ask a scientist here.

Stop by the Info Desk for further information and assistance.

WHAT'S NEW? Fingerprints and Anthocyanins FAQs

VISIT THE WEBSITE

Geopolitics for Dummies

The Education of the President: Bush On Pakistan

It was only a matter of time. While speaking in India prior to departing for Pakistan, Bush revealed his lack of familiarity with South Asia:

“I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world,” the president added.

Later, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that Bush meant to say Pakistan would be a force for freedom and moderation in the Muslim world. Pakistan is not an Arab country.

This article goes on to remind people that, during the 2000 campaign, Bush could not even name the leader of Pakistan. LOL.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Wait a sec. Bush meant to talk about peace in the Muslim world while visiting a mostly Hindu country? M'kay...

Telespoof - Defeat Caller ID

If you have a need for privacy (blocking your phone number from being revealed by Caller ID), then you should check out Telespoof which will mask your real phone number with any other number that you choose. It works online as well as with other kinds of telephones and you can record conversations and have them sent to you as email.

Telespoof Website

Now you can watch corn grow!

The Iowa Farmer's Corn Cam

Some more fun: Maize Mazes Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D. In Case You Are Allergic to Corn Native American History of Corn JOLLY TIME Pop Corn Corn Fun Facts Amazing Corn Mazes Grow Your Own Corn A World Without Corn? 100th year of corn flakes Make a Corn Husk Doll Cornbread Recipe Crazy About Corn

Well, this IS the Brain FART Blog...

From the Mirago Web Directory:

Antifart.com - Daily fart cartoon, farting advice column, sounds of farts, videos, and chat.
Australians Against Flatuphobia - Australians Against Flatuphobia is an organisation helping the victims of flatuphobia.
BumFart Web Site - Offers a Situation Adaptability Test, a simulated chat with a bumfart, and a personality analysis.
Bung's Ripper Fart Page - Fart wavs, fart sounds and fart jokes.
Burning Farts - Video of people burning farts.
Burps and Farts - Site offers sounds and descriptions from all over the world.
CreateFarts.com - Visitors can custom build their personal farting experience. Requires Flash.
Facts on Farts - Fart FAQs, synonyms and rhymes.
FART - HUMOR - Farting, farting and more on farting: Definitions, honorable mentions and stories.
Fart Names - Funny names for different types of farts.
Farting Survey - Contribute to our research by completing our survey!
Farts.com - Fart Humor, thousands of farts, fart novelty merchandise, farting advice, and more at farts.com
Flatulina's Fabulous World - Send free virtual cards with fart songs, download desktops or join the Flatulina fanclub.
Free Greeting Cards - Farting birthday card.
Fun With Farts - All farts all the time. Free bulletin board and professional farting discussion groups.
I Farted.com - A site about farting.
Legendary Farts - Information of flatulence and its role in history.
Poop Report - Stories, information, resources and consumer reports all pertaining to America's favorite past time, poop.
Queen Of Farts - Offers live cam, videos, recordings, and stories featuring a woman who has gas.
Royal Fartorium - Annotated audio clips.
SmellyPoop.com - Send to enemies or mean friends choosing from dog, horse, or human smelly poop. Also send virtual greeting cards.
The Fart - All you wanted to know about farts but didn't know who to ask.
The Farting Dot - The site that lives up to its name. It's a dot. It farts. It's the farting dot.
The Fartmart - Buy The Fart Machine, Pull My Finger Fred, and Dozens of other farting products at The Fartmart!
The Gas Note - Anal Opus - Includes fart music, and parodies.
The Masters Blue Dart Page - Video clips of guys lighting farts.
The World of Farts - An all-around site about farts.
Tracey's Fart Farm - Fart poems, sounds, and stories.
Who Cut the Cheese? by Jim Dawson - All about Jim Dawson's book "Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural history of the Fart."

And I Thought I Loved Dolls!

Most of my friends know that I love to design doll clothes and to make soft-sculpture dolls. I especially enjoy designing fashions for Barbie. I once made a replica of Princess Diana's wedding gown for my niece's 11 1/2" Barbie Doll. That was a lot of fun! I found a website of another artistic lady who does some fascinating things with dolls. It's worth a visit to see her image galleries. HERE IS THE LINK TO HER WEBSITE. Some Sample Images from, "Sculptured Fashion and Random Object Art Dolls by Joanna Bond":

Kool Keychains!

Kool Keychains I love collecting freaky-deeky keychains like these: