Mr. Joshua, frustrated, shoots the TV and hollers, "It's goddamned Christmas!"
I can't help but wonder how many more of these will occur to me this year.
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From this link I got this freaking sexy photograph:
It's a woman, in 1942, operating a lathe at an aircraft plant in Texas. This is the face of the real "Rosie Riveter". And in actuality she's old enough to be my mother, if not my grandmother. But dayum, a guy just can't help but appreciate real raw sexiness like that.
That's real sex appeal--not the stuff that's manufactured for girlie magazines, not the Victoria's Secret-and-Frederick's-of-Hollywood crap.
And she's not showing anything.
Of course, I like a woman who is not afraid of machinery anyway; my ideal woman is the one who would see me torquing down a cylinder head, call me on doing it wrong, and be right.
A few years ago I saw an episode of Monster Garage and fell in love with this one woman--it was a show where the whole crew was female--and the one that I thought was the prettiest of the lot refused to get a tattoo. She didn't have any to begin with, unlike the others, and so when they all decided to get a new tattoo commemorating their time on the show, she had the artist do hers in Sharpie rather than with a needle. She had nice skin and wasn't ruining it; she was nicely chunky without being fat and was pretty. And she could weld.
And then she static-timed a Chevy V8 without looking at a manual.
I was in love.
(Via.)
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I was just thinking: you know, it really isn't all that hard to make incandescent light bulbs, if you think about it. All you need is a way to heat glass to its melting point--a propane torch should do--and a way to pump air out of a container. You can buy a decent vacuum pump from any of a thousand sources, or you can even make one by pulling the compressor from an old refrigerator or air conditioner.
You could recycle the screw base from an old bulb and make a reusable globe; the hard part would be getting an air-tight seal--but once you do that, you can go ahead and replace the filament whenever it burns out, and keep on liberating photons via black body radiation! Strike a blow for illuminative choice now!
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Vox Day doesn't agree with Mark Steyn a lot of the time. I like Mark Steyn a lot more than I like Vox Day, but this article is important if you're a) Canadian, and b) like to be able to say what you think.
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The truth is out there!!! The British Ministry of Defence is going to open their x-files. Whee!
Someone made the point that UFO sightings have really dropped off since cell phone cameras, digital cameras, camcorders, etc, have become more common....
Although, to be honest, there has historically been about a 40-year cycle in UFO sightings, and the drop may be coincidental. I don't know. UFOs and aliens are one of those things I'm just agnostic about, because while I don't think the government is hiding anything from us, I also wouldn't put it past 'em.
The people who have their panties in a wad over Roswell et al won't really get my attention until and unless they can show me some real proof. Not "so-and-so remembers", not blurry photographs (unless they can show me the unaltered, original negatives, too) and definitely not video of "spots of light" that could be just about goddamned anything. A real live piece of a flying saucer would do it. Show me something that was made by sentient beings that our materials science could not possibly manufacture and I'll believe you.
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30 years ago this would have been related to the UFO story.
"It was like Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds,'" said Donna Toti, 50. "Birds were just falling out of the sky. They would land, lie on the ground, flap and die."...said the woman who had obviously never seen Hitchcock's movie. The damn birds didn't die in the movie, you anus! The people did! WTF!
And, by the way, Toyota now wins the "Most Annoying Popover Ad, 2007", for the stupid popup douchebag who I couldn't hear because I normally keep my speakers off:
He looks like a complete schliefky, and if I was ever thinking about buying a Toyota--which I wasn't--that would convince me not to.
And, incidentally, "click here for your wildest dreams"? My wildest dreams do not revolve around freaking Toyotas. If it were a popover ad for Ferrari that might be appropriate; but Toyota? No. That's about the same as fricking Buick saying that kind of thing. Nobody has "wild dreams" about Buicks, and I'm pretty sure the same thing goes for Toyotas. You buy a Toyota if you want a good solid car, not because they make the kind of cars that feature prominently in peoples' "wildest dreams"...unless their wildest dreams feature being able to drive a car 200,000 miles before rust claims it. That's why Toyota's youth-oriented vehicles are marketed under the Scion brand...and even those aren't "wildest dream" cars. What the fuck.
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Pocket change adds up. This guy bought a new truck with his saved-up pocket change in 1994; and apparently he did it again this year. Dang.
And read the comments. There's some concentrated douchebaggery in there. The internet has bred a subrace of know-it-alls who have nothing else to do with their time than to be right about everything. Okay, so the guy was stupid for not putting that change into a savings account every week--so what? It's his money, and it made him happy, so why don't you just fricking relax, shut up, and worry about your own finances, douchebag?
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Because it is now Christms Eve, and because I must be about 100 miles from here by noon, I don't get to go on with more of my bloggerating. And I'm in a fine mood for it today, as the above entries should demonstrate.
When I was in my teens and got heavily into Monty Python, of course there was also Fawlty Towers. And that show, starring John Cleese, showcased Cleese's unparalleled ability to do the Tirade. He's a master of it.
And so, when I really get going, I aim to emulate him as best I can. It's a poor imitation at best, but I do get some laughs once in a while.
Denis Leary is another comedian who is freaking good at them. Listen to his bit on "Coffee-flavored Coffee". In his quasi-holiday movie The Ref he gets off a couple of good ones. My favorite:
Let's get one thing straight, okay? From now on, the only person who yells is me. Why? Because I have a gun, okay? People with guns can do whatever they want. Married people, without guns--for instance, you--do not get to yell. Why? No guns. No guns, no yelling. See? Simple little equation!It's hilarious.
But no, I've got to stop now and go do holiday stuff! I have to wrap presents and bathe and stuff, and go eat good food, and--
Wait, WTF am I complaining about?
Merry Christmas, everyone.