24

Last week 24 premiered. I think this is the best show that's been on TV over the last several years. In terms of hooking you in, it is unmatched. For now Jack's pretty messed up after some time in a Chinese prison. He's back but not quite as sharp as before it would seem. Last week he was ready to call it quits for good until he changed his mind when at the end of the show he watched a nuke explode. I'm pretty sure he should be blinded by this, but since this is fiction he probably won't be. I'd have to see it again but I think you could even see a reflection of the mushroom cloud in his eyes as it happened.

As usual for this show a main character has died already. I'm going to be upset if Chloe gets killed somehow this season. I think she's my favorite character that's still alive. She's not usually in harms way back at CTU headquarters but she could get fired. That seems more likely but there are always surprises. CTU headquarters isn't necessarily safe either as we have seen before.

PJ Harvey

I've spent some time at YouTube recently. This is pretty obviously apparent from my recent posts. A few weeks ago I picked up the PJ Harvey DVD called, "Please Leave Quietly" that covers the Uh Huh Her tour. That DVD is awesome. I've been playing it a lot lately and parts of it over and over. Here's a clip not from the DVD but from Letterman. This clip is sort of YouTube quality and it pales to watching the DVD version of the same song but it's pretty good anyway.

VW Un-Pimped Ads

These ads are awesome.

Get a Mac Ads

These ads are just lame.I think it's supposed to make the Apple look like the cool, easy to use computer while the PC is the nerdy guy with all the problems.I'm waiting for the day the news comes out that the actor that represents the Apple is arrested for possessing marijuana. Just like that actor that was that was in the Dell ads that always said, "Dude. You're gettin a Dell" he'll disappear forever along with these stupid advertisements. Yeah that'll be the day.

The Smoking Gun Archive: Dell Dude Pot Bust

Crack

Crack is bad for you and bad for your neighborhood. Here is more proof.

Space

Whoa! I haven't posted since December 2nd. That's my biggest gap yet I think. This post is here to fill space until my next upcoming post. I have all sorts of post ideas piled up in my head that haven't sat down and written out. I guess I've just been focused on other things lately. For today and for now I'll just post this photo of Arnold and also a photo of Guy Smiley.

Who is Guy Smiley.

Toothbrush

This is madness. Why on earth does anyone need a toothbrush with an on-board computer? The list price of this Oral-B Triumph toothbrush is $140. Amazon has it for around $95.

I've used electric brushes in the past but I haven't for a long time now. Electric toothbrush I understand. Electric toothbrush with on-board computer? Now that's just plain unnecessary.

Manual toothbrushes have come a long way. They aren't just flat bristles in the shape of a rectangle anymore. I like the Active Angle, the Navigator, and the Wave Colgate brushes. I like the Oral-B CrossAction brush a lot too. Sometimes I have trouble finding them at the store because I always need the compact head with soft bristles style. If I don't use the compact head size I find that there isn't enough room to maneuver. I don't know why all the other sizes are so much more common. I'd guess that everyone else besides me must have smaller teeth or bigger mouths. I think I have bigger teeth. I have all of them that are in the diagram below except for a bicuspid from each quadrant. I had the 4 of them pulled when I was 12 and right before I got my braces.

Saturday Morning Cartunes with Dietrich

Sometimes I wonder what radio DJ's I hear look like. When I hear Dietrich from the Saturday morning 6-9AM slot on WMSE I picture Lieut. Dan from Forrest Gump. I shouldn't be surprised if Dietrich looks nothing like this but I bet he did at one time. At the same time Gary Sinise doesn't sound anything like Dietrich does. I also wonder about Haven from the same time slot on Wednesday mornings. She sounds very much like a former friend of mine from my early college years and I have a hard time getting that out of my head when I hear the radio on Wednesday mornings. It's uncanny. It's like they were separated at birth or something. I'll bet she looks nothing at all like I imagine.

I'll have to go to a radio station event sometime to find out what everybody looks like. I think they have a chili cookoff or something every year. I'm not sure when that is. I think Dietrich said this morning that he might check out the Primus show tonight at the Rave. Maybe I'll go to that and see if I'm able to find a guy that looks like Lieut. Dan but with legs.

Turns out Doogie Howser is gay

That surprises me. It really does. I found out today from a friend that Doogie Howser disclosed that he's gay. According to the news story here he says he's "a very content gay man". Who are we going to hear that from next? That Fred Savage guy from the Wonder Years? My friend also heard a rumor Kirk Hammett from Metallica was gay too. I researched that a little as well but I couldn't find anything. That appears to be hearsay. Not that it matters gay or straight but I hated that Doogie Howser show. Same thing with the Wonder Years. I had a roommate in college that liked both shows and watched them all the time in reruns which were on constantly around the time. It just made me hate them more. They were just such utterly stupid TV shows.

Sick Dog

Jon Carry Banner

"Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." -Sen. John Kerry

My opinion is this. I don't think he intentionally set out to insult our armed forces in Iraq. The words that he said probably didn't come out as planned but I think reflect his true beliefs about A. the intelligence level of a person who chooses to serve in the military in the absence of a draft and B. the reasons they choose to serve in the military. I'm not buying that it was a botched joke. What was the joke supposed to be again? Then he at first refuses to apologize but then laters caves into the pressure and does so. That's revealing in and of itself.


The Soldiers Behind the Banner from the blog of Charlie Sykes

I killed rabbits

I shot them. This was many years ago now. I think I was still living at home at the time. We had problems with them eating the garden or plants or something so we kept a pellet gun handy in case we spotted any of them. My mom gave my dad and I the go ahead to kill them. The first one I killed I shot from about 20 yards straight into the rabbits' ear. It was a good shot I thought. It dropped dead instantly right where it sat. The second rabbit I killed first ran off to the neighbors yard. My dad circled around to scare it back toward me. I think it died a shot or 2 later but it was more of a challenge and involved some tactics and strategy. If I remember correctly one of my shots went into its' ear just like my first one. Now the last rabbit I killed I still feel a little bad about. As I approached I could see that it was a pretty small one. It didn't run or anything. I walked right up to it and shot it at pretty close range. I remember beforehand standing there wondering whether I was going to listen to my conscience or to my mother. This one was just too easy. I chose the latter but after that I didn't want to kill any more rabbits. That was the last thing I ever killed. Since then I've only shot at soda cans in the backyard or at pieces of paper at the range.

That same summer was the time when we got a visit from a policeman at our house. Our back yard has a wood fence around it and bushes but apparently a passerby saw us with the pellet gun and called the police on us. I think we stepped outside the fence to see if a rabbit ran that way when they saw I had it. We found out it's against the law to fire a weapon of any kind within our village. I guess that makes sense but whatever. Who gives a rip about hunting rabbits with a pellet gun? It's not like it was a .22 or something. We checked with all our neighbors and they didn't care. They wanted the rabbits gone as much as we did. They were a real problem that year.

Pumpkins

I should carve a pumpkin this year. I don't think I've done it for a long time.

These are from my archive of dumb pictures I either got in my email or found on the internet.

Google Satellite Image

During the summer I often ride loops on this road that circles a park near where I live. It's technically in the park so there's not much traffic. Most of the traffic is people walking their dogs, or joggers, roller-bladers, and other bikers. It's just under a mile and 3/4 around. I usually do an equal number of loops in each direction starting with counterclockwise loops. It's not completely flat but it doesn't have any gigantic hills either. It's just hilly enough to make it interesting and different depending on which way around your going. I put together this aerial view of it using the satellite map thing on Google maps. I zoomed in as far as it would go and did a bunch of screenshots and then pasted them all together. I'd never seen the park from that perspective before so I thought it was interesting. At first I considered putting together an aerial view like this of my entire route that I go on from my house to this park. I decided against it because at this zoom level it would take forever and it would be one very gigantic image. And what would the point of it be anyway? The park is more interesting than any other part of my route.

Rest Stop

I rented Rest Stop (official site here) last night. I never heard of it before but it looked interesting enough. It was pretty terrible. Much less than I expected and I didn't expect much. I give it only a 1/2 star out of 5 possible. It had music from the Black Keys in it and at least 2 really sick scenes but other than that nothing going for it. In retrospect I'd rather that I still had my $4.50 and used that hour and half of my life for something else. I think this was even worse than High Tension.

Final 2006 Miles

I decided I may as well call it a year. I've already put the glass in my storm door instead of the screen and my furnace is running as of the middle of last week. It seems much too early for that but it was 62 degrees in my house before I flipped the switch on that. So since there's a great likelihood that biking is done for the year I redid my chart with all my cumulative miles from this year and last year. It didn't turn out as terrible as I originally thought it might when I first created the chart in August. If it weren't for my long inactive period from early June to the latter half of July I'd be pretty much in line with 2005. Next year I plan on needing to adjust the table to include numbers above 800. A lot will depend on getting a good start and the weather, but that's my plan right now. My 2005 total was 716 miles and this year it was a mere 434 miles.

Slo-mo Home Depot

This is another great gag I ran into a few weeks ago. Improv Anywhere got about 225 people to shop at Home Depot in Manhattan in slow motion for 5 minutes. Then after a 5 minute break freeze in place completely for 5 minutes. See the entire explanation and videos of it all here.

155 t-shirts at once

I love when people do crazy stuff like this. I saw a different guy a few weeks back with 121 shirts at one time. What's next?

Line Rider

I ran into this line rider thing a week or so ago. I'm not very good at it so far. There was also a link to this example which probably took an pretty good amount of time to create. I think I know what I'm doing during my lunch hours this week.

Smith

The only new show I started watching this fall is cancelled already. I watch The Unit with Dennis Haysbert which is back for its' second season and Smith was on in the time slot after that on Tuesday at 9:00. I didn't have anything better to do the first night it was on so I watched it. It wasn't great. I didn't think I'd even watch it again but I did. The second episode hooked me in completely. It's one of those shows that follows the bad guys in the same way as The Sopranos does. You find yourself in place where your sort of rooting for thieves. I can hardly believe it was so unpopular that they ditched it. I think there were only 3 episodes on altogether. It had Ray Liota in it and Amy Smart from The Butterfly Effect. Even a bad show with Amy Smart in it might be worth watching but it wasn't a bad show. I'm bummed. I like a good story and now I'll never know how it ends. Damn you CBS!