Stupid Edison

Boy, it's been awhile since my last post. Busy, busy, busy. I'm not sure if the following is all that funny, but it is something that really bugs me. Wires on poles. In the 21st Century? Seriously?



Every few years my electric company, ComEd, comes down our street with crews to trim the trees under the electric lines, carving them into Y shapes to make room for the wires. It looks ridiculous. And the branches still knock down the wires when it storms. How can we force them to invest in a more reliable, less visually-polluting, infrastructure?

Am I starting to sound a little like Andy Rooney? I am not a curmudgeon. I'm not.

Foreign Accent Syndrome

Yeah, I know, it's been a while. But I've been really, really busy. New episodes of Breaking Bad are airing!

This was a half-baked idea I had bouncing around in my head for a long time and kind of forgot about it, and then I saw the story of the British woman suddenly talking with a Chinese accent and it came back to me. Enjoy.



Update: I found video of the lady in the news story. She's not talking in a Chinese accent any more; now it's sort of generic European.

Touchless Soap Dispenser

This seems to be a totally different subject, but it could be considered a sequel to last week's health care reform episode, which for some reason is getting 10x the normal number of YouTube views.



Don't get me wrong. I'm not a socialist, at least not all the time. Free-market capitalism is great for some things. If it weren't for free-market capitalism, we'd all still be toting around Commodore SX64s. Here's what that looks like:

I used to use a box like that to program multimedia shows. (I'm really old.) That open bay is for a second $400 170 KB floppy drive, which was handy for making back-up floppies. But I digress.

I'm glad capitalism drives so much innovation and creativity, most of the time. But when it comes to my health insurance, I'm not sure a corporate entity whose primary objective is maximizing ROI for the investment community has my best interests at heart. There it seems all the innovation and creativity goes into finding new ways to screw us.

Here's one of those nifty soap dispensers. Only thirty bucks (batteries not included). Note the handy built-in tray for catching the inevitable dribbles due to lack of hand/motion-sensor coordination.

The Health Care Reform Puppy

I'm just going to throw this out there and see what people think. I have a feeling it might be a little divisive. Please feel free to leave a comment--just try to avoid the worst obscenities and death threats. There are kids here.

The Fattest Woman

I started writing this about the woman who wants to eat her way over to over a thousand pounds, and I was going to have them talk about the consequences for her if she fails, the function for society that "the fattest man" and the "the fattest woman" serve in helping us feel better about our not-so-fat-after-all bodies, and what not. But then the idea took an entirely different turn for the better, I think. Enjoy.

Shaving Accident

Here's another news item from Florida. I'm actually in Florida as I write this, working with some local guys that in no way live up to the stereotype set by some of the stories I've covered previously.



Please allow me this blatant bit of content-relevant SEO: pussy shaving. I feel more than a little dirty doing that, but you know it's going to boost my page views.

Take Your Child to Work

Haven't heard anything in the news lately that has inspired me, until this story came along. Not that there hasn't been idiocy in the news. Repubs trying to make a simple application of a Senate rule sound like an unnatural sex act. Making bills passed by both houses match up so they can get a simple majority vote and become law??!! Reconciliation??!! Our legislative branch actually making laws??!! OMG!!!

Sorry. Enjoy this fine episode.



Just a few more things about health insurance reform. First, it's not health care reform, it's health insurance reform. And second, don't show me polls that say most people don't want this reform. Other polls show most people want everything that's in this reform. There's a reason our founding fathers didn't set up our laws to be made by public referendum. Sometimes the public wets itself and says stupid shit to manipulative poll takers.