November 2, 2007

Don't Fucking Touch Swords

I recommend that you watch Cautionary Tales Of Swords, the video series that reminds us "Don't Fucking Touch Swords," because "Swords Will Fucking Cut You Wide Open."

Make sure you watch them in order (from the bottom up), and watch at least the first two.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:24 AM | Comments (1)

July 31, 2007

Experts RE: Egg

A woman found an egg inside of another egg. She cracked open the egg, and there was a yolk, as well as a full second egg. It's kind of interesting, but what I really love about the article is that it says that the egg was "described by experts as a freak of nature."

Really? Is that a technical term? Did you really call an expert just to get an official word on whether or not the egg was "a freak of nature?"

Because I happen to be an expert as well, and based on my extensive qualifications, as well as my direct research of this occurrence, I will be publishing an article in Nature journal next month that confirms that the egg thing "is pretty crazy, dude," and that "she probably was surprised when she saw it." Further, I will be hypothesizing that this "doesn't happen every time one eats an egg." I know it's groundbreaking and all, but hey--that's why they call me a scientist!

Posted by Barzelay at 4:19 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2007

Israeli Porn Production Not Kosher

A porn production company named Tight Fit Productions has apparently ventured into Israeli-themed pornography. They have a movie coming out titled, "Assraelis!" And jokingly to prove the video's authenticity, they included a kosher-certification symbol on the packaging, which is already really funny. But now a Rabbinical certification group sent a C&D letter to the porn production company alleging some sort of trademark infringement of their kosher symbol!

No word from Cohen [owner of Tight Fit]... on whether, despite their Kosher claims, meat and milk products were mixed during the making of "Assraelis."

This is so hilarious. It's also hilarious that they shot the movie all in Israel, with local talent, and all in Hebrew. With English subtitles. Subtitles! The idea of subtitles on a porn movie is so funny to me.

Woman: Yeah. Yeah.
Man: Oh yeah.
Woman: Yeah.
Man: Yeah.
Woman: Oh. Oh.
Man: Yeah. Oh. Oh.
Woman: Yeah.
Man: Oh. Oh. Oh.
*Man ejaculates*
Woman: Yeah.

Via Counterfeit Chic.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 PM | Comments (5)

January 23, 2007

I'm Sorry, Sir... This Toilet Is For Members Only

A couple nights ago I was in a hurry to get out the door, but I still had to brush my teeth. I was going to take with me a change of clothes and two of my textbooks, so I stacked all that up with my jacket on top. I put the pile on the counter, to the side of the sink, so that I could just grab it and go when I was done brushing. And it perched there. Precariously.

At some point in the middle of brushing, my elbow bumped the stack. The whole thing fell off the counter, and went straight into the toilet. This caused me suddenly to lunge to try to save it all. The lunging also included my toothpastey hand letting go of the toothbrush in my mouth and shooting toward the falling stuff. So in the process of jumping with toothpastey hands outstretched, as my clothes and books were plummeting into my toilet, I ended up flinging a mix of toothpaste and saliva all over the bathroom in a wide arc. The arc of saliva and toothpaste managed to splatter on pretty much everything in the bathroom, including the jeans I had on, all the items that fell into the toilet, and pretty much everything else, too.

Not wanting to cause any further toothpaste damage, I frantically wiped the toothpaste off my hands and lunged back toward the toilet to retrieve my sad pile of flotsam before too much damage occurred.

As I pulled all of it out the toilet, I realized that my jacket had insulated the textbooks! Thank you, Members Only! I also realized gleefully that Kyle had remembered to flush that day, so there was nothing in the toilet but water!

So I wiped a bit of water off the book covers, wiped the toothpaste off of my arms, pants, shoes, the floor, the shower curtain, the mirror, and the counter, grabbed a different change of clothes and a different jacket, threw the toilet clothes into the laundry basket, and I was on my way. No permanent harm done.

Posted by Barzelay at 2:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2007

Jeremy Piven on SNL

I just watched a full hour of Saturday Night Live without seeing a single thing that made me want to shoot myself. First time in at least five years.

And then AFI played,* which did make me want to shoot myself, but I'm pretty sure that was their intention.

"Adoption can be very complicated."
"Yeah. Like Sudoku."

"Jojo, I need you to round up all the pubes you can find! Quick, before this dynamite blows!"

"You can't run a war by a committee. You run a war by a monkey, a map, and a bunch of darts."

"George Bush did to New Orleans what Debbie did to Dallas."

And best of all was the perfectly brief First Man In History To Discover Dancing

* By the way, AFI's bassist looks just like Flea, except wearing more clothes.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

November 16, 2006

Happy Holidays From Baby J--

My friend Jake just sent me a card. On the front is a typical nativity scene.

On the inside, he wrote the following:

Dear David, As a thank you for your generous, thoughtful donation to AIDS Project Los Angeles, I am sending this picture of my parents and me as a baby boy.

I love blasphemy.

Posted by Barzelay at 7:01 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2006

War and the Morning Funnies

Sunday's WaPo had an awesome, touching, wonderful article about Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip Doonesbury. He has always shunned publicity, and so this glimpse is supposedly a big deal.

I haven't read comics in the paper since I was too young to care about Doonesbury's dry, topical subject matter, so this article is my first rendezvous with Doonesbury since childhood. The article focuses on a particular storyline in which one of the main four characters, B.D., who has been in the strip since its inception, has to go to Iraq, and ends up losing a limb. Pretty serious subject matter for a silly cartoon.

Trudeau has been visiting wounded veterans to talk to them and mine them for ideas. Recently he accepted an award of excellence in the arts from the Vietnam Veterans of America. Anyway, I really loved the article, and it induced me to purchase a collection of the B.D. in Iraq saga, as well as the aftermath. It is called The Long Road Home. Anyway, check out the article.

Posted by Barzelay at 2:47 PM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2006

Judge On Trial For Indecent Exposure

Nothing I could say could make this more transcendently hilarious. Just read this (Original link dead. Try this and this).

Thanks to Aaron "Needs One Of These Devices" Goldhamer, who provided the tip.

Posted by Barzelay at 6:23 AM | Comments (5)

June 26, 2006

Only Assholes Have Car Alarms 2

A couple weeks ago, I posted about an asshole with a car alarm (which is, by the way, redundant). Well, friends, it happened again. Another asshole with a broken car alarm, going off all morning. Last time it woke me up on a weekend. This time it disrupted some research on declaratory judgments in copyright cases.

Again, I want to make clear that if you have a noise-based car alarm, your theft deterrent is not only ineffective, but also rude. And even if it weren't ineffective, I'm pretty sure that my tranquility is worth your car getting stolen. So you, owner of a BMW with California plate "4WZA670," are an asshole.

UPDATE:

Throughout the day, the alarm kept going off. I can vouch that it was going off from 8:00am-5:00pm at least. When I left work, I passed by the car again on my way home, and saw something that delighted me. The owner of the car had gotten a ticket for his noisy alarm!

While getting a closer look at the ticket and taking the photo at right, a woman sitting on the street (homeless? crackhead? meth addict?) asked me if it was my car. The angry look on her face subsided as I explained that it was not mine, and I'd left a note on it bitching to the owner. And then the woman recounted the story of the ticket for me.

According to her, an SFPD officer went over to the car to investigate the noisy alarm. When he got up there, he noticed the note on the car. He took the note out and read it, and then burst out laughing and stuck the note back into the hood. Apparently he took my note as confirmation that the alarm had been going off for at least five hours at that point, so he went back to his car and wrote up a ticket, while leaving my note for the owner. Who says cops aren't protecting the streets?

Posted by Barzelay at 1:47 PM | Comments (7)

June 7, 2006

Only Assholes Have Car Alarms

I was trying to sleep in late this weekend. I was exhausted from my first week of work, moving into my apartment, and traipsing all about town searching for free furniture. Oh, and the amount of walking and bike riding that I've been doing has suddenly increased to their highest levels since sixth grade or so. I was quite tired.

So when a car alarm blaring continuously woke me up, I'm sure you'll understand that I was greatly annoyed. And when I'm significantly and needlessly annoyed, I tend not to just sit around and take it. The car's owner was nowhere in sight, so I did the next best thing. I left him a note.

But just so there's no confusion, I want everyone to know that the owner of a navy Ford Thunderbird, model year circa 1994, with California plate "3PIM011," is an asshole. That goes for anyone who equips their twelve year old sedan with motion-activated alarm, and, without exception, anyone who uses THE CLUB. Are there people left in the world who actually think car alarms are effective in deterring theft? And even if so, is there anyone who thinks their deterrent effects are worth their annoyance?

Posted by Barzelay at 3:13 AM | Comments (18)

May 14, 2006

Hooters' manager/pimp

I was in the Chinatown Hooters today, picking up a To Go order.

At one point, a waitress walked by in her tiny orange shorts and puffy, rolled-down socks, and a manager was walking behind her. The waitress sat down on a bench, and the manager stopped, pointed his finger at her, and barked, "And I want to see you do it with a smile next time!"

My jaw dropped and I stared at him. He shook his head and then started to turn toward me. I couldn't look away in time, and he caught me staring at him, mouth agape. Then he said to me, "If you want to keep things orderly around here, sometimes you have to lay a hand on a bitch." And then he walked away.

Posted by Barzelay at 5:46 PM | Comments (4)

May 1, 2006

Stephen Colbert at the WHPC Dinner

Stephen Colbert mocked Bush Saturday night to his face for about 30 minutes at the annual White House Press Corps dinner. While driving down Connecticut Ave that night, I was forced to stop and wait for about three minutes for some well-dressed waspy types to be escorted across the street to the event by police officers, so I'm glad something good came out of it. Bush had to just sit there with a stupid grin on his face, not quite managing to hold in his contempt for Colbert, while Colbert blasted him.

Why they allowed Colbert to do that routine, right in front of Bush, is pretty incomprehensible to me, but wow! It is hilarious. He stayed in character the whole time, acting as if he loved Bush, while obviously lambasting everything about him. He also mocked the press at their own celebratory dinner, thanking them for failing to ask the tough questions or investigate anything the President did. As a result, the mainstream press has boycotted Colbert's routine, instead running stupid stories about the act that preceded Colbert where Bush got on stage with a Bush impersonator. That bit was mildly humorous (if you download the file using the torrent below, you'll have that, too), but Colbert's speech was one of the most newsworthy things to happen this year, and it is being blacked out. The Press Corps wants the President at future annual dinners, and the Press also don't like being mocked, so they're not reporting on it. Such blatant bias. Everyone needs to watch this. Some of my favorite lines:

• "If anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail."
• "So don't pay attention to the approval ratings that say 68% of Americans disapprove of the job this man is doing. I ask you this, does that not also logically mean that 68% approve of the job he's not doing? Think about it. I haven't."
• "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."
• "Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias."
• "Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, "Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!"
• "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
• "Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know--fiction."

This is one of the ballsiest things I've seen in a long time. Welcome to the no-fly list, Stephen Colbert. Here is a transcript, but if you can, you should really watch the video:

• Crooks and liars (doesn't have the whole thing)
• YouTube: Part 1, 2, 3
• Torrent (has act before Colbert, too)

From BoingBoing, Slashdot, DailyKos, EditorAndPublisher

Posted by Barzelay at 5:06 AM | Comments (8)

April 30, 2006

IKEA Strategy Guide

This strategy guide for how to beat IKEA is hilarious. It's written in the style of a video-game walkthrough. After today's trip to the College Park IKEA, it is particularly pithy.

=============================================================
 __      __  ___     _______         ___      
|  |    |  |/  /    |   ____|       /   \ 
|  |    |  ’  /     |  |__         /  ^  \ 
|  |    |    <      |   __|       /  /_\  \   
|  |    |  .  \     |  |____     /  _____  \  
|__|    |__|\__\    |_______|   /__/     \__\ 
                                              
=============================================================
IKEA WALKTHROUGH v2.3.1
=============================================================

IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized.

=============================================================
OBJECTIVE
=============================================================

Your goal is to successfully traverse the five awesome worlds of IKEA before your patience runs out. On your first few tries this may seem like an impossible task, but with practice (and this IKEA Walkthrough!) you will soon be able to muster the sense of numb resignation necessary for victory.

My favorite line is this:

"IKEA veterans know the secret to defeating this level: While waiting in line it’s crucial that you NOT CONTEMPLATE YOUR MERCHANDISE!... Do not try to reconcile your recent participation in anti-globalization protest parades with the fact that you are now on the verge of buying an armchair that somehow costs 23 bucks.

Thanks to Joel for the link.

Posted by Barzelay at 2:13 AM | Comments (1)

April 17, 2006

That time some scraggly woodsman gave me a frozen turkey

I approached the Bethesda Giant (the mid-range supermarket chain that owns Peapod) last night with a smallish list of items necessary to tide me over until the next big grocery run. My grocery runs are usually of epic proportions, often happen very late at night, almost always feature the wonderful Harris Teeter as my destination, and result in the cooking of many delicious meals in the ensuing week or two. Last night was not such an occasion, though it will result in at least one delicious meal (the leftovers of which may last for the ensuing week or two).

When I pulled into the parking lot of the Giant, I could tell something was amiss. There were only a couple cars. A bad sign. I walked up to the door, and an employee standing outside smoking and waiting for a ride explained that apparently a lot of people in this country believe that, a long time ago on this day, some dead Jewish guy walked out of this little cave and said, "See? I told you so," a short time before flying away into the sky never to be seen again except in nachos and hot chocolate, and because of that, the Giant closed at 8:00pm.

Okay. Well, ten-thousand years ago on this day, this ancient Mesopotamian man was having a really bad day, and needed to buy a bottle of Thunderbird at 9:00pm to drown his sorrows, but all the Giants in the fertile crescent were closed, so instead he invented writing and and actually improved the world. In His honor, I say we should go ahead and keep the grocery stores open until their normal closing time.

Oh well. Moving on... the employee's explanation only lasted a few seconds, after which I noticed a scraggly old man, standing nearby, staring at me. The guy was maybe sixty years old, with a long, stringy white beard and peppered hair, sun-hardened skin, and a dirty gray t-shirt covering his wiry body. And he was looking right at me. As soon as I made eye contact, he said to me in a deep, raspy Southern voice, "You want a turkey?"

I stared at him for a second, and finally asked, "What?"

He looked me up and down. "I said, do you want a turkey? I got this frozen turkey, and I'll give it to you if you want it." At that point he gestured behind my left shoulder.

I turned around and looked, and right behind me was a large trashcan with a flat-topped lid, on top of which was a large, frozen turkey wrapped in grocery bags.

"So," he repeated. "You want it? I ain't gonna use it."

So I said, "Well, thanks, but I think there are probably people who need it more than me."

He shook his head. "Nah. I done asked five or six other people, and no one wants to take it. So if you can use it, you take it. Give it to some family, or just cook it up and eat it yourself."

Ever the skeptic, especially when hobo-looking men try to give me items of value, I asked, "Why don't you cook it up and eat it?"

He looked off into the distance momentarily before saying, "Nah. I do all my cooking out in the woods. So I got this turkey and I can't use it. Why don't you take it?"

At that point I moved closer to the turkey and felt it. It hadn't begun thawing. And then I looked over to the store employee with a questioning glance. He nodded his head, which I interpreted as confirming that the guy had just bought the turkey and that it was okay for me take it and eat it. In retrospect, he may have been nodding to say, "Yeah, the guy's absolutely crazy," and not in any way sanctioning the turkey donation.

So I was confronted with a dilemma. To take the sketchiest turkey in history, or not to take the sketchiest turkey in history. And well... if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that there is a depressed Mesopotamian man in heaven watching over us and saving us from our illiterate sins. But if there are two things I'm sure about, the second is that I would never pass up a free opportunity to cook something delicious. So of course, I took the turkey, and thanked the man.

As I was walking back to my car, without milk, sugar, or laundry detergent, but with a large, frozen turkey, he yelled at me, "Happy Thanksgiving," and then cackled. It occurred to me then to take a picture of him, but when I turned around, he was gone. Seriously.

So now I've got this big turkey thawing in my kitchen. Do you know how much turkey is in a turkey? I mean... it's a shitload of turkey. It's somewhere between ten and fifteen pounds. The weight isn't labeled, and I don't have a scale. Cooking times for such beasts are based on weight, so I considered constructing an elaborate balance to use physics to determine the turkey's weight based on the fixed mass of a 2-pound bag of flour. Then I remembered that it was a FREE turkey given to me by a cackling woodsman outside a closed grocery store. If it comes out a bit dry, oh well.

I'm not sure how much a turkey costs, but I'm pretty sure it's more than $0. So I think I'm making out pretty well on this one. Of course there's always the chance that my philanthropic Appalachian friend poisoned it or something, but I figure the head-nod of a sixteen year-old chain-smoking bag boy who may or may not have been hired because he is slightly mentally handicapped is probably just as safe as FDA approval.

So look out world, because a ten to fifteen pound turkey is coming your way, courtesy of a possibly-homeless mountain man whose campfire apparently lacks the facilities for cooking such a bird. And when I'm savoring the perfectly roasted meat, crispy skin, and flavorful gravy, I'll make sure to bow my head and give thanks to our depressive Mesopotamian god for his gifts of poetry and poultry. Happy Easter, kids. This world is insane.

Posted by Barzelay at 5:53 AM | Comments (7)

April 13, 2006

Sexual Harrassment photos

Soon I'll be starting my training for Kaplan, teaching LSAT and SAT prep classes for some extra cash. One of my pre-training requirements is the completion of their online sexual harassment training. The whole thing is extremely obvious, but no matter. Users get to be entertained by the random office-context pictures that appear haphazardly on the training slides. In looking at the following photos, consider carefully whether or not the employees are engaging in behaviors that put them and their companies at risk of sexual harassment litigation.

"Bill, you've got a sexy goddamned hand, you know that?"	"Oh, fuck! It's that three-fingered woman from Accounts Payable!"
"Showing me color swatches? Damn it, I knew he was gay."	"Liz, why do we spend three hours every day challenging each other to staring contests?"
"You're touching the mouse, and I'm touching you, so it's kind of like I'm touching the mouse."	"My mother always used peanut butter when we got gum in our hair."
"I've never met a jaywalker with such smooth skin before."	"Greg, let me ask you something. Is my sideburn straight?"
"I'm so glad you told me. But I have a secret to tell you as well. I'm attracted to women, too!"	"Your utter incompetence as my secretary is causing the very walls of this office to become blurry!"
"Why is Egon Spangler in my house and touching my arm?"	"Goddamn it! That's the third fucking time she's beat me in a thumb war!"

Posted by Barzelay at 4:09 PM | Comments (3)

March 21, 2006

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog

Click to read Geoffrey Chaucer's Blog.

Of late, he's been mostly running the blog as an advice column. Here's his solicitation for questions:

Gowere, notwithstandinge, I shal continue to blogge... Ich have herde of thes "adyce columns," and I woot much of counsel and wysdom, and wolde helpen peple spede in their affaires... Sende worde to me on myne friendster accounte of youre troubles, and Y shal advyse yow. Yow shal remayne anonymouse, like moste of the politicale poetrye in my period. Yow may signe yowr queries wyth an amusyng acronyme if it pleseth yow.

On a related note, check out the amusing Historic Tale Construction Kit, which helps one to create faux-tapestry images such as the one created by my friend Rachel:

Or this one which depicts the last happy hour.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:51 AM | Comments (2)

March 14, 2006

Miss Deaf Texas Struck By Train and other curious diversions

• I'm going to the DC blogger happy hour tonight. Starts at 7:00pm at Yuca. Hopefully it will be less awkward than the last one that I inadvertently went to.
• Salon.com has some balls and publishes some seriously controversial photos and videos from Abu Ghraib. It's good to see any news media in this country actually being ballsy. Jon Stewart made a joke at the Oscars that went something like this: Two of tonight's Best Picture nominees are films about crusading journalists, standing up to power and corruption despite personal risk. They're period pieces, obviously."

• In a headline seemingly ripped from The Onion, a woman crowned Miss Deaf Texas was struck and killed by a train. I struggled with categorizing this post as "Humor," but let's face it; that's fucking funny. Sure it's tragic that an eighteen-year old girl was killed, but it's a train!
  1. Trains are not motionless predators lying in wait, alerting prey only by their horn toots, finally pouncing on any who do not heed or cannot hear their warnings. Trains rumble. They create a lot of vibration. One knows quite in advance that a train is approaching.
  2. If you are deaf, you should not be playing around on the train tracks. If you are blind, you should not be driving. If you are anorexic, you should not go to a buffet.
  3. My prevailing theory is that she must have been really, really drunk.
• I got the EFF internship in San Francisco! I'll be working in the Mission District for at least ten weeks this summer without pay. Yay! Here's hoping I get an Equal Justice Fellowship ($3250) from Georgetown for the non-profit work. Either way, it should be awesome.
• Tim calls out our future President. I bet you're thinking Obama, right? Nope! It's Pierce Bush, displaying that fine Bush intellect we've all come to love. He says, "you know?" and "you know what I mean?" about 200 times.
• You missed free coffee at Starbucks today. Yesterday was Steak And A Blowjob Day. If you were more on top of these things, your life would be significantly better.
• Many of these Top Ten Most Annoying Alarm Clocks are hilarious, but all the cool ones are just concepts and not currently alienable. Also check out my friend Jacob's alarm-clock idea that will appeal to Econ geeks.
• When I first looked at this article, I laughed very hard. I don't know, it just hit me right. The article, from Slate, is about What to do if your eyeball pops out of its socket.

Posted by Barzelay at 1:03 PM | Comments (4)

March 3, 2006

Virtual Bouncing Boobs

This is one of the best random sites I've run across in a very long time. A sports bra company has built an online simulator of bouncing breasts, to demonstrate how much better their bras support athletic boobs of all sizes. It's a flash app where you can choose the cup size and the level of activity, and it will provide you with a simulation of how the boobs would bounce nude, with a normal bra, and with this company's "shock absorber" line of bras. Then it will recommend a specific bra for your cup size and level of activity.

The amazing things about the site number two:

1. Since the company behind the site is British and therefore not nearly as repressed, the site actually shows the naked, bouncing breasts, in a life-like computer rendering.
2. The company also provides an amazing wireframe so that the user can really observe the physics behind the bouncing breast phenomenon.

I highly recommend that you go to the bouncing breast simulator site and check it out for yourself, although it is arguably NSFW in America (because WE* are Christians).

* "WE" here refers to, seemingly, everyone who votes except me.

Posted by Barzelay at 5:36 AM | Comments (4)

February 10, 2006

SBA Vice Presidential Candidate Doesn't Understand Sarcasm

A candidate [name omitted] for SBA Vice President, was the one who initially reported the video to the elections committee. Here's my IM conversation with her from yesterday afternoon, which apparently went way over her head.

Posted by Barzelay at 6:30 PM | Comments (8)

Hey Crackhead

Read this hilarious anecdote posted on Craigslist about a man having his spark plugs stolen.

*** If you are not the Crackhead that took my sparkplugs, please disregard this posting ***

Posted by Barzelay at 1:52 AM | Comments (1)

January 23, 2006

Crack Cocaine and the Snitch Bitch Hoes who interfere with distribution

Wow. I'm so glad things like this actually happen! Pay particular attention to Footnote #1. Tip from Jeanette.

U.S. v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857 (7th Cir. 2005).

We begin with the facts. Pamela Hayden agreed to become an informant for local law enforcement after being arrested on drug charges. In December of 2002, she made two controlled purchases of crack cocaine from Darron Murphy, Jr., which led to his arrest.

On the evening of May 29, 2003, Hayden was smoking crack with three other folks at a trailer park home on Chain of Rocks Road in Granite City, Illinois, Murphy, Sr., who had sold drugs to Hayden several years earlier, showed up later that night. He was friendly at first, but he soon called Hayden a "snitch bitch hoe" [FN1] and hit her in the head with the back of his hand. He said he saw her name in discovery materials from his son's criminal case and that she was responsible for putting him in jail. He put a gun--a small chrome-plated one--to her head and said he was going to kill her for putting his son in jail. He said this would be her last night and her body would be found in a ditch. Murphy then placed several calls, telling Hayden he was calling his people to get someone to dispose of her car.

FN1. The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch "hoe." A "hoe," of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden's response. We have taken the liberty of changing "hoe" to "ho," a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps "You doin' ho activities with ho tendencies."

Baker, who dealt drugs for Murphy, eventually arrived. Murphy asked Hayden for her keys before eventually ordering her outside to retrieve them from her car. Once out of the trailer, Hayden tried to run away, but she was thwarted by Baker, who grabbed her right arm. Murphy again told Hayden to get her keys. When Hayden stalled, an impatient Murphy hit her with the butt of his gun, splitting open the top of her head. After struggling for a few more minutes, Hayden managed to get in her car and drive away. A sheriff's deputy discovered her at 4 a.m. She had a bleeding gash on her head and bruises on her arm.

Police later arrested Murphy outside his home and discovered that he was carrying crack cocaine. They also arrested Baker inside Murphy's home. A search of the home revealed more crack, a syringe, baking soda, a digital scale used for weighing narcotics, and firearms, including the small chrome-plated one identified by Ms. Hayden.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:03 AM | Comments (5)

January 20, 2006

A Trio Of Links From A Singular Law Geek

Jason Schulz at lawgeek.typepad.com has not one, not two, but three links which I also want to post.

• Originally uploaded by Steiner62 (aka Duck Dodgers in the 21st Century), and linked to by Jason Schulz

  

• Lawyer's Coloring Book

  Uploaded by Jason Schulz (who knows from whom he got them--bad form, Jason), these lawyer coloring book pages are absolutely hilarious. I'm just going to mirror them since I don't know where they originally came from, anyway.

  

• Again, linked to by Jason Schulz, Defective Yeti posted a transcript of Bush's presidency in the form a text-based adventure game. Here's an excerpt:

  Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure Revision 88 / Serial number 54892

  Oval Office
  You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.

  There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.

  What do you want to do now?

  > INVADE IRAQ
  You are not able to do that, yet.

  > EXAMINE CHAIRS
  They are two several chairs arranged around the center of the room, along with two couches. Under one couch you find Clinton's shoes.

  > FILL SHOES
  You are unable to fill Clinton's shoes.

  ****************

  > STAY COURSE
  The situation in Iraq deteriorates.

  > STAY COURSE
  The situation in Iraq deteriorates.

  Some insurgents arrive.
  There is a huge number of insurgents here.

  > STAY COURSE
  The situation in Iraq deteriorates.

  > STAY COURSE
  The situation in Iraq deteriorates.

  Some insurgents arrive.
  There is an overwhelming number of insurgents here.

Posted by Barzelay at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2005

Puns

My father forwarded me this list of puns. His forwards are batting around .400 right now, which is easily good enough to be in the Hall Of Fame of email forwarders. Anyway, I think they're pretty great. Sure, they're stupid, but that just makes them more great.

<puns>

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

7. "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'" "That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?" Well, "It's Not Unusual."

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," says Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaims Daisy.

10. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

11. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

12 . I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

13 . A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I know you can't - I've cut off your arms!"

14 . I went to a seafood disco last week...and pulled a mussel.

15 . What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

14 . Two termites walk into a bar. One asks, "Is the bar tender here?"

BUT WAIT -- THERE'S MORE!! Here are the 10 first place winners in the International Pun Contest

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!".

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron," The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because", he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan. " Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him ..(Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good)..... A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

</puns>

Posted by Barzelay at 2:00 AM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2005

Best Blond Joke Ever

Blond jokes are usually pretty stupid, but this one is simply brilliant.

Posted by Barzelay at 5:12 PM | Comments (10)

December 12, 2005

Hypopecritical

A friend sent me a link to this news story, titled Pope says materialism pollutes Christmas spirit.

He sent it with the following link text: "Pope denounces materialism from balcony of marble, gold-domed building in midst of jewel-encrusted religious icons while wearing giant gold cross."

Posted by Barzelay at 1:47 PM | Comments (3)

September 29, 2005

The Onion's new layout needs to lose some weight

This week's Onion issue is really good.

And, for Cara and her research, check out this great column, "Women Have To Stop Starving Themselves Past The Point Of Hotness."

Avoiding eating in order to improve your appearance is part of being a woman, and it's natural for a woman to devote all of her time to achieving a figure pleasing to the male eye. While there are many ways to get hot, one of the simplest, fastest, and most effective is through self-starvation. However, anorexia, like all things, is best used in moderation. For example, you should never get so thin that you lose your tits.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2005

Links to make love to.

• I love when celebrities make political statements. No sarcasm, I really do. Damon Wayans on the possible reinstatement of a military draft: "I'll send my sons [to Iraq] if [Bush] sends his daughters. Put those two drunk bitches on a plane and let them go fight. At least I know my sons would be getting some on the way."
• Cardboard box art. Super cool.
• Google will answer your text message queries. Driving directions, movie times, etc. Text "GOOGL" (46645) something like "120 F St NW, Washington, DC to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC" and they'll reply, giving you driving directions from Georgetown Law to the White House.
• ArsTechnica and Wired are carrying two stories saying that all you suckers with iPods and personal music players are going deaf!
• Yeah, let's all teach our children that eroding civil liberties and a gradual descent into an oppressive military state is fun! Who would buy this toy, and why? This is so disturbing. Next they'll be selling the Fisher Price Enemy Combatant Cell™, and the LEGO® Technic Warrantless Wiretap Kit!
• Tivo has caved to content-industry pressure to add broadcast flag protection to their latest update. Yep, this new OS update adds a "feature" that makes it so that you can't save certain shows past a certain date if the networks don't want you to. How is it in Tivo's interest to add this? This basically makes their product useless. Here's a screenshot. The "Betamax" decision, affirmed many times since, settled that Americans have the right to record television shows even if the copyright holder doesn't want them to. Sony v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574 (1984). There is no copyholder right to a limited shelf-life of those recordings. BoingBoing posts about alternatives to Tivo.
• Google launched a Blog Search tool. At first glance, it doesn't seem all that useful, lacking the huge wealth of features at, for instance, Technorati (which is a very cool site, but I don't find use for anyway). Hopefully this just means Google will be indexing blogs more often. They've got my latest posts on there, one day after my posting them, so that's better than normal Google used to be.
• Another instance of silly pet owners. You should get a pet dry room, which uses infrared radiation to dry your pet off and prevent pet skin rash. These "doggie microwaves," as I like to call them, are clearly super necessary. I am considering putting up a separate category of posts here on my blog stricly for silly pet owner links. Something like Joel Hart's apparently trademarked "There's No Fruitcake Like A Religious Fruitcake" stuff.
• In the grand Zork style (the original Zork trilogy is now downloadable for free from Infocom, by the way) comes Shakespeare's Hamlet, the text-based adventure game!

Posted by Barzelay at 12:45 PM | Comments (2)

July 29, 2005

Israel Slang

I just found the list of slang terms we came up with in Israel and realized I never posted them! Okay, so we had eight Israeli soldiers stay with us for eight days. Jake, Dave Silverstein, and I had the idea to make up a bunch of slang and start using it around the soldiers a bunch. We wanted them to think it was normal American slang, and for them to start using it and spread it to the rest of Israel (which obviously wasn't going to happen, but we had so much fun with this).

We were sitting at dinner at Kibbutz 1 and we came up with the following list. We wrote it down later after we had so much fun using it around Yair, who was at first dumbfounded, but then caught on that we were using strange slang, so we explained it and recorded our slang for posterity (you).

So, without further ado, our slang list:

»» Continue reading "Israel Slang"

Posted by Barzelay at 5:33 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2005

$ rm terror/ -Rf

This will probably be too nerdy for some of my readers, so I apologize in advance, but I find this hilarious, and so will Daniel, at least. Someone has written the US war on terror as a series of Unix commands. It's really quite brilliant.

$ rm Taliban
rm: Taliban is a directory
$ cd Taliban
$ ls
soldiers
$ rm soldiers
$ cd ..
$ rmdir Taliban
rmdir: directory "Taliban": Directory not empty
$ cd Taliban
$ ls -a
.            ..           .insurgents

My favorite part, and this is just awesome, is:

$ ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda Iraq/.

Posted by Barzelay at 6:42 AM | Comments (6)

July 5, 2005

New Google Bomb for the french

You know that Google Bomb where you type in "French Military Victories" and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky," and it takes you to a fake 404 page where it asks, "Did you mean French Military Defeats?"

Well, I was just inspired by this post from edemynag to change it. So, here it is... the start of a new Google bomb (that will never catch on): French Military Victories.

To help with the Google bomb, link to this page with the link text being "French Military Victories." Like so:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_war">French Military Victories</a>

Posted by Barzelay at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

July 1, 2005

Monument Of 613 Commandments Installed In New York Courthouse

Wrote another Slant article last night.

Monument Of 613 Commandments Installed In New York Courthouse

Stone tablet bearing original 613 laws of Jewish mitzvot draws criticism from civil rights groups.

SCARSDALE,NY--The city of Scarsdale, just North of New York City, is one of the wealthiest cities in the United States. But town leaders say it is also one of the most spiritually wealthy cities in the nation, with a devout Jewish population that makes up at least seventy percent of the town's residents. And Head Justice Abraham Weisman of the Scarsdale County Court says they want everyone to know it.

»» Continue reading "Monument Of 613 Commandments Installed In New York Courthouse"

Posted by Barzelay at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2005

The Ten Non-Demoninational Moral Commandments

I wrote this quick article for The Slant last night: The Ten Non-Demoninational Moral Commandments:

As dictated by divine revelation and the Establishment Clause, and in accordance with the Supreme Court's rulings on the display of the Ten Commandments by government, the following Ten Non-Denominational Commandments have been formulated to replace the original ten, while being more clearly of a historical and secular purpose:

»» Continue reading "The Ten Non-Demoninational Moral Commandments"

Posted by Barzelay at 9:12 PM | Comments (3)

June 22, 2005

The Onion, 2056 Edition

This week The Onion is awesome. They did The Onion of the future, 2056 to be exact.

Lots of great humor, including "Million Robot March Attended By Exactly One Million Robots," "SOLOPEC Nations Warn Sun's Output May Fall Short Of Demand," "Overcrowding Reaches Crisis Level At Yellowstone National Parking Lot," "We Need A Fourth Law Of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife," and "What Do You Think: A Female Dolphin President."

It's good stuff, and if you want the sounds (there is sound on all the stories this week as well) you'll need to use Internet Explorer to visit the page. Otherwise Firefox works wonderfully.

Posted by Barzelay at 6:36 PM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2005

F Dubya

This guy in Washington got a license plate that said "F DUBYA" by claiming it was for Florida Western College (which doesn't exist). Then the state DMV canceled the plate because they'd received complaints and realized what it was...

»» Continue reading "F Dubya"

Posted by Barzelay at 4:25 AM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2005

On a scale of one to ten...

Check out Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's brilliant coverage of the Michael Jackson trial.

Posted by Barzelay at 4:47 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2005

I Heart Tampa!

Yay for Tampa Bay, the least affordable metro area in the US. Yay for our complete lack of public transportation, yay for the city being really spread out and needing a car to get anywhere, yay for it being really hot so everyone spends a bundle on air conditioning, yay for hurricanes, floods, and lightning making our insurance really high. And yay for the delicious Cuban sandwiches, salads, palomilla steak, ropa vieja, picadillo, platanos, Cuban bread, Cuban coffee, carne asado, lechon asado, mojo sauce, and flan that makes it all better.

In other news, getting your driver's side quarter glass window re-sealed because it has a very slight leak costs around $150 at most auto glass shops. On the other hand, having them order a new window with factory tinting, ship it, remove the interior panels blocking the bolts, remove the old window, clean the seal off the body, install the new window, seal the new window, replace the interior panels, and clean-up is $175. Yay for inane pricing!

Arnold Schwarzenegger got booed at a college graduation. I actually agree with his stance on all three of the proposed ballot initiatives, but couldn't it have waited till next year?

Britney Spears is the celebrity most commonly listed in spam emails, narrowly edging out Bill Gates, J-Lo, Shakira, and Osama bin Laden.

LawGeek points to a collection of identically-dressed band members at Hey, Suburbia. He also points to a hilarious old ad for a copyright firm.

Heidi Fleiss is planning to open a brothel in Las Vegas that will be modeled after the White House. Another Vegas company whose building is modeled after the White House is angry, and one of their execs has some funny comments.

This Onion article is great.
Everything That Can Go Wrong Listed
"FULLERTON, CA-A worldwide consortium of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers is nearing the completion of the ambitious, decade-long project of cataloging everything that can go wrong, project leader Dr. Thomas R. Kress announced at a press conference Tuesday."

The things that can go wrong are hilarious. At least look at the graphic that details some of the things that can go wrong.

Posted by Barzelay at 7:30 PM | Comments (0)

Skorporate Skellouts

My little brother plays guitar and occasionally sings in a punk band called Used Wisely. They regularly play shows for free at tiny little punk record stores and occasionally open for other slightly better known but still local bands at small clubs.

Today my brother was complaining that they don't get enough gigs and never get paid. He said he and the main singer were gonna start a side project that would have more appeal, by combining punk with ska, and playing ska-punk. And then he called their genre "skunk." You know, ska+punk = skunk. I thought that was ridiculous. Ska bands always do that. I used to be really into ska and thought it was hilarious back then as well. Let's look at some ska band names, shall we?

The Skatalites, The Mephiskapheles, The Amazing Skasmonauts, Bim Skala Bim, Cobra Skammander, Flux Skapacitor, Fried Ska-lamari, Jimmy Skaffa, Los Skarnales, Muhammed Skali, Oedipus Skamplex, Shrimp Skampi and the Skallops, Skacapella, Ska Trek, Skabba The Hutt, The Skaburbians, Ska'd For Life, The Skadaddles, Skadatel, The Skadfathers, The Skadolescents, Skagina, Skahumbug, Skaladdin, The Skalapenos, The Skaletons, The Skalcoholics, The Skalett Letter, Skali Baba and the Forty Ounce Horns, Skalicious, The Skalidays, Skaliosis, The Skam, The Skamigos, Skamakaze, The Skamatics, The Skamish, The Skamodores, The Skamps, Skampton, Skandalizer, The Skandals, Skanic Boom, The Skanker Sores, Skankin' Pickle, Skaos, Skarface, Skaramanga, Skarmy Of Darkness, Skarotum, The Skatapults, The Skathics, Skatoon Syndicate, The Skatterbrains, The Skauthentics, The Skavacados and the High Flying Horns, Skavoovie and the Epitones, The Luke Skawalkers, The Skawfull Waffles, The Space Skadets, Uncle Skam, Viskasity, The West Side Skafia, and my own personal favorite: Skazel Tov!

So, in response to this ridiculousness, I wrote a song for my brother's band.

Posted by Barzelay at 7:37 AM | Comments (3)

June 12, 2005

Nothing Is More Distracting Than White Women

Nothing Is More Distracting Than White Women. Brilliant article on Something Awful's homepage.

Reporter: Oh crap! Like, 60 people died in a car bomb in Jordan!
Reporter #2: Where the hell is Jordan?
News Director: Shut up! There's a blond high school girl missing in Utah, her parents say she COULD be at the mall, but she COULD be getting raped and brutally murdered!
Reporter #1 & #2: GASP!

Posted by Barzelay at 7:02 PM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2005

The DoD Is Officially Christian, Bob Jones Univ Dress Code, Some Quiz

Disgusting. Not in a corpulent or vulgar way. This is disgusting to my sense of decency in a way that fetish porn, injury pictures, or body modification can't even touch.

Selected Passages From The Fred Phelps Bible

Dress code at Bob Jones University. Pretty ridiculous.

Your Political Profile

Overall: 15% Conservative, 85% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Posted by Barzelay at 2:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2005

Proof of actual distribution required for infringement

Yay! A judge has found that simply offering copyrighted material to others doesn't mean you're distributing it. This means copyright holders must actually prove that someone downloaded copyrighted material from you before you can be held liable for infringement. Since it is much harder to prove someone actually downloaded something (although in the case of something like Napster, not all that hard), this makes their burden of proof much greater and protects scheisters like me.

Specifically, this ruling clarifies that my freshman year files-for-money scheme was entirely legal, although still an asshole thing to do. It worked like this:

I (as most of you know) have tons of files on my computer. Music, movies, programs, etc. These files are desirable to people. So, I set up an ftp server by which people could ostensibly log in and download my precious files.

Then I found a porn spam company who was willing to pay me $0.06 for every person who gave them their email address. So, I had visitors to my site go to that company's site and put their email in for porn spam before allowing them to get onto my server to download. At the time, FTP was a big deal, and so I got a lot of traffic. At one point I was making $300/week.

Now, what I just described is still entirely illegal. Here's the part that kept it legal, and made me an asshole: I set the maximum number of users on the account to 0. So, once someone gave their email address (and the spam company gave me six cents), they would try to log on and receive a message that said, "Too many users logged on at this time. Try again later."

So, no one could actually download anything, keeping my legal. No one ever paid anything to anyone, the spam company got their email addresses, I got money from the spam company, everyone was happy except for their slight hassle of their wasted minute and an increase in spam (until they unsubscribed, and unsubscribing in this case actually worked). It was quite a racket.

And now it's clear that Dean Brock Williams should not have forced me to stop it and told me if they ever caught me doing it again that I'd never again have access to university internet. I explained to him all about the legality of it and the cited the relevant laws and court cases, but he just couldn't tell how it could possibly be legal. I'm gonna find a better article about this from a more neutral source and then forward to him out of spite. Up yours, Brock.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2005

Long Live The Pirate Captain!

A guy ran anonymously for Student Body President of NC State as "the Pirate Captain," and won! See his campaign website, and three articles from their paper. Hilarious. Make sure you read the quotes from him in the articles and watch the video on his website.

Andrea Dworkin died. While I respect her insights on sexual politics, I could not be more against her anti-pornography campaign (or, for example, her view that marriage constitutes a "license to rape"). I think liberty is a more primary responsibility of state than is protection, though I disagree that porn has anything to do with protection.

Sharon announced that Israel wouldn't engage in a unilateral strike against Iran to dismantle their supposedly burgeoning nuclear weapons program. This is good. I don't like strikes in general, let alone unilateral ones. I'm just beginning to become a lot more informed and opinionated on Israeli issues, since I'm starting to get a little more into my Jewish heritage and seek out knowledge about these issues. Noelle gave a cool McGill hour this week about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and her hugely biased-toward-Palestine teacher came along, too. In looking at these issues, a couple factors come to mind for me above others:

In general, I support the right of people to secede from any union and form their own country. The problems lie in territory and in making sure that the people who get swept up in this sort of change also want it to happen. So, I certainly support an independent Palestinian estate, but the issue becomes over land: how much land should they get and where, and then what should be done with the settlers already there? In general, I favor the Labour Party's position in Israel, since the right-wingers there are the ones basically advocating settling which knowingly leads to violence and stands in the way of peace.

Congress voted to eliminate the estate tax. In general, this was a Republican-backed issue, and one that Democrats fought. I side with the Republicans on this, and here's why: Only two percent of people who died left estates that were subject to taxation anyway. This because anyone rich enough to deserve paying taxes on their estates is also rich enough to have hired financial people who make sure their estates are disbursed in such a way as to avoid taxation. In any case, I support a vastly simplified tax system that would largely eliminate questions like this.

Britney's pregnant! Who cares?

The UN voted to outlaw nuclear terrorism. How is a measure like this necessary? It's like they're arguing, "Prior to passing this law, it could have been ambiguous whether or not the UN was in support of nuclear terrorism."

And I've got a funny story of my own from today:

I had just gotten out of class and stepped out of Sarratt on my way back to McGill. Then my phone vibrated and I'd gotten a text message. It was Bridget and it said, "I just farted."

Then I look ahead as I'm walking, and about fifty yards ahead of me, Bridget is also walking back to McGill, and she looks hot. So I reply to her text message with, "Nice butt."

Ten seconds or so later (I'm almost at Tolman now, she's almost to McGill), she picks up her phone and looks at it for a minute. Then I yell to her, "Nice butt!"

So she turns around and looks at me--and it isn't Bridget. I look away quickly and pretend like I wasn't the one who just told some random Bridget look-alike that she had a nice ass.

Oh, and for those out of the loop, Bridget and I have been back together for about two months now, and it's great. I just never bothered posting about it because I felt ridiculous about the yo-yo-ing. This time though, certain things that happened shook things up and made us look a lot more closely at why things weren't working out and do some self-examining, and we actually got to the bottom of a lot of things and figured stuff out, and it seems to have worked, cause it's been perfect since then.

Posted by Barzelay at 2:40 AM | Comments (0)