Every once in a while, Mike will stop me in mid-sentence and scream "How many times are you going to quote the Simpson\rquote s in one day. Let me have some peace, man!" He'll then hand me a bag of nuts, and send me to the park.

Last time, I took my camera.

Here's my friend, the squirrel.

I wasn\rquote t the only one feeding them!

Sometimes, they jump!

Hey - there are ducks too!

And, to make Mike Happy, here's a flower.

Mike and I have both been to the dentist recently. Both of us had filling work done, and Mike had a partial treatment to help his gums.

Nothing interesting there, you say?

Well, YOU'D BE WRONG!

Mike fell asleep during his treatment. ASLEEP! In fact, the dentist hard a hard time doing her work, because he was snoring a little.

In a dentist chair, suction tubes in his mouth, an assitant flushing him with water, the dentist fiddling around with whatever and he FALLS ASLEEP!

The boy can sleep anywhere.

(Yes, as a matter of fact, I am jealous.)

Elevator People

This is a true transcript of a conversation that happened to me yesterday.

**I am waiting for the elevator. Along comes another guy**

Guy: You going up or down?
Me: Down.
Guy: Oh. **presses both the up and down button**. I\rquote m going up.
Me: **silence**
**The elevator arrives, going up.**
Guy: Did you say you were going down?
Me: Yea.
Guy: This is going up.
Me: Yea.
Guy: I\rquote m going up.
Me: OK.

**Guy gets in and elevator door closes**

Okay - 3 basic rules for using the ATM if there is a line for all of you people to ignorant to figure this one out on your own.

1) Get everything ready before you get in line. Or, at the very least, insure you will be ready when your turn arrives. There's nothing worse than waiting in a long line for the ATM, and having the dingbat in front of you, when they finally get their turn, rooting around in their wallet/purse looking for their ATM card, or trying to add the amount of the deposit.

2) Have in idea of what it is you wish to accomplish while at the ATM. Nothing cries 'dingbat' more than someone reading the options on the screen, then pausing to think about each one. It basically boils down to getting money, giving money, or finding out how much money you have. Some of these people seem to think if they wait long enough, they might win a raffle or something. If you're staring at the options for longer than 2 minutes - YOU'RE TOO DUMB TO WORK THE ATM! MOVE ALONG! (PS The 2 minute time limit is intended to allow time for people who have never used ATMs before).

3) When you are done, quickly grab your card and move to the side. Now is not the time to review your balance or to fumble putting your card away. I have better things to do with my time then watch you struggle to figure out if the date stamp on your deposit slip matches the time on your watch. And, if there is a problem, it's not like you're going to be able to discuss it with the ATM anyway.

You people are KILLING ME.

Welcome to today\rquote s installment of things that make me laugh.

On the Good side, I could spend an entire day poking around the HomeStarRunner site. It\rquote s an animation site (FLASH), with a bunch of crazy characters. Strongbad, a wrestler, the \lquote Cheat\rquote some sort of yellowish creature, Marzipan, and Homestar Runner. The site runs from G to very lightly PG humor and is great.

They have Halloween Games and Marshmallow Commercials, and Marshmallow Commercials.

A fun \lquote cartoon\rquote , drawn by StrongBad, called Teen Girl Squad, a fun old-time cartoon about The Sneak and, of course, StrongBad\rquote s Email. 2 of My favorite Emails are the one where he thinks about what he would be like if he were an Japanese Cartoon, Techno, and Trevor the Vampire.

On the Evil side, is Something Awful. This is childish grown-up humor. The kind that Shaun would like. There are regular features, like Cliff Yablonski., where people send in pictures and he rips them apart. Or, Photoshop Phridays, where there is a Photoshop \lquote theme\rquote . The also review Pornography, Adult Video Games, and Cheesy Movies.

The best, however, is their responses to people who threaten to sue them:

After a lengthy talk with my lawyer, Leonard Crabs, I have been told that we will be more than happy to remove the potentially "slanderous" material from the webpage in question. However, Leonard demands you come over and wash his car first.

The site ranges from heavy PG to at lease 2 Xs.

Go. Look. Laugh.

Mike\rquote s mom and dad live very close to where some of the fires are in CA. They haven\rquote t been evacuated yet, though people who live a few blocks from them have been. I can\rquote t imagine how scary that must be, waiting for someone to come and tell you that have to leave NOW before your house burns down.

Hopefully, the fire will be controlled before it comes to that.

So, I\rquote m officially in a mid-life slightly-earlier-than-mid-life crisis. I know I need to go somewhere, but I\rquote m not sure where to go. I have been following the computer path \endash but the outlook seems to be getting grimmer and grimmer. At first, I thought I would just have to wait out a bad economy, but there\rquote s a new trend of \lquote outsourcing\rquote programming jobs to other countries, which will not only drive down jobs, but also salaries.

So, I\rquote ve been wavering and thinking about other options. One of which is Law School. I think I would enjoy law school and am pretty sure I would do well. The problem is, however, if Mike and I have kids, which is the plan, it makes it a challenge \endash as starting out as a lawyer requires a lot of time.

I took a practice LSAT test from Kaplan, for laughs, with no preparation and scored in the 80-94 percentiles. Which, I think, is pretty good. I would need to get 2 letters of recommendation, however, and I\rquote m not sure who I would ask for that.

There is a Law School here with a part-time program for a JD \endash which means I could go part time while Mike finishes up, then full time when Mike is working (Or stay part-time if we have a kid).

(Mike has told me, when he graduates, he fully supports me becoming a professional weightlifter. Apparently, he's willing to pay me to do it. i told him, as long as we're considering serious jobs, I might just study to be a pony.)

I had a chance to play with my camera. I took some pictures of SF area at night. Here's a couple:

Castro Street. Home of the Hot Cookie.

Here's a view of Sf at night, as you drive down our Hill.

I'm not sure what this is. It's red lit bamboo outside a building on Mission street. I call it 'Red Tree by Night'.

Finally, the 'other' bridge. The Bay Bridge. This is the one I use more than that one* whom I share a name with.

* Golden Child. Golden Gate Bridge. It's like we're twins.

Hmmm...Shaun? It could be...lets blow it up....

IT IS SHAUN!. Who knew he still had the metallica hat?

Well, my camera came today. I have no idea how to use it yet, as I'm at work, but I took a few pictures during lunch - using the fully automated feature. One of the reasons I wanted this particular camera, is that I can do it all automatic, or all manually.

First the love of my life (The one on the left):

Then a scene from a window where I work of SF.

and Finally, a ghost that's part of the Halloween decorations in my Dept.

Behold Beauty!

I got a great deal, from an admittedly shadowy company, on the Fuji S5000 digital camera. While I still plan on taking film pictures, this cam will allow me to take lots of pictures - while still manipulating Aperture and exposure settings. So I can learn better without having to print them all.

And, lets face it, it's a cool looking thing.

Does this sound familiar? Here's the text, in case the story gets taken down.

Mysterious skeleton to have a proper burial

(Canadaigua-AP) -- A skeleton found in a white coffin in a western New York lodge building will soon have a proper burial.
The skeleton of an unknown woman was found in a storage room at the Canandaigua lodge of the International Order of Oddfellows in May. The skeleton in its coffin had been in the lodge for at least 50 years, but nobody knew how it got there.
City police say there's no criminal investigation. They say the remains, which had been embalmed, will be buried next week as a "Jane Doe" in a county-owned cemetery.
80-year-old Oddfellows Grand Noble Don Wagner says the skeleton had been used in initiation rituals until he became the head of the lodge ten years ago.
During the ceremony, new members stood in front of the open coffin and spoke. There were red lights strung inside the coffin lid.
Wagner says he's glad the remains are finally getting a proper burial.

Update: Okay, okay. So, I was had. It's a fake article. I'm a doofus.

I usually don't cross post - but this is just too silly not to put on both blogs.

This is just too amusing not to pass on. Perhaps as revenge for the whole Condom thing (see this post) here\rquote s been a study which has shown a link between frequency of women performing Fellatio (IE Oral Sex) and lower occurrences of Breast Cancer. (Via CNN).

I\rquote ll skip the important science behind this, and go right for the cheap jokes. Well, more specifically, the over the top quotes CNN saw fit to include in the story :

"I am surprised by these findings, but am also excited\'85.

"Since the emergence of the research, I try to fellate at least once every other night to reduce my chances."

"There's definitely fertile ground for more research. Many have stepped forward to volunteer for related research now in the planning stages,"

\ldblquote I encourage all women out there to make fellatio an important part of their daily routine,"

I listen to my walkman to help me sleep. Really. If I don\rquote t listen to something , I can\rquote t fall asleep. (Well, I can, but not easily). I\rquote ve always listened to stuff \endash from when I was young and I used to fall asleep to Dr. Demento.

When I was single \endash it was pretty easy to listen to whatever \endash I just had a radio/tape player. However, in a relationship, you have to give and take \endash and I didn\rquote t want to subject Mike to my night noise. So, I took to listening to my walkman at night. Sometimes Coast to Coast (Am radio about UFOs and Ghosts and stuff) or books on tapes (I have all the Hitchhikers books on tape, as well as some star trek, contact, and others).

Anyway \endash my walkman makes a \lquote beep\rquote in the headphones when you FF or Rewind a tape, to let you know it\rquote s doing something. Here\rquote s the odd thing\'85.

You know that electric jump you sometimes get when you unexpectedly hear a creak or other noise in a quiet room (or a larger jump with a sudden loud noise)?

Whenever I rewind or FF a tape, at night, I jump with every beep. Every single one. Even though I know they\rquote re coming and can predict when the next beep is coming. During the day, if I rewind/FF \endash I don\rquote t jump at the beeps.

Odd, huh?

I raed sweroheme taht trehe was a sudty wichh sgutesgs taht the barin dseon\rquote t need the lterets of wrods to be in the crorcet palecs. All it rlaely nedes is the frist and lsat lteters to be paecld crorcelty \endash and it slitl can mkae out the menanig.

Pretty neat, huh?

When you get a chance, and have 3-5 minutes to waste. Pop over to Zombo.com

You can do anything there.

(Hint - make sure you have your speakers on.)

Hey! Martin Sheen called me too!

He's nice.

I have a new semi-favorite commercial. I saw a Budweiser commercial while I was watching the Sox take the lead against the A's. Anyway, it's the one where the guy writes into the commissioner and suggests a warning 'moat' instead of warning track. Then the baseball guy is eaten by an alligator. I understand it\rquote s old \endash but I like it.

Very funny.

I got my haircut this weekend. Why do hair-cutting people always have the most complicated haircuts conceivable on themselves? Is it because they're trying out the newest things on themselves? Don't they have those fake heads to work on? I'm just saying if I went to a doctor, and he had all these scars from new 'procedures' he heard about, I'd probably switch health plans.

I got a phone call from former Vice President Al Gore over the weekend! He was asking me about the recall election in CA. I tried to ask him some questions about his time in the White House, but he must have been very busy - because he just kept right on talking. He did thank me, though.

He was nice.

Did you know that, instead of all this dark-matter foolishness, a physicist has worked out a new formula for gravity that seems to explain why our universe seems to be moving faster than it should be. He calls it MOND for Modified Newtonian Dynamics. If he's right, and we've been using the wrong formula - it's a good indication of how little we know, regardless of how much we know. It wouldn't be the first time a set of 'standard' accepted scientific 'laws' were shaken up. Einstein did the same thing.

Speaking of space....To all of you people who notice I try to keep a small amount of space between myself and other people - whether standing in line or driving a car STOP CUTTING IN FRONT OF ME! I'm trying to be polite - nobody wants to feel like the person behind them is some sort of horny dog waiting to mount. You people are the reasons the soviets would have beaten us, if they hadn't lost to us. Especially you - Mr. Coffee man, who cut the entire line of people waiting for coffee, because I refused to super glue myself to the woman in front of me. If you need caffeine that bad - get the patch. Preferably a hemlock patch.

Communist.

I thought I had posted this a while ago, but it must have slipped my minds. As my regular readers know, I like to feed squirrels (Though, contrary to the rumors \endash I do NOT attribute that to my mother. She\rquote s responsible for my gambling problem and my hatred of Pepsi).

Anyway \endash the squirrels. This really isn\rquote t about that. It\rquote s about the ducks. See, sometimes when I go to feed the squirrels, I also feed the ducks. In fact, in the spring at Stow Lake, they have cute little ducklings you can feed. (I\rquote m not sure if my mother has anything to do with my Duck Feeding problem. I\rquote ll have to check my psych books).

Anyway \endash the ducks. This really isn\rquote t about that. It\rquote s about the pigeons. There\rquote s a lots of them at Stowe Lake, as well as these cute little \endash finches I guess they are. (Small little brown, cotton ball shaped birds who flitter from place to place.)

Anyway \endash the pigeons. This really isn\rquote t about that. It\rquote s about this guy who took time out of his very busy life to chastise me for feeding the pigeons. See, as I feed the ducks, the pigeons look at me with their sad, soulful, eyes. Well, okay, they\rquote re more like red-rat-eyes, but I feel bad for them anyway. So, I feed the ducks a bit \endash I feed the finches a bit, and I feed the pigeons a bit. So, this guy yells at me, and tells me it\rquote s against the law. TO FEED PIGEONS. IN A PARK. I understand why you don\rquote t want to feed them near restaurants, or supermarkets, or near people\rquote s carport. But, A PARK?

And is this such a horrible thing, with terrorism and another season of Reality TV, that you have to stop someone and point out that feeding the Pigeons is WRONG? I wanted to stuff my moldy bread into each of his nostrils, knock him down, and invite the pigeons to feast on his face.

However, as I wasn\rquote t fully pigeon-lecture-prepared, the best I could manage was \lquote Huh\rquote ? and to stare at him with wonder as he wandered off, probably in search of kids to whom he could point out that they\rquote re really not supposed to be playing ball in the park.

I hope he got pooped on.

By a pigeon who ate my moldy bread.

And then \endash bitten by a squirrel.

Yea.

Pigeon picture provided by the Arizona Pigeon CLub