I was weeding through my old links and found this. Surprisingly, just as funny as it was a year and a half ago.

Cracks me up.

So. Heidi Fleiss is apparently opening a stud farm in Nevada. That's in the brothel sense, not the equine sense.

What think you? Will it stay in business? Is there really a market for this? Apparently it's female-only clientele. Ladies, would you ever go to a boy shop? (If you're married, would you ever have?) Not my speed, personally; and even if it was, I have such stupidly specific taste in men, I can't imagine she'd have anything for me. But I wouldn't mind taking a peek. Heh.

I dug six months worth of pictures out of my phone today...

The first four are from a trip to New York a few months ago. This is one of my favorite cars, the BMW Isetta. Three wheels, one door. Steering wheel on the door. For some reason, there was one in the airport...

Next is one I'd seen before in the airport and loved, but never remembered to photograph. I'm not going to explain it. I'll let you figure it out.

I have no idea why this one is so funny to me, but the first ten times I drove past it, I busted out laughing. It's just so specific. As far as I can tell, it's a Jewish Gay Pride windsock.

Finally, the most recent. A real mailbox in my town.

That's all. As usual, click any photo to supahsize.

(I've expressed my opinion about trying to be Reagan before here, but I still think this is hilarious.)

There are a lot of irritants at the beach. The sun, sand, harsh winds, seaweed, and even some people.

This is another link I found while cleaning up my old favorites. Hilarious. Not really all that safe for work. It will probably make you laugh hysterically, but may also scar you for life.

"So it's home again and home again, America for me.
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be.
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars
Where the air is full of sunlight, and the flag is full of stars."

--Henry Van Dyke, via Peggy Noonan

Happy Independence Day! I hope you're all out enjoying it!

It all started when I tried to buy flowers for someone online, last Friday night.

The website declined my card. I figured it was their software, or maybe the fact that I was using a debit card, and I informed my monitor that they'd just lost my business. Whatever.

Saturday afternoon, it was declined at the grocery store, but the cashier said that it had been happening all day. She suggested I try using it as debit, and that worked.

I went home, moved some furniture around, and when I was done, I noticed it was hotter than I expected. My dog, to verify my suspicion, was panting and giving me that utterly disappointed, my-human-failed-me look. The air conditioner, set at 70, was registering 75. The air was blowing, but not cold. I turned it down, knowing it wasn't going to work, and turned on all of the ceiling fans.

Sunday morning at 6am, I called the company that installed my furnace. They took my number and their tech eventually called me back around 9am. He said he'd be out that afternoon, and that there would be a $95 Sunday fee. I pulled out the dusty old box fans and waited.

He got there in the afternoon, as advertised, and checked the freon in my fifteen-year old unit, which has always looked like someone tried to drive over it with a truck. Zero. Zip, zilch, nada. No freon. At all. He asked me if it had been working before, looking at me like I had ten heads, and I said it had. He put a little freon back in, and we could both hear the leak. He asked if I wanted him to solder it, and I figured since I was already paying the crazy Sunday fee, he might as well. He soldered the living bejeezus out of it, until it stopped leaking, filled it full of freon, and charged me four hundred bucks.

While I went to pick the cash off of my money tree in the back yard, he went into the basement to stick a thermometer in the exhaust, and it was still blowing at 80 degrees. My thermostat has always been a little wonky, and we both thought the living room was hotter than the digital display was saying. He wrote me an estimate for a new air conditioning unit, and went on his way.

Figuring I'd have to spend thousands of dollars on a new unit the next day, I decided to replace the thermostat that evening, just in case. So I drove to Home Depot and picked up a fancy schmancy new one. Went to check out, and the credit card -- remember the credit card? -- was declined again.

*sigh*

Fortunately, though I never, ever use credit cards, I do have one for emergencies, and I happened to have it with me. Somehow, it worked, even though it's been over a year since I used it, and I left with my freakin' expensive (even the salesgirl commented on it) new thermostat.

When I got home it was quickly getting dark, so I dropped power to the whole house, rather than figuring out which one switch to trip. Marked the wires, took the old thermostat off, threaded the wires into the new one, leveled it, and screwed it into the wall. And the plasted crumbled. So I moved it, tried again, and the plaster crumbled. Now I have five big holes in the wall, plus the old holes, it's nearly dark, and I need to get this thing wired and turned on while I can still see. And before I die of heat stroke.

Having wasted all that daylight, I quickly re-plaster the holes, leave the thermostat dangling until that dries, wire it up (why do they use those teeny eyeglass screws, so you have to use a nail file to screw them in?), run down to the basement, and turn the power back on. Do three very simple setup steps (Thanks, Honeywell!) and the air conditioner kicks back on. Go me!

It drops two degrees very quickly, but that's all I get. In the meantime, I have to buy a plane ticket, and I have to use the emergency card again, because there's no way the other one's doing anything. It stays 77 degrees all night, and my dog sighs grumpily and gives me dirty looks the entire time.

Now that I have time to think, the declined card starts to really worry me. It's the end of the month, and my mortgage, gas, electric, insurance, cable, all have to come out of that account within the next two days. I hope it's a false alarm.

At 8am, I call the company from work and tell them to go ahead with the new install. They don't need me at home, and he does the whole thing without me (I really do like this company). When he's done, I just have to drive home, check the results, and pay him. Amazingly, the emergency card works, one last time. He leaves, I go back to work, and when I get there, there's a message on my phone. That card's been pulled too, suspecting fraud.

Good thing I don't need groceries or gas.

After about ten calls, I did manage to get them both cleared up and active again. The original attempted flower purchase caused the whole thing. Apparently 1800flowers is having a massive amount of fraud, and my bank has been pulling cards automatically if used on their site. They tried to contact me, but had an old number on file.

More stress than I needed, and I'm hemorrhaging money, but at least I have a working air conditioner again.

Peony, by Pearl S Buck

My mother has this Jewish cookbook, that she's had as long as I can remember. After returning to California from New York one summer, I made my first batch of potato latkes and kugel from that book (and burned the holy living hell out of myself, in the process). It's half recipes and half anecdotes, and having read it years ago, I've known for a long time that there are Chinese Jews. The book even goes into the "The Chinese Jew says to the Israeli Jew, 'you don't look Jewish'" schtick. But it never occurred to me to wonder how they went from being middle eastern to being Chinese. This book tells that story.

It's hard to judge exactly when it's set. I think the main part takes place between about 1790 and 1820, because one of the main characters was a real person, and his death year is recorded in history. (Some other occurences in the book make those dates questionable.)

Peony is the lovely bondservant, purchased by the family as a playmate/servant for their only son, David. Naturally, as they grow up together, she falls in love with him. But this isn't really her story, it's David's. It's his Chinese life, his Jewish faith, and the way the former are changed and strengthened by four women. It's a great story, as all of Buck's books are -- fiction and history woven so tightly that it's nearly impossible to tell the difference -- and the characters are loveable and hateable and totally engrossing and believable.

I have nothing. Here's a kitten.

Lyric quiz! Lyric quiz!

I love these things (I got 11 out of 12), and I'm totally looking forward to Singing Bee starting. (Which, according to wiki, is tonight. Is that right?)

What's your favorite misheard lyric? The one in the title is mine (courtesy of my sister, circa 1984), and I'll let you figure out the song.

Update: Seki cheated and googled, so if you want to try and guess the title, don't read the comments (or do read it, if you want/need a hint).

...I think I have a parentheses problem...

I went to see The Lion King this weekend. If you get a chance, and you haven't seen it yet, you should go. It's really beautiful and magical, and not in a sappy way. There's a lot of stuff going on in the aisles, and I was lucky enough to have an aisle seat in the orchestra section, so I had a fabulous up close and personal view.

It's *almost* entirely undisneyfied, too. They could have reined back Timon and Pumba, for my taste, and then it would have been perfect. But I guess they had to leave something in for the kids.

Which brings me to my point. You knew I wasn't just going to talk about the show, right?

I do not get why people bring children under about eight years old to these things. For multiple reasons.

1. This has happened at Wicked, A Christmas Carol, and now the Lion King. These shows are terrifying. It's dark, first of all. And then there are witches and flying monkeys and ghosts and zombies (we can call Jacob Marley a zombie, right? He's not a normal ghost.) and evil dad-killing lions and scary elephant graveyards. And it's dark. Did I mention the dark part, with flashing scary lights? There were children crying hysterically everywhere. And the majority of parents didn't bother taking them out, which is a whole 'nother issue.

2. If you must bring a kid, do not get orchestra seats. I guess the rules of physics escape most people, but the orchestra floor is -- for all intents and purposes -- flat. The seats are also not staggered left and right. If you buy an orchestra seat for your kid, he's not going to be able to see anything but the back of someone's head. If he stands up to see, and gets in my way, I'm going to take it out on you. The loge seats are so steep, you get vertigo. He could see over Andre the Giant's head. Sit up there.

3. Wherever you sit, control your child. I didn't spend $90 to be your babysitter, to listen to your little screamer, or to stare at the back of his head because you won't make him sit down. I'm not going to be penalized because you didn't think ahead. If you don't want to be responsible for them, leave them at home. Or sell them on eBay. I don't care. Just keep them away from me.

The woman in front of me brought three kids. She sat in front of me, but because she and I were on the aisle, the kids were the ones between me and the stage. Within the first song, they were standing up, jumping up and down, and crawling all over the woman. The little girl in front of me had full-on Billy Idol hair, so even when I sat as tall as I could, I was still looking through hair. I couldn't see anything. I was craning around, leaning forward, dodging left and right, and that's not just unfair to me, but to the people behind me too -- who I'm sure were ready to strangle me.

I finally leaned forward and said "Can you please keep them DOWN?" I may have said it a little loud, so she'd hear me over the music. She immediately put them back in their seats, and told them to stay down. And bless her heart, she kept them down the whole time.

I mean, they're children (they were all around five or six, I'd guess) and they were already there, so it's not like I could expect them to be perfectly still, but she kept them seated and quiet, and when one of them got nervous, and needed to sit in her lap, she kept them on the aisle side, so they were out of sight.

I wanted to thank her (hell, I wanted to hug her) but they left before the curtain calls. Seriously, if there were more parents like her, the world would be a much more civil place.

1. Radar Online has the worst holiday destinations. The Gravitron is my favorite ride ever, by the way. Well, after the Big Shot in Vegas. Some of these are really nasty. Caveat emptor, and all that stuff like that there.

2. Richard Viguerie lays out Fred Thompson's political history in one big chunk. Not sounding very conservative, there. If you care about his record, and not just his charisma, you should really read that. Sadly, I still think he's the best we've got right now.

3. The Daily Star tells Obama to embrace his Muslim roots. I've mentioned this before (ages ago) at Juliette's, but I think that would be a very dangerous thing. Whether or not he was ever Muslim, which has never been fully explained, the extremists are already going to look at him as a convert. In many countries, the penalty for that is death. Why encourage them? I don't buy his politics, but he's always struck me as a guy I'd like to drink a beer with. I'd hate to see his life in danger.

4. Did anyone watch the Half Hour News Hour this weekend? The opening segment was actually funny. And clever. This may be a sign of the coming apocalypse. Gwendoline Yeo was a guest, and was looking very lovely, as usual. I would never have picked her for FoxNews kinda girl.

5. Shades of How I Met Your Mother. Sick, really? Please. Get thee to a freudian psychologist.

Dude.

The instinct to jump to safety at about twenty feet must have been almost overwhelming.

Holy Toledo!

I had to stop my dvr in the middle of Singing Bee to blog this. That's how important it is. I'd heard there was going to be an Underdog movie, but I had no idea it would be... live. action.

I am shaken. Shaken to the core. Just go watch the preview, and tell me this isn't excellent. Go now. I need a moment.

Note: I have relatives that will tell you what cataclysmic tantrums I threw when I wasn't allowed to drink my milk from the Polly Purebred glass at dinner. Last Christmas. Be afraid. Or, wait, don't listen to those liars... No. No, be afraid.

I've been seriously considering getting an iphone, even though I need one less than any human in the free world. I don't talk on the phone. I don't IM. I have an ipod and a palm. I've never needed, wanted, or owned a blackberry. And yet...

I'm definitely not doing it until someone hacks it for use with other carriers. There's no way I'm switching to at&t and doubling my monthly bill, even if their reception didn't suck. But it doesn't look like that will take much longer, frankly. And the other non-hardware weirdness issues, like the narrow keyboard for email: stuff like that can be fixed with a fairly simple software push, right?

Since the great air conditioner debacle, spending $500 on a toy would be pretty silly. And yet...

You know, my old cell really doesn't hold a charge very long anymore...

Anyway, if you're toying with the idea too, here's a great site with a full, feature-by-feature review. Very in-depth and unbiased, and full of pictures and video. The ipod section is great -- and finally exposes someone with songs that are more embarrassing than mine. And the "stress testing" section near the end is amazing. They carry it around unprotected with keys, sit on it, and finally skid it across concrete, drop it on the sidewalk, throw it off a balcony, and chuck it into a toilet while it's playing a song. A must-read.

They sure are pretty... And I could carry a smaller purse...

PC World has a collection of some of the strangest things in Google Earth. Way cooler than looking at the top of your house.

This is my favorite:

click for full size

but I'd also love to know more about what's going here. Some are man made, some are natural, and many are just weird. Check it out.

Saw it. Loved it.

To say "dark" would be redundant, right? But I didn't think it was as dark as everyone's saying. Then again, I was in a very receptive audience.

It had to happen eventually. I quite often get pulled aside for various new tests at the airport (the crazy air puff one is my favorite), because I look either (a) like a terrorist, with my pasty skin and red hair, or (b) like a person who's patient with weird rules. But this is the first trip that they've actually confiscated some of my stuff.

It's my own fault, really. I grabbed a can of carbonated water on the way out, planning to drink it before I got to security. But they had overbooked the flight, and I didn't have a seat, so I rushed down there, forgetting the can in my bag. I'm sure that's why they pulled me out, because it must have lit up like a searchlight on the xray. How you would get explosives into a sealed twelve-ounce steel can of carbonated liquid is beyond me, but rules are rules.

I've traveled with all this stuff a million times, and apparently had it packed wrong every time. My little bottles have consistently leaked each time I've used them, so I pack them in individual sandwich-size ziploc bags, and then stick all of the little bags into one gallon-size ziploc bag. As it turns out, you can only bring one quart-size bag, with no smaller bags inside.

She kindly repacked it for me -- after taking my face cleanser, toothpaste (nice), and water (I should probably just be glad she left my deodorant, because it is seriously hot) -- and I rushed off to my gate and managed to get the last seat on the plane.

And now all of the bottles are half empty and very slimy, and my mascara, eyeliner, and lip stain are all covered in shampoo. Fabulous.

I see this one a few times a year, and it takes me a minute to figure it out every time:

BLCHWK

I would guess every other normal combination was taken, and the owner was just determined to get it no matter how much he had to torque it. But I still go "Blich Walk? Blichwick? Huh?" every time I see it.

(Bad shortening decisions always make me think of "SIMP FI" -- I haven't seen that one in over a year. I figure either someone explained the typo to him and he replaced it, or he was beaten to death by literate Marines.)

Celebrity Makeunders

I know they do uglification on Fark and Worth1000 all the time, but these are brilliantly simple. The Madonna one made me laugh out loud.

Update: It'll probably make some people mad, but this one cracked me up too.

Everyone's seen this Dodge Nitro ad by now, right? It's in terrible taste, and isn't even funny, but it was done by a European subsidiary, and the company has apologized.

As repulsed as I was, I have a whole 'nother issue here. When did the kind of men who drive trucks become whiny little bitches who even care if a dog pees on their TIRE. Say when you want about the reign of the metrosexual being over. It's obviously not. It's a truck, for pity's sake. I think your tire can take it, Hercules.

Remember when people who drove trucks and SUVs actually used the four wheel drive? Remember off-roading? And mud? Remember when you polished and preened over a 1947 Jaguar (or a 1968 Karmann Ghia) and left the truck out the rain to get cleaned?

I'm not saying that trucks aren't important or cool, or shouldn't be maintained. I drive a Jeep myself. I just liked them better when the testosterone indicator was the caked mud and dirt, and not the shiny, shiny hub caps.

God, how I miss real men.

I'm a little bit pissed that I had to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows so fast, instead of savoring it -- reading just a few pages a day to make it last, like I was able to do with the earlier books. But I knew I wouldn't make it past the spoilers today.

Anyway, it was worth it. I finished it last night. It's absolutely perfect, and I can't think of a single loose end that wasn't wrapped up. Loved it.

If you haven't read it, what the hell are you doing at work? Call in sick and go read it. GO! If you have and you're done already, what'd ya think?

(Comments may contain spoilers later, be advised -- I won't put anything up here.)

Don't worry, I'm not going to make a habit of writing about The Three Douchekateers. But my schadenfreude just kicked in.

I laughed so hard at this when I read it last week, but as someone with alcoholism running madly amok in my family, I genuinely wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, so I didn't link it.

Right after getting out, Lindsay headed to Vegas and was seen partying at Pure on Saturday, voluntarily wearing the alcohol monitoring bracelet her rep was talking about.

Although since nobody ordered her to wear that thing, I'm not sure who's checking it. When she gets home it's probably smoking and sparks are shooting out because she's overloaded its tracking limit. Then she takes it off, stumbles over to her computer where it's flashing "Legally Dead" and she lifts her hands in the air and screams, "I'm cured!"

Hee.

Anyway, so much for that benefit of the doubt thing.

Lindsay Lohan was popped for possession of cocaine, driving under the influence, transporting a narcotic into a custodial facility and driving on a suspended license. Sources say her blood alcohol level was between .12 and .13, well over the .08 legal limit.

Cops tell TMZ cocaine was found in her pants pocket.

While I find her utterly talentless at playing any character other than herself, she's a very pretty, tragic girl. And she's a ginger, as far as I know. So I hate to see her doing this. This time she's definitely getting jail time. I hope that makes dent.

Hey, check it out. We got Castle Doctrine.

I heard someone mention this a few weeks ago, and then forgot to look it up until today. Not that I would have hesitated to defend myself anyway -- better tried by twelve than carried by six, unfortunately -- but it's nice to keep up with the red states.

Here's the whole bill. It goes into effect next month. Thanks, Governor Blunt!

In lieu of griping endlessly about how you should have to pass an IQ test to get a driver's license, and how driving while talking on a cell phone needs to be illegal, I offer you this seriously twisted little game.

It's no Grand Theft Auto, but for a mainstream outlet like yahoo, it's pretty gruesome. Enjoy.

For your perusal, the fifty best movie robots, evah!

I haven't seen all of these movies, but I can immediately cross off #48, and I'd push #28 up a little higher. Other than that, I'm pretty much ok with it, (I have a story about #4 that I'll tell some day -- a girlfriend of mine was a special effect in that flick, and I spent the day on site with her while they filmed/created it.) excepting a few whose label as "robot" I might question.

Feel free to offer replacements and reorganizations.

Why is it so much more exhausting to fix other people's mistakes than it is to fix your own?

Via Seki, the Easy Mac Micro Maniac

Eggs are the clear winner, but the Floam and Christmas lights are pretty awesome too. I thought marshmallows were a ripoff, but on the other hand, we've all seen what naked marshmallows do before, right?

Sound is a real bonus on some of these, but not required. And the top icon changes to a spoiler halfway through, so avert your peepers if you want to be surprised.

The guy next to me is cutting his fingernails. At his desk.

God, I hope it's not his toenails. I can't bear to look. I think I may start screaming now.

Anyone watch the cbs trainwreck Pirate Master? I should probably say, does anyone admit to it?

I will claim it as a shameful guilty pleasure. Former, I guess, since it's cancelled and I don't know if they're even airing the rest. But I liked the challenges, in general. And I liked several of the contestants a lot. Almost all of the women, and one (maybe two) of the men. I also liked loudly mocking one of the men, while alternately bouncing nerf balls off his face on the television.

Anyway, I doubt anyone but me will care, but I find this really tragic, and I had to say something. She seemed like a smart, tough cookie. I generally think of suicides as cowards, but since she was already the victim of one, it's hard to blame her. Her boyfriend's death must have been terrible to bear. Sucks.

When I was a kid, I used to spend part of winter break with my grandparents every year. They had an endless collection of Reader's Digests, and I was a crazy-voracious reader, so I'd read them cover to cover.

I found a story once that I just loved, and went back to try and find it again when vacation was over, but couldn't. I've been looking for it ever since (in fact, I think I've blogged it before). It was about archaeologists who found an intact, ancient home, and were trying to determine what the contents were, and how they were used. The home was in a place called "Usa," and I vaguely recall spoons being designated as some kind of jewelry.

After so many years, that's pretty much all I could recall twenty minutes ago, when I tried googling it again. But I apparently got the right combination of keywords this time, and I found it. At Megan's, of all places.

Since the entry's old and closed, I'll say it here. Thanks, Megan! I'm going to pick it up on the way home.