Tag: doh

80s Flashback Block Party: Son of SDI

strangelove

I found that Twain bit during a long web search for something I couldn’t find: a satire on new weapons technology from the 1860s that is anthologized in The Sub-Treasury of American Humor. I can’t find that book in my house yet either; the search continues. It’s a lovely bit of writing and entirely appropriate today.

The whole search was sparked by this hilarious/horrible article on the return of the discredited, stupid, and entirely evil “Brilliant Pebbles” weapons project, part of the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative that was popularly known as the “Star Wars” system.

This is courtesy of Lowell Wood, our current living Strangelove. A disciple of Teller, he believed in every mad science approach to strategic defense: killer satellites, nuclear explosions in space, throwing rocks really fast at missiles, and X-ray lasers. The last one is a beauty: nuclear bombs in satellites would be detonated and their radiation focused into laser beams.

Wood’s still at it. His entire career and ego are attached to the scheme.

Craigslist personals quote of the day

http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/w4m/84361135.html

i am a single asian girl who is looking to meet a special gentleman in my area for friendship or more.. my expectation is high and i wont settle for less. i would like to meet someone who is smart, confident, strong and fun to hang out with.(loves travel and eat out is must) you need to be successful in business and personal life, able to manage your time and money. i do not want to hear your “i have this and that” “ive done this and that” stories. so please do not try to impress me with your story that i dont really believe anyways.

i am not looking for a sugar daddy or financial support from you so dont try to show off your $$$ either. but if youve never bought a car for your girlfriend, please dont bother. my guy should be capable of doing so whether youd do it for me or not. (if you thought that i am a gold digger or/and dont understand what i mean on here, obviously you do not have the same value or lifestyle as i do, so please dont bother.)

please, no players, one night stand seekers or cheaters.

She’s right. I don’t have the same lifestyle or “value” as she does! Anyway I can’t afford more than a one night stand. Glad to hear she’s not a gold digger, though. Gosh, that would be awful.

She’ll end up with one of the guys who ends his ads “no fatties”, and she’ll get chlamydia. But it’s all part of the career choice, I guess.

“Never trust a whore who says they don’t want money. They’re the most expensive kind.” —William S. Burroughs

One-Click Horking

Hi there. I’m going to talk to you today about website programming. You aren’t interested, but maybe you should be, because your bank sucks at it.

Today I cancelled a credit account that had been paid off a long time ago and was no longer useful. Before I called them up, I looked at the website for my account to make sure that everything was clear and that no pending or recurring charges would show up.

The account statement looked like this:

Available Credit: [redacted]

Current balance: $0.00

Minimum payment Due: $20.00

Previous Balance: $0.00

Last Payment: $58.97, 3/5/2005

I immediately saw that I had a $20 payment due, but missed seeing that my balance was zero. Oh crap, how long has that been due? At least since March! Better pay that last $20 before I cancel. I clicked on the “Make a payment online” button.

that’s when it got funny

Today’s CPSC Recall: The Not a Walking Stick

You will see, Watson, that this is no ordinary walking stick. Note the pouch full of darts and the fiendishly clever bamboo gunsight! I wrote a monograph on this particular piece of South Seas devilry…

Name of Product: African Blow Dart Guns

Description: The blow dart gun is a 51-inch long decorative wooden tube with an attached pouch containing five darts. The brown, bamboo-shaped gun has a black, small barrel-like container attached to the top.

Hazard: Consumers may have mistakenly purchased the dart guns thinking it was a decorative walking stick, posing the risk of injury if someone used the gun for its intended purpose.

Making a Federal Queso It

Via robotwisdom, mainly for anarqueso, gordonzola, and the rest of the cheese crew. Your nemesis has been uncovered; the EVIL cheese makers. Also I was obligated to make a dumb joke in the headline so shut up about it already.

Feds charge pair in cheese-making scam

WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. – They touted their cheese as better than the rest, and their company was hailed as one of the best small businesses in America.

But a federal court indictment claims the success story of now-defunct cheese maker Suprema Specialties was full of holes. The company’s former chief executive and chief financial officer are accused of participating in a massive scheme with customers and suppliers to claim more than $600 million in non-existent sales.

and they lied about the cheese, too

This heaven gives me migraine

Waiting for my mother at the doctor’s office just now I picked up a magazine called “Organic Style”, thinking “this should be good!”

It does not disappoint. A more descriptive name would be “The magazine for women who need to be so healthy and virtuous and beautiful that they are all hot yoga adepts and Jane Goodall and Susan Sarandon at once”.

Ads for Shell Oil face editorials decrying Arctic drilling. A product sidebar touts a $249 “earth/peace scapulare” that makes a statement in 14k “recycled gold”. There are many, many skin moisturizers and breakfast cereals. One is commanded to indulge everything, always.

The best part was a Dove ad. It was actually an ad for an advertising campaign (!). Dove wishes to celebrate “real beauty” of “women with curves” who are not size 2 models. They laud their own ad campaign, in which they stand firm for real women and unretouched photographs and celebrating… Anyway the women in the ad for the ad are impossibly hot twenty year olds with perfect everything laughing in their underwear. I guess it’s okay to be a size 4 catalog model now, gals! Size 0 is no longer mandatory!