If you caught Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, then you probably still have the A Man's Gotta Do song stuck in your head (if not, you can buy it from iTunes or hear the song on youtube).
You can nominate me for Father of the Year if you want, but we watched all three acts of Dr. Horrible with Pete over the weekend. He thought it was pretty entertaining, and stayed engaged through all 45~ minutes. Then, yesterday I caught him singing "A maaaaaaaaaan's gotta do what a maaaaan's gotta do" under his breath. As if that weren't funny enough, last night while he was taking a bath he turned to me and said, "I've gotta do what I've gotta do. 'Cuz I'm a man, right Dad?" As I tried to keep myself from bursting out with laughter, I asked him what he thought he had to do. "You know," he said, "Man stuff."
I'm hoping that doesn't involve peeing in the back yard, but I wouldn't count on it.
It's free until Sunday. After that, you can buy it through iTunes. The first two are really funny, and it's got Doogie Howser. How could you not click on the link above?
If the mortgage bailout doesn't go through, maybe banks should consult this website before trying to turn their foreclosed properties.
It's Lovely! I'll Take It! is "A collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings. With love." A couple of them (1, 2) are right here in Lincoln, but this one is probably my favorite.
HT: Challies
In the good old days, if a city council wanted to trim back some overgrown landscaping in a public area, all they had to do was conduct an environmental impact study done, hire a proportionate number of women and minority landscapers to handle the job, and face toward Mecca while filling the Weed Whacker with E85 fuel. Oh, that it were still so simple.
According to the Telegraph, the City Council of Bristol (U.K.) set out to "prune bushes and remove cover from an area known as the Downs to improve the landscape and encourage rare wildlife." Huzzah for green spaces and rare wildlife, right? To quote the legendary Lee Corso, "Not so fast, my friend!" Apparently the word "wildlife" can have multiple meanings, because gay rights activists are claiming that the city council's plans are "discriminatory" because the spot is, um, well, a popular spot for homosexual "outdoor recreation", so to speak. Although these outdoor escapades are illegal, these activists believe they have a right to a government-provided space to engage in them. Cutting down some bushes would violate this right, see?
So, work on the area has been stopped while the council seeks "to make sure any work we will do is sensitive."
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In other news, the Association of Unauthorized Bank Asset Procurement Specialists (AUBAPS) is claiming that their members' rights are being violated because banks in all of England are equipped with security cameras. This is, of course, a violation of their right to privacy while engaging in their behavior of choice. The Central Bank of England is considering how they might be more sensitive to the concerns of bank robbers who might be offended by the current videographic arrangements most banks have in place.
Yesterday I was in an 80's kind of mood, so I tuned in the 80's tag radio channel on last.fm. At one point I got to hear Phil Collins (In the Air Tonight) and Genesis (Jesus He Knows Me) back-to-back, which brought to mind one my favorite 30 Rock quotes:
Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan): "I'm gonna make you a mix tape. You like Phil Collins?"
Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin): "I have two ears and a heart, don’t I?"
If you don't watch 30 Rock, you should.
Anyway, not long after that Europe's The Final Countdown came on (check out the YouTube video. It's totally rad!). While I'm sure I've heard the opening to that song in dozens of NBA playoff games, I don't think I'd ever listened to the whole thing. Were you aware that this song is actually about the crew of a spaceship that will be traveling from Earth to Venus? Yeah, that seems normal.
So, the next time your favorite NBA thug is getting ready to take the floor in search of a game winning buzzer beater, you better hope the sound guy queues up this 80's glam-rock/sci-fi classic. I mean, nothing can get an athlete pumped up like a man-who-looks-like-a-woman singing about his impending space travels.
The folks over at The Art of Manliness have compiled a list of 15 great men that cried, plus 5 "dishonorable mentions" to round it out. The list includes men raging from Lou Gehrig to Dwight D. Eisenhower to David Letterman. The list spans two pages, so be sure you don't miss the second page.
It's one thing to say you care about helping people, another thing to actually do something to help people, and yet another thing to do something that actually does help people in the long run. We should all rebuke the man who says he cares for the poor, but never offers them a loaf of bread. He's a hypocrite. But, don't forget that we should also rebuke the man who says he cares for the poor and then invents programs that will guarantee that they will always be so. This man is also a hypocrite, perhaps even more so because he likes to remind us all of how cold and calloused we are for not jumping on his programs-for-the-poor bandwagon.
Borrowing heavily from Doug Wilson's thoughts, we need to not only care about the needs of the poor, but we need to care enough to offer solutions that will actually help them. It's one thing to have good intentions, but what if the measures we take to "help the poor" actually make things worse? In such a case, everyone would be better off if we had done nothing at all. To borrow again from Wilson, what if our shipments of "relief" to an impoverished community in Africa are diverted to the local dictator and his armies, keeping him in power and assuring that the people under his tyranny will continue to starve? Are these people better off because of the so-called aid we've provided? What if sending out government checks to those "less fortunate than us" encourages them to not get married, not find a job, and to have more illegitimate children? Are they better off because of it? Judging by the progress in the War on Poverty (which, I should mention, has gone on much longer, and at much greater cost, than the war in Iraq), I would say that we're teaching people to be less responsible, and more dependent on their governmental ATM, which will most certainly run out of cash at some point.
While this shouldn't be misconstrued as an excuse to not do anything, it should serve as a warning that we should evaluate the potential consequences (intentional and otherwise) of any governmental (or social, for that matter) intervention before we launch the latest and greatest new program to solve everyone's problems for them. I say we employ this novel approach before the proposed legislation bailing out mortgage lenders and "distressed" home owners gets through Congress. The legislation is "meant to save hundreds of thousands of troubled homeowners from foreclosure. The legislation would create a government-backed mortgage insurance program with the power to refinance as much as $300 billion worth of failing home loans."
Hey, that sounds great. I mean, think of the CHILDREN! Think of their PETS! Don't we have a responsibility–nay, a duty–to protect people from the consequences of their decisions? Continue reading this post »
From Fox News:
Muslims in the Scottish district of Tayside are outraged by the appearance of a wide-eyed, 6-week-old puppy on postcards distributed by the local police force, according to the Daily Mail.
Postcards showing police dog-in-training Rebel, a German shepherd born in early December, are causing a furor among the region’s Muslims who believe dogs are 'ritually unclean,' the Daily Mail reports.
The cute cards were meant to notify locals of a new telephone number for non-emergency phone calls but instead have become a flashpoint for a clash of cultures. Shopkeepers are refusing to display the offending ad and a Dundee city councilor is calling for an investigation.
Meanwhile, non-Muslims everywhere were outraged by Muslims bombing marketplaces, beheading "Infidels", and flying passenger jets into buildings full of civilians.
The Onion makes me laugh.
Headline: We Must Expand Our Nuclear Power Program If We're To Realize Our Dream Of Superhero Mutants
If we fail to encourage our scientists to get trapped in a malfunctioning reactor as warning klaxons ring across the facility, and menacing numbers on a nearby wall-screen count down to zero, their frail human physiologies will never receive the massive doses of radiation necessary to transform them into glowing metallic-chrome beings with nuclei-and-electron symbols emblazoned on their muscular chests. As our country takes on the innumerable challenges of the 21st century, we need—now more than ever—cosmic, glowing superbeings capable of harnessing the power of the atom to fight crime.
The headline: Gore's Mansion Uses More Energy After 'Going Green'
Enviro-crusader Al Gore just finished up renovating his home in Tennessee to make it more eco-friendly. After spending more than $16,000 on improvements that will surely save this soon-to-be-melting planet, "the former vice president uses an average of 17,768 kWh per month — 1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations."
Some perspective; according to the Energy Information Administration's website, the average American household uses 920 kilowatthours (kWh) per month. In other words, Al Gore uses 1,900% (19x) more electricity per month than the average American household. In fact, the additional amount of electricity Gore uses each month since the renovation is nearly double the amount a "normal" family uses each month.
Frankly, the High Priest of Hype wouldn't be any more hypocritical if he were actually having polar bears flown in from the Arctic and throwing them into a bear-burning stove to heat his humble abode all winter long. I've said all along that I'd be more inclined to believe the global warming hype if the people proclaiming our impending doom actually believed it.
By the way, this article over on Snopes is kind of fun, too.
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