Your natural beauty is breathtaking, but your efforts to complement it with jewelry is understood. When flying, please pack your metal baubles and save wearing them for when you’ve reached your destination. All of us behind you in line at the metal detector will understand and find you to be even more beautiful for doing so. Thank you.
An interesting story in the Washington Post today describes how the prigs on the ‘Old Georgetown Board‘ have thrice rejected Apple’s proposed design for their planned retail store in Georgetown. Tonight Apple will take a fourth swing with a design that’s pretty similar to their first one.
In tough economic times, you would think a shopping community such as Georgetown is would eagerly embrace a new Apple store. Personally I’d rather see an Apple store downtown, closer to my office. Georgetown is not a convenient place to get to. So please Georgetown Board, reject Apple yet again. And hopefully they’ll find a more welcoming place in DC to open up a store.
Apple Tries, Tries Again To Open in Georgetown
The Washington Post, 2/6/09
Holy crap! (or maybe ‘unholy’ crap!) This guy is scary…
Huckabee: ‘amend the Constitution’ to ‘God’s standards.’: “
At a campaign stop yesterday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee recommended — to a cheering audience — that the Constitution be ‘changed’ to fit ‘God’s standards’:
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.
Watch it:
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Rawstory notes that in response, MSNBC’s ‘Mika Brzezinski was almost speechless, and even Joe Scarborough couldn’t immediately find much to say beyond calling it ‘interesting.’’
“
(Via Think Progress.)
Pardon the unpleasant topic, but this is something we all do, every day, and it should be done regularly and well. But my office building recently installed automatic flushing mechanisms on the toilets and urinals in our building, and each day I get angrier about it.
On the urinals, they are fine. You stand there, take your leak, shake twice, put it away, and walk away. And only after you have stepped away from the urinal, does the auto-flush system recognize that you are no longer standing there, and then does it’s job and flushes. No hands, no fuss, no waste.
But on the toilets, auto flushers are a disaster. You sit down, drop a stool (good word eh?), stand up to do the paper work…and FLUSH!!! Wait, I’m not done, I have a handful of used toilet paper here! So you finish the cleanup work, drop the paper in the toilet, and use the manual override button to flush once again. Two flushes, a BM interrupted by one of them, and you still have to touch something unless you want to leave a bowl of dirty wet toilet paper for the next visitor.
WTF? Really, am I doing it wrong?
I turned to the Google to research, and found this interesting blog post titled ‘How to Wipe Your Ass‘, in which a survey of 259 individuals explored their various techniques; standing or sitting, and wiping direction. I’m not going to get into direction, but I was interested to see that of the 185 men surveyed, sitting while wiping beat out standing 132 to 53.
So us standing wipers are in the minority, but a significant enough one to not be ignored. I’m not going to change my technique developed since mom handed over the job to me as a toddler, just because the Zurn auto-flusher’s electric eye sees light between my legs when I stand up!
The Google search was very interesting, and I was glad to find I was not the only one outraged over this. And I was glad also to see a simple and satisfactory solution suggested, the foot-pedal flush. I have a dream, that one day I will have both the ability to avoid touching bathroom fixtures unnecessarily with my hands, but also be the master of my own flush. You just have to believe.
For further reading:
The Crappiest Invention of All Time
Slate Magazine, 3/7/2006
Standing vs. Sitting: How Do YOU Wipe?
Collegehumor.com, 4/5/2007
It’s Election Day, and I have cast my vote. It’s an action that makes me both proud. But today I’m also sad and concerned at the same time.
I’m proud to be an American, and to live in a democracy where citizens have an critical role to play in our governance. I consider voting to be a civic duty, and I encourage others to do the same.
I’m sad to see major races on my ballot go unchallenged, with only an incumbent running, and happily holding their ‘safe’ seat. In a couple instances, I wrote myself in rather than vote for them. I’m sad because I’m reminded how our current President illegitimately gained the most powerful elected office in the world, and for all the harm he has done while in it. 441 more days, assuming he doesn’t pull a Musharraf/Putin and try to cling to power after his time is up. Given his record, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I’m concerned because our election system is in bad shape. For starters, Why Tuesday? That makes no sense at all. Why isn’t Election Day a national holiday? Or a multi-day event? I’m currently reading the book, Stealing Democracy, and it’s sobering to be reminded how gerrymandered districts, partisan election officials, and a patchwork of election eligibility/registration/voting rules can all be used to skew or determine an election’s outcome.
But neither my sadness or concern can overcome my hope and determination. They will move me to action and change. Please vote today.
UPDATE: Looks like most of the wrong candidates won here in Prince William, so you can add ‘discouraged’ to the above feelings. Silver lining, Democrats took control of Virginia’s Senate for the first time in something like 40-years.
Spotted today at New York and 14th on my way to the bus stop heading home from work. What else can you say?
Rove… Gonzalez… Bush’s brain… Bush’s lawyer
Who’s next? There are sooo many good choices… Dick, Condi… hell, how long will Barney stick around? My choice, every last one of them… 511 more days.
Damn, Roberts and Alito will be hanging around much longer than that 🙁
I guess you can call it a summer lull, or I’ve just been very busy with travels of late, and as a result things have been pretty darn quiet here in the Casey blog. Sosumi.
Let me try and offer some quick catching up, and some random thoughts on my mind…
Company Retreat – For the third summer in a row, I’ve spent a weekend at a company retreat in Vermont, and as before, it was a blast. Bonfires, backhoes, and corporate bonding… good times. We suffered a six-hour delay on our return flight, but hey, shit happens.
Fat B-Roll –
There was a news story recently about obesity being contagious (which is of course old news and was reported in The Onion years ago, right here). What struck me about this story and others like it is the b-roll video that is always used, showing fat people from the neck down, minding their own business walking down the street, eating a couple hot dogs, or sitting on a bench. Who are the cameramen who gather this stuff? I’m on the lookout. Beware any camera that won’t look you in the face. And I better start doing some sit-ups, or I’ll be starring in an fat-story sometime soon.
Tech Turmoil – It seems like when my technology fails me, it all happens at once. My iPod has been freezing up periodically freezing up, and now it seems to be completely dead. This is the second iPod photo of mine that has died after little more than a year, and the Apple Care coverage I bought the second time around will do me no good, as it expired in February. And the month-old Phillips Plasma TV I bought for the basement manspace suddenly has nothing more to offer than a little blue light, no picture, sound, or anything else. It’s under warranty, but finding a Philips rep who will make the promised house call is proving challenging.
Chicago – I recently visited Chicago to attend the 2nd Yearly Kos Convention. It was a good time and notably larger than last years first one in Vegas. Once again I came back with an armload of signed books, and a head full of energy for heading into 2008 Election battles. It was very impressive to see almost every Presidential campaign (except Biden) show up to participate. I went to Bill Richardson’s breakout session and he did much to re-inforce my feelings that he ought to be among the top tier candidates. When his staffer tried to cut off his Q&A with the audience, he replied, “I’m at 13%, I can answer a few more questions!”.
I read Mike Royko’s biography of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Boss, while on the trip. It’s an eye-opening education in machine politics of the 50s & 60s. And it wouldn’t be a trip to Chicago without a visit with my Great Aunt Margaret, a Cubs game at Wrigley Field, and some Casey Family grave hunting.
OK, so while that still leaves me far from caught up, it’s a least a little slice of summer offered here in the Casey blog. More to come…
Scary Evil. He exemplifies reckless disregard for the Constitution, and of any person or law’s ability to exercise any amount of oversight of his activities. Remarkably, he recently claimed that the Vice President’s Office is not an “entity within the Executive Branch”, and so is not subject to Presidential Executive Orders. Wha?? Well, to follow Cheney’s own twisted logic, this week Congress will vote to defund the VP’s office as an executive branch agency, leaving him to fend for himself as the President of the Senate. Personally I think Rep. Kucinich has it right with his plan to impeach Cheney first, because impeaching President Bush only to have Cheney become President would be like trying to put out a fire with gasoline, you’ll only end up in much worse shape.
This week the Washington Post is running an in-depth profile about Cheney and his machinations. It’s scary to read about the lengths this Dick will go to in order to subvert the law and pursue his un-American agenda. It’s something everyone should read. You’ll feel dirty and ashamed afterward, but you need to read it anyway.
George Bush is most certainly the Worst President Ever, but with the Evil Dick as his VP they have combined to be a catastrophe from which America may never completely recover.
This morning’s news is that VP ‘Big’ Dick Cheney has made a surprise visit to Baghdad. You’ll know things are going better in Iraq when a visit by the President, VP or cabinet secretary there is no longer described as a ‘surprise’. I imagine the Iraqi Prime Minister, walking into a darkened conference room and the lights come on and he’s confronted by Dick shouting ‘Surprise! I’m here!’. It must be hard, as I’d guess they’re tired of guests from America. Or maybe Cheney is part of the surge. He can tell the Iraqis to “Go F Themselves“, which would be good, because I think we’ve F’d them enough.
