Fair and Balanced in Terms of Stupidity
If you read the title and are expecting a rant on politics in today's news, don't bother. You won't get one. Go read something by Al Franken or Bill O'Reilly. In fact, throw bias to the wind and read something by both those windbags.

No, this is just stupidity in general.

First, an article from FoxNews about a 91-year old golfer hitting a hole in one. The guy is from Thunder Bay, Ontario, and the article says that the 'burg "is in northern Ontario, about 20 miles from the Minnesota border on Lake Superior."

Except it isn't - Thunder Bay is in central Ontario. No point of Ontario within 50 miles of Minnesota could be classified as being in the northern part of the province. Here's proof. Next thing you know, we'll read about Paraguayan guerillas crossing the border into Micronesia. Nice job, champ.

Also on FoxNews, the editors put up an article about Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (fine job using colons, Mr. Lucas). Keep in mind, the article was published May 26, the movie opened May 19th - 7 full days of tickets have been counted (tickets for the 26th aren't figured into this, obviously, because the shows haven't been seen yet). Read this quote:
"With $182 million in the till, the film has taken in about $10 million a day since last weekend. The $200 million point will occur on its eighth day of release, which is certainly some kind of record."

Actually, the movie took in a gate of $159 million in its first four days, meaning that it's taken in $23 million over the last three. So, you have 23 million dollars divided by three - that's seven million dollars per day, not ten. And if it keeps up that pace, it won't hit 200 million dollars until day 10, not day 8.

So, Fox News has failed Geography and Math today. Maybe the No Child Left Behind act should have included news columnists...

Hello, Debt Load
Saint Louis, you may recall (or you may never have known, but I'm telling you know, so you can recall it later, smartass) is a phenomenally hot and sticky city during the summer. Not the hot and sticky and sweet kind that Def Leppard made cool, just hot and sticky - like a gas station hot dog covered in soda. That kind. The vomit-inducing kind.

That, in and of itself, is enough to make you want to sit down and really take some time to consider whether you want to live in a place like this. "Isn't Milwaukee superior?" I ask myself on a daily basis. "Or Sioux Falls?"

The environment here is made far worse by driving a car - cars, with their traditionally dark interiors and glass, non-vented windows, heat up pretty quickly in the sun, especially in Saint Louis between March and November. But, you need a car to get around Saint Louis, because the public transportation system was obviously designed by either a) a mad scientist, or b) a box of rocks. So the real key to surviving here, besides rooting against the Chicago Cubs, is having a car with air conditioning.

My car's air conditioning went on the fritz last April.

Last summer was absolute misery - the parking lot in front of my workplace is unguarded by trees for most of the day, so my poor little car would get well above 110 degrees Fahrenheit by about 9:30 AM, and just keep cooking until I left at 5:00. One of the results of this oven-like environment was that my car's headliner (the cloth on the ceiling) detached from its support structure and drooped down, until I managed to fix it with superglue and a few well-placed shims. I liked to use nickels; they increased the value of my car.

(click here for a picture of a car like mine - now imagine it with no grille and one fender a slightly lighter shade of red.)

(click here to see how I actually felt driving the thing.)

So I decided last month, while roasting like a game hen in rush-hour traffic, that I couldn't take it any more and that I ought to buy a new car with a bank's money. Since I don't have any of my own, and all. I got a loan, I did a lot of research, and I decided that I really liked 1998-series Honda Accords. They were sharp-looking, they were reliable, they were fuel-efficient, and they were excellent at making you look like everyone else. I must say that those four qualities were major factors in my decision.

I took a few test drives - I liked the Accord. "It handles well," I said. "It's got good road manners," I reasoned. "It's in my price range."

And then my girlfriend Kirsten points out this car. The 2002 Elantra.

"A Hyundai?" I say. "Never! I remember the 80s, when they were garbage! Lowest of the low! A plague on Korea's house!" I ranted and raved.

Then I test-drove the thing - and I really liked it. Really, really liked it. "It handles well," I said. "It's got good road manners," I reasoned. "It's in my price range." So I bought it. I bit the bullet, took out a check, and really bought a car that I never would have thought I'd be caught dead in. I'll admit, it was partly because it's used, but under warranty for another 21 months. Who cares if it's garbage? As long as it's only garbage for 21 months (or 30,000 miles, whichever comes first), then it's free garbage, and I can live with that.

And the best part is, those poor schmoes at the dealership took 1100 dollars for my honorary lawn tractor. Suckers.

Random Bathroom Rant
Someone here at work asked me if I'd ever been in a ladies' restroom before, and the answer is yes, I have...but it managed to bring out this really horrible set of memories that my therapist says I have to vocalize in order to get over them and move on.

When I was in high school, I was in the band. Yes, I was a band geek, and as junior, I didn't even march - I played in the orchestra pit. At football games. Anyway, our Pit captain was this girl named Janelle, and even though she was blind, I had the whole younger-guy-woman-in-a-powerful-position hots for her, so I'd go to her church every so often. She invited me, so it wasn't stalking. Just sad.

Anyway, There were about four mens rooms, and every one of them was identical: theoretically sterile tile with green-black grout that used to be white, floor-length urinals (side note: every guy not two feet tall hates those things), one stall with no door, and a sink with no soap, no towels, and one working faucet. Invariably, it was the cold water, so when you rinse your hands off after doing whatever, you get a) diseased and b) the finger-shivers. Awful.

The ladies' rooms, on the other hand - wait, I'm sorry. Salons. They called them salons. Like it's a place where you go to have your nails and hair done at the same time as whatever else goes on in a bathroom. And of course it had its own foyer. Not an entry, not a rat-maze three-turn hallway so you can't see in or out, but a legitimate foyer. With carpet. And a leather sofa. And flowers. Freaking flowers in a john. That's like putting mice in a cat sanctuary. "Oh, they look so nice!" THEY'RE GOING TO DIE. THE ENVIRONMENT IS HOSTILE. And, of course, it's David in the lions' den; the flowers live and actually encourage the normally foul bathroom odors to change their ways, commit to God, and smell like a berry patch.

The mens' locker room at Washington University was pretty bad too. For two solid years, the soap dispensers that would normally be mounted next to the sinks sat on the floor, sad and lonely and impotent. And soapless, which is perhaps the bigger key. It's not just the hepatitis-positive door handle anymore, now it's the weight equipment, and any diseases being spread around would not only be guy-centered (we're tough, we can take a little stomach virus), it crosses gender barriers to girls, because a lot of guys, like me, don't just bench 500 pounds - we like to start light, like with the three-pound weights. Partly because that's girl central at that end of the weight rack, but partly also because - well, I was scrawny as a freshman. And sophomore. And junior...

Just so we're clear, guys actually like nice bathrooms. They don't have to be froofy and pink, but we tend to be in there a little longer than girls. Is it so hard to pay some low-wager a few bucks to come in and mop the floor every five years or so? Or empty the trash? Or just bring in some soap? Please? I can dry my hands on my pants, I can take that, but I don't want to have to worry that I'm going to come right out of the loo and have my boss say, "Brian, I want to shake your hand." Because that'd just be too tempting...

Dude, I am so wasted
Or at least, I would be if I were McCauley Culkin.

Seriously - did he smoke up in the courthouse bathroom?

Mathematical Improbability
Today's date is 05/05/05, a date which happens every thousand years (as does every repeating digit date, but nevermind). The next 05/05/05 will be in the year 3005...on May 5th. Odd, huh?

Now, the really odd fact is that today is a thursday, the fifth day of the week. What you might presume is that 05/05/05 happening on day 5 is something that would happen every 7000 years (1000 years times 7 days). But you'd be wrong.

Because of leap years, every fourth year is 1 day longer. So 05/05/05 on day 5 should happen every 7000 years times 4, or 28000 years, right?

Wrong again.

It's actually every 8000 years, because the weeks cycle on 8-day patterns (believe it or not) with the addition of leap years to the equation.

You'll be glad you know this the next time this happens - Thursday, May 5th, 10005.

I'm Told it's a Texas Thing
Where in the world does "Nucular" come from? The word is nuclear, last I checked, and it ought to be pronounced NEW-klee-ur.. Like a window-washing aid - "Now you can get those spotless mirrors and windows with New Clear solution! Available at fine stores everywhere, except Hawai'i, because it's expensive as ass to mail shit there!"

Somehow, a large group of people, apparently from Texas, pronounces it "nucular." Like, "Saddam Hussein is currently making efforts to acquire a nucular weapon." Or, "We will work with our allies and friends to reduce the number of nucular weapons in the world." That sort of thing.

I, for one, don't understand it. If you're going to mispronounce a word, you generally do it in childhood, or when you first see it, and generally there are others around you to correct your pronunciation - maybe they even step through it with you. Like "Lascivious." That can be a daunting task, but just remember that the "c" is silent. Like in "Science," or "Scmith."

So what happened with "nucular?" Adding extra syllables, especially for a guy who went to Yale, should be a rare event accompanied by alcohol, or strippers, or something. Perhaps our president and all of his mispronouncing allies were stoned when they learned the word?

</rant>

For like-minded people, you can express your displeasure literarily - literallarariry - in print. With this shirt. Nifty, huh?

I'm looking for one that says, "I like call girls."

It's been a while
So I thought I'd post something substantive.

Shocking, isn't it?

Last night Kirsten and I went out to go see "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To the Galaxy," but we'll get to that later. First, I'd like to point out how much I like polo shirts on girls.

Great stuff. Seriously. I bought Kirsten this cute little 10-dollar number at Aeropostale (side note: This is the only time I've bought anything from Aeropostale) and I'm madly in love with it. Or perhaps the idea of it.

Some time ago I made a comment that I saw a shirt in the juniors' section of Famous Barr that read "Not everything is flat in Kansas!" and I registered my presumed disgust for it. So what is it about shirts with collars and, generally, deepish v-necks that isn't so bad? Perhaps it's that I don't like it when someone brags about their own body - and a girl who I don't know proclaiming proudly that her breasts are like mountains probably qualifies.

Or perhaps it's just that I have a thing for women who wear sexed-up versions of menswear. That could be it, too.

On to the movie - it was pretty good, and I'm quite impressed that there's still a studio out there that's willing to put out a major motion picture using actors in funny suits, rather than CGI characters (The Vogons were foam-rubber puppet suits). That, and any movie with Warwick Davis in it should at least get serious consideration.

Perhaps it's that I haven't read any of the books, but I don't understand a lot of the complaints that reviewers have been giving this movie. The only downside I saw was the soundtrack, which was a bit on the happy side, all other things being equal. I'm not saying it should have been super-depressing, but maybe just a sense of general melancholy every now and then would have evened it out a bit.

That said, I can wholeheartedly recommend this movie. Plus, you'll all recognize President Beeblebrox.