Posted 4/30/2006 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

Colbert walks on water, at least on basic cable, but I can't agree more with Ann's assessment of his performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner:

Colbert could have tried to go on as a decent guy being a nice guest and supplying some perfectly pitched stand-up humor, the way Drew Carey has done in the past. But Colbert really isn't a stand-up comedian, and his humor is always set inside a character who is not him. He's an actor, and how hard, how monumentally awkward, it must have been to stay inside his character with such intimidating people around him. Wouldn't the sheer instinct for self-protection make him want to twinkle and say I kid but I love?

Wasn't it awful to perform without laughs? Maybe he should have filed the edges off a couple of jokes, but, basically, he did what he had to do to maintain his credibility with his real audience, those who watch "The Colbert Report." And we'll remember the horrible laughlessness of that night and marvel at the steely nerve of Stephen Colbert.

He was on 60 Minutes tonight, too. Is Colbert taking over the airways? We can only hope. We can only hope the other blow-hards realize just how full of shit the characters they play on TV are like Colbert. But then again, there are those out there that don't realize Colbert is joking.

Posted 4/30/2006 05:23:00 PM by Douglas

I had no idea that Scotty's mom was one tough grandma. I should really pay closer attention to what nepotism will get ya.

Posted 4/28/2006 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

José can you see?

Posted 4/28/2006 05:17:00 PM by Douglas

I know I've ranted on ethanol, which is different than ranting while on ethanol, but still. This has to be the best article I've seen that sums up the sheer stupidity of the "ethanol as fuel" movement. This article has it all. CAFE mileage requirements, EPA emission requirements. Not to mention ADM corn subsidies and Brazilian exports to support their ethanol industry. But you can't make up this stuff:

But the government site's automatic calculations are based on E85 selling for 37 cents per gallon less than regular gasoline, when the USA Today article reports that at many stations in the Midwest E85 is actually selling for 13 cents per gallon more than ordinary gas. Using the corrected prices for both gasoline and E85, the annual cost of fueling GM's Suburban goes from $2,709 to $3,763. Hence the suggestion that truth in advertising should come back into play. Possibly GM could rename this ad campaign "Shell Out Green, Turn Yellow."

Well, no shit. If it were cost effective, don't you think we'd been doing it years (decades) ago? Pardon my libertarian head poking through, but the market has a strange way of bringing about the most cost effective way of doing business. But it gets better:

Even more damaging, the EPA's own attorney admitted to the judges that because of its higher volatility, putting ethanol into the nation's fuel supply would likely increase smog where it was used. One of the judges, on hearing that the EPA was actively promoting a substance that could in fact diminish air quality, wondered aloud, "Is the EPA in outer space?"

What GM left out of its ads was that the use of this fuel would likely increase the amount of smog during the summer months (as the EPA's own attorneys had admitted in 1995) -- and that using E85 in GM products would lower their fuel efficiency by as much as 25%. (USA Today recently reported that the Energy Dept. estimated the drop in mileage at 40%.)

So not only does it make more smog, it takes more fuel to power the same internal combustion engine? Take ADM's profit's out of this equation, and I'm having a hard time seeing any advantage, but what do I know? I'm just an engineer. Here's the final nail:

The other negative aspect of this inefficient fuel is that numerous studies have found that ethanol creates less energy than is required to make it. Other studies have found that ethanol creates "slightly" more energy than is used in its production. Yet not one of these studies takes into account that when E85 is used, the vehicle's fuel efficiency drops by at least 25% -- and possibly by as much as 40%. Using any of the accredited studies as a baseline in an energy-efficiency equation, ethanol when used as a fuel is a net energy waste.

Corn ain't cheap. It's cheap to ADM because they get it for free (courtesy of your federal government). Ethanol as fuel is a thermodynamic nightmare, and we're better off using alchemy to turn rocks into coal than we are using switch-grass into a renewable energy source.

Labels: ethanol

Posted 4/28/2006 05:57:00 AM by Douglas

For those with ADHD.

Posted 4/25/2006 05:21:00 PM by Douglas

The Ritz Theater, in all its glory.

In the late 1920s and '30s, Wellington moviegoers flocked to the Ritz Theater to catch the likes of Clark Gable and Shirley Temple on the silver screen.

For decades, film lovers came to the Ritz to see their favorite stars. But by the late 1970s, the Ritz had seen better days and shuttered its doors.

But a new generation soon will enjoy the once-majestic theater thanks to a major overhaul funded by the local Zephyr Foundation and Historic Wellington. Historic Wellington already has spruced up the marquee, and the once-dark Ritz sign glows once again in green and red neon.

The theater, built in 1928, featured a $35,000 Vitaphone and Movietone sound system, cutting-edge technology for showing "talking" movies. But its first big event was that year's local Democratic Party convention.

Hopefully it won't be the site of the 2008 Democratic Party convention in Collingsworth County.

Posted 4/25/2006 05:15:00 PM by Douglas

Airbus is full of many wonderful ideas. Check out their cross town bus class:

Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none has agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.

That's gonna make a long flight to Singapore, strapped to a board on your feet.

Posted 4/25/2006 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

A friend sent me this story this morning, and I really think I was too disgusted to really digest it. I still am, and I suppose my comments will be visceral, but still, the phrase "this is America" used to mean something. Your freedoms end where other's began. Not anymore. The pre-emptive approach taken now by law enforcement (and foreign policy) seems to be here for a long long, time. Anyway, here's the article, about how every car will soon have an Ethanol interlock device. In the U.S frickin' A Today, no less.

Widespread use of ignition interlock devices that won't allow a car to be started if a driver has had too much alcohol, once considered radical, no longer seems out of the question. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) gives a qualified endorsement to the idea. New York state legislators are considering requiring the devices on all cars and trucks by 2009. And automakers, already close to offering the devices as optional equipment on all Volvo and Saab models in Sweden, are considering whether to bring the technology here.

Keep your European hegemony of your 'subjects' in Europe, please. We used to have a thing call the Fourth Amendment here in America. I haven't seen it of late.

Manufacturers are perfecting technology that could detect alcohol on the skin surface, eliminating the need for the current, cumbersome, blow-into-a-tube breath-analyzing systems. Current breathalyzers cost about $1,000. The newer systems are expected to cost about the same.

Skin surface drunk tests? So if I'm a designated driver and someone spills a beer on me, does that mean my car won't start?

Ok, so there isn't a single paragraph in that story that pisses me off any less than any other, so I'll stop the running commentary. The point is that the rule of law has stated, quite eloquently for several hundred years, you can't be prosecuted until you've actually committed a crime, and to think that you're going to spend thousands of dollars on a vehicle that forces you to pass a driver's test each and every time you get in it is absolutely absurd. I know the Reichstag burned in 1933 2001, but that doesn't mean we have to deal with the tactics of the brown shirts.

---

Update: Crap! Of course, Radley's all over this one, and said it better than I ever could:

It's not just that ideas as absurd as this one are slowly gaining acceptance, it's that the lapse of time these Nanny State gimmicks must traverse to get from absurd to mainstream grows shorter by the day.

Damn, I wish he wasn't as smart as he is.

Posted 4/24/2006 05:45:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a cautionary tale out of the show-me state. I guess "show-me" means show me your religious intolerance. [requires registration Login: frank@joe.com Password: sixsix] The article is small (and most likely faked), so I'll post the whole thing here:

State bill proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official religion
Missouri legislators in Jefferson City considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official "majority" religion.

House Concurrent Resolution 13 has is pending in the state legislature.

Many Missouri residents had not heard about the bill until Thursday.

Karen Aroesty of the Anti-defamation league, along with other watch-groups, began a letter writing and email campaign to stop the resolution.

The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."

State representative David Sater of Cassville in southwestern Missouri, sponsored the resolution, but he has refused to talk about it on camera or over the phone.

KMOV also contacted Gov. Matt Blunt's office to see where he stands on the resolution, but he has yet to respond.

While scary, this story is completely absurd and as of yet, totally unverified. But it's not outside the realm of possibility. And that's even scarier. Now, just for the sake of equal time, the first amendment: [emphasis added]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Suck on that, House Concurrent Resolution 13!

Posted 4/24/2006 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

Why I read the Amarillo Globe-News. Headlines like this:

Truck rollover kills Earth man

. . . and. . .

Turkey victim of oversight

It's not the paper's fault that there are some strangely named towns around Amarillo (let's not forget about the Happy superintendent charged with assault) but there's just something odd about being from a place called Earth. If you went on to win the Nobel Prize, the headline would still read, "Earth Man Wins Nobel Prize." That's just nutty.

Posted 4/24/2006 05:20:00 PM by Douglas

United States map, by county and gas price. Interesting for several reason. First off and most obvious, what the hell is up with the green states? Most of middle America follows the same color, more or less, till you get out West. Then it occurred to me why their gas is cheaper. They have lower fuel taxes. Sure, they have a lot fewer people and a lot less miles of road to maintain, but it surprises me that the difference of fuel price is so dramatically defined by something like the state line of Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.

On the other side of that coin, look at the states with the highest price. You could draw a line around high gas prices in the North East around New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. Of course Florida and California are thrown in there too. Does that surprise anyone? Lefty states where it's considered 'progressive' to think that the government knows more about what's best for its citizens and their money than they do actually tax the crap out of them when it comes to their fuel, too. Go figure. Blue state=Red gas price.

So someone please tell me why Texas isn't bright green. Blindling green.

Posted 4/23/2006 11:17:00 AM by Douglas

Every ISP, from AOL to your local library, has established policies as to what you can and can't do with their bandwidth. That's not censorship, that's a market reaction to limited recourses in accordance with community standards. But Del Mar College seems to have gone a bit too far. They've banned myspace.com from their servers.

Del Mar College students who want to surf their online social scene at MySpace.com will have to use computers outside the school's system.

The Corpus Christi community college blocked the site recently in response to complaints about sluggish Internet speed on campus computers. An investigation found that heavy traffic at MySpace.com was eating up too much bandwidth, said August Alfonso, the school's chief of information and technology.

Personally, I'm sick of hearing about every aspect of myspace.com, but I'm not a 20 year old college student in Corpus Christi. I'm sure these kids pay a hefty "technology" fee to attend classes at Del Mar, and I'll bet internet access is part of that fee. The argument from the administration is that they have to ban this particular web site because it's the one website the students overwhelmingly want to look at! Make sense?

Posted 4/23/2006 11:09:00 AM by Douglas

And interesting look at the history of design and the use of streamlining.

In the catalog for the "American Modern" show at the Metropolitan Museum in 2000, J. Stewart Johnson, its curator, took issue with 30's designers who "began to apply streamlining to all sorts of objects — not only to locomotives, where it made sense, but to vacuum cleaners, where it did not." A section of his show was devoted to streamlining more or less as a subset of American Modernism.

The difference in how scholars regarded Art Deco and Bauhaus functionalism versus how they saw streamlining, says David A. Hanks, curator of the Program for Modern Design, stemmed from the former's genesis in the avant-garde, "while streamlining aimed at the widest possible public and was based on an admiration for industry and speed."

It's always be intriguing to see what past generations considered "futuristic." I'm still waiting for my hover car.

Posted 4/23/2006 11:02:00 AM by Douglas

Read the headline:

2 men face sentencing for narcotics distribution

Another causality in the ridiculous war on drugs? Sadly, no.

An Oxnard physician and a Ventura pharmacist charged with illegally distributing large quantities of prescription painkillers have agreed to plead guilty in federal court.

Dr. Michael Huff, a family practitioner, will spend three years in a minimum-security federal prison in exchange for pleading guilty to one count of unlawfully distributing narcotics, his attorney Mark Beck of Los Angeles said. Richard Ozar, who owns the Victoria Village Pharmacy, is expected to receive six months of home detention in exchange for a similar plea, his attorney, Victor Sherman, said.

I sure as hell don't know whether or not the two men were engaged in nefarious tactics to get narcotics on the street, and I know for a fact that he wouldn't be the first doctor to use his script pad to make some quick cash on the side. But it's statements like this made by the U.S. attorney that make me wince:

According to the indictments, Huff, 57, over-prescribed medications that Ozar, 61, filled. Because the prescriptions were for such huge amounts, Huff and Ozar must have known the drugs would end up in the hands of dealers and recreational users, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Young said.

It's so comforting to know that the Justice Department hires such clairvoyant attorneys as Mr. Young. I'll be Dr. Huff knows a lot more about what it's like to be in chronic pain than an attorney does. The only reasonable outcome to all this would be for Mr. Young to have the misfortune of suffering from chronic pain, and be deprived of narcotic pain relievers because his doctor is afraid of overzealous prosecutors.

Posted 4/20/2006 05:26:00 PM by Douglas

TABC raiding bars, and why they're totally out of control [registration required, and available from bugmenot. login: poots@brown.net password: bronwhole.]

But how do officers tell if someone is intoxicated without giving a breathalyzer test?

One man was pulled from an Irving restaurant on March 10 after an undercover agent watched him and suspected him of public intoxication, or PI. Now he's a suspect.

"We give them a field sobriety test. There are three field sobriety tests," said TABC officer Lt. Sonja Pendergast.

You go to jail after failing a field sobriety test. What that means is the TABC officer suspects that you're drunk, without having to verify your BAL. What's worse, is that by only relying on a field test, that means that the person was more than likely not obviously drunk. So instead of busting the guy that's knocking over table and groping the waitress, they're picking out random people in the bar that don't even appear to be drunk. Is this the best use of our state's resources?

Posted 4/20/2006 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

Every president must be concerned, on some level, about their legacy. It's obvious That Bush 43 still thinks he can make up his own.

While White House press secretary Scott McClellan resigns, Rumsfeld stays. Clinging to Rumsfeld as indispensable to his strength, Bush reveals his fragility. The two men prefer not to understand that time and opportunity lost can never be regained. Their denial extends beyond the realities of Iraq and its history to the history of the United States. It is extremely peculiar that they have learned no lessons of nation building from the tragedy of failed political leadership during post-Civil War Reconstruction, whose collapse consigned African-Americans to second-class citizenship for a century. Bush & Co. disdain nation building as something soft and weak connected to the Clinton presidency, just as they belittled and neglected terrorism as a Clinton obsession before Sept. 11 and as the president dismissed history itself as weightless.

"History? We don't know. We'll all be dead," Bush remarked in 2003. "We cannot escape history," said Abraham Lincoln. The living president has already sealed his reputation in history.

What will the eight Bush years be remembered for, other than seven years of a protracted land war in Asia? Hubris.

Posted 4/20/2006 05:11:00 PM by Douglas

It's true you never stop learning. I had never, before today, even heard of kudzu. I find it amusing that one of FDR's plans was responsible for much of its spread in the 1930s. Socialists. . . is there anything they can't fuck-up?

Posted 4/16/2006 01:04:00 PM by Douglas

Why do cats love sinks? Is that a new Samuel L. Jackson movie?

Posted 4/16/2006 01:02:00 PM by Douglas

What's in a name? Apparently a lot if you're a celebrity.

"You're likely to be the only one in any normal-size group with that name," Mr. Jillette said by e-mail, adding, " 'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean 'chutzpah,' and that's nice."

"Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it," he wrote. "It's only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think. They're named Dave."

Now why did he have to go and pick on Dave like that? And what's wrong (or boring) about naming people, oh, I don't know, names? I'd much rather hear a kid named Moxie CrimFighter or Pilot Pilot Inspektor then the androgynous names that are popular now. Search this database and see when Skyler, Taylor, Riley, Dakota and Morgan became prevalent. Why is it that the dumbest sounding names became popular in the last 20 years?

Posted 4/16/2006 12:46:00 PM by Douglas

Who would listen to a general, anyway?

Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon's military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.

Wow. It's one thing for Michael Moore to post such a statement on his blog, but for a Marine General and former member of the Joint Chiefs to go public with such a stirring condemnation, maybe the administration will begin to question its own infallibility.

Posted 4/12/2006 05:42:00 PM by Douglas

How ironic that this happened the same year War Games came out. A little too ironic.

It was Sept. 26, 1983, and Petrov was playing a principal role in one of the most harrowing incidents of the nuclear age, a false alarm signaling a U.S. missile attack.

As Petrov described it in an interview, one of the Soviet satellites sent a signal to the bunker that a nuclear missile attack was underway. The warning system's computer, weighing the signal against static, concluded that a missile had been launched from a base in the United States.

The responsibility fell to Petrov, then a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel, to make a decision: Was it for real?

Petrov was situated at a critical point in the chain of command, overseeing a staff that monitored incoming signals from the satellites. He reported to superiors at warning-system headquarters; they, in turn, reported to the general staff, which would consult with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov on the possibility of launching a retaliatory attack.

Petrov's role was to evaluate the incoming data. At first, the satellite reported that one missile had been launched – then another, and another. Soon, the system was "roaring," he recalled – five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched, it reported.

Despite the electronic evidence, Petrov decided – and advised the others – that the satellite alert was a false alarm, a call that may have averted a nuclear holocaust. But he was relentlessly interrogated afterward, was never rewarded for his decision and today is a long-forgotten pensioner living in a town outside Moscow. He spoke openly about the incident, although the official account is still considered secret by authorities here.

Wow. Full nuclear commitment was averted at the discretion of one man that was disobeying direct orders! Further proof that the satire in Dr. Strangelove, while terrifyingly hilarious, wasn't that far off the mark.

Labels: Stanislav Petrov

Posted 4/12/2006 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

Here we go. Again.

The West, led by the United States, believes that Iran plans to build nuclear weapons and says the move only underscores why the global community has serious concerns about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran has said it has a right to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.

Kind of ironic, I think that the only nation on the globe that has deployed nuclear weapons in combat now dictates to the world what it can and what it can't do with their own atoms. A nuclear Iran doesn't make me sleep any better at night, but I don't really want to see the U.S. Army become the de facto enforcement wing of the U.N., either.

But the real question is where is Iran's shock and awe? We invaded and deposed Iraq because we thought he had WMD. Iran is openly flaunting their enriched uranium. So what are we doing still talking about it? Where is the a-men choir of neoconsTrotskyites war-hawks now? Surely they're not going to admit that they were wrong about Iraq, are they?

Posted 4/12/2006 05:23:00 PM by Douglas

The top 50 jobs. The second worst job, according to Norm McDonald? Crack whore. The worst job? Assistant crack whore.

Posted 4/12/2006 05:19:00 PM by Douglas

The R.E.M. connection with some Snakes. On a Plane.
This thing is going to be bigger than Elvis before August.

Posted 4/12/2006 05:16:00 PM by Douglas

At first glance, I thought the connection between a bottle of Gatorade and your penis was tenuous at best. Hell, maybe even a little optimistic. But after looking at this, I think they may be on to something.

Posted 4/11/2006 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

What a fascinating story. It really has it all.

The Oak Island Money Pit was discovered by chance in 1795 and has become the longest running treasure hunt in the world. Oak Island's Money Pit has captured imaginations of treasure hunters for over 200 years searching for a pirate's lost treasure buried in a mysterious money pit.

Buried treasure, loss of life, and most importantly, Pirates.

Posted 4/11/2006 06:35:00 PM by Douglas

Terrifying article about Iran and the nookular options that are sadly, still on the table.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

Pretty scary stuff, coming as it does from a president that "doesn't want war." And there's more here.

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

But what kills me is the infographic. Not to mention the 60,000 tons of fallout from one kiloton, but the "dial-a-yield" feature of this particular weapon. Is Ron Popeil now designing our country's nuclear arsenal? I mean I'm pretty sure it slices, dices, and vaporizes everything in the vicinity, but what the hell?

And how did they decided how far they could "dial it up." Spinal Tap? Do these nuclear weapons go to 11?

Posted 4/11/2006 06:34:00 PM by Douglas

Goats. On a Pole.

Goatonapole is the philosophy of being that holds that there is a Goat and a Pole and that the Goat is on the Pole. In the relation of Goat and Pole we Goatonapolists find an eternal thread of unfathomable cosmic significance, a point of reference in which all opposites dissolve into a unity of infinite breadth, a universal truth underlying the very fabric of existence. Upon contemplation of the Goat, the Pole, and their relative positions, one cannot help but realize that we've always been talking about Goatonapole. Whether we accept, reject, or live in ignorance of Goatonapole, we are all Goatonapolists.

I don't know whether to laugh or tithe.

Labels: goats

Posted 4/11/2006 06:33:00 PM by Douglas

I wonder where the Cntrrrrrrrrl button is?

Posted 4/05/2006 05:49:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a newflash for Katie Couric, and I only say this because I firmly believe that she's the only one that doesn't know this. You're not 22 anymore. Get over it.

On her 15th anniversary on "Today," Katie Couric told viewers Wednesday she's leaving NBC to join CBS, where she will become the first woman to anchor a network weekday evening newscast alone.

Boy, I can't wait till I get the chance to not watch her read the teleprompter at 5:30 P.M. on CBS just like I didn't watch her read the teleprompter at 7:00 A.M. on NBC. What a promotion!

Posted 4/05/2006 05:14:00 PM by Douglas

How many times do the words "conscientious objector" and "Medal of Honor" appear in the same story? Well, at least once.

The only conscientious objector to receive a Medal of Honor in World War II has been buried at a national cemetery with a 21-gun salute, although he refused to carry a weapon while serving as an Army medic.

Desmond T. Doss Sr., 87, died March 23 in Piedmont, Ala., where he and his wife, Frances, had been living with family.

A horse-drawn hearse delivered the flag-covered casket to the grave site Monday in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. Military helicopters flew overhead in a tribute formation.

[. . . ]

While under enemy fire on the island of Okinawa, Doss carried 75 wounded soldiers to the edge of a 400-foot cliff and lowered them to safety, according to his citation.

During a later attack, he was seriously wounded in the legs by a grenade. According to the citation, as he was being carried to safety, he saw a more critically injured man and crawled off his stretcher, directing the medics to help the other wounded man.

Wow. Makes you rethink that whole 'hero' moniker. This guy's the real deal.

And while I'm at it, who is the only woman to win the Medal of Honor? Dr. Mary Walker, of course!

Posted 4/02/2006 09:21:00 PM by Douglas

How many people want to see Sharon Stone naked? Apparently about as many as want to see Larry the Cable Guy in a tutu.

Sony's MGM release "Basic Instinct 2," the belated sequel to the 1992 sex thriller that made Stone a star, tied for the No. 10 spot with Lionsgate's "Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector," which took in $3.2 million in its second weekend.

Ouch.

Posted 4/02/2006 09:18:00 PM by Douglas

I kinda thought it was odd to see this on the south side of Houston:

Oh right, Houston has more New Orleanians than New Orleans does.

Labels: New Orleans

Posted 4/02/2006 09:11:00 PM by Douglas

Because convertibles are a great way to meet chicks. As seen in East Texas:

Mud tires on a Mazda Miata. And to assuage your curiosity, yes, it's for sale. I just can't figure out how'd you get in the damn thing.