Posted 10/30/2009 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

What the story doesn't say is that the car was driven by a roadrunner.

Daniel East and his sister, Tevyn, were driving at night along Interstate 80 near the Nevada-Utah earlier this month, when their car slammed into a coyote that scurried in their path, reported Rex Features.

Believing there was no way the wild animal could survive the 75 mph collision, the pair kept driving for eight more hours to their destination, where they finally inspected the damage to their car.

But it did manage to survive being dragged for 600 miles.

"Immediately I saw a ton of fur and said, 'Sis, don't look, this is bad,'" David East told the photo agency.

When the coyote started moving, however East realized the animal had survived - and was trapped between the front grill and the radiator of their car.

I think "Lucky" would be a better name than "Tricky." Or perhaps "Acme."

Posted 10/30/2009 06:34:00 PM by Douglas

Not a fan of clothing you have to read, but I LOVE the image. Twitter = pointless.

Posted 10/28/2009 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

NASA successfully launches a single stage, sub-orbital un-manned rocket this morning.

Nearly twice the height of the spaceship it's supposed to replace — the shuttle — the skinny experimental rocket carried no passengers or payload, only throwaway ballast and hundreds of sensors. The flight cost $445 million.

NASA said the flight was a tremendous success, based on early indications.

Welcome to 1959, NASA! Remember when you did this the first time, 60 years ago?

Posted 10/28/2009 06:31:00 PM by Douglas

Turns out Susan Wright is going to get another bite at the sentencing apple.

A woman convicted of tying her husband to their bed and stabbing him almost 200 times will get a new punishment phase because of ineffective assistance of counsel in her trial.

However, if jurors in a new punishment phase decide against sudden passion, she could would face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

So it looks like the stripper with the heart of gold gets another roll of the dice. But at least she stands a chance to get life behind bars if the jury doesn't believe her bullshit about stabbing her husband 173 times out of self defense.

Posted 10/28/2009 06:16:00 PM by Douglas

The pig flu (vaccine) hits Houston, with typical overreactions.

Starting today, there's enough swine flu vaccine in the Houston area that providers are imposing fewer restrictions on who can get it.

The city of Houston health department has more than 17,000 doses available today. Vaccinations begin at 9 a.m. at 10 city health clinics.

The doses are available on a first-come, first-served basis, though officials hope they go to high-risk patients, health department spokesman Porfirio Villarreal said.

Catch that? We're all going to die of pig flu, but they hope the vaccine goes to high risk patients. So I hope hope can save these high risk patients from the pig flu media hype.

Posted 10/28/2009 06:11:00 PM by Douglas

Colt McCoy and Jordan Shipley. We all know about their status as roommates and the fact that their fathers were roommates, but what's next?

Distance never kept the McCoys and the Shipleys apart. They vacationed together. The boys went to church camp together. With their fathers, they fished the Devils Riverin Southwest Texas. They played pitch and catch with the football, and their parents watched their skinny little boys grow into players that old men talked about at the barbershop.

West Texas. As Kinky Freidman would say, how can you spot a fag in West Texas? A fag cares more about girls than he does about football.

Posted 10/28/2009 06:05:00 PM by Douglas

How to help the economy: Help the ones that vote the most.

The president has proposed sending a $250 check to every Social Security recipient, which sounds pretty good at first. The checks would be part of his admirable efforts to stimulate the economy, and older Americans are clearly a sympathetic group. Next year, they are scheduled to receive no cost-of-living increase in their Social Security benefits.

As if there's just $14Billion just laying around. This is pandering, pure and simple. Plenty of clock-punching workers didn't see a COLA in 2009. Life's rough, suck it up.

Posted 10/26/2009 07:44:00 PM by Douglas

Dry clothes: scourge of the 21st century. I liked this part:

During your last hotel stay, you probably encountered an in-room card asking you to reuse your towels. Although wordings vary, such cards always urge this action to preserve the environment. What the cards never say is that the majority of guests do reuse their towels at least once when requested. My research team suspected that this omission was costing the hotels — and the environment — plenty.

To test our suspicion, we conspired with the management of an upscale hotel to place one of four cards in its guestrooms. Three cards employed some version of the typical environmental appeal. A fourth card added (true) information that the majority of guests do reuse their towels when asked.

The outcome? Compared with the first three messages, the final message increased towel reuse by 34 percent. How easily we can be influenced to act by honest information about how those around us are acting.

Interesting that the hotel appeals to your inner tree-hugger to reuse the towels, so they can save money on water, electricity and detergent, yet don't want to pass any of those savings to you? How many guests would reuse their towels if they knocked $5 off their bill when they check out?

Also, to the idiots that are drying their clothes in their living room: Where do you think the water goes? Paying for electricity for your A/C to remove the water isn't much more efficient than paying for the electricity in your dryer.

Posted 10/26/2009 07:34:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting animation of the Sully-Hudson landing. The change in the tone of his voice between "we may end up in the Hudson" to "we're going to be in the Hudson" is almost imperceptible.



I think we get confused in this country as to what a real hero is.

I wonder if U.S. Airways gives him specially fitted uniforms to accommodate his gigantic balls.

Posted 10/26/2009 07:28:00 PM by Douglas

Metallica pays $50k for a white girl.

American heavy metal band Metallica has stumped up 50,000 dollars in reward money for a fan who disappeared at one of their concerts, a campaign website said Monday.

"Morgan has blond hair and blue eyes, is 5'6", 120 lbs., and was wearing a black 'Pantera' T-shirt, black skirt, and black boots," the ad said.

Who wears a Pantera T-shirt to a Metallica concert?

In a related story, Cody Canada offered up a 12 pack of Bud Light and a dime bag for a missing girl at Ziegfest this weekend. Then he realized she was passed out under the table in the tour bus.

Posted 10/26/2009 07:09:00 PM by Douglas

Are you a boring loser that has always dreamed of having a witty conversation? Here's your chance.

The more obscure the reference, the wittier the statement--but the greater the confusion if the person you're talking to doesn't know what you're referring to. If someone says "I'll try" and you say "Do or do not; there is no try." --they may, or may not, realize that you're making a Star Wars reference.

I can't tell how serious this is, but funny, still.

Posted 10/26/2009 06:12:00 PM by Douglas

Steal someone else's catch-phrase. It's been done, ya slack jawed yokels.

Posted 10/25/2009 01:50:00 PM by Douglas

I've made fun of them, I've bought one, but this takes the snuggie-crazy to a whole new level. Pretty funny, though.

Posted 10/21/2009 06:31:00 PM by Douglas

Thankfully, Justice Roberts was alone in his dissent of Virginia v. Harris, otherwise the police would be justified in pulling you over for a sobriety check because you farted in someone's car and they called the cops:

The story in Harris essentially was that some woman called the cops refusing to give her name, but said that Harris was driving drunk in a green Altima and wearing a striped shirt. The police found a green Altima in the general vicinity of where she said it would be, and the license plate was “close enough” to the partial description she provided. Importantly, however, Harris did not commit any traffic violations (damn those pesky drunk drivers not providing any bases for a pretextual stop!), so when he pulled over to the side of the road, the cop followed suit and initiated a traffic stop. It is not clear why he pulled over (probably because he was drunk and saw a cop following him) or what the cop initiated a stop for (probably because he was a cop and he could). Anyway, Harris reeked and was arrested.

Wow! Is America returning to the land where you actually have to do something illegal before they throw you in jail? Imagine my surprise. For reference, check out the probable cause clause of Amendment number four.

Posted 10/20/2009 05:58:00 PM by Douglas

In the face of the current collapse of the credit market, it's no surprise that credit cards are pulling out all the stops. Their once insatiable cash-cow is now faced with dry teats, and how are they responding? By eradicating any perk ever garnered by those that paid their bill. This should end well:

Starting next year, Bank of America will charge a small number of customers an annual fee, ranging from $29 to $99. The bank has characterized the fee as experimental. But card holders who have never carried a balance or paid late fees could be among those affected.

Citigroup, meanwhile, has started charging annual fees to card holders who don't put more than a specific amount on their cards, typically $2,400 a year. Other banks are charging inactivity fees if customers don't use their credit cards during a specific period of time. You heard that right: You could be spanked for staying out of debt.

The average credit card user is pretty durn stupid, but they're not that stupid, are they?

If you use your cards wisely, and take the cash-back option, you can make thousands of dollars off your regular purchases. If that dries up, so be it, but it's not like you're really losing anything. If they start charging annual fees, for the luxury of carrying their card around in your wallet, then their profits are really going to tank. Remember they still make up to 3% on every single purchase you make with the card, whether you pay your balance in full or not.

If they take away the incentive to use your credit card at all,, expect the situation to go from bad to worse, because that's when the credit card cash cow gets put out to pasture.

Labels: Credit Card Collapse

Posted 10/19/2009 06:16:00 PM by Douglas

Once again, life imitates The Simpson's

A 54-year-old statue of St. Anthony of Padua, namesake of the city of San Antonio, has been beheaded.

A spokesman for the San Antonio Roman Catholic archdiocese says witnesses reported seeing a man shouting obscenities just before 6 a.m. Sunday in the city’s Main Plaza, near San Fernando Cathedral.

Well, you know what Jebediah would say:

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."

It's a perfectly cromulent phrase.

Posted 10/18/2009 03:25:00 PM by Douglas

Pointlessly running 26 miles has claimed three more victims in Detroit this weekend:

Three runners died Sunday during the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Marathon in Detroit, Michigan, police told CNN.

his 60s fell and hit his head, Roach said. The cause of the fall was unknown. The man was transported to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Two other men, aged 36 and 26, also collapsed during the race and were pronounced dead at the hospital, Roach said.

Why not try counting to a million for no fucking reason? Much lower body count.

Labels: Marathons

Posted 10/16/2009 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

Not a good week in East Texas for dead bodies.

A 45-year-old Texas woman has been committed for mental evaluation after authorities say she lived in an apartment for a week with her dead boyfriend's body.

The Tyler Morning Telegraph reports Big Sandy police were flagged down by a man Friday who reported a stentch coming from his sister's apartment.

Once inside, police found 50-year-old William Drake dead on a couch. From the condition of the corpse, police believe he had been dead about a week.

I don't know the whole story, but I'd hold off on the "mental illness" call 'till all the facts are in. If most men were to die on the couch, the smell might get slightly worse, but most women would hesitate to call the meat-wagon simply because it got noticeably quieter.

Posted 10/16/2009 06:31:00 PM by Douglas

Guess who else didn't get a raise this year? A lot of people that punch the clock at work every day. They're on a "fixed-income," too, and their companies, some listed in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, didn't give them COLA, either. So I can feel bad for grandma losing her raise this year, but what about everyone else?

If her check were bigger, 76-year-old Agnes Conti might be able to spring for a better cut of meat for her pot roast. She could afford to send her nine grandchildren more than $20 for their birthdays and Christmas. She'd be able to buy some nice new clothes, like she sees on QVC, not what she settles for at Walmart.

If only. The government has said the Social Security checks Conti and tens of millions of other seniors rely on as their primary source of income will not increase next year as consumer prices have fallen overall. And while the retired hospital clerk will get by, she'll be watching her spending even closer, knowing she can't expect the annual raise she's been accustomed to.

So what to do? If people working for 30 years at a company that's not going to give them a raise during these tough economic times™, what hope do people living off the dole?

Posted 10/13/2009 07:54:00 PM by Douglas

It would be silly to think that anyone would make a case promoting sending a text message while driving, but just because it's a stupid idea doesn't mean the government needs to make a law against it. Unless you're a democrat, and you think there's no problem too great for the government to solve. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-umb), hit me with some crazy about how your bill is going to save the children:

Often, it is the legality of an issue that is the impetus to effect behavioral change. For those in states that do not ban texting, there is little incentive to encourage people to stop, aside from an accident itself.

That statement would be hilarious if she didn't really mean it, because it's obvious that this logic makes perfect sense to her: "Hey, I got a text message. I'm not going to respond right now, though. Not because I'm doing 70 on the freeway in a 4,000 pound vehicle and I could kill myself or others if traffic changes while I have my head up my ass, but because I might get a $75 ticket, if the cop that's driving right next to me can prove I was texting and not looking at my "Slippery When Wet" CD case to figure out what track You Give Love a Bad Name is."

But this stance shouldn't surprise anyone, coming as it does from someone that thinks that firearms aren't going to be used criminally because there's a "law" against it.

Posted 10/13/2009 07:32:00 PM by Douglas

Step one for becoming a pet: Don't be delicious.

Animal lovers are going hog wild over a new breed of miniature pet.

"Teacup" pigs have became the latest trendy pet in England.

The little piggies weigh just over half a pound at birth and only grow to 12 to 16 inches high, topping out at about 65 pounds - rather svelte in the pig world.

OK, so they're cute as hell. But do you think they know where bacon comes from?

Posted 10/13/2009 07:27:00 PM by Douglas

I don't care what anyone says, chicken wings are not food. Putting a load of vinegar and butter on a cat turd doesn't make it food, either, although there's probably more meat in a cat turd.

Restaurants, normally big buyers of breast meat, slashed orders as millions of people cut back on eating out, and breast prices slumped. But demand for wings has remained strong, partly because people perceived them as a cheap luxury.

Adding to the demand: the brisk growth of restaurant chains focusing on wings, like Atomic Wings, Wingstop and Wing Zone. Several chains have been remarking this year about how much business is up in the recession. The major public company in this group, Buffalo Wild Wings, reported a 27 percent earnings jump in the first half of the year.

What a fascinating commentary for our culture. People would rather eat absolute shit than the best meat of the yard-bird.

Posted 10/12/2009 05:12:00 PM by Douglas

I've had some raging hangovers in my day, but I've never woken up in a closet of an abandoned house with a dead guy.

A Houston man has been charged with three misdemeanor drug offenses after police found him asleep in a closet with a dead man in a vacant Cypress home Sunday.

Zombie Boy, 21, also was charged with abuse of a corpse after prosecutors alleged he treated the body “in an offensive manner.” However, the charge was dropped this morning after a judge examined the allegations in a probable cause hearing. The original charging document did not elaborate on the charge.

Thank you for not elaborating on what "an offensive manner" entails.

“It appeared that they were doing some sort of narcotics — at least the one that they woke up. He was under the influence of something, obviously.”

The one that woke up appeared to be under the influence of something. The dead one. . . .not so much. He just looked pretty much dead.

Posted 10/12/2009 04:54:00 PM by Douglas

If you're going to lead five separate law-enforcement agencies on a high-speed chase, do yourself a favor. Make sure you're wearing pants.

Authorities said Ubalda Olvera, 31, stole a white, older model Cadillac sedan in Marquez in Leon County on Sunday. The pursuit ended on Texas 6 in College Station near the University Drive exit, where the man crashed and drove into a grassy ditch. His car, which was southbound, rested facing north.

The naked man raced from his vehicle and tried to flag down motorists who stopped to help, according to police. College Station officers intercepted the man and took him into custody, according to Sgt. Calder Lively. It was unclear why he was naked, but authorities said he was spotted earlier in the day with no clothes on in Leon County.

I've found it easier to flag down your fellow motorist for assistance if you're not naked.

Posted 10/12/2009 04:44:00 PM by Douglas

Playboy, don't tease me. How can you put Marge on the cover and not let us know if she colors her muff?

"D'oh!" doesn't even start to cover it. Marge Simpson -- the blue beehived matriarch of America's most loved dysfunctional family - is Playboy magazine's November cover, the magazine said on Friday.

Simpson, tastefully concealing her assets behind a signature Playboy Bunny chair, is the first cartoon character ever to front the glossy adult magazine, joining the ranks of sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford.

Marge is hot!!

Then there's this:

Playboy magazine's circulation has slipped in recent years in the face of competition from the Internet, which offers free and plentiful pictures of naked women online.

What? There's pictures of nekkid womin on the internets? I had no idea. I'll be right back.

Posted 10/12/2009 12:04:00 PM by Douglas

The fallout from Barry's Peace Prize has just begun:

While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he's been in office, the same clearly can't be said for economics.

The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.

Yet the Nobel panel chose instead to award the prize to two obscure academics -- Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson -- one noted for her work on managing collective resources, and the other for his work on transaction costs.

Economics, hell. Why didn't he get the Nobel Prize for Literature? He did actually write a book, after all.

Posted 10/11/2009 01:15:00 PM by Douglas

What the hell is Al Gore going to do if last decade of climate data goes against all he's been preaching?

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Perhaps distilling a million years of climate into 50 (or less) years of weather isn't as accurate as Al "Nobel Laureate" Gore would have us believe. Does that mean he has to give his million dollars back?

Labels: global warming

Posted 10/11/2009 01:01:00 PM by Douglas

Who would have ever guessed you'd see a story with Britney Spears, nuts and squirrel meats and be kinda sad, not sick.

A biography published in the US says her family was so poor they ate anything her dad Jamie could hunt.

And fans keen for a taste of her trailer park childhood are snapping up squirrel, rabbit and possum from butchers and restaurants.

In a related story, Kevin Federline is looking to the cushions of his couch for 89¢ for a crispy taco.

Posted 10/11/2009 12:43:00 PM by Douglas

If you're going to lock people up for DWI, make sure your equipment is calibrated.

More than 1,200 driving while intoxicated convictions in Harris County are invalid after a contractor was convicted of faking inspections of alcohol breath testing devices, prosecutors said.

Deetrice Wallace, a Department of Public Safety contractor, told investigators that she had falsified inspections records for the South Houston and Clute police department intoxilyzers.

From 2002 until she was arrested in October 2008, Wallace handled DPS instruments that were used to determine alcohol concentration in DWI cases for at least seven police departments, including League City, Friendswood, Webster, Seabrook, Galveston, Clute and South Houston.

"It's just a massive problem that is not going to go away," Buess said. "It's a huge mess."

Huge mess is right.

Posted 10/11/2009 12:33:00 PM by Douglas

Food makes humans human, and learning how to cook gave us big, juicy brains:

Richard Wrangham has new ideas about why these changes occurred. He has no argument with the generally accepted wisdom that our first transformation – from nimble tree-climbing australopithecines to sociable, tool-wielding habilines – was the consequence of a meat diet. But the character of the second change – from Homo habilis to the protohuman Homo erectus – has never been adequately explained, and Wrangham believes he has the answer: 1.8 million years ago, we learned to cook. Cooking improves the caloric value of food, and widens the range of what is edible. It literally powered our evolution.

I think it's time to grill a steak. A think, delicious, monkey steak.

Posted 10/11/2009 12:28:00 PM by Douglas

Why are the Germans so freakin' weird?

Part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Reunion show featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess. The storyline of the performance has the two separated by a wall, thrown up by "land and sea monsters".

What the hell? The Berlin Wall wasn't nearly as creepy.

Posted 10/11/2009 11:36:00 AM by Douglas

Had my first run in with an In-N-Out Burger this summer, and I was quite unimpressed. I was amazed that the place in San Diego was packed at 3 in the afternoon, but the burger was average at best. But you gotta give it to them for finding their niche in an otherwise saturated market.

The joy of having a simple hamburger made fresh and to your specifications has earned not only popularity with the hungry masses but respect from gourmet chefs too. Perman cites some Michelin-starred chefs and their love and admiration for In-N-Out: from Daniel Boulud, inventor of the gourmet hamburger, who noted the quality and striking simplicity of the In-N-Out burger, to Hell's Kitchen's Gordon Ramsay, who proclaimed his enthusiasm in a Sunday Mail interview, calling the burgers "extraordinary" and admitting to finishing a Double-Double only to double back for seconds.

A fried burger is a fried burger. I've never understood why no one has figured out how to grill a damn hamburger patty.

Posted 10/07/2009 06:44:00 PM by Douglas

Two stories I found while farting around yahoo today makes me think that Mike Judge was a gall-durned optimist when he wrote Idiocracy. First up, annoying words idiots say. So where is, like, LIKE?

So, you know, it is what it is, but Americans are totally annoyed by the use of "whatever" in conversations.

The popular slacker term of indifference was found "most annoying in conversation" by 47 percent of Americans surveyed in a Marist College poll released Wednesday.

"Whatever" easily beat out "you know," which especially grated a quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were "anyway" (at 7 percent), "it is what it is" (11 percent) and "at the end of the day" (2 percent).

Like, what?

Then there's this:

Could birth control pills be taking human evolution in a whole new, and possibly detrimental, direction?

Watch the movie. It's like, spelled out clearly, and stuff.

Posted 10/06/2009 06:04:00 PM by Douglas

I've been sick of this argument for a long time now:

In Philadelphia, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania find, possessing a gun is strongly associated with getting shot.

Yeah yeah yeah, and owning a ceiling fan increases your chance of being decapitated by a ceiling fan. Owning an iBook increases your chances of becoming an insufferable douchebag. Possessing a poli-sci degree from a state school increases the chance that you think causality only occurred when you thought of it.

But of course, when you want to get into anti-causality, gotta go with the tired and absurd.

Posted 10/04/2009 02:03:00 PM by Douglas

Are you sitting at home today, wondering what it would look like to hit a guy in the face with an eel? Wait no more.

You're welcome.

Posted 10/03/2009 05:48:00 PM by Douglas

Not everyone can be a bean counter, making a zillion dollars off of the creation of others. Soon, there's nothing to count. So says one of the nation's head jurist.

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

Ahem, the "best" minds? We're worse off in this country than I thought.

Posted 10/02/2009 06:47:00 PM by Douglas

While I think that the rights of non-smokers to have clean trumps the rights of smokers to suck on carcinogens, I think I'm going to have to side with the smoker in this one and lay the blame with the owner of the townhouse and their shoddy construction that allows air intrusion from one unit to another.

A Dallas woman has filed a lawsuit seeking six figures from a former neighbor and landlord for damage she says was caused by cigarette smoke wafting through adjoining walls of her high-end townhome.

"Smoking is not a right, it's a privilege," said Chris Daniel, a retired nurse. "I'm sorry that people smoke. I think it's foolish, but when it comes into my house and hurts my health and my daughter's health and our belongings, it's a different issue."

Right, privilege, that's absolute horse shit. What you do in your own home is no one else's gall durned bidness. If it affects others, that one thing, assuming there's nothing that could be done about it, but still. This neighbor was smoking a cigarette, not enriching uranium. But the whining, it gets worse:

And even if some smell did seep through, the Daniels renewed their lease at Estancia – where smoking is permitted – six months after they say the problem began.

You don't like the behavior of your neighbors? LEAVE. I'm sure there are all sorts of non-smoking whiners that would LOVE to hear your sad tale of woe and see your gas masks.

Posted 10/02/2009 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

The Millennium Falcon it ain't, but looks like the "laser" on a plane had a successful hit

Back in August, Boeing announced that its Advanced Tactical Laser — a cargo aircraft retrofitted with a chemical laser — had successfully “defeated” a target vehicle parked on the ground. The test was a step toward the fielding of a laser gunship that, in theory, could blast targets with little or no collateral damage.

That's gotta be complicated, and after seeing Star Wars for 10,000 times, it's not nearly as cool as when Luke blows up the Death Star. Still, it's gotta freak you out if you're the bad guy and your hood catches on fire and your engine blows up for seemingly no reason.