In the spirit of Jedi Squirrels, Army Squirrel, and Sith Squirrel, I give you… Faith Healer Chipmunk!

Thanks to DangerDave for posting his pic on facebook for me to steal!

Irony of ironies, I’m actually wearying my “Oh Fudge” Christmas Story t-shirt today. And I just found this article.

For the second day in a row, Judge Robert Ruehlman threw someone in jail and cited him for contempt for cussing in the courtroom. It was an accused gang member Wednesday. On Thursday, it was a private attorney in a non-criminal case.

…

As Koenig and Brautigam turned to walk away from the judge, Brautigam called Koenig “a (bleeping) liar.”

“He used the famous F-word,” Koenig said. “(Ruehlman) asked Mr. Brautigam if he said that.”

Brautigam admitted he had and had directed it at Koenig.

Ruehlman cited Brautigam for contempt and sent him to jail for six months.

“I had to give him six months because I gave the other guy (on Wednesday) six months,” Ruehlman said.

Six months in jail!! Wow!!! It really IS the queen-mother of dirty words!

“Oooh fuuudge!” Only I didn’t say “Fudge.” I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word! … It was all over – I was dead. What would it be? The guillotine? Hanging? The chair? The rack? The Chinese water torture? Hmmph. Mere child’s play compared to what surely awaited me.

People get upset over the dumbest things. I can’t comprehend how people can be so sensitive. I know I get it from my dad, who has about as much tact as a gorilla at a tea party. Oh, the stories I could tell.

My favorite bumper sticker (sadly it was on the truck I used to own and I haven’t found a replacement) said, in big bold letters, “GET OVER IT.”

So, I hope you’ll have proper context when I say the people who’s panties are wadded over the new Burger King “Whopper Virgins” ad campaign are idiots.

I really love the concept. A whopper and a big mac, side-by-side taste test, offered to people from different cultures that have never had (and sometimes never heard of) a hamburger.

I’ve always thought that food is the most fascinating aspect of culture. Unlike politics, religion, and economics, you can ask a person from a different culture about the food and be sure you’ll never offend them. In fact, I’ve found that they usually enjoy talking about it.

Every time I have a chance to talk to someone from outside the Unites States, I ask them what they think of American food and what they miss about food back home. Everyone eats and everyone has things they like and don’t like to eat. It’s universal and, at least to me, very interesting.

Now, as for the controversy, Hot Air has a post that sums it up. Rather than rehash it here, I’ll just link to it.

Clicky clicky.

Several years ago, we put together a tribute for Memorial Day at our church. The script was actually written for Veteran’s Day, so I thought I’d offer it up again.

(These files are pretty big, so you may want to right click on the link and choose “Save Target As.”)
MemorialDayTribute.mp3
MemorialDayTribute.wma (Windows Media)

And the script can be found here: WhatIsAVeteran.doc

Oh.. Em.. Gee…

If you thought you could waste time on the internet, you have been fooling yourself until now.

Let there be no doubt. MTV is the bane of modern society. The cable channel has single handedly ruined the moral character of generations of Americans. And now, as if to add insult to injury, you can relive every wonderful minute of it for free.

Surf at your own risk: mtvmusic.com

Let me recommend some favorites:
Jacko was monster long before his surgeons turned him into one
Christopher Walken dances into history
Weird Al beat’s jacko (The original here)
Al parties like it’s 1699 (The original here)

… and so many more but I’m out of time!

DangerDave has posted another great post full of intelligent calm regarding the economy. Check it out. I’ll be paraphrasing the finer points here.

It was almost exactly one year ago that the Dow broke 14,000. Back then, I wondered when the correction would hit. Just like back around Y2K, when the dot-com boom artificially pushed up the stock market, big peaks in the market are usually followed by bigger drops. Here, let me show you.

In 1987, we had “Black Monday” a huge one-day correction. It was the end of the world… except not. Between 2000 and 2002, the dot-com bubble burst and 9-11 punched the economy in the jimmy and we went to war. Over two years, the market shed 38%. It was the end of the world… except not.

A year ago, the market, buoyed by a lot of bad lending and an inflated housing market, hit 14,000 points for the first time ever. At this point, I started looking for the end of the world. It has arrived… except not. This is a correction. Corrections happen. The market continues to go up over time. There’s no reason to expect it will not continue to go up throughout our lifetimes.

As much as the Liberal-pinko-stinky media (and their favorite Liberal-pinko-stinky politicians) want you to believe otherwise, the U.S. economy is sound. All of the economic indicators that are used to define a recession are UP!

MSN’s Money page has gone so far as to add a “Financial Crisis” tab to their website where you can find articles like, “Surviving a financial panic,” “What if your bank fails?” “A survival guide for the unemployed.” I wonder if that last article talks about selling apples out of a basket for 10 cents a piece. What a farce!

If you think I’m making all this up just because I’m a conservative, look closer. According to the dems and the media, this is a huge crisis! “If we don’t bail out the market before Friday we would see the Great Depression II.” (That was last Friday) Then it was, “If we don’t get this passed by Monday…” And now it’s Tuesday. The bail-out bill failed (with 95 dems voting against it). The market is up over 300 points! And Pelosi has sent Congress home for the Rosh Hashanah holiday. WHAT??!! If this is such a huge crisis, don’t you think we might need to work through Rosh Hashanah? Well, guess what. This is NOT a crisis. This is a completely fabricated, election year, puppet show.

So what about Bush (and McCain for that matter)? The single, foremost point on which GeeDub and I have failed to see eye-to-eye is on big-business. It was the big-biz lobby that led Bush’s (and McCain’s) pro-immigration-amnesty push a while back. It’s equally clear that the big-biz lobby has pushed Bush (and McCain) on this bail-out bill. Why else would he be making so much noise about getting this bail-out through? Doesn’t it seem a little weird that Bush (and McCain) and Pelosi (and Obama) are saying a lot of the same things? That stinks like week-old raw fish and I don’t like it.

Huck doesn’t like it either. Check out his blog post:

 Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. They lost, but want the rest of us to cover their bets so they won’t be effected in their lavish lifestyles as they figure out how to spend their tens of millions and in some cases, hundreds of millions in bonuses and compensation which was their reward for … sinking their companies…

Amen. Put away your pitchforks. Douse the torches. Don’t sell your 401k. Go back to work. Keep producing and consuming and buying and investing just like you’ve always done and things will be just fine (so long as you vote Republican and get rid of this useless Pelosi Congress).

Now, I’ve got to get to work because this little post that was supposed to just be a link to DangerDave has gotten completely out of control.

I love the United States of America. Sure we’ve got our problems. But compared to every other nation in the world, I’m dad-gum proud to be an American.

I also love our National Anthem. The wife gets all teary when she hears it performed well. And we both can not stand it when someone gets all Marvin Gay, trying to show off their “talent” singing The Anthem before a sporting event.

Look, if you think you need to add words, repeat phrases, or throw in a bunch of extra key changes to show off, don’t. All you’re doing is making yourself look like a total boob by sacrificing a gem of patriotic pride on the alter of your self-interested non-career. I think they should tell the performer before hand, “We’re turning off the mic after 90 seconds. You go longer than that and we’ll spare our audience your screeching final stanza.”

Case in point, this “Pop Sensation” (pfft, yeah right) before a Cowboys game. You can tell it’s going to be bad when she starts off with some head bobbles and pointless pointing. But hang on ’til the end, if you can stand it that long. (Over two minutes!!) The real music in this clip is the melodic calls of the boo birds at the end.

Well, at least she got all the words right.

Due to weather related delays (and the fact that I started after business hours), Friday’s video is being posted on Saturday.

Threw this together this morning. It’s too dark (North facing windows, too early in the morning, yadda yadda.) and the sound’s not that great, but what do you expect? I’m no Ze Frank.

Well, that’s pretty cool, but it’s not the chrome I was talking about.

By now, even non-geeks who pay any attention to the news should know that Google has taken another giant step towards ruling the world (or at least the world wide web) by introducing their own web browser, Chrome. They even released a very googlesque comic-book to educate you on why you need it.

There’s all kinds of talk about how this is the next generation of browser. How all other browsers will now have to play catch-up with Google’s Chrome (whereas that role was previously held by Mozilla’s Firefox). How this browser is designed for the internet of the 21st century (while all those old, crusty browsers you had before were so 20th century. Gaww).

As proud as I am of my geekness, I’m usually over-cautious on new stuff. I wanted a PDA so bad in 1999, but I waited. In 2007, I bought a Treo and now I get both the PDA and phone in one. I waited to start using Windows XP until my work PC was retired and I had no choice, thus sparing me from the trials of the pre-SP1 bugs. I still have not move to Vista. Instead, I’ll probably wait for Win08 which should have all the major headaches of Vista fixed.

The way I see it, the people who insist on living on the cutting edge of technology are consistently getting burned by it. Everyone I know who stands in line to get the latest gizmo the instant it’s available ends up frustrated by all the bugs and quirks that eventually get worked out in later versions or patches or service packs. I let the fools rush in to battle and get skewered, then I step over their corpses and fully enjoy the spoils of their pain.

But not this time. Because I make my living on the web (and arguably spend most of my life there) I figured I’d better jump on this early. As I type, the Chrome installer is ticking away, loading up the google-goodness. I’ll let you know if I run into any major hick-ups.

I already like how the installer offers to import all my bookmarks, settings, and even saved passwords from Firefox.