February 2010
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I Was Born on Nathan Hale's Birthday*...
Let’s start with the assumption no one watches TV as a stand-alone activity. Because that explains at least a tiny bit why I found myself simultaneously watching the E! show The SPINdustry and looking at Boston.com’s Big Picture out of Marja, Afghanistan.
It doesn’t entirely explain my reaction though.
As I looked at these photos (Not Safe For Mom—but the rest of you,...
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“The Twinkle Star is my favorite.”
– He caught me reading over his shoulder. What he didn’t know perhaps was that I was reading—but also thinking.
He was a grown man, maybe within 10 years of my age, and he’d pulled out a nursery rhyme workbook and opened it on the train. I was looking at it and struck. I guessed he...
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Listen Up...
Remember when I said this won’t be a milblog? Still true, but sometimes there’s a tiny bit of leakage. So, I own this book. Yes, that’d be the Ultimate Interactive Basic Training Workbook because I don’t think I’ve ever attempted success in anything without book learnin’. (Feel free to mock.) And there are indeed quizzes and flashcards and hints like:...
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Hold Up. I'm Just Sending Mother Nature the...
Oh? That’s what we’re calling it? A “Public Relations” challenge?
If only there’d been a warning this might happen, we could have named the creature accordingly.
Luckily, I hear animal instinct responds well to a finely-crafted press release.
(Yes. It’s terrible that it happened. But in what world does a tragic accident that happened because an animal was...
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Adore.
Come ON. If this doesn’t make you respond out loud, your heart is a Blue Peter craft project made of Plaster of Paris.
I love her. And I love that she’s meeting the Prime Minister and tomorrow is Fish & Chip day and she’s equally excited about both.
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“And then I went to see Park Avenue because that’s where Arnold and Willis...”
– Tourism: As Seen on TV.
Or: How sometimes the worst influences end up being the best.
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33. →
Between here and this “World Peace” lie 33 ongoing conflicts.
Here are pictures from all of them from Foreign Policy’s Planet War series.
Pakistan: While Iraq and Afghanistan have captured much of the public’s attention of late, Pakistan may well be the country whose security, stability, and partnership is most important to American success in the war on terrorism.
...
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8 Second Philosopher...
Me: Rodeo--"Yes," or "Heck Yes."
He: Uh, Heck Yes.
Me: Good. Politics, religion psh. There is no litmus test like team roping.
He: Team roping? Not over bull and bareback.
Me: I can't argue with the purity of those, but for practical skill? Roping. I love how they're either screwed or golden in the first .0245 seconds.
He: I never thought about it like that.
Me: When in life do you ever need a *whole ride* to know if you're going to fail or not? Just keep the clowns close and give 'er a whirl.
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1984 Was a Very Good Year...
Right. With the whole “school turning on the laptop computers’ cameras remotely” story, everyone’s covering up their own cameras up with band-aids and the like, to which I say, “What, duh, didn’t you assume it was a portal into your life and dress accordingly?”
But it’s not just laptop cameras kids.
Pictures you take with camera phones have...
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Common Cent$...
Though rest assured I think “teabags” should be reserved for making beverages, I’ve always been in favor of a decision-making tree that starts with self and moves to government, not the other way around. Same goes for help. Begin at the individual and the community. If that fails, then work your way up.
With great reliance, comes great power and oof. You’ve seen the...
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“(Yes, the mother of John Edwards’ baby did not have health insurance.)”
– Says the staffer-turned-author who had to put the Rielle/Frances Quinn/Edwards delivery on his private credit card.
What’s that feeling where you just consumed a lot of something really ill-advised and you feel physically…contaminated by it? Yeah. Unclean. Also grossed out. And sure...
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Live & Active Cultures...
What price, what pound of flesh required for passage in this modern age? Low-cultural Message Acquisition Osmosis. (LMAO) (Yes. It was worth the effort.) Even things you don’t want to know, you do, with no effort to necessary to acquire said knowledge:
I can sing most of the lyrics to St. Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” without owning a radio, ever sought out to listen to...
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“If “x” is the rock, then look the f**k around.”
– On mathematically determining the origination of a boulder through your roof.
Keith and the Girl, Episode 1128, Too Fat to Fly.
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Thank You For Being a Friend...
Me: Plus, you know I hate "feelings" talk.
She: You're so the boy in this relationship.
Me: I'm like that stupid Dockers "Wear the Pants" campaign.
She: You could join the *Marines* and I'd still support you--but I'm warning you, the second you put on a pair of pleated-front khakis, you're dead to me.
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Let's Play "Which Is More Appealing?"
There is an answer here, I am confident of that.
YOUR CHOICES:
Mr. Valentine, who bills himself as a “tall drink of water,” lists The Notebook as his favorite movie, will “spoon you all night until the break of dawn,” and has his…chest AND stomach hair artfully shaped into the form of hearts?
OR!
Sack O’ Sauce in a Can O’ Meat, with...
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Will Watch (Everytime it's on Cable) for Food...
He: "Waiting" is pretty funny. That's the perfect amount of Dane Cook.
Me: YES.
He: If everyone's worked in food service, how come people are such jerks?
Me: Who knows. It's a wildly uncreative way to rage against humanity.
He: Even "the Existence of Dane Cook" is a better way to hate.
Me: Yes. It's that wrist cuff. All aggression begins at the wrist cuff.
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It's Presidents Day! Wanna Buy a Mattress?
Oh, I cannot tell a lie—it’s weird, right? Always with the mattress sales as if there was a logical cognitive leap between Lincoln’s birthday* and buying a mattress you can jump on without spilling a glass of wine.
I mused about presidential astrology and Aquarians here (four of the five Aquarian presidents died in office, and the sign is tied for the most popular) so happy...
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Me & Uncle Sam: We're Square...
Well, I did my taxes yesterday—not because I’m usually on top of the bureaucracy of my life, but because I’ll be at Basic on the official IRS Appreciation Day. (And I did them all by myself! Irrationally proud of conquering this task most adults accomplish on their own but whatever. God only grants so many gifts and forms and numbers ain’t on my list.)
And here, in...
So This Exists... →
So you can me ask stuff, you know if that desire ever arose. It’s like the Q & A portion of a lecture, without that guy getting up and telling a long story about himself and then making a comment that doesn’t actually end in a question mark.
Preemptive favorite answer of all time:
They were all former Miss Americas.
(First answer I ever gave correctly in a tournament on my high...
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Rumors... →
Not just the title of a Sweet Valley High book. (What? You expected perhaps Fleetwood Mac? Too Easy. Mac.)
Here we have a genesis story of news and how rumors find themselves becoming such. Not included however is how somebody may or may not have spent the Super Bowl Googling “David Paterson Furries.” Hey, you hear something once, you Google—hear something twice and it has a...
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“Go get me Jared from Subway.”
– I don’t know what it means, but I will be yelling it at regular intervals today for my own amusement.
-CM Punk
Hahahhaha.
(via ringsidereview)
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"Ask Your Mother."
Though my mom thinks I take after my dad, and he indeed provided the “nature” part of my personality and habits, she provided the “nurture.” I won’t use the complicated cliche “post-feminist” on her birthday, but I will say the argument, “Feminist, psh. Having to champion anything just means you’re reminding everyone of this so-called...
