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Friends,
I was listening to the radio this morning after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries and heard Senator Mrs. Clinton say this:
“It’s not just Kentucky bluegrass that’s music to my ears, it’s the sound of your overwhelming vote of confidence, even in the face of some pretty tough odds,” Clinton told her supporters in Kentucky.
I may be mistaken, but isn’t Kentucky bluegrass, you know, grass?
– bob
Friends,
Look, I hate spammers as much as you do, but it’s starting to look like tough times are hitting them too. You’ve certainly seen all the come-ons for expensive watches, jewelry, and designer fashions flooding your inbox. Me, I’m getting spam offering deep discounts on Timex watches and Ugg boots. I’m a big Timex fan, but as far as fabulous offers go, it seems pretty low-rent to me.
Poor, pitiful spammers. What’s next? Deep discounts on Tupperware? Black market laundry detergent? Identity thieves coming after my Vons Club card? In Cyrillic?
– bob
Friends,
Work. What can you say? The medical systems I’m responsible for have decided to pitch a fit, leaving our family health clinic in America’s Finest Decent Satisfactory Declining Doomed City without their electronic charts. Fine, they can break out the ballpoint pens and legal pads while I fix it. We’ve had a good run of uptime, so they’re not too upset.
I’m anxious to get in on the burgeoning Bismati rice futures trading market, considering our global food crisis. I don’t really know how to get started though. By the way, can we blame Al Gore for this too? The corn to ethanol thing we can totally pin on his biofuel ideas, but rice? We’ll see.
The very big problem is that the spambots have started using bob [at] bobtherieau [dot] com for their evil ends. If you’re sending email then, please use info [at] bobtherieau [dot] com instead. Thanks China! (Just asking, is this the next salvo in their information war with us? Fun thing to think about, no?)
So, um, good times! Whee!
Your pal,
– bob
Fellow Fangio Lovers,
I’ve had the opportunity over the last year to tangle daily with the various factions of The Anti-Destination League (a term that I believe is credited to the irascible and brilliant Brock Yates). I’ve had fun with this and have attempted to determine why any individual might wish to join this dark, life force draining cabal. I have theories!
Anything you’d like to add? Please do, just not while you’re driving. Thanks.
Your pal,
– bob
Oh no!
The robot uprising has begun…
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
The oceans are cooling or, um, not warming? Wait a sec. How will Master Gorebot crush this dissent?
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it’s also possible that something more mysterious is going on.
Mysterious heat is escaping! Our greenhouse isn’t working. No more hothouse tomatoes, apparently. What could be happening?
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
Stupid scientists.
Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.
Of course. These strange readings that don’t fit our preconceptions so we’ll need more data to make the statistics work with our models.
Essentially, we’re doomed by the non-dooming. Wake up warm people!
Sigh,
– bob
You may not enjoy this as much as I do, but La Mesa mayor Art Madrid was found by police near his home drunk, and in a pool of his own sick. (“Um, Mr. Mayor, would you mind coming with us?”) Two things make this story much better: an equally drunk city employee was in his Ford Exploder with her feet hanging out the window, plus the La Mesa City Council hauled his sorry butt into chambers to read him the riot act.
At last night’s meeting, Madrid would only say that “it was unfortunate for me. It’s embarrassing and humiliating, and I promise it will never happen again.”
Next time he’ll drive the pickup.
– bob
Friends,
You may have noticed that YouTube and another great big pile of Google sites died yesterday. The speculation is that when Pakistan banned YouTube for hosting “unauthorized videos,” they crapped all over the routing tables. “Oooh, tech-speak,” you must be thinking. Points to my reliance on the internet gizmos, maybe yours as well. So my advice to you is to break out your inkjet and print copies of everything on your computer, then chuck your peecee out the window.
Or stop using ‘net services that are exposed to other countries.
Oh.
Where’s my Levenger catalog?
– bob
Dear American Heroes,
If you, like we knuckleheads in California, are part of the primary voting cluster of democracy tomorrow, you’re no doubt excited about the possibilities. The possibility of having your vote on a ballot proposition overturned by an aggrieved loser in court. The possibility that your favorite candidate will change positions sometime in May to appeal to the important baby seal-clubbing voting block. The possibility that superdelegates will trump everything that you thought you were voting for at the convention.
This is the important turning point of our cherished democracy.
Well then, now that we’ve got all the pessimism out of the way, let’s get to The Jaunty Little Blog Recommendations For Filling In Those Tiny Dots!
There you have it. We’ve staked our positions which should prove highly valuable if you’ve just landed here from Mars. Otherwise you’ve already made up your mind, made your choices, and for crissakes gone out and placed your vote. Remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the next Assistant Secretary of the Interior nominee…
Your pal,
– bob
Friends,
This site is now blocked by Websense at San Diego’s Omnipresent Charitable Organization. Actually, all sites hosted on the blogspot.com domain have been silenced. Other “social networking and personal journaling” sites have been disappeared as well. TypePad sites are among them, but there are a couple that missed the axe for now. I won’t name them and give the thugs ideas, though.
It’s disconcerting of course, but I worry about the greater message. Alternative and private opinion isn’t welcome at a place that some might consider progressive, and that’s a choice made by some anonymous individual. Was it us? Was it a Websense update that just automatically installed (which is likely since it happened on the 15th)? Was it an executive decision made to enforce parity with our ban on Facebook and MySpace? And this—will it make the place happier and more productive?
I’m not happy, if that’s any indication.
By the way, you can send this URL to yourself and give it a try: http://tinyurl.com/39fjs9 It’s a TinyURL for the giant link to this site through the YouHide proxy server. Here’s another one: http://tinyurl.com/26vbdk from SurfUnblocked. The nice thing about this one is that the advertising banner doesn’t seem to be that overwhelming. Proxy servers. Geez, it’s come to this.
Your pal,
bob
Friends,
Oh, how the professional journalist class complains about pesky bloggers. Always with the research and the agendas and the poor spelling. Here’s a guy who’s kind of a journalist who’s the latest to have gone cranky (thanks to deadspin.com):
“And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is …someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts.
He’s got a point (after you enjoy the comments on that post), so by the power vested in me, I hereby introduce the International Institute Of Fairly Reasonable Forward Movement credential process for bloggers. For your substantial tuition fee, you’ll receive training in subjects such as; writing words, thinking about things, putting things on the interwebs, and making certain statements. Once you have attained those high and lofty goals, you’ll receive certified certification from the Important Board of Blogging Certification. Wince no more at ad hominem attacks by people who are actually getting paid for the kind of writing you do every day—for free!
You’re proud, you’re slightly unhinged, you’re down with the typey and the linkey. Get your certification today!
Your pal,
bob (Dean of Students)
Friends,
You may have heard that German police arrested some surely well-sorted and well-adjusted individuals last night. Apparently these fine, upstanding lads were planning to blow up pubs, airports, and Ramstein Air Base. Surely their motives were misunderstood. They harbored an intense hatred for the United States, but hey! who doesn’t? My guess is that they were simply hoping to get on the air base to start a cosmetology school. What else could explain this from the AP:
German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said the three, two of whom were German converts to Islam, had trained at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, a group based in Central Asia. They had obtained some 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives.
Islamic hairdressers. Yeah, that’s it.
– bob
This just in!
Der Spiegel is reporting that the Norwegian moose population are, um, gross emitters. This proves once again that we’re all doomed by the warmening…
Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.
Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.
If we were to replace all of our Norwegian moose with compact fluorescent caribou…
– bob
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I understand that you’re tired of these presidential candidates. Too phony. Too calculating. I get that and I’m here to help. With all of these knuckleheads vying for your attention, it’s hard to know what to think. We’re here to help! Here’s the Jaunty Early Line on the respective tickets for the general election. You can take this to Vegas. Ready?
Hillary wins the nomination. How can she not? Obama is imploding. The rest of the Democratic field is, well, Kucinich and kookoolulu Bill Richardson. My pick is a Clinton/Obama ticket. Why? That’s pretty easy. Hillary is marginally electable in the general election and Obama suffers from the inexperience tag and could use the veep time to be ready for 2014 2016. I’ve thrown this out to a couple of people, and they cringe. I’m a big fan of universal healthcare, but will that dynamic duo buy in to global warming hysteria? More petrol taxes? Slapping down coal-fired power plants? Bazillion MPG corporate average fuel economy standards? Nanny state nonsense? Yikes.
Yeah, I know. I liked Bill Richardson at one point. He’s clearly the smartest guy in the room, but he can’t be president. The extreme left’s adorable pander bear just can’t cut the mustard. As Senator Obama clearly doesn’t have the experience to run the Executive Branch, Governor Richardson has spent so much time tiptoeing through the netroots minefield that it’s hard to see him coming back.
But what about the GOPers? Glad you asked. The pragmatists over there see Giuliani as electable. The “base” hates him, which will play havoc on his primary chances. I still think he’ll prevail and be the nominee. Who to balance out the ticket? Nobody who’s running. I’m hearing weird noise about drafting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to round out the ticket. Why not? She’s as conservative as can be. She helps with the people who want to vote for a woman, but don’t like Hillary.
Man, this could shape up to be a brutal campaign. Clinton/Obama vs. Giuliani/Palin could be a bloody slugfest, don’t you think? You thought you were tired of the campaign now…
Your pal,
bob
UPDATE: Date fixed and link to Draft Palin site added.
Dude, who knew that Clint Eastwood spoke Italian? Holy crap.
Your genius pundit pal,
bob