No-wax, easy maintenance, bacteriostatic, and anti-slip.
Friends,
I trundled down the hill to attend my nephew (and godson, btw) William’s first birthday. The birthday boy was pretty happy about the whole thing, even if the cake decorators may have been phoning it in…
…but the party favors were laid out with care…
Even the birthday boy’s sister was in fine form…
…right up until the bubbles I brought ran out.
Happy birthday, William!
– (uncle) bob
Friends,
I’ve been trying to write a post about an interaction I’m in the middle of on Facebook, but every angle I try to take on the subject seems, well, not interesting. That story is hereby spiked. What will go up is something else entirely, starting with another picture of an oddly proportioned Japanese car from the way-back machine…
1961 Subaru Roadster (that may have a different name that I can’t read because it’s in Japanese on their site). Rear-engine, 23 horsepowers of fury!
Whew! Now that we’ve covered that, what’s for lunch?
Your pal,
– bob
Friends,
Just wanted to drop you a little note wishing you a happy February. Yeah, I know, it’s Monday and things haven’t been working out for you today. The sink is clogged, the rain has finally leaked into that hole in your shoe, your cat has asthma, the budget you submitted is running a trillion dollars in the red…
But hey! It’s can’t be all bad, it’s February!
– bob
Friends,
Yesterday, NASA and JPL announced that the Kepler space telescope had discovered five planets outside of our solar system. This is good news if you took JPL in your Fantasy Number of Planets league and good news for folks already tired of this year’s cold weather. According to astronomers, the planets range in temperature between 2,200 and 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. No more shoveling the driveway!
Sure, the telescope’s mission is to find planets that we can move to when things get too dicey here (I’m moving to the planet where playing Hip Hop or rap is a capital crime), and the announcement seems a bit apologetic for finding screaming hot planets Kepler 4b through 8b first, but I’m thrilled by the news. It’s the first step in the “too hot, too cold, just right” triumvirate, and at the rate they’re going, we’ll be moving off this rock by 2012.
Well, you’ll be moving off this rock. Right?
– bob
Friends,
We here at the vast Jaunty Little Media Empire wish you a happy, healthy, and joyous New Year. We’re planning interesting things for the new year while continuing to provide the same middling level of mild entertainments that you’ve come to expect from this hot mess. That’s our our promise to you! (which you can take to the bank, once it has emerged from bankruptcy protection. – ed)
Your very best pal in the whole wide world, bar none,
– bob
Friends,
I went to a town hall meeting with our state assemblyman Brian Nestande last night in the Idyllwild School gymnasium. Yeah, he’s a Republican, but this is a pretty Republican town in a pretty Republican district (warning: PDF link. Scroll down to the 64th. Registration was 41.99% as of last May. – ed). Clearly, on his tour of the district he’s been really pounded on by other groups and it showed in his deference to the current assembly leadership. “I don’t want to get into the politics…” he said often while making a point about the broken politics in the legislature. Budgets? They’re terrible and likely to get worse. Legislative analyst projections of revenue? Wrong and increasingly wrong over the last few cycles. He’s recently been selected by his caucus to sit on the budget committee, which is fine (chief of staff for Sonny Bono a decade ago apparently is enough qualification), but his grasp of the details was pretty thin, I thought.
You’d think it would be a friendly crowd and they were pretty respectful on the whole. Questions asked, with petitioners trying to display their own level of wonkery, and questions answered. Teacher salaries, tax burdens, business stimulation, state employee compensation levels.
The standard bits were trotted out and everybody nodded and hummed and listened with finger on chin. The meeting was informative, but pretty staid and was starting to go long. Then the answer without a question came from our host. I’m going to paraphrase because my notes are crap…
“What bothers me about the global warming legislation in the state is that it creates a demand for green technologies. Wind and solar… But it creates the demand from foreign sources. The legislation won’t allow industries to build the equipment here in the state because of the emissions, but it sets up the demand. We’ll have to buy wind and solar from China or Tennessee or Alabama because they don’t have these rules, so we are going to demand these things and spend the money and send that money out of the state. I don’t get it.”
I’d never thought of this problem before, but it seems so obvious, especially in the context of building up the tax base to fund this budget of ours. The budget that, in the words of the assemblyman, “is diverging, between expenditures and revenue, and is getting worse.”
The, um, “green economy” is starting off famously, don’t you think? Here’s your unintended consequence.
– bob
P.S. The question that engendered the most crowd reaction was the complaint that the CalTrans snowplows were dumping snow in people’s driveways. Can’t something be done? Everybody was positively animated. Top issues, people!
Friends,
I believe this fine new (thankfully) limited-edition product confidently answers a question that nobody has asked. And I mean nobody.
– bob
Editor’s Note: unless the question is “how can jones soda make a marketing splash and create some much-needed interest?” i know, buzzkill. – ed
(from the Chicago Sun-Times via Consumerist. Thanks!)
UPDATE: Please take some time to visit Cake Wrecks when you get the chance. Where else can you cast your gaze (and glaze) upon a turkey cake!
Friends,
As promised, but very late, here are a couple nifty shots of tiny brand new baby Esme (no accent acute? -ed No, sorry. I’ve been corrected. That’s too pretentious.). I haven’t heard an update, but I’m guessing that she’s now forty pounds and four feet tall. Maybe more!
I’m going to go edit Wikipedia right now because there’s the new definition of cute. You’re welcome, internet!
– bob
Friends,
I know that the story about the future conspiring to break the Large Hadron Collider so that we don’t, you know, DESTROY THE UNIVERSE has been floating around. People have mostly dismissed it as either geekery or fantasy. I’ve asked Doctor Morgan to comment on Facebook, but he’s been eerily silent on the subject. Maybe he’s getting paid off with future Euros to keep his mouth shut, but that’s just a rumor.
The future, ladies and gentlemen; it’s not to be trifled with.
Your pal,
bob
Friends,
Yesterday, my lovely sister gave birth to a 9 lb, 14 oz. baby girl named Esmé. No pictures yet, but here’s a sketch showing what we think she looks like…
artist’s interpretation
As you know, Esmé can be used as the shortened version of Esmeralda…
…but I don’t think that’s the case here.
Speaking of Alice Ghostley, I don’t think our little Esmé has anything to do with this person either…
…or even the Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment.
Maybe I’m overthinking this…
Your pal,
(proud new) uncle bob
P.S. This post is our 1,600th. Thanks for hanging in there!
UPDATE: We have an updated post with cute baby pictures. Hooray!
Friends,
This story from the Associated Press via the information firehose that is the Riverside Press-Enterprise takes a stab at carefully chosen wording, but in the end, I think we have a pretty good idea what really happened…
Officials say teachers sickened in LA by pot brownies
Federal health officials say five preschool teachers in Los Angeles were sickened earlier this year after eating marijuana-laced brownies bought from a street vendor.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that police investigated the April incident, which occurred at an unidentified school.
A preschool teacher, who did not eat the snack but gave it her adult son, bought the brownies from a sidewalk vendor and shared them with her colleagues.
Five teachers ate one brownie each. The CDC says a sixth teacher took a bite and spit it out after complaining of an “unusual taste.”
The teachers recovered within hours. A brownie sample tested by Los Angeles police found traces of marijuana.
The teacher who bought the brownies was not charged. Police have not found the street vendor.
—The Associated Press
Yeah, sickened. Are you sticking with that? Really?
The CDC was called in because a few preschool teachers were high for a few hours? With this level of attention, H1N1 should be wiped out in a couple days.
Friends,
Today is the day 220 years ago when average French citizens went batcrap nuts and stormed the Bastille, hoisting a giant middle finger to the monarch, Louis XVI (“Louie” to his friends). Today, Francophiles around the world celebrate by playing with balls and eating pastry.
Congratulations, France!
– bob
Friends,
Why are the Big 3 Detroit automakers in such dire straights? It’s marketing, of course. In 1967 American Motors was sitting pretty (oh, that’s debatable, isn’t it? – ed Leave the Matador coupe out of it.) and having fun. How much fun? This much…
Sure, it’s a lovely car, but what’s happening in the background?
Like a rock? Not really. Dodge boys have more fun? Not likely. Would you really rather drive a Buick? Please. Certainly not your father’s Oldsmobile. Can you see Government Motors or Fiatsler (Chryslat?) doing something like this? Wait, doesn’t Chrysler own the AMC intellectual property assets?
– bob
Friends,
Today is the day that Mexicans all over the world celebrate the day in 1904 when Cy Young pitched the first perfect game in American League history while playing for the Boston Americans. Huzzah! the Mexicans cheered on that day 105 years ago. So tonight, when you’re on your 27th tequila shot, getting tired and emotional, remember the reason for the season—Denton “Cy” Young.
– bob
Friends,
It looks like General Motors, in a last-ditch effort to extend their line of guvmint credit, have made the decision to kill Pontiac. “See! We’re really trying! …to completely ruin our company! Happy now?”
Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be a current Pontiac model (except the G8, oops) that’s actually unique in North America. Mom’s Pontiac Torrent, for example has sisters at the Chevrolet, GMC, Saturn and Suzuki dealerships. She’ll get parts during her government-sponsored warranty, and that’s good for all of us. No, really. You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Mom and a warranty claim. If you’re Steve Rattner, the head of the President’s Automotive Task Force, you may be under investigation for your private equity shenanigans, but your secretary isn’t paid enough to deal with the angry phone calls should the Torrent have a misfire. Just sayin’.
But you cats are the best and brightest, right?
Right?
– bob