Jared's One Blog

So my only goal in the softball game on Monday night was simply not to embarrass myself. I mean, I’d played baseball/softball I think maybe three or four times since middle school, so avoidance of self-embarrassment I though would be a reasonable goal. Anyway, we had quite a few people show up despite the 90-degree heat, so that half the team played until the middle of the 4th, and the other half (including me) played out the balance of the 7-inning game. We quickly fell behind 9-0 to St Paul’s Lutheran after two innings, but then slowly started crawling back into it. By the time our team switched halves we’d come back to make it 9-4 after 3 1/2 innings of play. I led off the top of the 5th with an infield single to the 2nd baseman and came around to score two at-bats later, and then scored another run the following inning after getting on with a single dumped into center field. When it was all said and done we (Evangelical Free Church) won 15-9; 15 unanswered runs, now I’d call that a comeback! I was put in at third base and had one grounder hit to me; I didn’t field it cleanly, but I kept it in front of me and prevented the runner from advancing past 1st at least, so that coupled with going 2-for-3 at the plate (third AB was a flyout to left) with two runs, I’d say I avoided embarrassing myself. Mission accomplished. 🙂
Walker Building didn’t have the A/C working the first couple days of this holiday-shortened week, which just happened to coincide with two of the warmest days of the season so far. Great timing. And with no window or fan in the TA office it’s been rather stuffy and miserable up there. At least today the A/C came back on full-time again, though since there’s no vent in our office we’re reliant a lot on cool air seeping in from the hallway, so getting the office more comfortable isn’t exactly a quick process.
I can add another new place to my restaurant list in State College, Red’s Steamed Cheeseburgers. I went there for lunch today with Jeff, Vic, Mario & Daniel, and it was pretty good. And the fries were awesome too (just way too many of them). I dunno, it still doesn’t top Sports Cafe’s 25c wing Tuesdays, which Daniel & I took advantage of this week again as usual. Even though it was easily in the mid-80s we still sat outside since we found some shade. Ahhhh, wings and a beer while sitting outside on a beautiful summer’s day for lunch, this is the life!
My new computer for work arrived today! I took some time this afternoon getting it put together and set up on my new (temporary) desk in 405, though it’s still not on the network yet, and needs a bunch of stuff installed as well. I’ve gotta choose a name for it too (_____.met.psu.edu), so I’m wrestling with trying to come up with something cool. Other computers in the department have names like snowsquall, heatwave, vortex (and various other meteo-related names), sitka and chaos, so should I continue the weather-phenomena trend? Perhaps with hailstreak, blizzard, willywilly or windchill? Or pick something distinctly non-meteo like shadowfax, jackbauer, viking, fjord, eucalypt, whitsunday, wallaby (Aussie nods), beaver, aurora or borealis? Or even pick some sort of obscure Biblical reference? Or perhaps a Minnesota reference, like hennepin, minnehaha, nokomis, itasca or hiawatha? Comments/votes/suggestions would be welcome, though sometime Friday morning I’ll probably have to make an executive suggestion on a name. So many to choose from though, this is gonna be a tough decision… 🙂
The other day I picked up the board game “Cranium” and the DVD “Fargo” at Target with a gift card I had. I’ve only played Cranium once, but really liked it and thought I needed at least a second group game to compliment Apples to Apples. And tonight Daniel & I watched “Fargo” over here at my place. We’ve both seen it before and really like it. It’d been probably eight or nine years since I’d seen it, and now with more perspective all the “Minnesota Nice” mannerisms (and of course the accent!) seem even funnier because they’re so true! I remember when the movie came out a lot of Minnesotans were indignant and claiming they don’t talk like that. Hate to break it to ya fellas, but yes you do talk that way. It may not be *quite* that pronounced (though they didn’t actually embellish the accents in the movie as much as I thought I’d remembered), but once you get out of the Twin Cities and into the country and the small towns, people really do talk that way. Personally I think it’s more charming and enjoyable to listen to than the “hey buddy” central PA accent, but I admit I’m a bit biased here… And occasionally I bust out a word or phrase here or there in the Minnesotan accent (in words such as Minne-SOH-ta, boat, uffda, or roof, for which I constantly get made fun of ever time I say it, hehe). But then again I also do have a tendency to throw in some Aussie slang now and then, just to spice things up.

Ahhh, Memorial Day weekend, the semi-official start of summer. The weather’s finally been behaving like it’s summer too, with temps in the 80s the last two days, and today and tomorrow slotted for around 90. I’ve gotta get used to the heat again.
Perhaps next time that I walk to the Sports Cafe for trivia I should actually check the radar beforehand, so as to avoid being outside getting soaked for the duration of a ten-minute downpour. But at least it was a warm rain. We were tied for first heading into the final question this week, but didn’t wager enough points to come out in 1st, oh well. Second still isn’t too bad, we still get free food next Friday. After trivia Jacob had a bunch of us over to his place to watch some “Family Guy” episodes, even though he had a 6am flight to catch for his two-week vacation to SE Asia. If I had to get up that early, I doubt I would’ve been up for doing much of anything.
It’s been quite a fun holiday weekend so far. On Saturday afternoon nine of us drove up to the mini-golf course north of Bellefonte. Sadly enough, even though it’s only 15 minutes away from State College, it was my first time outside State College since spring break when I went to Arizona (unless you count when I went to Clem’s BBQ 5 minutes outside town about six weeks ago). I’m really not taking advantage of a lot of what this area of Pennsylvania has to offer, in terms of hiking or just driving around and looking at all the natural beauty around here. Sigh. But as sad as not venturing outside of State College is, this was my first time ever playing at a real mini-golf course. Yes, I’ve been a bit deprived. I think I did fairly well for my first time though, recovering from a bad first hole to nab a couple holes-in-one in back-to-back on the back 9 (and on the first of those I hit mine right after Daniel also had one, and on the second Jeff hit one right after me, so our foursome averaged a 1.5 over those two holes :-). We split up into two groups (Jeff, Rob C., Daniel & I, and Kerrie, Amber, Caren, Walter & Chris), and in my group Daniel & I managed to tie for first with 48, while Jeff was right behind with a 49, though none of us could quite match Walter or Chris, who both were a few strokes lower. It was a fun little mini-golf course (the giant buffalo was quite popular), I definitely think I’ll be back at some point this summer for another go. Following mini-golf we all made a stop at the University Creamery on campus for some tasty ice cream (it being my first time there, I just had to get a Peachy Paterno milkshake, yummm). It tasted so good, especially on such a warm day. So I guess Saturday was a day of firsts for me, in a very good way.
Yesterday Daniel & I went to church, and Pastor Tober had a really good sermon on Acts 2. He asked us afterwards what we were smiling or chuckling about during his sermon, but he was crackin a few jokes, so what did he expect us to do? 🙂 And Ed, Ellen & Blair all seem to be responding to our requests for more hymns during worship time, there’s been at least one or two hymns each of the last few weeks, which has definitely been nice.
Yesterday afternoon Jeff hosted a Memorial Weekend BBBQ for the meteo grads up at his place. There was much food and merriment out in the bright, hot sunshine (I almost sunburned, but not quite … I’m not used to all this sunshine anymore, being at “StratoCu U” here in State College). We spent a few hours just tossing around the frisbee in the backyard and playing a little whiffleball. I totally wasn’t used to swinging a bat though, so I’m extremely sore today from all the BP. Once it got too dark to play outside we all moved down into the nice and cool basement for a fair bit of Apples to Apples, which always provides for much amusement.
I’ve gotten quite a few more photo albums put together and uploaded to my Photos page, 11 to be exact. Now I’m caught up through mid-May of last year. It’s progress, at least. Soon I hope to be less than a year behind. 🙂
I just read a very fair piece out of the Washington Times about how the world’s top hurricane scientists are split on the issue of global warming’s effects on tropical cyclones, in response to the bit of hubbub being generated by Algore’s new film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It presents what both sides are saying fairly accurately, as near as I can tell.
Whaddya know, the US Government finally got around to stop taxing us on our long distance phone bills for the Spanish-American War.
As if anyone needed more proof that the inside-the-Beltway types in the White House and Senate weren’t taking the illegal immigration issue seriously, the White House recently compared illegal immigration to speeding. They just don’t get it, they’re completely tone deaf in Washington when it comes to listening to what the majority of people in the rest of the country are saying on the issue. The immigration “reform” bill the US Senate recently passed is a joke, and I’m hoping beyond hope that conservatives in the House of Representatives don’t cave in to the pressure to adopt the Senate’s version of the bill, though there seems to be a glimmer of hope that that won’t happen.
I can promise to you that when I worked for a car rental agency in the Twin Cities we made sure there weren’t large snakes in the car when we rented the cars to customers. Apparently the same procedures don’t apply in Ohio.
This just in: the Northeast still has the “dumbest drivers,” according to CNN.
And researchers in America and Britain apparently believe that they’re only 18 months away from potentially creating a legitimate cloaking device, a la Star Trek. If they succeed, that could very well be one of the most revolutionary inventions/discoveries of modern times.
Well, it’s almost time for me to head off to softball, I’m playing in a game with a team from my church. This morning I dug around in some of the boxes underneath my bed and found my glove that’s actually never been used yet, I’m sad to say. But I’ll start getting it broken in tonight at least. Hopefully a little exercise will make me less sore, even though it’s 91 degrees out right now…

My week can be summed up in two words: data transfer. I’m finally about 60-65% done with transferring 140 GB of data to a 400 GB external hard drive. I might’ve been done by now if my computer in Walker had a USB 2.0 port though, instead of crappy USB 1.0. Oh well, I should be all done by Friday morning with it. Then this morning I went to a marathon two and a half hour group meeting, and there was some stuff I was vaguely told I would be doing, but it all went whooshing over my head. Learning curves suck.
The nice weather has helped my motivation to go running a bit, I went for jogs today and on Monday, both days going longer than I did last week. Not much longer, but it’s still progress.
**24 spoiler alert:** If you’re Rob T. from Australia or someone else who hasn’t yet seen the season finale to 24 but plans on doing so, skip this paragraph… Amber, Bob, Rob C. & I all went up to Vic, Jeff & Rob L.’s place to watch the big 2-hour season finale, it was a 24 party! The look on President Logan’s face starting from the moment the Secret Service started moving in was absolutely priceless! But as for Jack, is this the definition of “slow boat to China”? Definitely more of a cliffhanger than last season. But I’m very sad that there are gonna be no more new 24 episodes for 6-7 months. What am I gonna do with my Monday nights now?
Last night Kerrie, Caren, Amber & I had a bit of a training session to learn how to crew (push all the right buttons) for the CNET tapings. Matt, the undergrad in charge of CNET this summer, was absolutely thrilled to have the four of us interested in doing stuff with that this summer because he’s so short-handed. Sometime later this summer Kerrie & I are gonna try out going on camera. CNET’s probably the best place to train for that sort of stuff, since it’s just videotaped 3 1/2 minute forecasts aired on the local community access channel. Meaning nobody’s really gonna see my first few comical, mistake-filled attempts of doing a forecast on the air. 🙂
Thank goodness another Red Sox-Yankees series is over, ESPN can stop hyperventilating for a little while. I still hate the Yankees, but the Red Sox are getting so much coverage (for instance, Kerrie complains when they’re not on ESPN at least three times a week, hehe) and are just as free-spending as the Yankees nowadays. Sometimes it seems like the media isn’t aware that there are in fact baseball teams outside of the Northeast. But it still doesn’t stop me from watching the games, as tonight I went over to Ben’s place with Tim, Steve & Byran to watch the first 6 innings or so.
The redesigned and updated Penn State Christian Grads website is now online, I spent a good chunk of Monday working on it. It’s not totally finished, but at least it’s got updated information now. It took a bit of rigamarole to get me added as the webmaster, but we finally figured it out so now I have access to change the website.
This just in: Britons think the French are the rudest, most boring people on earth. No way!
Hat tip to Walter for pointing out this awesome PhD Comics panel about writing a thesis.
Man, those Ruskies have a high tolerance for alcohol. A driver in Lithuania was arrested for having a blood alcohol content of .72, 18 times the legal limit of .04. Wow.
And the FBI thinks they may have found where Jimmy Hoffa was buried. So how does the small Michigan town deal with all the attention? Cupcakes. Seriously, these cupcakes are absolutely hilarious, you have to take a look at the photo included with the linked news story!
And oh, I hate PSU Security. They have absolutely nothing better to do than give me two parking tickets for parking in a completely legal spot in the White Course parking lot. Supposedly I parked in a “reserved space,” but it’s unsigned, unmarked, and a normal parking spot that tons of residents from White Course have used all year long, including me. I guess I need to make time for a little walk up to Eisenhower Building tomorrow to go yell at them. I better get out of these tickets, because I did absolutely nothing wrong…

Drat, I’ve caught a cold again. Fortunately this one doesn’t seem too bad, and I’ve already had it for a couple days now after a little bit of a sore throat on Thursday & Friday, so hopefully it’ll go away pretty soon. Thank goodness for Cold-Eeze though, I really think it’s helping. And so did going for a run yesterday (Saturday) morning. In my experience, running or some other form of exercise has almost always helped me either ease or completely get rid of a cold or some other minor illness. So perhaps if I would’ve gotten up the motivation to go for a run Thursday or Friday I’d be in better shape. But as it stands I only ran twice last week, so it only took me two weeks to fall short of my goal of running 3-4 times every week this summer. Oh well, I knew it’d happen at some point. The weather’s gonna be nice this week though, unlike this past week (today we finally got rid of the crappy, cloudy, damp weather!), so I’m rather certain that’ll give me more motivation to get out there for a jog.
Thursday evening Daniel came over here and we watched “Half Baked,” which he’d seen some time ago but I hadn’t seen yet. I’ve been meaning to see it for years on the recommendations of several friends, and I’m glad I finally saw it because it’s pretty funny. Though I still can’t believe that I believed Daniel when he said initially that he had rented “Steel Magnolias.” Tsk, tsk, tsk, I’m so gullible. My high school and Gustavus friends would be glad to see that I haven’t changed in that respect, haha. But rather than thinking of it as “gullbile,” I prefer to think of myself as being “trusting.” Perhaps too trusting. 😉
For lunch on Friday a group of us went out to eat at the India Pavillion, mmmmm, so good… I definitely didn’t need to eat again the whole rest of the day, I totally stuffed myself. I absolutely love their naan bread and “nuclear chicken” (as we call it), it’s so delicious (despite what Frame would argue, don’t listen to him). Then on Friday evening we won 1st place at trivia again at the Sports Cafe, wooo. Our team name was a Helen Keller joke (I can’t claim that I came up with it), but if you really wanna know what it was let me know and I’ll tell ya. I just don’t want all sorts of people getting mad at me and leaving nasty comments on my blog. It’s really not that offensive, but whatever. 🙂 Anyways, afterward several people came over to my place to play the LOTR board game and watch the Mavericks-Spurs basketball game. We tried two games at the hardest difficulty (and failed miserably quite early on both times), but then in the third game we made it a fair ways in at the intermediate difficulty. That’s sure a tough game to win. Most everyone left at 1am, but Bob and Rob C. stuck around till almost 2:30 just chatting. Bob filled me in a lot on what goes on at AccuWeather (he’s a forecaster there), and I’ll likely end up taking him up sometime in the near future on his offer to have me shadow him during one of his shifts at AccuWeather (which is based right here in State College), so that I can get a feel for what it’s like to have weather forecasting be your job. Since that’s a career I’m definitely quite interested in (though definitely not for the money, as it doesn’t really pay all that well), I’m glad to have the opportunity to do this. Now I just need to find some night where I wouldn’t mind pulling an all-nighter, since Bob usually works the overnight shifts…
Last night I went out for some wings at Quaker Steak & Lube with Daniel, Stephanie, Petters & Mario. The name might sound kinda disconcerting for a restaurant, but their wings are quite good. The wings themselves are better than the ones at Sports Cafe, though I still like a couple of the sauces on the Sports Cafe wings more than at Quaker Steak. I hadn’t ever been there before, but I give it a definite thumbs up. Daniel will need to try the atomic wings sometime though; I may try them as well in the future, if I get up the courage to risk having my taste buds seared off.
Today at church and then this evening at PSCG there was a fair bit of focus on the Da Vinci Code, but not really in going through and picking apart the book point-by-point (though one certainly can do that with pretty minimal research). Instead, especially in the Bible study tonight, the discussion was more about the different reactions various kinds of people might have after reading the book or seeing the movie, and why they might have those reactions. One thing is for sure though, as a result of all the hoopla surrounding the Da Vinci Code in our culture these days, I’ve learned a fair bit about the real history of the early Church, in contrast to the distortions/mistruths that are put forth in the Dan Brown novel and the movie.
This week I’ll start doing some real work on research finally. On Friday morning we had a training session on SCIPUFF, so now I have a better picture of some of the stuff I’ll be doing, at least qualitatively. And progress has also been made on the office/computer front. After discussing it with Joel, I won’t be moving to 627 after all, but instead will be moving to 405 either this week or next in all likelihood, which will put me very near all the other students who are involved on this huge project and are also doing things with SCIPUFF (the other students in 627 literally had nothing to do with my project, it was just an open space to put me apaprently). I’ll also be nearer most of the other grad students too (yay!), as most of them are on 4th floor, with only a few being on 6th. And Joel had Dave (who had Karen) order me a computer for work on Saturday, so that might even be here by the end of the week! I’m really feeling quite a bit better about my research now that I know I’m gonna be in an office nearer people doing related research, and that I’ll be getting a computer within a week or so.
So other than that I got around to installing SimCity 4 and Civiliazation III on my computer this weekend, which I toyed around with for a bit yesterday. I didn’t play games this afternoon though, I actually did some real work and finally started updating/redesigning the webpage for Penn State Christian Grads. And also doing a little bit of reading. I have so many books I need to get around to…
At least two new stadiums look like they’re going to be built in the Twin Cities. On Saturday the Minnesota State Legislature approved a plan for a new open-air, on-campus football stadium for the University of Minnesota, and in the wee hours of this morning they approved a plan for a $522 million, 42,000-seat, open-air stadium for the Minnesota Twins in the Warehouse District of Downtown Minneapolis, right behind the Target Center. While I certainly wish the Twins stadium could’ve been built with a smaller (or non-existent) contribution from taxes, I’m very glad to hear that they’re finally building a stadium for the Twins. The Metrodome absolutely sucks for baseball, and I’ll be glad it won’t be the Twins home anymore after the 2009 season.
It’s also interesting to note that 10% of Mexico’s population is living in the United States (illegally), and that despite all of Mexico’s protestations about any planned restrictions on illegal immigration here in the U.S., Mexico has quite severe restrictions on what jobs any non-native-born Mexican can hold. Can you say “hypocrisy”?
Congratulations to Ben & Margaret on getting married today! Fortunately the morning rain was replaced by sunshine in time for the afternoon outdoor ceremony.
Also, for what it’s worth, I’ve finally passed 10,000 unique visits to my web page. Woooo. Though I’m sure Josh will soon leave some sort of mocking comment considering his website probably has had some ridiculous number of visits in basically the same period of time, like 50,000 (I really have no idea since he doesn’t have a very visible counter on his page), and since he just generally likes to mock me whenever presented an opportunity. At any rate, thanks for reading my pointless drivel, I couldn’t have made it this far without all ya’ll. 🙂

The Minnesota Twins have been wreaking havoc with my emotions lately. Prior to last week they’ve mostly been playing poorly, but they really started playing well heading into their series with division-leading Chicago. Last Saturday night I watched them on WGN (having to suffer through the annoying Chicago announcers) as they came from behind to beat the White Sux 8-4, making me hopeful for a 3-1 series win, or even possibly a sweep. So then on Sunday night, to celebrate the Twins being on ESPN and me actually being able to watch my team on TV, a rare occurrence out here in central PA, I had Jeff and Daniel over to my place. Talk about a strange game. The White Sox scored 3 in the top of the 1st, and would’ve scored more if it weren’t for three Twins web gems. Then the bottom of the 1st came around, and the Twins scored 7 runs before they had their second out of the inning. And then they didn’t score the rest of the game, partly aided by a White Sox triple play, the first in the majors in over a year, which allowed the Whities to win 9-7. Sigh. And now since then they’ve also lost their next three games. Time to get back to being a demoralized Twins fan I guess.
Monday evening I got myself up to a 15-minute run, 4 minutes longer than I was doing last week. Yay for progress. Then after making myself supper, I totally forgot that President Bush was giving an address to the nation about illegal immigration, and instead watched some Stargate SG-1. But it’s probably a good thing I forgot about Bush’s speech, because I likely would have thrown my dinner at the TV in response (well, probably not quite that, but you get the idea). Bush definitely blew a golden opportunity to take leadership on this issue that he’s been shirking for his six years in office, but instead of actually doing something about stopping further illegal immigration, he’s choosing to address the issue with symbolism, in sending a few National Guard troops down to the border, but not allowing them to do anything. And now Mexico is threatening to sue the United States — in American courts — if the National Guard actually does anything to stem the tide of illegal immigrants streaming across the border. That alone should be a wake-up call on the issue, but unfortunately the majority of the politicians in Washington in both parties are sound asleep.
Tuesday was wings day again, and Daniel & I were joined by Mario & Jacob, who had just finished the second day/half of the Ph.D. candidacy exam. They showed me the questions that were on the test, and while the physical meteorology portion of the exam seems potentially doable, the dynamics half of the exam is absolutely impossible. The candidacy exam as a whole frightens me, but the dynamics portion scares me to death, and is a large reason why I’m currently leaning towards entering the real world after I get my Master’s next year. But then Tuesday evening, a pretty good-sized group of us meteo grad students, even several of us who didn’t take the candidacy exam this week, got together to celebrate the official end of the semester for everyone. It was quite the little tour of downtown State College we had going, starting out at the Sports Cafe, then moving on to Zeno’s, the Rathskeller, the Darkhorse, the Saloon, Beulah’s, and finally wrapping up the evening at the Gingerbread Man. But no tour would be complete without t-shirts, so Jacob & Stephanie bought a bunch of plain white t-shirts and some markers so people could come up with their own creative sayings, such as Mario’s “I’m Unconditionally Unstable,” Jacob’s “I Took the Meteo Candidacy Exam and all I Got Was This Shirt,” and Dave’s scattering/absorption radiative transfer equation. Amber & Kerrie decided to take it a slightly different route, with drawings of “Death by Dendrite” and “Death by Shear” respectively, but David had, in my opinion, the best shirt of the night: “Cyclogenesis Killed My Mom: I Demand Vengeance,” complete with a low pressure center and a couple of fronts drawn on. Yes, we’re nerds. Huge nerds. But if you’re wondering what I put on my shirt, you’re out of luck because I didn’t make one. I know, I’m super lame for not further showing off my nerdiness, but I figure my GAC Physics t-shirts are nerdy enough. 🙂 At any rate it was a really fun evening for everyone, and I managed to stick out the tour right to the very end.
Not long after I got to Walker today I happened to get sucked into a group meeting as I was walking by in the hallway. Considering they said that some of what they were discussing was going to pertain to my future thesis, I wonder why they didn’t let me know about it, you know, before the meeting or something, instead of with just 10-15 minutes left. Oh well. But then this afternoon I finally found out what office I’ll be moving to, up in 627 in the anteroom to Dr Wyngaard’s office, sharing space with Sanjiv and Mark, two of Dr Wyngaard’s students. I am somewhat curious why I’m being moved up there, since both of them are, at best, tangentially related to the research I’m doing, especially since there are several other people who will be doing somewhat more similar stuff down on 4th floor. Since most of the other meteo grads are down on 4th floor that’s where I’d prefer to have my office too, but perhaps I’ll get a little more work done being on 6th floor. So Sanjiv & I spent a bit of time this afternoon swapping desks and tables of various sizes in and out of the room and constantly rearranging the room trying to make the best use of the space. We finally got it to our liking, but I still can’t move up there for awhile because there’s no computer for me as of yet. Apparently that little detail was somehow overlooked by my advisor, and since Joel’s grant doesn’t allow for the purchase of any new hardware, I’m hoping that Dr Wyngaard (or Dr Stauffer or somebody else in the group) has some money to buy me a computer so that I can actually do work. But until then I’ll still be hanging out in the TA office (530), because at least I have a computer there, even though it’s gotten rather lonely in that office, with Daniel having moved out last week downstairs to the tropical office, Amber basically moved out to the ozone office, Kerrie doing a lot of work from home, Fangxing not there a whole lot and Muge back home in Turkey for a couple weeks.
Tonight for the PSCG men’s group we decided to play a board game, and Monopoly sounded good (at least better than Tim’s idea of scaling the walls of certain buildings), as none of us had played it in years. I really don’t recall games of Monopoly taking only two hours before, but that’s all the longer that this one lasted. Steve really didn’t need much time to vanquish Tim, Ben, myself and South African Daniel, but it was still a fun activity, especially when I was able to follow it up with the South Park episode about hippies congregating for a music festival, an absolute classic!
Transferring music and other media is now legal in Australia, though internet piracy is being pursued and punished even more aggressively. I guess even taping a show off the TV was illegal until now Down Under.
Now this is a classic headline: Missing Manure Mystifies Middlefield. Yes, someone called the cops on a manure thief. It’s really gonna hit the fan if they catch this person…
Apparently candidates from the Democratic Party for the State of Alabama Attorney General need not believe that the Holocaust actually happened.
A couple of columnists for ESPN have their own ideas for what a new baseball stadium for the Minnesota Twins should look like. I really like the lake in right field and the cornfield in straight-away center.
Visitors to a Danish zoo got an up close and personal look at nature in action. The CNN headline says it all: Bears eat monkey, visitors shocked. I’m surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often, but needless to say the zoo is moving the monkeys to a different area.
It seems that the new movie “The Da Vinci Code” isn’t as good as it has been billed, as it just got panned by movie critics in Cannes who saw it last night in a sneak preview before wide release. All reports say that the moviegoers actually laughed aloud at one of the key dramatic moments in the film, and that there wasn’t even scattered applause once the credits started rolling, only silence from most and a few scattered whistles (boos) from others. I wonder how this news will affect the box office draw of the film.
Apparently a judge in New York thinks that an airplane is a boat with wings, in declaring it subject to maritime laws. Uhhh, ok.
In West Virginia various agencies bickered for three weeks whose responsibility it was to remove a decaying cow from a local river, while the stench became more and more unbearable for area residents, until finally a joint effort removed the rotting cow.
Kudos to Dave F. for sending me the link to a video of a wacky weatherguy in Charlotte. Seriously, this guy has issues. And it isn’t made up, this is a real TV meteorologist, only now he’s working at a station in Colorado. I haven’t yet been able to figure out if he’s still “performing” like he did in Charlotte. I seriously can’t believe the Charlotte station let this guy do half the stuff he did. Just watch and you’ll see what I mean.