Come On Tennessee...Really?

On an election day when it seemed like people running for office were being held accountable for the stupid things they've said or done and the country seemed like it was getting its collective head out of its ass on the subject of marriage equality and bigotry, Tennessee stands alone as the state that made the dumbest move in the country.

Whether it was Missouri, a very conservative state rejecting Todd Akin or Richard Murdoch in Indiana, voters seemed to be holding politicians accountable for their statements.

Akin, of course, famously said that women who get "legitimately" raped can't get pregnant because their body "shuts that stuff down." "That stuff" presumably is the icky and mysterious inside parts of a woman that makes him squeamish. The inference being that either all women who claim to get pregnant via a rape are lying about being raped, or even worse that they were somehow asking for it. No matter how you slice it that opinion is reprehensible and Akin's political career went up in flames almost immediately.

Murdoch, on the other hand, said that a woman getting pregnant from a rape was "god's will." You should know better than to say things like that! The voters sent this ignorant jerk home last night. I understand the religious cop-out that when something bad happens it's "god's will" but come on, use your head here man! Don't say that it's god's will for women to be raped! Everyone knows that sounds bad!

It might seem that it's cruel to end these guys' careers over one comment made off the cuff. But think about it....shouldn't they know better than to talk about rape so casually? Rape is an EXTREMELY sensitive topic and they should have their policies and their feelings on the subject well thought-out and they should have the ability to be very clear about their positions on difficult concepts. If they were unprepared to speak clearly on such a sensitive issue, are they prepared to be leaders of the people? Seems like they're not.


The thing we need most from our leaders is good judgment. And these guys demonstrated that they don't have it. Period. So being rejected by states that would otherwise seem to embrace them is a good thing.

And speaking of good things there's Maryland and Maine voting to legalize marriage equality for homosexuals, and even Colorado legalizing marijuana for recreational use. A lot of the country really seems to be making progress*. 

But then we come to Tennessee. Still representing the south, still backwards as hell. Middle Tennessee folks elected a man to congress named Dr. Scott DesJarlais.  DesJarlais, a medical doctor, is a pro-life, anti-choice Republican, as most Tennessee politicians are. But when this guy got his mistress, who happens to be one of his patients, pregnant he pressured her to get an abortion. Seriously! A MEDICAL DOCTOR got his MISTRESS, one of his PATIENTS, PREGNANT. I'm not a doctor, but don't we know what causes this? Then THE PRO-LIFE REPUBLICAN talked her into getting an ABORTION, and RECORDED THE CONVERSATION. Another mistress, who was another one of his patients (!), claims that he gave her prescriptions for pain medications for recreational use, which is why she was involved with him. Are any of those things red flags? Does this sound like the kind of responsible individual we need representing our state in congress?

Come on Tennessee! You're better than this! What the fuck?


*(If you think that's not progress, you're stupid. Gay marriage and smoking pot never hurt anyone. If you think they should be illegal you're just plain wrong and please go back to the 50's. It wasn't wrong then either, but you'll have more company. I'm not gay and I don't smoke pot. I don't stand to gain anything by the legalization of these things. It's just the right thing you do, and every reasonable person knows it.)

Fuelly

Poised

Shadows are getting long after work these days. I suppose after daylight savings ends this weekend I will be driving home in the dark.

I still love my little car, even moreso after my long trip last week. It has its quirks, I was a little worried when the seat got stuck in the recline position and wouldn't come back up. The idea of driving for a lot of hours without any back support was not exactly thrilling, but the seat finally cooperated and fixed itself. I just signed up for Fuelly, which is a website that tracks your fuel mileage. There's a smartphone app to input your fuel-ups. I also have been using Waze, a very cool traffic/GPS application for smart phones. I have even been notified of upcoming police sitting in speed traps, which is worth the price of admission. Which is free.

Scooting weather is officially over, for my commute anyway. My outdoor thermometer read 25 degrees this morning. Even with all my warm riding gear that's never gonna happen. I'm lucky to have a car I love to drive.

I Call Bullshit

I call bullshit on all the people crying about the replacement referees in the NFL.

All I would hear every week of a normal NFL season is how each person's favorite team is getting fucked by the officials, that every call against their team is a bad call, and every call in favor of their team was justice handed down from god himself.

Now I keep hearing the replacement officials are doing a horrible job. Really? Based on what people have said up until now is it even POSSIBLE for the officiating to be worse? Are they not bringing the game to a screeching halt every 10 minutes to go look at a replay? Because I see absolutely no difference. I'm not seeing any more coaches' challenges, I'm seeing every single turnover play called either right or wrong and being upheld or overturned by replays.

Yes, I am seeing tons of missed calls, and tons of wrong calls, and tons of silly calls. But there was ALWAYS tons of them. Has anything changed?

I've never heard anyone say "wow the officiating in this college game is so much worse than the officiating in the pro league." Because NOBODY EVER THOUGHT THAT. Nobody ever said "this ref will never make it at the pro level." Nobody even knew or cared where officials come from.

Admit it. If you didn't know there was a referee lockout/strike or whatever it is, you wouldn't even notice a difference in the officiating in the NFL this year. You'd say it sucks, because it always has sucked. Only now it sucks, and you have to hear the asshole announcers talk about "regular officials vs. replacement officials."

Those poor assholes have to fill four hours of football every game when the action only occurs for about 15 minutes of that time. Don't give them such an annoying subject to talk about! They are desperate for something to fill that time with. To them this is a gift. A painfully annoying gift.

Last I heard everyone hated officials. Why is everyone suddenly so in love with the referees they hated so much when they called your favorite team for holding last year? I've never met anyone that liked officials. Are they the guys who loved being hall monitor in school?

The officials union and the NFL have a disagreement, and they will eventually get it worked out.  The replacement referees will do an equally shitty job until that happens. If you have a problem with that, get over it.

Realization

I used to think I was the magic frog in an ordinary garden. I realized I was an ordinary frog in a magic garden. It's so much better. Tnx GBS.

A goat standing on his house

Enjoy!

I am not a cat person

But this is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while:

RIP Tony Scott

Tony Scott directed one of my favorite films, True Romance, and by doing so made Reservoir Dogs possible. He chose to end his life rather than suffer the slow, painful and degrading death due to inoperable brain cancer.

Rest in peace.

I Screamed

For ice cream! Ice cream sandwich that is! **Warning, all computery type talk ahead**

I had a bit of a nerdgasm yesterday when I read online that Ice Cream Sandwich was available for me. For those slightly less nerdly, Ice Cream Sandwich is the nickname for version 4 of the Android Operating System. It has been available on certain smart phones and tablet devices for a while, but yesterday the company that makes my Android Tablet (Toshiba) released a version for my tablet.

This was not all good news. Most users got a notification on their actual devices that they could connect to the Toshiba update location and download the new OS and have in installed automatically. This option was not available to me. Being a nerd, I "rooted" my tablet the day I received it. It's called "rooting" because you are giving yourself "root" access to the device, derived from the unix meaning of root access, meaning total access.

Basically when you run the stock version of the operating system on these devices, you are at the mercy of the manufacturer. If they want you to have certain applications on your device, you cannot delete them. If they don't want you using certain features of the device or running certain applications, they will block your ability to use them. They aren't overly restrictive, but it's annoying that they are using up your precious memory space with programs you may not want, and it's even more annoying that you are not free to do whatever you like with a device you purchased.

When you have root access, you can delete or install whatever you like. You have unrestricted access to all the features and workings of your device. This is good and bad, you could potentially break something, which is also not impossible with a stock device but a bit less likely, and you lose access to the approved update mechanism, which gets you the latest improvements and updates. And this improvement and update was something I really wanted.

Luckily for me the people who develop hacked ROMs for my tablet were really on the ball and had a rooted version of the new operating system an hour after the official version was released. AN HOUR! To say these folks were looking forward to this release is a vast understatement.

So last night was spent backing up and downloading and installing and restoring and all kinds of nerd fun. I am really liking the new OS so far. The greatest improvement is in the speed of browsing the internet and the smoothness of video playback. Since those are two of the three things I do the most on my tablet, I'd call that a tremendous improvement.

I haven't run into any bugs or significant interface changes that have bothered me. It's slightly less intuitive than it was, which is strange, but interfaces change all the time.

Coworkers

I love my coworkers with all my heart. I really really do. But sometimes they say things I just cannot fathom.

I was reading a story online about Mitt Romney's IRA account, mentioning that I've read stories that explain how it's possible to have over a hundred million dollars in the account that you are legally prohibited from putting more than six thousand dollars a year into, but I still suspect something shady must have gone on. And my coworker asked "well, how many years has he been contributing?"

$100,000,000 divided by $6,000 equals 16,666 years. Maybe he started working really really young.

At lunch today, while telling me that the best movie he's ever seen is "Transformers 2" another coworker asked me "What's 'Citizen Kane,' is that the black-and-white movie that's supposed to be about the holocaust?"

After explaining that he's talking about 'Schindler's List' and asking him about other Stephen Spielberg movies he said 'Saving Private Ryan' was not very good and 'Jaws' sucked, but if they remade it today with decent effects, it would be a lot better. "They could show from inside the shark, ripping a guy into pieces." Yes, that's exactly what 'Jaws' was missing.

The subject of 'Citizen Kane' came up because they wanted to know what was considered the best movie ever made, and I told them that a lot of people feel like 'The Godfather' was the best movie ever made. Neither of them had seen it, but one of them said "If they do a remake with modern effects, I'll probably watch that."

My coworkers usually spend lunch time with their faces buried in their smart phones. Via this we found out that 'Transformers 4' was going to happen, but they were both disappointed that Shia Labeouf was not going to be involved. When we were discussing what films they thought were good movies and why, the word 'story' was never involved. The acronyms CGI and ILM were constant, however.

I'm beginning to understand why new movies aren't quite as good as I expect them to be. I'm not the desired audience, and the desired audience doesn't want what I want. At all.

Removed

Removed by request

Chicken is as Chicken Does

Chick-Fil-A is really taking it up the ass lately.

Everything started going wrong for them when someone published a story saying that every year Chick-Fil-A gives millions of dollars to anti-gay rights organizations. It's never been a secret Chick-Fil-A is a religion oriented business, what with their being closed on Sundays. I have heard the restaurant called by the nickname "Christian Chicken," as in "Do you wanna go eat some Christian Chicken?" I went, even though I prefer my food to be more secular. Except for kosher hot dogs. Hey, I'm lactose intolerant.

But being Christian doesn't necessarily mean anti-gay. A lot of Christian people I know choose to regard the part of the bible that has been interpreted to condemn homosexuals the same way they regard the chapters that condemn getting tattoos (Leviticus 19:28) mixing two types of cloth (Leviticus 19:19) or wearing gold (1 Timothy 2:9). Not worth worrying about.

But don't tell that to the Christians in charge at Chick-Fil-A. And don't even try wearing a poly-cotton blend in that place! They will burn you at the stake. Okay maybe not. But wearing polyester doesn't make them feel all icky inside with feelings they don't understand like homosexuality does. Whatever.

Well, the publicity reached the folks that made some of the Muppet toys that Chick-Fil-A gave away to try to attract parents to the stores to buy their children chicken nuggets there instead of the fifty other chain fast food joints that have playgrounds and other good parent blackmailing mechanisms. The Muppet making people decided they didn't want to be associated with companies that give money to hate groups, and stopped providing the toys for the aforementioned blackmailing children.

All of this is fine. If Chick-Fil-A wants to give money to groups who oppose other peoples' lifestyles, whatever. Their money, they may flush it down whatever toilet they choose. I personally think that ship has sailed, and that battle is lost. Young folks could give a shit if someone is gay. Move on. Maybe go after that wearing gold thing, see how that turns out. And if the Muppet making people don't want to be a part of that mess, awesome. Good for them.

But apparently Chick-Fil-A is not as proud of their political actions as they would have you believe, because rather than admitting that the Muppet people are too ashamed of Chick-Fil-A to work with them, they claimed that there was a safety hazard in the toys, and the good people of Chick-Fil-A are doing their best to protect your children from the dangerous Muppet people's dangerous toys.

Also, Chick-Fil-A thinks you are stupid enough to believe this, and that the Internet wouldn't find out. The Internet is a hive-mind. It knows EVERYTHING. This caused a stir, Chick-Fil-A has been caught in a lie. In fact, you might say they got caught bearing false witness against their neighbors. There's something in that book they like so much about bearing false witness isn't there? It's been a long time since catechism class, but I remember that one being in the Late Night show TOP 10 list.

And when people took to Facebook, as people are wont to do, and exposed this fabrication, the fine folks at Chick-Fil-A decided to double down on the lie and create fake Facebook accounts to compound the lies and make things even worse. Because Facebook is on the Internet, and that hive-mind is still there, knowing everything.

Now that Chick-Fil-A realizes it is in the middle of a world-class fuck up of monumental proportions, it says it wants to “leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.”

Too fucking late, assholes. Are you going to get those millions of dollars back? Are you going to give the same amount to gay rights organizations? You are already contributing to the policy debate when you are giving money. You can't just back up now and say "this is none of our business."

There's a lot of places out there to get a chicken sandwich. I think I'll be going to one of the others from now on.

The Dark Knight Rises

What happened in Aurora Colorado at the premier of The Dark Knight Rises is the precise reason I don't go see movies in the movie theater anymore.

Some fucking asshole brought a six-year old and a THREE-MONTH old to a fucking theater at a Midnight showing.

That shit is intolerable.

I'm A Bad Person

Yesterday at lunch a coworker expressed with dismay "It sucks that Bob and Tom are gone!" The other coworker said "Is that why they weren't on this morning? They're gone for good?"

Apparently "Bob and Tom" are morning radio DJs out of Indianapolis (I had to ask) and the radio station in Nashville that broadcast their syndicated antics changed format to gospel music only and gave their show the axe. It doesn't count as much of a loss for me because I haven't listened to radio in years and they were on a country station anyway, I'm pretty sure.

I have listened to "morning radio" in the past, especially Howard Stern when he was in DC and later when he was syndicated from New York. I listened to his replacement in DC, a guy who called himself "The Greaseman" and managed to tell the same dirty joke a hundred thousand times until he discovered a racist one which got him fired for telling it. When I got satellite radio I listened to Opie and Anthony for quite a while, when the advertising breaks weren't so brutally often as they are on broadcast radio. I also remember listening to and enjoying the "Don and Mike" show out of DC in the afternoons on occasion. I would consider myself a fan of the medium in the past, but not for quite a while.

Now I occasionally switch to radio when going from CD to AUX on my car stereo and 99 times out of 100 I will hear a commercial. The one other time I always hear the same Bad Company song every time. I have no use for broadcast radio at all anymore. I exclusively listen to books on tape and podcasts. Particularly Adam Carolla, Mark Maron, Jay Mohr and Doug Benson.

What makes me a bad person is that I smiled when I heard that this show that my coworkers obviously enjoyed was going away. Why on earth would that give me any kind of satisfaction? They obviously enjoyed the program. Something about the fact that it was gospel music that replaced them too made me nearly laugh out loud. All I know of them was second hand stories of their antics, which sounded typically "morning zoo" and usually fairly dirty. Was it the irony? Was it pure schadenfreude? Maybe the re-tellings of "Bob and Tom" stories were tedious? I have no idea. I understand why it didn't make me sad, but why did it make me happy?

Number One

Someone asked me the other day if I still blog. I quickly told him that "blog" is a noun, not a verb! One does not "blog." One posts on a blog. One who posts on a blog is known as a "blogger."

Anyway, when I stopped being a grammar douchebag, I thought about it. I don't know why I'm not blogging. I used to think I wasn't blogging as much because Twitter was filling the void of saying snarky things on the internet. But they recently blocked Twitter here at work. Yes I have access to the firewall (the CIO's account is WIDE OPEN) and I could unblock it for myself, but since any admin can go in and see who has what access, I don't need said CIO going in and asking "why the fuck does Duggle think he needs Twitter?"

So now I'm not tweeting, and i'm not posting to my blog, what am I doing?

Answer? Nothing!

Off

A lot of people will tell you I've always been at least a little off, but today I was way off.

My misadventure started off with a miscalculation. I was headed to a picnic at my boss' boss' house, which I had never visited before and wasn't really sure where it was. I put the location into my trusty dusty motorcycle GPS and headed off on my scooter to obtain hamburgers as assigned for the party and beer for myself.

The miscalculation came when I tried to buy beer on Sunday in my county of Tennessee. Tomorrow being a holiday I completely forgot it was Sunday so I was shocked that I was unable to purchase beer with my $27 worth of raw hamburger meat pre-shaped into patties. Strike one.

I arrived at the fancy house way up on the hill far too early after a fantastic ride along Natchez Trace Parkway which runs the length of Tennessee into northern Mississippi, a beautiful unspoiled 150-mile roadway that doesn't have a straightway on it. Even the bridges, of which there are hundreds, are curved.

Instead of being the first person at the party my social anxiety completely took over and told me to scoot around for a while. The beef was in a cooler on ice packs so it would be fine for another half hour. Plus it was an opportunity to find a beer store in a county that allows alcohol to be transferred between adults on the sabbath. I found a store and the clerk looked at me sideways when I asked if he would sell me beer today. Why wouldn't we? He even asked me for ID. I realize I look young for my age, but I am FORTY FOUR. Sheesh! Okay that was actually a good thing that happened to me today.

When I got back to my boss' boss' hilly driveway I was approaching it from the opposite side, so instead of a 50 degree angle it was a 130 degree turn, and I foolishly wanted to keep my speed up for the hill so I overshot the turn and my front tire went off the pavement onto the grass. I cursed and hit the brakes, looking over my shoulder to see if I could back up without backing into traffic. When I turned my head back around my bike was headed DOWN on the left side. I quickly considered trying to hold it up but instead decided to slowly guide it down.

Unfortunately I guided it right down onto my ankle, and I was foolishly wearing shoes that did not cover my ankle as I nearly always do. I can't remember a time I've gotten on the bike without proper footwear since I twisted my ankle on it last summer. I didn't want to wear clumsy boots at the picnic but instead of bringing a better pair of shoes to wear in my spacious trunk, I wore them.

I pulled my ankle free from the bike now laying on it's side with its wheels off the ground. This is the third time I have put the bike down and each time was an exercise in stupidity. This time, however, I didn't have help lifting it back up. I attempted to lift it on my own but the pain in my ankle was making it very difficult. I abandoned hope of lifting it myself and sat down on the capsized vehicle, exhausted. It would be embarrassing when the next party attendee came along, but at least I would have help getting my bike upright.

For what seemed like 15 minutes but was actually probably 60 seconds nobody came by. I noticed that sweat was running down my arms from the 98 degree heat, and gas was flowing from the overflow spout. Things were not looking good. I got angry and decided to give it one more try, this time managing to get the bike back onto it's wheels by myself. It cranked right up (thank you Honda) and I remember thinking as I slowly tooled up the hill that nobody would know that I was down at all! Score.

But when I got to the top of the hill I barely got the kickstand down before my vision started clouding up and I felt like I was going to pass out. I don't know if it was the heat or the adrenaline rush or what but I was crashing. I grabbed a drink from my cooler and downed half of it, then sat down in the grass. That was the moment other party guests decided to arrive, rushing to me to see if I was okay. They assumed I was hot from the ride, but I told them the whole story of the off at the bottom of the hill. Embarrassment restored!

The picnic was generally pleasant after I recovered, but I was worried about my ankle the whole time. I become a hypochondriac when I have a mild injury, constantly testing it to see how bad it is. At first there was almost no pain at all, but it got progressively worse as the day went on. It remained stationary for almost the entire one-hour ride home and when I got off the bike at my house it was throbbing. I now have it elevated and after take some Tylenol and Advil it feels like I have a cramp in the top of my foot. It is unpleasant but not horribly painful.

Ironically, if my ankle doesn't improve I will have to ride my bike to work on Tuesday. I may be the only guy who drives a manual car but an automatic bike. We shall see!

Twitters Greatest Hits

When I want to post something and cant think of anything to post, I just repeat the stuff I said on Twitter!

Duh. Kia commercial where a guy has a dream where he's driving his Kia at a Motley Crue concert. And the weird part is it's Motley Crue NOW.

We need to invent a lot of shit in the next seven years to make Blade Runner accurate.

After spending 20 minutes trying to post a new profile pic to Facebook, I have decided to delete my account entirely.

I just heard on Fox News that George Zimmerman was running for office on the same ticket as Joe the Plumber.

Does anyone watch Archer? If you don't please start. Unless easily offended. Then go fuck yourself.

Gotta love a news story that says chin implants are becoming as popular as breast implants and uses pictures of breasts as graphics. Nice.

Don't be the guy who gets the entire Secret Service in trouble by not paying a Columbian hooker $46. Just don't be that guy.

I can picture everybody in the Kansas City Royals organization watching "Moneyball" and saying "what a bunch of horseshit!"

They've replaced the toilet paper in the restroom with something more closely related to roofing shingles.

The best thing about being a libertarian is your ideas will never fail because they will never actually be implemented. :|

Dog Days

I love dogs. If there is another creature on earth that is born with a greater capacity to love, I don't know what it is. The unconditional love that comes from a dog is unparallelled.

Someone (who reads very closely) asked me if I love dogs so much, why did I wait until I was 30 to get my first dog. An excellent question. My first thought was that I didn't know what I was missing, but that's not really true. Even in my 20s I used to hang out at an animal shelter and take pictures of the dogs for the local newspaper to help them get adopted. There was a dog there I absolutely adored named Mollie. (Not to be confused with my black shar-pei named Molli.)

This is Molli, not Mollie

Mollie ran the animal shelter. She was the most terrifying looking dog you've ever seen, maybe a cross between an English Bulldog and a Rottweiler. Of course she was a total sweetheart. When I would sit in the chairs in the lobby of the shelter she would come and lay her gigantic head on my thigh and look up at me with pure love. Mollie only hated two things. She hated the dog catcher, and she hated rats. I know it sounds disgusting, but this was a no-kill shelter. When they needed to expand they had an anonymous donor who gave them money to build outdoor cages out behind the shelter. So the place was really vast. And anytime you have a lot of cages with a lot of dog food around, you are going to get rodents. It's a fact of life. And I saw Mollie plow through 55 gallon trash barrels to try to catch a rat. It was the most hilariously terrifying thing I have ever seen.

Mollie was a sweetheart, but she was never leaving the shelter. That was her home. She was the queen of that castle.

This picture actually ran in a newspaper once upon a time

This was the woman who ran the shelter. Yes, it's strange that I can remember Mollie's name and not hers. They only destroyed dogs that were sick. They didn't even kill dogs that would bite. They would try to socialize the smaller dogs that were biters, and the big ones just lived out the rest of their lives in the cages. I think both the dogs in the picture above were recovering biters. Now all they wanted to do was lick you. Puppy dog kisses.

So I didn't answer the question, because I don't really know what kept me from getting a dog for so long. Maybe I never thought I was responsible enough for a dog before then? That implies a self-awareness that just doesn't fit. All I know is I always loved dogs, and I'm glad I have them now. 

Ceramic Dog

Title sounds like it would be a good P-Funk song.



The weird little thing in the corner of that picture is a ceramic cookie jar. While it doesn't technically belong to me, I have it and I don't particularly have a use for it as I do not bake. But I am not going to ship it because it will surely break, and I'm not taking it with me to Vegas this summer because I am bringing more important stuff and I'd feel dumb trying to take it through security.

Maybe you could send Waffles to get it?

I Love Italian

I could eat Italian every night and never get tired of it. When my folks visit I prefer to go with something Italian, and everyone always loves it.

This time I went with Lasagna (spelt it right thanks to my foreign language expert.) It was quite a hit!