babbling blue

Just some little tidbits to let you know I’m alive and still sporadically blogging.

Luciano Pavarotti died of cancer at the age of 71. He was one of the Three Tenors. This is sad news. There are now only two tenors: Placido Domingo and the other guy.

NFL Football starts this weekend. Go Pack!

I’m hot. My part of the office is not adequately air-conditioned. I had a desk fan but the cheap piece of shit stopped working a couple days ago. And do you think you can buy a fan this time of year? Well certainly not around here (the Loop). I’m fucked. Sweaty and fucked.

New iPods and an iPhone price drop. Neat, but I’m still not going to buy an iPhone. Probably not an iPod Touch either. It’s an ironic name since you can’t control it by touch like you can a classic iPod. Now I can just reach into my pocket and adjust the volume, pause or move to the next song by touch. The iPod Touch requires you to look. Perhaps it should be called the iPod Look.

The state government has still not given the CTA the money they are asking for. The fare increases and service cutbacks are 10 days away and counting. The measure has yet to pass a single house of the Legislature. And if it does, our illustrious governor has vowed to veto it. So either Governor Ratface has to get a clue or the Legislature has to pass it by enough votes to override his veto.

Updated 1:15pm: As it turns out, I did find a fan. I stopped into a Walgreen’s as I was passing by during my lunch break, and they had 6 fans! Not 6 models, mind you–6 actual fans. They now have 5 (or fewer). The new fan is bigger and noisier than the old one, but at least it moves air. We’ll see how long this one lasts. It seems I’m no longer sweaty & fucked.

Dick Cheney in 1994

Another jewel from Scott Adams’ Dilbert Blog.

I always wonder why people do research to discover the obvious. Now researchers have “discovered” that smart people have less intercourse than people of average intelligence.

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligence.php

One reason the dimwitted get so much action is that they tend to be more attractive than smart people. That’s not a coincidence. It’s genetics. Hot/dumb people are more likely to mate with other hot/dumb people and produce hot/dumb kids. Here’s a headline you’ll never see: “Nobel Prize winner for physics thanked his supermodel parents for all of their support.”

Seems to be about right to me…

From Forbes:

Forget coffee when it’s time to sober up. Instead, check out the real estate listings in New York or Los Angeles.

There, buyers pay $1 million for a property that might fetch half that elsewhere. The disparity illustrates how affordability has been spiraling out of control in places on the East and West coasts.

For example, in the first quarter of 2001, 42.3% of homes sold in Los Angeles were available to the median earning household. But in the first quarter of 2007, only 3% of homes sold there were affordable to those households earning the median income.

What are the 10 least affordable cities? I’ll tell you:

1. Los Angeles, CA
2. San Francisco, CA
3. San Diego, CA
4. New York City, NY
5. Miami, FL
6. Sacramento, CA
7. Las Vegas, NV
8. Seattle, WA
9. Boston, MA
10. Orlando, FL

For the most part this is a Where’s Where list of places I probably wouldn’t want to live anyway. Notice there isn’t a single city in the Midwest on the list! Of course, I think my days in the Midwest are probably numbered, so I’ll have to eventually find someplace affordable to live. Unless things change drastically in the next couple years, that won’t be any of the places above.

An “overheard in the elevator” story.

I was in the elevator going downstairs for my afternoon coffee and one other guy was on it with me. He’s a middle-aged (perhaps a little older) white guy on his way downstairs for a smoke break. The door opens on an intermediate floor and a middle-aged Indian guy (from the country, not Native American) got on and this took place.

White Guy: Hey there!
Indian Guy: Hello, [name]
White Guy: You know what General Custer said, right?
Indian Guy: No…
White Guy: The only good Indian is a dead Indian.
Me: *jaw drops*
…silence…
White Guy: Of course, that’s the other kind of Indian…

The Indian guy recovered gracefully and mentioned Christopher Columbus, wondering how he could have thought he was in India. The conversation proceeded innocuously from there.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time. I hope “Wait Wait” gets a hold of this.

Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.

Read it! It’s short, and you won’t be sorry.

Update (4/30/2007): Sadly, this has turned out to be a hoax. But it still made me laugh.
Update (7/02/2007): Oops, I lost the link in the transition. Oh well!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know it’s been a bad couple of days around here. By around here I don’t mean here (Chicago) or here (the Internet). I mean it in a broader and more easterly sense. Not that I’m making any sense, so I’ll just move on. Records are getting smashed, and in very bad ways.

In the past few days the Northeastern U.S. has been getting hammered with an incredible storm, with rainfall (and snowfall) amounts quadrupling or more previous records–so far 8 inches of rain has fallen in NYC’s Central Park, and 17 inches of snow has been reported in Vermont. According to CNN as of this morning, at least 15 deaths have been attributed to the storm thus far. Hundreds of thousands are without power and countless people have had to evacuate their flooded homes. It’s a real sloppy mess over there.

And overshadowing the news of the storm was the tragic mass shooting (I’m avoiding the more colorful terms favored by the media) at Virginia Tech. The latest body count was an unbelievable 32 people, making this the largest mass shooting in American history. This is not the kind of record we like to see get broken.

While I’m sure none of them are likely to read this, my sympathy goes out to the family and friends of the victims of both disasters. I hope the wounded are able to recover and that the flood victims don’t lose everything they own.

And a virtual moment of silence to remember the deceased…
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That is all for now.

I needed an afternoon pick-me-up, so I just bought a can of Pepsi out of the vending machine at work.

When I used to work on a different floor here, the vending machine was laid out differently. On my old floor, cans of Pepsi were found in slot B9. I told myself that must be a sign that drinking Pepsi was actually good for me, despite all evidence to the contrary. (Get it? B9. . . benign? I debated on whether or not I should explain this, but decided I probably should.) Of course I didn’t really believe that. But now that I’m up a few floors higher, Pepsi is in B1 and B2. And it doesn’t seem as good for me any more. I have no empirical evidence to support this, but I suspect I may be buying less Pepsi now. It’s strange how symbolism can work on our minds sometimes, even when it’s completely irrational and we know it!

However, I just discovered something good! Pepsi is “VERY LOW SODIUM”! I know this because it tells me so right above the Nutrition Facts. Never mind the 41g of sugar or the 150 calories. A can of Pepsi contains only 1% of my daily sodium intake! And if that isn’t benign, I don’t know what is.

Happy 2007, all. I survived my vacation, though there was a time when I doubted that I would. More on that in a future post, if I can get myself to put it down in words. The vacation was relaxing, and a lot of fun. The beaches were beautiful, the weather was lovely and so were some of the boys. Photos will be posted soon, I hope. I’ll put a link on here when they’re available.

I am not enjoying being back at work (and school). Or in this shitty-ass Chicago weather. It was apparently mild here while I was gone, then it decided to get cold upon my return. Figures.

I’ll close this brief post with further proof of something we already knew. Mariah Carey (Scary) is crazy:

“Literally, I’ll have 20 humidifiers around my bed,” Carey told V Magazine. “It’s like sleeping in a steam room. … The ceiling is pitched so the water can’t fall on my head, and it all drips down to the side, and the TV is behind glass.”
She went on to say that it’s tough to avoid promoting promiscuity through her songs and her image because she’s so naturally hot.

Ohhhhhkay.

(Excerpted from the Chicago RedEye, January 9th, page 36)

The MPAA—which I will stop short of calling a terrorist organization, because that’s completely inappropriate—has partnered with the Los Angeles Area Boy Scouts to create a new merit badge.

Now merit badges are available for a variety of areas, including First Aid, Forestry, Art, Music, Reading, Hiking, Electricity, etc. And what’s this new one? Why, it’s in Respecting Copyrights, of course. After reading some . . .ummm. . . information provided by the MPAA and doing a presentation (for example “Research peer to peer websites—describe to your troop what they are and how they are sometimes used to illegally trade copyrighted materials”) a Scout earns a merit badge in Respecting Copyrights.

Not just Copyrights, but Respecting Copyrights. The curriculum neglects issues such as fair use, the public domain and the limited durations of copyrights. I guess the idea is to get kids while they are young and susceptible to indoctrination learning.

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