Number three
Hey, check it out. I drove in behind Number Three this morning. In fact, I nearly drove right up Number Three’s backside trying to snap this picture. Cadillac deVille. Living well on my dime. I wonder who it is? I suppose Number One is the governor, and Number Two is the lieutenant governor, so Number Three is…the governor’s best friend? The head of the Registry of Motor Vehicles? Boy, I bet this guy can blow through all the red lights he likes.
May 11, 2007 — 7:17 am
Comments: 11
http://www.carboncreditkillers.com/
The commenter Entropy posted this OT gem in a thread over at Ace’s, and it totally deserves a thread of its own, so here goes. Looks like they’ve registered both CarbonDeductions.com and CarbonCreditKillers.com. Wouldn’t want anyone horning in on the lucrative carbon credit nullifying market, I reckon.
Why We Do It
The reason we sell Carbon Debits is simple – we want to take away the pathetic excuse of Carbon Credits from those liberals who hide their shame filled lives behind money-bought lunacy. Carbon Credits are simply a way for the rich (Al Gore) to continue to hypocritically live lives that look nothing like what they try to enforce on everyone else in society. We want to take away those excuses.
Our goal is to completely wipe out every Carbon Credit ever bought by selling their nullifying opposite – the Carbon Debit. The guilt and shame that caused people to buy Carbon Credits in the first place will be placed back on them as we let them know that their actions caused us to nullify their credits. They are the cause of us killing trees; they need to face up to their guilt.
This message is important for one reason – Far Left Liberals are lunatics that operate solely on shame of themselves, their success, their country, and their wealth. It is time to expose their ideas and self-defeating idiocy – and selling Carbon Debits is the best way to do that.
Oh, man. I’m in.
— 7:03 am
Comments: 2
‘Tard offsets
Lest anyone think I throw around the “R” word with unduly casual alacrity, I beg exception under the universal “you’re allowed to make fun of your own” rule. See, I rode the short bus for three years.
Ha ha! You guys are minions of a Special Needs Weasel!
Here’s how it went down. After several years of precocious juvenile delinquency, I earned myself a trip to boarding school. It wasn’t military school; more of a finishing school for wayward dumbasses. I put up with about six weeks of that before I went AWOL. Idiots. I was an habitual rule breaker. What made them think the cure for that was more and tougher rules?
After The Man caught up with me and sent me home, no-one was quite sure what to do with me. The term was well under way at respectable schools, and I wasn’t exactly respectable school material at that point in my career. It was the early seventies, and society was just beginning to recast eternal human conditions such as “obnoxious” and “stupid” as mental disorders, thereby tapping into rich sources of federal funding. “Special schools” of dubious legitimacy were springing up all over. I got sent to an extra-specially dubious one for evaluation.
After three days of tests, I was declared sooper genius level in English, a year behind my grade level in math and an apparent congenital sufferer of “minimal cerebral dysfunction.” I always thought that was a wastebasket diagnosis for “something bad wrong, but we don’t know what.” But I recently mentioned it in conversation to a friend who’s a psych nurse, and she was like, “Oh, no…that’s what they originally called ADD.”
And I’m like, “Get! Out! ADD?! Moi?! I’m the least ADD person I know. I can amuse myself for hours staring at a particularly interesting maple leaf.”
And she’s like, “oh, ADD isn’t just hyperactive. It also covers daydreamers and chronic procrastinators.”
And I’m like, “Oh.”
So there you have it. Fair cop. I went to ‘Tard Academy for three years. It was actually pretty sweet. I did a lot of sitting in the corner with a text book. For some classes, they clustered a varying number of us of roughly similar intellectual level. It amounted to tutoring, pretty much. For meals and recess, we were all mixed together. That was the most painful part; getting my ass handed to me at kickball by people who had difficulty speaking in complete sentences and adding small sums.
I don’t think there were ever more than twenty of us, and no two with exactly the same label. The intellectual range was from above average to quite low, but nobody was snobby about it and we looked after each other pretty well. It was, all in all, not a bad memory.
And, as a result of the experience, I own the word “retarded” and its charming contemporary contractions “retard” and “tard”. I bought and paid for them.
The last three years I spent in a regular High School; decent GPA, aced my SAT’s. No harm, no foul. And the best part is telling tales around my family. All my stories start with, “when I was in Retarded School…”
My parents flinch and cry out, “Oh, you were not!”
Oh, but I was.
May 10, 2007 — 5:45 pm
Comments: 18
Notable by its absinthe
Hey, somebody in New York worked out how to make a street legal absinthe. Per their website (warning: tinkly piano music) they expect to ship the first bottles to New York City and the Hamptons at the end of this month.
Absinthe is made with wormwood, one constituent of which — thujone — is what makes the drink illegal in the US. Thujone is a GABA receptor antagonist; it causes convulsions at high levels and is regulated in most places. Absinthe with thujone levels below 10 parts per million is still legal in many European countries, and is imported pretty freely. This new manufacturer made absinthe per several 19th Century recipes and discovered that the thujone levels in the traditional article were really quite small. Once eliminated entirely the FDA permitted them to go ahead.
A lot of crap is talked about absinthe in general, and thujone in particular. The latter has roughly the molecular shape of THC and was thought to act similarly. It does not. Absinthe is supposed to cause drunkenness with clarity; visual saturation; hallucinations, even. I always heard it burnt out your optic nerves and you went bliiind. As near as I can tell, it’s all booollshit. Absinthe was just the Reefer Madness of la Belle Epoch.
I had to have some. I bought a big pyramidal bottle of the stuff for stupid money in England one year. I was like, “get me! I’m the world’s tallest Toulouse-Lautrec!”
The absinthe ritual is very particular: an ounce of vile green liqueur is poured into a glass. A slotted spoon is balanced across the top of the glass with a sugar cube poised in the middle. Slowly, drop by drop, ice water is dripped over the sugarcube and into the glass until the contents go from green to swirly, opalescent white.
Screw that. It’s just liquor and sugarwater. I drank mine on the rocks.
Despite having ingested my fair share of illicit chemicals, I have the same reaction every time. The moment I swallow, it’s like, “Oh my god you stupid fucking monkey, what have you done? It’s inside you now!!!”
After a couple of ounces, I thought, “Heyyyy…I know this sensation. It’s…alcohol!”
Feels like booze, looks like mouthwash, tastes like licorice. Jesus, how I hate licorice.
Further reading: the Virtual Absinthe Museum is fun. Apparently, old bottles of pre-ban absinthe are forever turning up in Europe, and they will sell you an ounce or two. They don’t tell you what it costs, which tells you what it costs. These people are good, too. They run another pricetag free site that sells nothing but bottles of assorted hooch older than fifty years.
May 9, 2007 — 5:09 am
Comments: 11
Stupid capitalist tricks
My fridge light blew awhile back. After spending days opening the refrigerator and thinking “<gasp!> The fridge is dead!” I finally got around to buying a new bulb today.
Either the profit margin on these things is very small, or GE is just messing with me. The smallest number of bulbs you can buy is two. They also sold a four pack.
Let’s see. This fridge is about ten years old, and this is my first bulb replacement. Yes, I’m sure a decade from now when the next one goes, I’ll know right where I put that spare. Especially if I put it in a drawer I use a lot and bat it out of my way for ten years.
May 8, 2007 — 4:37 pm
Comments: 17
Elderly Aussies build clandestine drug labs
They’re making Nembutal for euthanasia purposes.
Nembutal is a venerable barbiturate with a variety of uses, from sleeping aid to seizure control. It’s used to euthanize animals. Also people in Australia until ten years ago when, I gather, their assisted suicide law was struck off the books.
That latter fact is significant here, I suspect. Per the article, twenty Aussies chipped in $2,000 each and spent two years of painful trial and error learning to make the stuff. They have plans for four labs. They name the people involved and the location of the proposed labs. Why, after all this toil and sweat, would you nark your operation out the moment you achieve your goal? It smells of publicity stunt.
And that’s a shame. Because this is a significant conversation the West needs to have with itself, and we need to do it without posturing, bullshit or book burnings.
When I was younger, I was strongly pro-euthanasia. It was entirely selfish. I am a coward. I wanted to be sure there would be an easy way out if I ever needed it. Something that didn’t involve leaving behind a really icky tableau for somebody else to clean up. I still think the only moral dimension to self-murder is the mess you leave behind. If you don’t have ultimate ownership of your own life, what rights can you possibly have?
But I have changed my thinking about what constitutes a life worth living. I don’t have much experience of death, thank the whatevers, but I have seen a little. More than once, I have watched, amazed, as someone turned and fought keenly to hold onto a life I would have thought nothing but misery. My faith in the welcomeness of death has been somewhat shaken.
I once thought the only moral delimma surrounding euthanasia would be crafting the law controlling how we choose death for someone else. You know, “yeah, oh sure…Grandma always said she’d rather die than be an inconvenience. Trust me.” But there’s something else in this article that’s a real craw-sticker.
One of the illegal manufacturers, Bron Norman, said the drug should be available for those who wish to commit suicide when they have outlived their useful life.
Useful life. I fucking hate that expression, and not merely because I am, personally, useless. It’s like “giving back to the community” — it implies that a human being is a net negative until he proves otherwise. I cannot tell you how violently offensive and wrong I think this idea is. I’m an atheist; I’m not arguing from some traditional notion of what a God thinks life is worth. It’s entirely possible to develop a belief in human exceptionalism entirely by way of being one and observing others.
I might even go so far as to measure the worth of a society by how it treats its useless. Haven’t we dug up Neanderthals who were clearly so crippled they were in the care of others for years?
If we’re developing a climate in which people are encouraged to value their lives by the contribution they make, then I don’t think we’re ready for legalized euthanasia. We’ll have to wait until we level up to Neanderthals.
— 12:07 pm
Comments: 23
Nertz to you
No, not you…them. You know. Them.
I’m sitting in the lobby of the building next door, soaking up a lovely five-bar wifi signal. I haven’t been over here for ages, but I used to work in this building. So half the people walking by are, like, “hey, Weasel! Where you been?”
“Oh, you know. Over there somewhere. I’m here to steal your wifi.”
“Great! Help yourself.”
And I might, too. I got a new laptop battery for my birthday, which untethers me considerable. O, I have slipped the surly bonds of cubicle.
Yeah. Some time in the recent past, I had a birthday. I’m not going to tell you exactly when. It’s not that I don’t trust you — gosh, you guys are the bestest minions a weasel ever had. Only, I’m one of those paranoid types. Date of birth, mother’s maiden name…brrr. Kryptonite. I believe there’s a bot out there right this minute crawling the web, one measly singularity shy of stitching it all together; sweasel.com plus alt.support.pee-shy plus the Class of ’78 High School Reunion Committee plus my recent credit card records equals…well, I don’t know, exactly. I’m not in a hurry to find out.
The battery came from a place that reconditions them on the cheap. I’m very pleased. They promise substantially longer battery life than a manufacturer’s original battery at about a third of the cost. The instructions recommend completely charging and discharging a new battery at least five times to get it up to the full charge. I’m on cycle #3 at the moment, and currently getting about three hours a go.
Have you ever opened up a laptop battery? Inside, there are…well, batteries. Like regular old rechargeable batteries, taped together in sequence. How the manufacturers have the gall to charge upwards of a Franklin for that is anybody’s guess. I suspect what these guys do is crack open the case and replace those batteries with newer ones of higher spec. You can send them your old one to refill at a very low cost, or buy the whole thing for a bit more. I opted for the latter, so I can use the new battery when I actually need battery power, and use my crappy old one as emergency backup when I’m plugged into the AC. That constant trickle charge is apparently the battery slayer.
Well, I’m babbling. Gosh, it feels grand.
May 7, 2007 — 12:52 pm
Comments: 14
Friday, May 4
Why not vote Weasel? You’re going to get one anyway.
May 4, 2007 — 3:01 pm
Comments: 28
Okay, you know what? Even I am offended
I mean, I barked out a little moronlaugh when I saw it, but jeez. This is what happens when you stifle vigilantism: people do shit like this without secretly worrying somebody’s going to burn down his nice little fence company. Somebody angry. And crippled.
Like that guy on the left, who is both, according to the caption (I can’t link directly to the picture, it’s part of a slideshow on Local6.com, Florida).
This was once an important brake on stupid speech in a country that has very few legal brakes on speech: the concept of unprotected “fighting words.” The idea was upheld by the Supremes 9-0 in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire in 1942. Per Wikipedia:
Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, had purpotedly told a New Hampshire town marshal who was attempting to prevent him from preaching “You are a God-damned racketeer” and “a damned fascist” and was arrested. The court upheld the arrest…
Pretty strong language for a Jehovah’s Witness. My local bunch just ring the doorbell on Saturday mornings and leave copies of Watchtower.
May 3, 2007 — 4:22 pm
Comments: 18
I. Rule. The. World.
I’m bored with me and my stupid problems. I’m going to play computer games tonight.
I bought myself a copy of Civilization IV. I know, I know…it’s a two year old game now. I’m too old to pay gamers’ money for video cards these days, so it’s the geriatric lineup for me.
Actually, I bought myself two copies of Civilization IV. Because why? Because I’m a drunk, that’s why. I ordered one copy and several days later, I woke up thinking, “I bought something neat on Amazon ‘buy it used’ last night. I wonder what it was?” I didn’t check. This happens to me a lot, and I never second guess it. I walked around for days with a happy “a special surprise is in the mail” feeling. Then it came.
If I lived in Puritan times, they’d make me spend the rest of my life with the game box pinned to my hat and “Putrid Drunkarde” sewn across my pinafore in lime green cross-stitch.
Anyhoo. I was a huge fan of Civ I (and II). It was like a magic ant farm. I could explore the world and nurture my people and build a great civilization. I was far enough ahead of the AI that I never got my ass completely kicked and most always played until the time limit ran out with no clear winner. I cultivated my cities, conquered a little around the edges of my territory, enjoyed watching my nation grow from mud huts to space stations. I was a benevolent, leisurely dictator. It was the game SimCity should’ve been but somehow never was.
And every once in a while, I would draw down a happy, blessèd game, where accidents of geography and the luck of the draw handed me the ultimate prize. Where my more tech-savvy rivals spent the Dark Ages kicking each other’s asses and the only nations left standing by Victoria’s day were relics of the stone age, shaking flint spears and ululating while Mighty Exalted Weaseltanks squished them like bugs.
I. Ruled. The. World.
Good times.
When I got Civ III, I was delighted by the graphics and thoroughly pissed off by the gameplay. It was as though Sid Meier had let loose a bunch of ignorant twenty-something kindergarten teachers on his AI. Suddenly, the NPC’s were horribly aggressive about territory. No more leisurely exploration of the planet; if you didn’t plop down half-baked cities as fast as humanly possible — some time before the Iron Age — your neighbors swiftly corraled you within unsustainable borders.
And technology? Every culture in the world developed scientifically at exactly the same pace. The reviews described this as “more realistic.” Meh. Anybody at Firaxis ever heard of Papua Fucking New Guinea?
So I held off on IV. The reviews were glowing, but they glowed for that turd of a III, too.
Wish me luck. I’m…umm…screw it. I think I’ll just read a book tonight.
May 2, 2007 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 8