Updated Dr. Seuss

Although I know that Dr. Seuss was actually a pretty left-wing guy, and would probably love Obama:

I do not like this Uncle Sam, 
I do not like his health care scam. 
I do not like these dirty crooks, 
or how they lie and cook the books. 
I do not like when Congress steals, 
I do not like their secret deals. 
I do not like this speaker, Nan ,  
I do not like this 'YES WE CAN.' 
I do not like this spending spree, 
I'm smart, I know that nothing's free. 
I do not like your smug replies, 
when I complain about your lies. 
I do not like this kind of hope. 
I do not like it, nope, nope, nope! 

Best Movie Line Ever

Best Movie Line Ever

From a 1940 Bob Hope movie:



And more true now than ever!

START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

1. Open a new file in your computer.
2. Name it 'Barack Obama'.
3. Send it to the Recycle Bin.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin.
5. Your PC will ask you: 'Do you really want to get rid of 'Barack Obama?'
6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'

Feel better?

GOOD! - Tomorrow we'll do Nancy Pelosi!

Humor

Humor

Seen on Facebook:

Saw on the internet that Haiti is without a government. To help out, I am donating one Obama, one Pelosi, one Reid, one Frank, one Coakley and two Clintons! They may keep them permanently! I'd give them a constitution; but I can't find mine right now!

Harry Plotter

Harry Plotter

I mentioned the efforts of the unknown programmer Harry to get the HadCRUT datasets to reproduce, so that the data could be plotted to match the previous output. The following parody of Harry Potter and Hogwarts was too good to pass by.

Governor Schwarzenegger's Veto Message

Governor Schwarzenegger's Veto Message

I can't decide whether to be disappointed at the vulgarity, or impressed with the subtlety. Governor Schwarzenegger was very disappointed with a bill put on his desk--and he vetoed it. And his veto message, if you read the first letter of each of the seven lines, spells out a message. A message that I am too polite to repeat.



Coincidence, his staff says. Yeah, right. And that's why he picked the phrase, "kicks the can down the alley?"

An Irish Explanation of Derivatives Markets

An Irish Explanation of Derivatives Markets

This arrived in the mail. It's funny, and it's a reasonably accurate description of what went wrong. There's only one thing missing from it: Heidi starts this insane "drink now, pay later" program because the banker selling the bonds was threatening to have the city health inspector close her bar if she didn't do this. It's an "Irish" explanation because alcohol is the driving force. (As an Irish-American friend's mother once explained, "Alcoholism is the curse of the Irish." Some of us would say, alas, it's only disproportionately the curse of the Irish; there's no shortage of damage elsewhere.)

An IRISH Explanation of Derivative Markets

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses. One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.

Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers. Now, do you understand?

Ways To Shorten Emergency Room Visits

Ways To Shorten Emergency Room Visits

This arrived in my email, and I got a good laugh out of it. (Not particularly applicable here in Idaho, but when I lived in California--this might work!)

The other day, I needed to go to the emergency room.

Not wanting to sit there for 4 hours, I put on my old Army fatigues and stuck a patch onto the front of my shirt that I had downloaded off the Internet.

When I went into the E.R., I noticed that 3/4 of the people got up and left. I guess they decided that they weren't that sick after all. Cut at least 3 hours off my waiting time.

Here's the patch. Feel free to use it the next time you're in need of quicker emergency service.

Some Things Never Change

Some Things Never Change

A bowie-knife, dirk, or pistols, commonly occupy the desk-drawer of Congressional members; who, as a close observer remarked to me—"not only look four ways at once, but in manners and deportment strongly remind me of runaway convicts." [Henry Cook Todd, Notes Upon Canada and the United States: From 1832 to 1840 2nd ed. (Toronto: Rogers and Thompson, 1840), 181]

Okay, doubtless not completely fair back then, or now, but I was looking for references to Bowie knives in that period, and I thought you might get a laugh out of the description of members of Congress.

The Fail Blog

The Fail Blog

Not quite as funny as ThereIFixedIt.Com, but there are some amusing examples of communication failures on this page at the FAIL Blog. There's a street sign for "Meth Bible Camp." (Not a combination that you normally would imagine.) An amusingly placed manhole. And a most tragic spelling of "School Zone."

There was one that wasn't funny at first, until I spoke out load the name of the joint venture between Russian gas giant Gazprom and Nigeria's state gas company: "Nigaz." Say it with a short "i"!

UPDATE: And make sure you look at the cake decorated with unsupported HTML!

Website For Those Who Believe That Everyone Is A Handyman

Website For Those Who Believe That Everyone Is A Handyman

This should fix that belief. The web site is "There, I Fixed It." Some of my favorite examples are the use of Legos as building repair materials; a use of keys to solve an outlet adapter problem; what would seem to be an attempt to see how many building codes a single hot water heater installation can violate; a marvelous substitute for a vehicle lift; the marvelous uses of plastic wrap and duct tape as a substitute for auto body work; and a fine example of how to make a hot tub without electricity.

My worst days at car and home repair seem positively genius by comparison.

Very Un-PC Humor

Very Un-PC Humor

This was forwarded to me, and who knows, maybe it didn't really come from a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. But it sounds like it could have, and it's still pretty funny!

US troops definition of Taliban

The US troops in Afghanistan proved they have retained their sense of humor. One of them sent this. "YOU MAY BE TALIBAN IF ..."

1. You refine heroin for a living but you have a moral objection to beer.

2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher but you can't afford shoes.

3. You have more wives than teeth.

4. You wipe your butt with your bare hand but consider bacon "unclean."

5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

6. You can't think of anyone you haven't declared Jihad against.

7. You consider television dangerous but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.

8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.

9. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least one.

10. You've always had a crush on your neighbor's goat.

More Humorous Posters

More Humorous Posters

The first one really gave me a laugh.



The second one is a little more vulgar in language than I prefer, but it really captures the insanity of our first Affirmative Action President. (Why couldn't our first black President have been Thomas Sowell?)

Humorous Gun Posters

Humorous Gun Posters

A reader sent a collection. Here are some of the more amusing examples.

More Global Warming Humor

More Global Warming Humor

Over at Ursi's Blog. Trust me: you'll never find penguins and polar bears within 20,000 miles of each, much less this close!

Global Warming Humor

Global Warming Humor

It's rather like that other item floating around, that shows that the declining content of women's underwear is causing global warming--strictly intended as humor. Members of the global warming cult are wrong (or at least, not clearly correct), but at least the real scientists do actually use multivariate correlation analysis--not stupid bivariate correlations.

The Severity of the Ammunition Shortage

The Severity of the Ammunition Shortage

An amusing item over at gunbroker.com, which I found because of Snowflakes in Hell linking to it:

Offered for your consideration is one round (not one case or one box but one single round) of genuine .45 ACP ammunition. This is something rarely seen (at least since November 4th) and is hard to find at any price. The round of ammo includes a real brass casing; one full metal jacket bullet weighing 230 grains; a generous amount of hard-to-obtain gunpowder; and one nearly impossible to locate primer. Yes, you read that correctly. This round of ammo actually comes fully equipped with a real primer! Just try finding one of those! Imagine the thrill of actually being able to shoot your gun for a change. You will be the talk of the neighborhood when news gets around that you actually fired your pistol with your round of ammo. You may want to keep your round of ammo as an investment as prices are sure to keep rising.

That's just an excerpt.

A Real Use For Old Cell Phones

A Real Use For Old Cell Phones

This CNN report involves a cell phone found in an unlikely place. Now, if only there was a way to pull cell phones on fishhooks.

"Sheep: & "LED" Don't Usually Belong In The Same Sentence

"Sheep" & "LED" Don't Usually Belong In The Same Sentence

Have you ever wanted to explain to a technically challenged sort how a computer screen can display pictures? Here's a video that puts sheep and LEDs to a remarkable purpose. Imagine each LED as a pixel on the screen...

Weird Street Names

Weird Street Names

I mentioned several days ago that there were a couple of weird street names in the extreme southwest of Boise, off Eagle Road: Easyjet and Brandi's Jewels. A reader explains:

Easyjet and Brandi's Jewels are, or were, race horses from the Boise area. My folks raised quarterhorses and bred one of their horses to EasyJet. EasyJet's prime time would have been in the 70's or early 80's I think. My folks horse had a couple babies that did fairly well in the racing environment.

And that's about right. The subdivisions are 1980s, I would guess, by the appearance of the houses.

Many street names have obvious origins. There's a reason that most cities in America have a Main Street, or a Broadway, and the numbered and lettered streets are also obvious. (Boring, but simple to find your way around town.) But I would bet that not one Los Angeleno in a thousand has a clue why Rosecrans Boulevard is so named. It's for a Union Army general who was later a Congressman representing Los Angeles, and who bought up 16,000 acres of "worthless" land in the Los Angeles basin for $2.50 per acre. Many cities have a Euclid Street, instead of 13th, because of the same superstition that meant that many skyscrapers didn't have a 13th floor. (Euclid's Elements consisted of 13 books--hence the substitution for 13th Street.)