The World's Best Divorce Letter

I stumbled across this 'joke' and found it pretty hilarious. I would post the whole thing here but it would probably be offensive to some so I'm just putting the link and you can check it out if you wish. Jump

Farecast - know when to buy

I Stumbled across this site that provides fare history and predicts whether you should buy or not. It's still in Beta so I would look for improvements but it has potential. Jump

Popping the Antique Cherry

Well it finally happened. Never thought it would. I went antiquing. Well actually I tagged along with Mrs. Net-Wurth and two of her uncles. Now I was told that this antique show...or festival...or what ever the hell you call them was rated among the best in the country. Second only to one on the west coast that's apparently...more antiquy.

If you haven't been to one of these imagine a large piece of open land...perhaps a fair ground. Now imagine that the sprawling beautiful landscape is covered with garbage. There...you're finished. Actually I'm exaggerating a bit. I have no basis for comparison but this looked like a pretty well done antique thing. And I did see some pretty interesting pieces that were probably worth a fair bit of money. But seriously...there were hundreds of thousands of items, maybe it was closer to a million. I really have no way of knowing. If you extracted all the items that were worth real serious value I think you'd probably pull out about 5% of the inventory and then you could just rope off the rest of it and put up a sign, "Landfill - bring out your junk and mark it up 20%"

Some of the interesting items: Apparently Donald Duck is a popular guy at these events. That sonofabitch was EVERWHERE. They had Donald banks, books, figurines, and yes...a 4 foot wood cutout of the fowl tempered sailor. Dead animals is another popular item. Someone apparently told these people that stuffed animal corpses could be valuable antiques. Lamps of all shapes sizes and degrees of tackiness from tasteful desk lamps to one that doubled as a beer keg. Not everything there was junk...there was a gentleman who had tons of old books. His collection was very extensive ranging from a $2 Donald Duck (surprise, surprise) Golden Book for children to a $250 first edition of 'The Gray Ghost' by Seckatary Hawkins.

I must say that all-in-all it wasn't a bad outing. We had a good time seeing the junk and the occasional interesting piece. I may even go back as long as the trips remain infrequent and I'm allowed to buy as least one double-bladed battle ax. Yes, I saw one of those too.

Blogging in your Browser

I came across a sweet little plugin for Firefox. It's a nicely done extension allowing you to blog in the browser window and post to your respective site. It also has built in metrics that you can easily check without logging in. Check out the performancing extension if you're a blogger and a fan of Firefox. One little side note about the extension...you can't publish images correctly without linking a URL to them or uploading them to an FTP server. Blogger makes it a little easier by uploading the photo to their own site.

Vote --- or Else

An interesting editorial in the NY Times. I was unaware of the manditory voting in Austrailia. Personally I wouldn't have a problem with a law like this because I vote every chance I get. And they make several excellent points about how polarized this country is becoming because the extreme bases of each party are putting people in power. When winning the elections is determined by bringing up controversial issues in order to energize bases (even if the dialogue is not at all productive) we all lose.

John Stewart (The Daily Show) put it this way. 80% of the country is made up of reasonable people who might have their differences but if they sat down and talked they could come to an understanding. The other 20% are the assholes running the country. That's not an exact quote but that was the jist of it.

My personal take on the this: I would be in complete favor of a law like the one in Austrailia. Decrying that it's taking away our 'freedom' is nonsense. Voting is a freedom but more importantly it's a responsibility that most people do not take seriously. We have abissmal voter turnout. The blame can't be placed completely on the public. When all you hear are dipshit politicians throwing mud and trying to energize the extremes it is enough to turn you off. By making it a legal responsibility you remove the incentive to energize the wackos in your base and you start trying to sway the centrists with real issues.

Weighing a Switch to a Mac

The article gives tries to be evenhanded but leaves out some important parts regarding software, cost, and options for running Windows apps like Cider and CrossOver which do not require installations of the Windows OS. Perhaps I'm only perceiving bias is due to my own preferences and feeling on the matter.

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GM to revive the Camaro muscle car

I'll probably never have one but I thought it looked cool/mean enough for a post. Jump

More AOL News: Be careful what you search for.

The blunder by AOL in releasing the search habits of around 657,000 Americans continues to generate stories about privacy and whether search engines should keep this data. Jump

Lindsay Lohan wants to visit troops in Iraq

What in the hell? She says she wants to be a sex kitten pinup like her idle...Marilyn Monroe. And she plans to learn how to shoot a gun before going.

I can't say enough about how her aspirations are dripping with vanity. But if she wants to go, that's fine. It will give the boys a chance to fill their spank banks. Just don't tell me you're going to learn to shoot a gun. On the off chance that she is involved in a fire fight don't you think the frosted tart would be more a liability by giving her a gun than she would be if she just kept her head and ass out of sight. Christ...could someone please bitch slap her back to reality?

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Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases

With all the arguments over whether the media is liberal or conservative this article is pretty interesting. It centers on the 1982 Israli war in Lebenon & a study conducted at Stanford looking at PERCEIVED bias in the media. It's worth a read. Jump

It's time for Plan B since there was no Plan A

On Left, Right, & Center the other day they were talking about Iraq...a frequent topic of debate and they mentioned Thomas Friedman, a NY Times columnist who had been a supporter of the war in Iraq and until recently believed it could have a positive outcome. However, now he thinks it's time for Plan B. Jump

This is a very liberal blog so be careful. The column by Friedman appeared in the Times on 8/4 but I couldn't link to it since a subscription is required. Thanks Chucker for the link.

AOL...Proudly Releases Private Data

What in holy hell were they thinking? Nothing like releasing private information about your customers to put yourself out of business. Jump

Thanks fishwreck

Start your treadmills...OK go.

So I stumbled across this video tonight and found that I couldn't look away. I'm not sure if the music is for me but the more I listen the more it grows on me. Even if they're not your cup of tea...at least check out this bizarre video.