Another Word for Nerd

When I was in the Boy Scouts, we sold popcorn to raise money. Apparently now some troops are down to the point of selling fertilizer instead. That’s gotta be a shitty fundraiser.

I saw this tonight:

and couldn’t help but think of this:

“CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) — A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.”

I bet someone will be making sure their shoes are firmly and securely tied from now on…

MySpace and Xanga lamers trying to hotlink images off my machine will now get a nice HELLO.JPG (warning: NWS) instead.

Playing around with the built-in iSight on the new Mac…

I need to get Photoshop Elements reinstalled so I can do color correction.

UPDATE: For Tony and Dakota: they always called me a square.

As I was stuck at Firestone this morning waiting on a flat tire to be fixed, I had the opportunity to watch The Price Is Right for the first time in about ten years.

Some thoughts:
- It’s just not the same without Rod Roddy being the announcer.
- Some of these people take this show WAY TOO SERIOUSLY
- They give away more cars than they used to
- Bob Barker is an immortal zombie.

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called “dough.” It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

At first I thought it checked the date, then realized that CLISP always does this:

        i
. . . . I . . . i     ooooo    o        ooooooo   ooooo   ooooo
I I I I I I I I I    8     8   8           8     8     o  8    8
I I  \ `+' /  I I    8         8           8     8        8    8
I  \  `-+-'  /  I    8         8           8      ooooo   8oooo
 \  `-__|__-'  /     8         8           8           8  8
  `--___|___--'      8     o   8           8     o     8  8
        |             ooooo    8oooooo  ooo8ooo   ooooo   8
--------+--------

Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Michael Stoll 1992, 1993
Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Marcus Daniels 1994-1997
Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Pierpaolo Bernardi, Sam Steingold 1998
Copyright (c) Bruno Haible, Sam Steingold 1999-2000
Copyright (c) Sam Steingold, Bruno Haible 2001-2005

Time Warner had scheduled a tech to come out and fix my repair job, for between 8-10am. Given their prior track record, I expected them to either show up early and leave a “Sorry we Missed You” note, or not show until 9:55.

The tech showed up EXACTLY at 8am, took less than 20 minutes to fix the shoddy work the first installer had done, and was gone by 8:30. It’s a Christmas miracle!

I’m going back to bed. Bah Humbug.

We lost the best comedian ever yesterday. Richard Pryor passed away at the age of 65 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis.

I’ve spent the morning listening to his albums. I’m thinking of picking up the box set of his complete works.