Sardonic Brevity

I think I shouldn't let a year pass without saying something here.

Priceline is advertising an "Inauguration Special" for people to travel to DC in January.  I don't think they did that in 2004.

This morning just before 8:00, a young man got on the #48 bus and inserted his ticket into the fare meter.  The bus driver informed him that his ticket was for off-peak hours only and that he would have to pay an extra quarter.  Angrily, the man pulled a quarter out his pocket, shoved it into the meter, and grabbed his transfer.  Walking down the aisle toward his seat, he held his hand up next to his ear and flipped off the bus driver and was immediately tossed off the bus.  It was his nature.

Moral: Don't give your drive the finger until you reach your destination.

John McCain read The Martian Chronicles and was inspired to send humans to Mars by it? Maybe he needs to reread it.

From CNN's front page, an ad for Larry King Live:

Do vaccines cause autism? Actress and mother of an autistic son, Jenny McCarthy, debates the issue with medical professionals.

Last night hosting trivia, we did an audio round asking teams to identify bands appearing at the upcoming Sasquatch Festival. (Damn, they just added Kathleen Edwards to the day we're going. The only thing I could be doing that day that would be more fun would be reading questions as HSNCT.)  The average round score was 5.4/10, which means people did reasonably well but also means that there were a lot of wrong answers.  Here's who a group of pub trivia players think the songs we played sound like. (Bands in italics are actually playing Sasquatch and thus are usually not bad guesses.)

1. Cannonball, The Breeders
Wrong: Tegan & Sara, Seether, Elastica, Cranberries
Lesson: People who are about 30 mostly remember the Breeders.

2. The Widow, The Mars Volta
Wrong: Kristin Hersh, Garbage, Paramore (x2), Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Endeavors, Wolfmother, Cat Power, Muse, Thee Emergency, Mates of State, Kinski
Lesson: Dude from the Mars Volta sounds like a lady.

( And the rest... )

On ESPN right now they are saying how much better it is to be a #1 seed than a #3 seed in the NCAA basketball tournament. Yes, you say, that seems obvious. The stat that use to argue this point is that while #1, #2, and #3 seeds all have really good records in the first two rounds of the tournament, #3 seeds actually have a 21-23 record (under .500!) in the third round. Shocking! Shocking, that is, until you realize that, if the seeds hold, the #3 seed would be playing a #2 seed in the third round, and would therefore be an underdog. Well done, ESPN producers, well done.

The emotional scarring that the 1984 Blue Jays and Orioles must have suffered as a result of appearing in this video finally explains why the Tigers ran away with the division.

"The notion that humans descended from apes has never been popular among fundamentalists, but what of the apes themselves? Given the gory history of Homo sapiens on Earth, no self-respecting chimp or gorilla would claim a genetic connection to us." -- Carl Hiassen

No Tom Petty. No Paula Abdul.

Use the picture-in-picture capabilities of the TV to make a split screen. On the right side, Puppy Bowl. On the left side, Bomberman. Enjoyment ensued.

The first Youtube video I've seen that ends 5 seconds before the interesting part

...not only did Colts fans boo the 12-year-old girl in the Patriots jersey, they also failed to boo the girl in the Chargers jersey? As we speak, Gregg Easterbrook is writing a 10,000-word essay about how this disrespect and looking ahead to next week offended the football gods and caused the Colts to lose. Or maybe it was because one of the coaches wasn't cold enough. Anything that keeps him from writing about public policy is OK with me.

Finally posting the pub quiz from 3 weeks ago.

( December 18 Quiz )
Answers here.

Answers to the December 18 quiz. 15 teams played.

( Answers )

Dallas-Fort Worth airport has five terminals. In the past six hours, I visited them all. Terminal D is the nicest.

Last night at about 6:00, we leave the house to go to the pub. This involves an automobile, as public transportation is really not a good way to get from the Central District to Ballard. It's pretty good for north-south and east-west, but not northwest-southeast.

Backing out onto our street in usually the hardest part of the trip because it's usually pretty busy at rush hour. Last night it was difficult because there was a white car parked in our driveway. Our car is not white.

The woman in the car informed us that she had run out of gas and had pulled into our driveway to call her husband for help. This was pretty upsetting to us as: 1) we wanted to go somewhere; 2) there was a parking spot available 5 feet east of our driveway she could have stopped in instead; and 3) it seems that if you run out of gas, you don't have enough gas to find somewhere to park. But if someone says their car won't go, you tend not to question them. No one could be that dumb.

So she asks to see if we can push the car into the spot. I think about it, look at the traffic, and decide after a moment, no, that's fucking insane. I can't believe I was silly enough to think it might have worked, even for a second. I tell her it's not going to work.

Emily get on the phone, more pissed than I am, to tell people we'll be late. She says "some IDIOT ran out of gas and parked in our driveway." "Idiot" was apparently the magic gasoline-producing word, as she was then able to start her car and drive to a spot down the street. We're still not sure what exactly the deal was.

So yay, we can go out. We back out onto the street, which is still busy, but a car lets us in. Unfortunately, the van in front of him on the other side of the driveway stalls. The driver of the van tries to restart, but, as our house is on a slope, he can't restart without sliding a little bit backwards first. Right into the back-left corner of our car. Fortunately, nothing was seriously damaged in this 3-5 mph collision.

On the sitcom cliche scale, 1 being Arrested Development and 10 being Two and a Half Men, I rank last night's events a 9, or as cliched as According to Jim. If we had been on the way to the hospital to deliver a baby, it would have been off the scale.

According to NWS, it's rained 5.67 inches in the last 72 hours. I felt like this was slightly worse than usual for this time of year. The news reports had to tell me how widespread flooding actually is.

I also recently rediscovered this old Canadian PSA on Youtube. I think it's normal too and not the least bit odd.

( Some Trivia Questions )

Answers here.

The fall ballot for Washington has a referendum, R-67, that, if approved, would impose additional regulations on the insurance industry. Being a non-citizen and quite probably moving out of state again within the year, I really don't have much of an opinion on the initiative. You should just get universal health care and be done with it, eh?

As you can guess, the insurance industry is spending millions of dollars in advertising to get the voters of Washington to reject R-67. This is noteworthy because it is the most obnoxious political ad campaign I have ever seen.

( Why You Should Commit Voter Fraud to Approve R-67 (Not Really) )