Nobody yet knows who the sick [ ] is that manufactured and distributed these “toys”, but the Associated Press is reporting that somehow 14,000 toys depicting an airplane flying in to the twin World Trade Towers, and with the product number “9011″, were unknowingly included in bags of candy distributed to small stores throughout the United States.
Unbelieveable, I realize, but you can read the full story here.
You may have heard that security was uber-tight at the recent Democratic National Convention in Boston, particularly given the current and heightened terror alerts indicating that there is going to be an attempt to disrupt the political process (maybe someone should actually float a viable candidate – now that would disrupt the political process!..but I digress…)
What you may not have heard was that the security forces at the DNC had to confiscate razors from several individuals.
And none of the individuals seemed to be acting in concert with any of the other individuals who were found to be carrying the razors.
More insidious, these individuals triggered no profile: they were not swarthy men, spoke perfect English with no hint of a foreign national accent, and, in fact, were dressed as members of the press.
In fact, they were members of the press.
According to the ultrahip Spencer Katt, who slipped it to yours truly, the DNC handed out press bags to members of the press, at their hotel before they wended their way over to the convention. Included in those bags, along with a box of…I kid you not…donkey and star Kraft Mac’n’Cheese, some beverages and some craisins, was…a Gillette Mach 3 razor. Perhaps they thought the Katt-man was just too furry, or perhaps they figured the press for a bunch of longhairs. Or, perhaps they just weren’t thinking at all, as they sent a flotilla of press armed with razors straight to the security checkpoints at the convention.
On the other hand…it is a novel approach to protecting the homeland – “Vote the Democratic Ticket: We’ll Give You a Well-Armed Press Corps”
Hey, they are everywhere, after all.
No, it’s not a new political party, although maybe it should be.
I have just discovered Harney teas, and am blown away.
Harney teas are to teas as Penzey herbs are to herbs.
The aroma and bouquet of the *dried* teas, even before steeping, are just incredible. It’s like smelling the finest potpourri; open a tin of Harney’s tea and it’s like walking through a garden after a fresh morning rain. Absolutely incredible.
Incredible enough that I willingly shelled out $7.00 for a tin of 20 bags at the Starbucks concession in a local Barnes and Noble (in my defense, each bag makes two cups). You can get 50-bag tins for $19.00, and also loose leaf for less, at http://www.harney.com
Do it.
Your tea-loving self will be glad that you did.
For those of you who don’t have nubile teenagers going to teen nudist camp (if you don’t know to what I’m referring, see http://www.mangemerde.com/but-honey-the-law-says-that-i-have-to-go-watch-all-those-nubile-naked-teenagers/), you can always get a job as a Canadian visa official.
Yes, it’s true – the Toronto Sun has reported that non-Canadian women wishing to enter Canada to work as nude dancers must submit nude photos of themselves to qualify for a visa. A report in the Toronto Sun explains that the poor visa officials are having to pore over hundreds of pictures of nude exotic dancers. Such a tragedy.
As one Canadian official put it: If they don’t have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada.
Listening today to the candidates for the upcoming presidential election, George W. Bush and John Kerry, each driveling their lackluster verbal pablum, it suddenly hit me as to just why our choices for President have been increasingly disheartening, disillusioning, and demoralizing.
We are raising a nation of intellectual pygmies.
People no longer choose the best candidate – they choose the least bad candidate. It’s like the junkie channel surfer, clicking desperately from channel to channel, hoping to find that one show which doesn’t suck too badly until they can repeat the process at the top of the hour.
So too our choices for president – we as a nation are now being forced to vote not for the best candidate, but for the candidate who will suck the least. Because these are men who offer sound bytes, not wisdom, and whose trade is in insults not intellectual discourse.
Blather, rinse, repeat.
And do you know why? It’s because you simply can’t get a good, classical education in America any more. Our candidates are but a product of the educational environment we have created, and what we have created doesn’t even begin to teach true critical thinking, philosophy, reflection, values and ethics.
We no longer value real scholarship.
We no longer train intellectuals.
Presidents past, and I mean way past, were men of deep thought as well as action. They were well-educated, well-versed, and well-rounded. They were deep thinkers.
The candidates of today have no idea how to be deep, critical thinkers. That is what made Clinton such an attractive candidate to so many – he was, in fact, one of the few intellectuals to run in modern day (and I say that as someone who did not vote for him).
We have created a nation of intellectual pygmies.
We deserve the president we get.
Now here’s an interesting twist.
A judge in Virginia last week upheld a law which requires parents to accompany their teenage children to an all-teen nudist camp as a condition of the teen being allowed to attend.
The judge said “the presence of parents or guardians at the summer camp would not interfere with the children’s ability to enjoy themselves.”
Ok, obviously this judge never had, or was, a teenager.
But what a boon for the parents! It’s better than being ordered to read Penthouse or watch the Playboy channel! What will our whacky judiciary think of next?
I was walking through a bookstore today, when I saw – I kid you not:
“The Idiot’s Guide to Communicating with Spirits”
I’m pretty sure that if you’re an idiot, they don’t wanna communicate with you.
Anne (I don’t think they meant semaphore with a bottle of Jim Beam)
We are having a huge national conference this week, ISIPP’s National Spam and the Law Conference (http://www.isipp.com/events.php). We needed to have some “Slam a Spammer”
(http://www.slamaspammer.com) t-shirts made.
Now, we have a regular t-shirt printer whom we’ve always used. I’ve always been satisfied with their work. But this time they needed the Illustrator file, said they couldn’t possibly work from a jpg or gif (I’m not disputing that, it may be true), but even after I found the file (had to track down the original artist, and then we didn’t hear from him for a bit) and sent it, they were not as responsive as we needed, especially given the conference was so close.
*Before* finding the Illustrator file, in a panic, I started searching around for someone who could make the shirts from a gif or jpg, and one of the places I called was ESP Designs, out of Sherman, Texas. They were *so* incredibly responsive, great communications, which they often initiated themselves, the art guy even sent me a long email describing all the process for me, what this and that meant, etc… in the end I gave them an order last Thursday for a big batch of t-shirts (they now have the Illustrator file), and despite the rush and everything they *met* the quote of the local guy (which was $2/shirt less than their regular price) *and* agreed to eat shipping as with a local guy we didn’t have to deal with shipping – all with a guaranteed delivery of Tuesday! They did call me back, very sheepish, when they realized it was a rush delivery (after saying they’d eat the shipping) and ask if there was any way we’d split the rush fee with them (wow…most places would simply say “you have to pay the rush fee”) – I agreed with pleasure, in fact I’d already offered to pay it in full but I guess they’d not gotten that message in the front office.
Well, again, that was Thursday when I *placed* the order – here it is,Monday morning (and a holiday to boot), and the t-shirts just arrived, and they look wonderful!! And are a day early! Wow! What incredible services!
ESP Designs, http://www.esp-designs.com. 888-403-4600. Talk to Bryan. Tell him I sent you.
We’ll certainly be using them for all of our shirt printing needs from now on!
As I’ve mentioned, we have a huge Spam and the Law conference going on right now
(http://www.isipp.com/events.php).
Given the extortionate rates which the hotel charges for renting a projector and a screen for a day, it quickly became apparent that it would be cheaper to buy them (yes, really). $600+ for the screen! $550+ for the projector, and we need each for 2 days.
We got a *great* projector (Panasonic PT-LC56U – *1600* lumens for under $1000, but they are hard as anything to find – Newegg.com has them), but were having quite a time finding the screen we wanted. First, nobody could give us any decent information – they sell ’em, but don’t know anything about ’em. Second, the one we finally decided we wanted is big and bulky (for shipping purposes, that is), and we wanted to buy locally to avoid shipping if we could and if it made sense price-wise. Well, wow, pricing for these things is *all over the place*! We’re talking a several hundred dollar price spread! And nobody stocks them – which makes sense, as there are so many choices, sizes, screen types, etc., so they all drop-ship them from the manufacturer in Indiana.
I finally found one local place, and their price was ok, but not the best, which would let us do an in-store pickup. But then came the kicker, which was we still had to pay for shipping. Then they tried to talk us into a smaller size of the same model, which they happened to have on hand. If it turned out to be too small (which I really feared) we could return it, but they would charge a 15% restocking fee.
This was last Wednesday. The conference is next Thursday. In desparation I searched the web again, and found several places with better prices, and figured if we were willing to eat the cost of express shipping we’d still come out better. I called them all, and then I found Joel at AV Superstore. Not only did they have the best price, but he was the first person on this quest with whom I’d spoken who knew what he was talking about! You could tell right away that he knew far more than I did about this stuff, and sadly that was a first for this quest. We chatted about quite a few other things, including projectors and cameras,and I wished I’d found him before making my other purchases – oh, he affirmed that they were good purchases, but I wish I’d been able to give him that business!
He worked with me right then and there to ensure we’d have the screen by Tuesday. He took my credit card number. Then he called me back to say that he must have written the credit card number down wrong (he had) because it hadn’t gone through, but he’d gone ahead and placed the order anyways because he knew what a rush we were in!!!
Well, the screen just arrived today! A day ahead of schedule!
Great service!!
AV SuperStore http://www.avsuperstore.com 866-866-6767.
Ask for Joel. Tell him I sent you.
Having lost more than a few hours of work, on more than a few occasions, due to some catastrophic system failure in the middle of a drafting session during which I had failed to regularly back up the work, I’ve learned my lesson well, and now religiously back up documents as I am working on them.
But, it turns out, that is not always sufficient.
Today I learned the very hard way that if you open a document which you receive as an attachment in email, and edit it, to *not* just blindly hit “save”, but be *sure* to first do a “save as”, and give it a proper filename.
Because as I saved a total of several hours worth of work which I had done over the course of the day to this file which had come as an email attachment, it never once occurred to me to change the file name. The file name turned out to be a temporary file name assigned by my email program, and when I shut the email program down, sure enough…I lost all of my work, because the email program wiped the temporary file. Sob.
No warning, no “do you want to save all of your changes before they are lost in closing a temporary file”, no nothing. There I was blindly clicking “save” in Word every five or 10 minutes, and all that work was wiped in the blink of an eye.
(Yes, I know I can set word to do an autobackup -I *thought* that it was..but nope, it wasn’t.)
Anyways, don’t let this happen to you.
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