There’s a great piece on truthout.org called The Ballad of Dumb George. My favorite part was the description of Tony Blair talking to Bush at the G-8 Summit: “[Blair] sounded for all the world like a teacher attempting to explain something to an exceptionally dull student. His tone suggested infinite patience and a touch of true sadness, as if he could not quite believe he was speaking this way to an American president.”

And yes, I know I haven’t posted my Rachel visit post. I’m working on it, really.

From a contest I was entering.

Please enter your gender or province! I think the ordering may have gotten a bit messed up…

Levi Strauss is launching Red Wire, a new line of jeans that are iPod compatible. This seems entirely stupid to me. Or maybe I’m just bitter that no one had something like this for my Walkman when I was a kid.

Fate decided to have a giggle today. Around 12:30, an alarm went off telling us to evacuate the building. Guess which floor had a microwave that set off the smoke detector? Yeah, you guessed it. So there’s two competing theories. Either Jerry and I are being framed, or Star Witness believed us and put foil in the microwave. Or someone burned their lunch, but that’s just silly.

According to my Treo, I’m late for a meeting called “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyytuttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt”

If a microwave fire occurs on the 6th floor, Jerry and I are going to be prime suspects. Yesterday morning, I went to get hot water for my tea, and the machine was empty because someone had turned off the water flow for some reason. This is the conversation that resulted between Jerry, myself, and the man I’ll call “the prosecution’s star witness”:

Bryce: “We’re out of hot water. Now what am I going to do?”
Star Witness: “You could have coffee.”
Bryce: “But I don’t like coffee.” ::wanders around the kitchen aimlessly::
Star Witness: “Microwave?”
Bryce: “I don’t have anything except the styrofoam cup to heat it in. How likely is it to catch on fire?”
Star Witness: ::Looks concerned::
Jerry: “I do it all the time!”
Bryce: “How often does it catch on fire?”
Jerry: “Just once.”
Star Witness: ::Eyes get wider::
Bryce: “Those are good odds. Besides, it’s not like it’s MY microwave.”
Star Witness: ::Backs away slowly::
Bryce: “Hey, look. We have a second microwave! If this first one goes up in flames, we’ll still have another one.”
Jerry: “Ooh, and it’s an old one. It looks like the kind that can take foil.”

The defense enters a plea of not guilty by reason of sarcasm, Your Honor.

This was received in 2002, when I had a stupid facts section on my site:

Why do you have such a silly name, where do you live, what were we put here for, prehaps some of these questions could be answered on your website.

P.S Pickles are great arent they?
P.P.S The tongue of the blue whale is the size of an elephant.

This one is the most interesting piece of spam I ever received:

Hello,

I’m a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Since nobody here seems to be able to get me what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circut to get where I need myself. I am going to need an easy to follow picture diagram for a simple time travel circut, which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any schematics you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use Or if you have the rechargeable AMD dimensional warp generator wrist watch unit available, and are 100% certain you have a (secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply. Send a separate email to me at: info@.com.

Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You
checkerl znzvhweo v mn du uluqq
zaatg v vrrxrwoemkk m

From the producers of Brokeback Mountain. It was an experiment in time. The one variable they forgot was love.

The trailer to “Brokeback to the Future”

For a long time, I’m sure you have wondered the same things as I have. When Matchbox Twenty first became famous, Rob Thomas had no hands:

Yet in recent years, he is often seen in t-shirts with hands displayed for all to see. This raises two obvious questions.

1. What happened to his hands?
2. Where did he get new ones?

Well, I was listening to “If You’re Gone” tonight, and I realized the first question was answered in the lyrics:

“I bet my hands I can stay here
I bet you need
More than you mind”

It turns out that, in fact, he could NOT stay there. This cost him his hands. Now, while looking for the above picture, I found this. It has photographs of Rob Thomas getting his new hands made. What is surprising is that Christina Aguilera, Ja Rule, Ashanti, and John Rzeznik also had new hands made. Who knew?!

Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant (creators of the British comedy “The Office”) have been doing a weekly podcast, which is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a very long time. A majority of the material involves Karl Pilkington sharing his absurd view on a topic (for example, that we shouldn’t use science to bring back the wooly mammoth because “we don’t have enough room” since we already have elephants), then Ricky and Steve telling him he is an idiot.  This is absolutely hilarious comedy.  I’ve been listening at work, and been doubled over with laughter a number of times.