A Perry you can believe in

Further evidence that Obama is becoming a dictator!

I missed it on CNN, but this ad I saw on a website makes it clear: President Obama is personally setting mortgage rates now!

It's on the internet, so it must be true.

Seriously, though: This advertiser seems to think that the cult of Obama is a powerful draw.

And now, for a completely trivial pet peeve: “Guardrail Damage Ahead”

Here in Texas, whenever someone puts a serious dent in a guardrail, the highway department will send out someone to put up signs alerting us to this fact.

The Texas Department of Transportation’s Maintenance Operations Manual explains when the warning signs should go up:

"Guardrail Damage Ahead" signs should be installed only when substantial damage occurs to guardrail barriers or attenuators which causes them to not function properly.

What the manual doesn’t explain, however, is why this warning to drivers is necessary.

Unless the damage is so severe that the guardrail is sticking out into a lane of traffic, no hazard is posed, so what’s the point?

Whenever I see one of these signs, I say to myself, “Wow, thanks for the warning!  If I lose control of my car here, it might not be safe for me to hit that guardrail.  I must aim for something else.”

President manages to recover from White House TelePrompTer mishap

Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner

“24” Season 8 trailer

In my opinion, 24 is one of the few oases in the blighted wasteland that is network television.  Here’s the Season 8 promo that premiered during the first game of the World Series:

(Found via Dark Horizons via BibChr)

Should you forward that e-mail?

Brian at Shoebox Greetings answers the eternal question.


This is good advice, worth passing along to everyone you know.

"24", Dave Barry style

I really enjoy the show "24" but Dave Barry's liveblogging of the show is far more entertaining.

His post on last night's season premiere is here.

A couple of my favorite one-liners there:

UPDATE: OK, basically, wherever Jack goes, terrorism occurs. LA finally got rid of him, now he's in DC, and bingo. The solution is: send jack to iran.

And:

UPDATE: The federal government should definitely stop using Vista.

Warning: the linked post is chock-full-o-spoilers, so if you haven't watched the show yet, don't go there.

You can read all of his 24-related posts (including his liveblogging of previous seasons) here.

Coolest web searches resulting in a visit to this blog

I'll add more to this list as I come across them.

• 5/28/2011: brouhaha or kerfuffle -coffee -beer — Good thing they excluded coffee and beer from the search; otherwise, this post would have appeared much further down in the results.
• 11/29/2005: women +39 OR email OR contacts OR nov OR 2005 "katamail.com" -italy — Looks like someone is still tracking the progress of their lottery scam spam. Similar to the 11/9/2005 search, and also from a Nigerian ISP, this one tries to filter out Italian references to katamail.com. What's with the "39"?
• 11/9/2005: find name american women and there email address "katamail.com" — This one brought the searcher (who, surprise surprise, is from Nigeria) to this post.
  
• 10/29/2005: FREE SITES(bOTH REGISTRATION AND SUBSCRIPTION FESS FREE)ALL INSANE — This wouldn't have found my site if he/she hadn't misspelled "FEES". I'm particularly intrigued by the "ALL INSANE" keywords.
  

Forsooth, thou art a doo-doo head

Today's offering from the Thought For The Day listserv* was this gem from the Shakespearean Insulter:

Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth,
that are written down old with all the characters of age?
Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek,
a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly?
Is not your voice broken, your wind short,
your chin double, your wit single,
and every part about you blasted with antiquity?
And will you yet call yourself young?

-From: Henry IV, part 2

* To subscribe, send the message "subscribe tftd-l" (without the quotes, and without any signature block in the message) to listserv@listserv.tamu.edu.