Why I love British newspapers

I know that The Daily Mail is often called the Daily Fail, and it’s not hard to see why; the writing is sort of awful, and reminiscent of New York’s tabloid papers (The Daily News, The Post, & Newsday). Still, I think that British newspapers are just not afraid to write the most ridiculous things. That’s a gift.

A gift to me.

This particular article, entitled You’re Not Intelligent Enough to Marry, Bride Told, is so awesome that I will present it almost without comment. And all I’m going to do is give you my favorite excerpt from it:

“Mr McDougall claims Miss Robertson’s learning difficulties are not severe. ‘It’s true she is not very academic,’ he said. ‘But she is nowhere near as stupid as social services are making out.”

Love it! Although it does suck royally that this woman, who they seem to trust with a child, isn’t deemed fit to decide to marry. Boo to that.

Loaded Gunn

It’s no secret that I love Tim Gunn. Like, love. He’s the best. And now a whole new group, comic book readers, will get a chance to love Tim Gunn, too. Enter Loaded Gunn, a comic book series where Tim Gunn rescues the world from horrible clothes. Tim Gunn is the best sport ever: “Most superheroes are fighting the same thing — good vs. evil — but who’s taking on crimes against fashion? Me!”

So your ex wants to friend you on Facebook, huh?

via: Gina Trapani

Not the kind of time machine I meant

Oh allergies. Why must you ruin my Thursday?

My Time Machine backup drive died suddenly last week. I don’t know if it was age (two years) or the heat, but it just stopped working in the middle of the day, and wouldn’t come back on. I got a 1.5 TB drive (Newegg’s having a sale on external HDs, if anybody is interested), and made my previous backup drive into my new Time Machine. I was searching online to see what other people do when their time machine goes kaput. The search string “Time Machine failed” wasn’t very promising, so I switched to “Time Machine Died.”

I love (LOVE!) how the first result is some “article” on figuring out whether it’s possible to travel to the past and, say, shoot and kill your grandfather. Ooo-kay. It’s a little “how is babby formed,” but kind of a fun way to waste a couple of minutes.

I still haven’t figured out what the deal is with my dead dead HD, but I’ll worry about that later. I’m home sick today, so I think I’m going to take some allergy meds, motrin, and sleep til I know no more.

Australia’s unrelenting awesomeness

Australians are awesome, as long as you allow them to bring up Paul Hogan first (if ever) and avoid ordering Foster’s beer in front of them (or anywhere else, either; Foster’s: Australian for crap). Aside from containing awesome Aussies (who always seem to be traveling/visiting/living/working someplace else anyway), Australia also has great weather, at least from a North American standpoint. When we’re burning up during our summer, most of Oz is experiencing an awesome, snowy winter. When we can’t feel our fingers or toes, they’re on the beach in their swimsuits. But what’s going on in Australian during the rainy season that debuted in much of the North American East Coast this year? For that matter, what’s going on here? Why do we have four seasons, anyway?

Because the British said so, and apparently that’s good enough for us. I do find it strange that I never questioned this before. It’s been pretty clear for the last several years that the whole “winter-spring-summer-fall” model of weather isn’t the best at capturing exactly what seems to be happening around here, meteorologically speaking.

You know who’s not taking that British-mandated 4-season thing lying down? The Aussies. And maybe we should considered joining them in their stand against such a small number of out-moded, not descriptive enough seasons. Plus, more seasons = more end of the season sales. Everybody’s a winner.

That’s my girl

It’s been a while since I checked in with her, and I don’t do well with change, so it’s a relief to know that our friend Michele Bachmann is still as crazy as ever. This time, she temporarily blocked voting on the resolution that celebrated Hawai’i’s 50th year as a state, and, (oh!) also named it as the birthplace of our 44th president. Controversial stuff, there, right? Thankfully, her nuttiness didn’t impede the resolution from being passed 378 – 0 (not that it was unanimously approved; over 50 cowardly jackholes just abstained from the vote).

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

I told Satanski that I’m a little grossed out by Spongebob Squarepants (due to that gross episode where he has the Suds), so of course he decided that all he wanted to do for the rest of the night was draw me various Spongebob-esque pictures. This only stopped when I told him that he couldn’t use any more sheets of paper until he’d used the backs of the sheets he’d already used. This is always the point at which he stops.

Here’s the gallery:

30 seconds I’ll never get back

The real reason that I hate to receive email forwards is that the sentiments expressed therein are usually mawkish, wrong, obnoxious, or just not true. Forwards that fall in the first three categories are quickly archived, but for emails whose veracity is not immediately determined, I’m forced to do actual research. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy research. It’s my job, after all. I just hate spending any more time thinking about the crap that people email me about. Today’s example was the Bristol Zoo Parking Attendant email. It’s such a good story, I couldn’t pass up the chance to find out whether it was true. And…it’s not.

Bummer.

Times are not that desperate

I understand that we’re in a recession, and people are cutting back on paying others to do what they can really do for themselves. Some have learned to cut their own hair; others have done their own nails or forgone artificial tans. Still, I think we can all agree that there are some  things that you shouldn’t try to do for yourself; at some point you just have to admit that if you can’t afford it, it’s better just to wait. And tops on that list would have to be plastic surgery.

Let’s face it, no matter how much better you want to look, elective plastic surgery is not a necessity. It’s expensive, and requires many years of intensive training on cadavers and cadaverous trophy wives before one can really be said to master it. Why, then, did this woman try to perform her own plastic surgery? And then seem surprised when she effed up her face? How could this outcome not have seemed the likeliest to her? Of course, she then had to have an actual doctor perform several corrective surgeries to remove the liquid silicone that she’d injected into her face. Heckuva job, lady.

Good old Jersey

Of course, it would be remiss of me to rag on West Bend, Wisconsin and not even mention the big news in New Jersey today. A boatload of politicians and religious leaders were arrested today on charges of corruption. One of those people is Hoboken’s mayor, Peter Cammarano. I’m not surprised that a mayor would get caught up in this; this is New Jersey, after all, and Secaucus mayor Dennis Elwell and Ridgefield mayor Anthony Suarez were also arrested (I linked to the Google caches, in case industrious city workers remember to yank these). No, what surprises me is that Cammarano has only been on the job since July 1. And he’s being accused of taking$25,000 in that time. So this man, if the charges are to be believed, has taken over $1,000 in bribes for every day that he’s been on the job. He should be happy the feds arrested him; how could he have possibly kept up that pace? Also, it might be good for him that this happened so quickly, before he could make more incredibly boneheaded statements. All in all, I’m pretty sure that this is not what Cammarano had in mind last night (his 32nd birthday!) as he poured beer  for the opening night of Hoboken’s St. Ann’s festival.