12/25/08
12/15/08
bush Ducks Questions About the War on Shoes
This just in, bush has declared war on all shoes. He has launched air strikes against Nike and Adidas. He said moments ago, in a press conference (one in which all the reporters were barefoot) that either you are with him or against him, and that the wearing of all footwear by US citizens is unpatriotic. The patriot act is to be modified immediately to state anyone caught wearing shoes outside of their homes automatically give up all their rights, and can be searched with out reason and detained indefinitely.
Too bad the shoe wasn't loaded. Out of all the strapped on explosive device wearing, IED chucking suicide bombers, we have to get the one who forgot to light the fuse. Oh well just 40 more days or so and then people can start throwing their clothing at Obama. Oh wait, a lot of people are already throwing their underwear at the rock star.
12/14/08
12/12/08
DIY Kindle
Recently my wife watched an episode of Oprah that had Jeff Bezos hawking the Kindle, an electronic book reader. I had looked at them before in passing but hadn't ever considered buying one. Although I am an avid reader, I read on average a book a week, I "read" 99% of my books with my MP3 player. I don't make the time to sit and read a book, I listen to them while I am at work, or driving, or working around the house. My wife on the other hand likes to curl up in bed at night and read, something you can't do with an audiobook. So while she was watching Oprah talk about her Kindle, I said off handedly that I didn't think it was that neat of a product, and asked Nikki what she thought of it, and she said it looked really neat. So since Nikki-mas (Nikki's birthday) was fast approaching, I decided to go to Amazon.com and buy her one. Everything went smooth with the electronic checkout, as it always does on Amazon, until I got to the shipping form. The estimated shipping date on her Kindle was 16 to 20 weeks away. I thought the three weeks I gave myself before Nikki-mas was enough but I underestimated the effect that Oprah has on her minnions. I went ahead and ordered it, but it bothered me a little bit that Nikki wouldn't have anything to open up under our Nikki-mas tree on Nikki-mas morning. I thought about getting her a card and putting in a reciept for the Kindle, but that just didn't seem very festive. Then, on Nikki-mas eve, the perfect idea struct me. Why not just make my own Kindle, I'm kind of handy, and surely with all of the discarded gadgets lying around my house I could make something similar. So ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu. I give you THE SWINDLE.
THE SWINDLE v1.0
As you can see, it has everything you would need, a bright back light that can be turned on and off, that also doubles as an electronic bookmarker, so you will never loose your place. It also comes with the ability to either connect wired or wirelessly to almost any network. And as you can see in the next picture, it has a 10GB hard drive that will alow you to save thousands of books to take with you on the go and read at your leisure.
12/11/08
12/10/08
12/6/08
12/2/08
Coffee Mug Chocolate Cake
I found this recipe on the internet, and after making it for my wife I thought I should share.
This was called the Most Dangerous Recipe in the World
And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because
now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of
the day or night!
The Most Dangerous Cake Recipe in the World
What you will need:
1 coffee mug (must be microwave safe)
4 tablespoons flour (that's plain flour, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips
(optional) some nuts (optional)
Small splash of vanilla
Directions:
Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well.
Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips, nuts (if using), and vanilla, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for three (3) minutes on high.
(The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!)
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to share!)
This was called the Most Dangerous Recipe in the World
And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because
now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of
the day or night!
Two Guys on a Motorcycle
Every once in a while, my friend Ben and I will find ourselves in a situation where we need to go somewhere and the only means of travel is his motorcycle. I have always opted to just stay home, than to risk the ridicule we would receive. I say always, but about 10 years ago, for some reason after getting really drunk at home, Ben and I decided to go to a bar, and we only had his motorcycle to ride. So being drunk I didn't care at the time that I would have to hold on to Ben, while he bent over the handlebars and stuck his ass in my lap. I remember thinking the next day that I probably stuck out like a sore thumb. If people had cell phones with cameras, I'm sure someone would have taken a picture of us. After that I told him the only way I would ever ride with him again would be if he had a sidecar. Well recently he bought a new bike.
At least this guy has on a helmet. But did they have to do this in the rain?
Steve Mobs the Mapple CEO on the Simpsons
Bart is my brother from a different mother. The Simpson's writers can still deliver.
12/1/08
Atlas Shrugged
I know there is probably not anything new to say about a novel written in 1957, but Atlas Shrugged is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. As I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and listening to the news about the current U.S. financial situation, I think Ayn Rand could have been writing about today's economy. In her book, just as today, large, iconic, too big to fail businesses, start going under, and just as in her book, the U.S. government spend trillions of dollars to bail them out of their financial needs. Corporations start to rely on the taxpayers and the government to bail them out of poor fiscal practices, and soon the whole economy is based on how well a business can get a handout, and not on how well it performs any useful service to the world.
One of the most moving, and insightful passages of Atlas Shrugged is the dialogue that hard working entrepreneur Francisco d'Anconia delivers to a crowd of untalented, non-working, arrogant, aritocratic government sanctioned looters of other people's hard work, who damn him for having money by saying that "Money is the root of all evil." Here is his response:
One of the most moving, and insightful passages of Atlas Shrugged is the dialogue that hard working entrepreneur Francisco d'Anconia delivers to a crowd of untalented, non-working, arrogant, aritocratic government sanctioned looters of other people's hard work, who damn him for having money by saying that "Money is the root of all evil." Here is his response:
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
This book is something every CEO of every company should have to study.
My Favorite Pastime
People often ask me what I did over the weekend, so I video taped what my wife and I do on an average weekend.
11/28/08
11/27/08
11/24/08
11/23/08
11/21/08
11/20/08
11/19/08
Obama's Use of Language Upsets Some
From the Huffington Post
Oh, Bush, you have spoiled us with your stupidity.
In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.
Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.
But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring....read on
Oh, Bush, you have spoiled us with your stupidity.
11/18/08
A Tribute to Drinking
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Sorry about the douchebags in the video, I couldn't find a better rendition of Pat Dailey's Out Drinkin. So hit play and turn off your monitor for this video.
11/14/08
11/13/08
11/12/08
11/11/08
11/10/08
11/9/08
11/7/08
11/6/08
Drag Racing
A guy I work with is always talking about how much he loves to go drag racing on the weekends. I don't think he does it illegally in the streets like these guys people, but you never know about people's private lives. I must admit that it looks like a lot of fun, I might even try it some day.
11/5/08
Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job
WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress,low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."
11/4/08
11/3/08
Parking
I just came across this video, which I think is faked by the way because if you notice at the end the people getting out of the cars are women.
Which reminded of this video I saw a while back.
11/2/08
11/1/08
10/31/08
Times Gone By
I found this link on Neatorama showing some great political ads from past elections. It's interesting to note how some things have changed and some have not. Here are a few of my favorites.
10/30/08
bush Urinal
I always thought the waste came out of bush's mouth, but evidently this is how he gets charged back up.
McCain's Derisive Air Quotes
The last part of this video with Samantha Bee taking McCain to task on his use of air quotes when talking about women's health is awesome.
10/29/08
Times Tough? Fire Your Kids
I would have fired the big one, he obviously eats more than Bobby.
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
McCain Hates Pennsylvania
Democrat Representative John Murtha (who no one but a bunch of redneck racist have ever heard of) said that Western Pennsylvania is redneck and racist. After hearing this, John McCain agrees.
Electronic Voting Machine Fraud
This is just crazy. The election official in this video can't even fix the machine to make it work properly. Our society has been using computers to help us in our every day lives for decades now, and you want to convince me that we can't make voting foolproof? How many times have you went to an ATM and have it malfunction, say give you too much money or give you someone else's money? Never. And the same companies that make these voting machines make ATM's!
10/28/08
10/27/08
The Outbreak
I came across this interactive movie called The Outbreak. If you liked choose your own adventure books when you where a kid then this might have some appeal. You are involved in a zombie attack and every few minutes you have to pick your course of action, and I assume if you pick right you survive, and if not, chomp, chomp. From what I have seen of it so far, it's better than I Am Legend, but not as good as Shaun of the Dead.
Halloween Costume
As you know, Halloween is just a few days away. I haven't settled on my costume idea yet, but I'm leaning towards this. The only problem I see with this is the leather pants. If you have ever seen the episode of Friends with Ross wearing leather to impress his younger girlfriend you would know what I'm talking about.
10/26/08
10/25/08
10/24/08
Mike Rowe Has a Really Dirty Job
Mike Rowe has done some really gross stuff for his job, but this one takes the cake. The testicle cake that is. Mike goes to a sheep ranch and helps castrate a flock of sheep. It sounds bad enough, raising livestock is full of unpleasantness, but using your teeth to castrate sheep is going a little too far. Surely there is a more hygienic way. You would think someone over the years would have gotten tired of putting sheep balls in their mouth would have made a special tool for the testicle extraction. Wouldn't your hands work better? This farmer must be pulling the wool over on Mike Rowe's eyes. I hope Mike gets paid more than your average ball gobbler working the streets.
10/23/08
Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham Want You To Vote For Barack
See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die
10/22/08
Palin Says Vote Democrat
You would think with the republican National Committee spending $150,000 on her wardrobe, that they could have at least found this idiot a scarf with an elephant on it. This photo was taken yesterday at one of her klan rallies. I really do think that she is too stupid to know that the two parties are represented by a donkey and an elephant.
10/21/08
10/20/08
Raising a Child vs. Raising a Dog
This is why my wife and I don't have kids. Be warned, the last few seconds are a little over the top with the violence. The baby in the cat carrier licking the bars makes it all worth it.
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
10/19/08
Colin Powell Endorses Obama
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said today on Meet the Press that he will vote for Barack Obama. He said he questions McCain's decision making after he nominated Sarah Palin for his running mate. Powell also did not like the direction the republican party has went with questioning Obama's background, some calling him a terrorist, or implying that he is Muslim, and that a Muslim can't be President.
10/17/08
Obama Has Some Great Joke Writers
The candidates roast each other at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner in New York City.
Child Labor Builds World's Tallest Tower
Out of Lego. It took 4 days to put the 460,000 bricks together into a 96' tower in Vienna, Austria.
McCain Finally Shows Up For Letterman
After a few weeks delay, McCain found his way to Dave's show. It's clear that McCain had someone write some jokes for him. Letterman then takes McCain to task over McCain's running mate Palin saying Obama is a terrorists, and pals around with terrorists. Dave then asks McCain if Obama's relationship with Ayers is anything like McCain's relationship with convicted Watergate criminal G. Gordon Liddy.
10/15/08
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