Pretending Along

Holidays

A belated holiday greeting from all of us (Chris) here at Pretending Along.

Happy:

Chaunaka
Kwanza
Christmas
Winter Solstice

I hope your holidays were as enjoyable as mine. On the 23rd I had the pleasure of enjoying a Chaunaka celebration with some friends. And let me tell you, latkes flowed like wine, as did the beer... and the Indian food...
On the 24th I headed out to the mother's place up in the wilds of western MD, and on Christmas and Boxing day I was with different family members nursing a 104 degree fever.

All in all it was a nice holiday.

Meetings, Bombs, and Things

Well, before being rudely evacuated from my building due to a hightened security alert and a "bomb scare" I was in one of the most boring meetings I've ever had the pleasure to attend (and I've been in some awful meetings). Had I not been forced from the office I would have posted these gems from the meeting after work:

"The last thing I think they're not gonna want to do is..."

"When I worked for Oracle, we had a differentiation because we could go into the knickers of Oracle and pull out new..."

...and from a document we were reviewing, an actual product name: "SeeBeyond eGate MQ eWay"

Please fucking fire me....

Spooookey

Are you afeared? I'm shaking in my boots, apparently the Department of Homeland Security has its holidays mixed up. The way I understood it, you needlessly scare people on Halloween, not at Christmas and Chanukah.

I think we should reevaluate this high alert thing for the holidays. Can't we fuck with the alert system just for the holidays. Let's be serious, they're already going to win the election, why do they need to keep scaring us? What are they afraid of? Perhaps the belief is that a lackluster holiday shopping season might be overshadowed by a healthy dose of terror alert. Personally, I think we should have a dual alert for the next couple of days. We'll call it a 'severely low' risk of attack. Or a low risk of a severe attack. What about a severe risk of a low attack? I don't know, but the logo would be cool.
=

Simple Things

Do you know what made my day this morning? What put me in a great mood despite the Christmas shopping left to do, the nasty head cold, being tired, etc...

Changing the blade on my Gillette Mach III razor before shaving. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Fun with Telephone Menus

For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER: 443-573-2800.

It is the Baltimore City Parking Authority's telephone number. They save the best for last, so be sure to listen for option #7. DO IT, YOU WILL ENJOY YOURSELF.

[Insert Bad Earthquake Pun Here]

In case you were one of the millions who didn't feel it, you may have been unaware that the DC metro area experienced an earthquake on Tuesday. The quake, which had a magnitude 4.5, hit at about 4 PM. Its epicenter was about 30 miles west of Richmond. The entire experience is summed up nicely in the headline of a Wednesday Washington Post article: Earthquake Causes A Harmless Shake. And that's about all there is to say about that...

...that is, of course, unless you're the DC area's local Fox affiliate. Fox 5 pulled out all the stops to bring us the earth shattering (its the only one, I promise) news in its 10 PM news cast. That's right, in a stunning show of journalistic excellence the news team introduced its "Quake Coverage Team," surely the area's first. The newscast even had its own logo, one word, "Earthquake." The logo, shown as if carved in cracked stone, shook violently in the center of the screen, in an accurate depiction of the horror we all felt that day. The head news anchor at one point said with a deadly serious expression on his face (and I swear I am not making this up), "Well there was no structural damage from the quake, but I can tell you that there were some broken dishes in the area." Cut to a DC woman in her living room discussing her horrifying experience. She's leaning over her coffee table where two 5 inch tall, cut-out wooden snowmen sit precariously. "...and then this one fell over" the woman describes, pushing the snowman off balance, onto the table. "...and then it fell off the table and onto the floor..." Oh, the humanity!!!

Perhaps there was no other local news to report on Tuesday evening.

A Triumph for Public Radio

I'm a bit late about posting this but I must do it, better late than never.

Terry Gross, host of NPRs Fresh Air, interviewed Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Conan O'Brien, and Triumph's creator Robert Smigel in November. Check out the interview here. It's fucking hillarious. Check it out.

Hearing Terry Gross talk about Triumph's new album, "For Me to Poop On" is hysterical.

via eebmore

Take the Not All Americans Are Stupid Quiz. Not to toot my own horn, I got 19 out of 20. It's not the hardest quiz in the world, but if you view the results Americans score lower than other nationalities, on average.

Here's what the results had to say about me:

You have an impressive understanding of the world for an American. It is likely that you feel intellectually isolated in your home country, and often have to hide your opinions from others. Deep down, you realise that your country is the single biggest threat to world peace in modern times, but you have not yet summoned up the courage to emigrate.

"Biggest threat to world peace." Jeez, it's not like we're out starting wars or anything. Let's show these folks that we aren't necessarily dumber than the rest of the world. Our leaders might be, but hell, we didn't really elect them.

Newt, Cliff-Diving, and Cardian Doublespeak

Anyone out there remember Newt Gingrich? I know, I know, I worked hard to forget him too. Who would've predicted that a few years later we'd be looking back on our time sparring with him as the good-ol'-days... well, comparatively so, anyway.

Although relatively quiet since his retirement from politics, ol' Newtee is making a little noise again. And what do you think he's screaming about? The latest atrocity committed by the liberal media? Gay marriage? Hillary Clinton's demoralizing statements to GIs in Iraq?

None of the above. Former Congressman Gingrich is criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq policy. According to the AP, in an upcoming Newsweek story, Gingrich says that he was proud of what Gen. Tommy Franks, who planned and commanded the American-led invasion of Iraq, did "up to the moment of deciding how to transfer power to the Iraqis. Then we go off a cliff."

Umm... what? You know something is amiss when Newt Gingrich is criticizing an ultraconservative president in a time or war. So how does the administration react to this? Well, Bush chief of staff Andrew Card had this to say yesterday on Face the Nation: "Well, Newt Gingrich is not all-knowing."

You see, the Bush administration is not going to dignify with a response the crazed rantings of an America-hating, terrorist-loving, baby-killing, radical leftist such as Newt Gingrich.

In fact, contrary to what pinko Gingrich had to say, Card expressed the view of the administration, "Things are going better than they could have been expected to go at this time, and we're making great progress."

Ok, all sarcasm aside: This fucker said this on the same day insurgents attacked a U.S. military patrol in northern Iraq, killing one soldier and wounding two and a day after an American air raid in Afghanistan killed nine children How's that for going better than they could have been expected.

On CNN's Late Edition, Card "dismissed as 'a moot point' any lingering question about whether Bush relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq." I suppose we can infer that whether or not Bush lied to the American people and the international community in making the case for war a "moot point" as well.

In a triumph rhetorical mastery, reminiscent of Shakespeare's Marc Antony, Card asserted that intelligence has been "very, very good" overall. He added, "Intelligence is a collection of dots, and then an analysis on how those dots might be connected. Some of those dots may not be what they appear to be, and some of the connections may not have been what people would have suggested." His thrilling use of the passive voice aside, Card silenced critics with those masterfully constructed sentences. For mere rhetorical mortals, I'll break it down. In a nutshell Card said: We know things. Some things we know might be related to other things we know. But some of the things we know, it turns out we don't know. And when we said they were related, what we meant was that they were not related.

These people think we're the dumbest human beings on the planet. And they're probably right.

Experimentation

Just playing around with the template. I think this is ugly, but I'm learning MT.

Colymbosathon ecplecticos

You wanna know what that means?

Its Greek for "amazing swimmer with a large penis." The big news in science today is that UK and US researchers have discovered a "425 million-year-old fossil [which] boasts a lurid claim to fame - it has the oldest penis on record."

And that, my friends is the rest of the story.

Heard on the Bus

On the crowded bus this morning, I notice a woman standing uncomfortably and decide to offer her my seat next to the pole.

"Would you like a seat"

She looks at me, offers me a large smile and replies, "Honey, you know I can't fit myself down there."

I smile back, she laughs, we join the the rest of the passengers in silence and continue our ride to work. It made me smile, a nice start to the day.

Winning the Peace

The United States military is “winning the peace” in Iraq. I hope we remember to remind the families of the 107 coalition troops (including 79 Americans) killed last month of that key fact. And in case they’re not getting the message, we might also send a memo to the families of the two Japanese diplomats, two South Korean contractors, and one Columbian contractor killed over the weekend.

Meanwhile, the military is celebrating a crushing victory over insurgent forces after a convoy was ambushed in coordinated attacks in the city of Samarra, killing 54 insurgents (I’m tempted to put that last word in quotes). As the headline of the fair and balanced FoxNews.com proudly proclaims, 'They Obviously Picked the Wrong Convoy'.

But before we get too excited, about all that good old fashioned killin’ it’s worth looking at the story a bit further. The Guardian reports that original accounts of the battle, "today appear murkier than first reports suggested.”

According to NPR’s Ivan Watson, local Iraqis describe:

“a protracted gun battle yesterday afternoon, but they all insisted that the U.S. forces were not being shot at. They said that lines of American military vehicles came rolling into town and in some cases driving over and crushing vehicles—I did see evidence of that. And then they said that American forces opened fire indiscriminately in crowded marketplaces. At the hospital doctors said they had had more than 50 wounded and they said that most of them were children and women. For instance, women finishing a shift at the local pharmaceutical factory. They say there were at least seven killed; and some of the casualties were said to include Iranian pilgrims visiting a holy shrine in that town that also suffered some damage as a result of that shooting. I have to add that Samara is a town that is very hostile to the US occupation…”

According to the AP, “Many residents said Saddam loyalists attacked the Americans, but that when U.S. forces began firing at random, many civilians got their guns and joined the fight.”

While justifiably returning fire when fired upon, engaging in protracted battles in crowded marketplaces does not seem the greatest way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.