Rachel Lucas and I are on the same wavelength

Rachel Lucas on another foreclosure sob-story.

Retards don't like Tropic Thunder

Some retarded folks are complaining about the new movie Tropic Thunder. I guess they don't like the use of the word "RETARD":

"When I heard about it, I felt really hurt inside,'' said Special Olympics global messenger Dustin Plunkett. ''I cannot believe a writer could write something like that. It's not the way that we want to be portrayed. We have feelings. We don't like the word 'retard.' ''

Tony Paulauski, executive director of Arc of Illinois, a public policy and advocacy organization for those with developmental disabilities and their families, is calling for a boycott of the film, which opens today.

"The use of the 'R' word in the media, in movies, in comedy sketches is no different than the use of the 'N' word. It needs to end," he said.

Dustin Plunkett is a baby, OK? You "cannot believe a writer could write something like that"? When was the last time you were on an elementary school playground?

Tony Paulauski (you know what they say about Pollocks, right?) says retard = a very bad word for black people (even though they use it ALL THE TIME, but that's another topic). And here I thought it was dumb when feminists compared their "fight for equality" or whatever to what blacks went through here. Even worse was when gays did it. Then fat people started to do it. Now retarded people? Where does it end?

This cannot stand!

I have now been accused by two people (one verbally, one written) of following the Olympics by posting this. I'd like to clear up some misconceptions, since linking to an article with a funny headline apparently is equal to reading about the Olympics to people.

I read the Drudge Report numerous times a day. Why? If you have to ask, you've never checked it out. It's a great site for news links, from big stories to silly and weird stories to opinion pieces.

Yesterday I went to Drudge and he put up a link to the Phelps story where he just copied the headline to his site. Here it is again:

Rise of the human dolphin

There was a picture of Phelps above it. The headline immediately made me think of the South Park episode, to which I linked a snippet. I didn't even read the article, because I DON'T CARE.

So, let's go back over this, since being a math major in college clear doesn't confer upon people reason and logic:

I saw a headline, then linked to the story to show that I was not making it up. I then wrote that the headline reminded me of a South Park episode.

How again does that mean that I am following the Olympics?

Babytalk to old people

Rachel Lucas (clearly one of the few bigger misanthropes than me) writes about a study showing that old people hate being talked to like they are 2 years old. She does so very colorfully, so I recommend it to all.

When my grandmother was in her later years, I remember people talking to her like that. I hated it about as much as Rachel did. I always talked to her about normal things in a normal voice and I think she appreciated it.

Sick people on the CTA

This morning I'm on the Blue Line headed to work on a jam-packed car. We get to the Chicago stop and all of a sudden, at the other end of my car some of the passengers are forcing the doors open and getting off. I wonder what's happening (luckily I tend to have a good vantage point), and it becomes apparent that someone is "sick" on the train.

From what I could tell it was a little Hispanic lady who wasn't terribly old or fat. Yeah, the train was kind of warm, but when it's full of people that's going to happen. So the conductor and someone else (I guess the guy who was working at the station) come down and are just kind of talking to her for a few minutes. After this goes on for about 10 minutes we finally take off with this lady still on the train!

Now...

Unless someone is having a seizure or heart attack or stroke or something, why in the hell can't they just get up? Why can't we carry them off? This lady looked OK to me (not that she wasn't sick, but she could have gotten her ass up and off the train). We had to hold up morning rush hour for her to catch her breath or whatever? Meanwhile, the rest of the train was getting hotter and we were all getting warmed up while she had tons of room to calm herself down or something.

I'm quite aware that this may be my most misanthropic post yet, but I just don't get it. She wasn't going anywhere, so why not just get the train two more stops to Clark and Lake where everyone else can get off and she can be attended to? The whole thing is just done with no consideration of the hundreds of other passengers on the train sweating our asses off, not to mention the other trains behind us now getting clogged up.

Fatass whiners

What a bunch of babies. Big, fat babies:

In late April, Troutman learned an unfortunate side effect of his healthy weight gain: After entering the Michigan Avenue Gap store, he was told that they no longer carried his size, XXL.

"I'm not sure what I felt at that moment, but part of it was embarrassment," Troutman wrote on his blog, My View from the Jeep. "Regardless of the words the associate used, all I heard was, 'We're not serving your kind anymore.' "

The horror. It's like Jim Crow all over again.

The Gap was Troutman's favorite retail spot, and shopping there provided him with relief from the stresses of working as human resource manager at a Chicago not-for-profit. Now, he says, the local store on his block is a reminder of where he is not welcome anymore. "At my size, I don't have many options for shopping, and this was just one more limitation," he said. "The Gap is making it harder for a group of people who already have difficulty shopping to purchase their product."

Paul McAleer is a Chicago Web designer and developer who created and writes for My Big Fat Blog, which aims to report on "fat awareness and fat rights." He said the Gap's decision to pull the XXL from stores is part of a retail trend to make the bricks-and-mortar store less plus-size friendly. "To me it says that fat people, both men and women, do not fit within the Gap's brand image," McAleer said. Last year Old Navy, a youth-oriented brand of clothing owned by Gap Inc., pulled women's XXL from its stores, making it available only online.

What I'm about to write is not because I hate fat people and make fun of them (though they can be funny sometimes). It's because I'm 6'9" and can't find clothes everywhere I want to shop either:

All right, fatty, here's the deal. Stop being such a whiner. First, you are fat because you eat too much and don't exercise enough. If it's really just due to muscle gain, no one has to subsidize your roided up body. To complain about not finding clothes because of your lifestyle is ridiculous. That's like if you chopped off your arm on purpose and started complaining because stores don't carry one-armed shirts.

Second, why is Gap a bad guy? They are trying to be more efficient in their inventory. You can still buy your clothes online. Besides, since you are a guy you should appreciate not having to go to a store. It sucks poop, and only gays and metrosexuals enjoy shopping for clothes. Online shopping is SO much easier and better. Trust me, I do it all the time.

Third, this isn't Russia (to turn a phrase; I know they have a market economy now). We have a free market. If there are so many fashionable fatties out there who want to shop, open a store for them where you design the clothes. You should be fabulously rich benefitting from all of the fat discrimination out there.

Wait, what's that you say? You wouldn't get rich from it? Well no kidding. I guess there's not that much demand for it. Now do you see why Gap is not carrying that stuff any more?

Why should a store be required to carry everything they have in your size? Where does it end? Can I get some size 15 shoes, or 38 inch inseam pants, or XLXT shirts too? How about Shawn Bradley? How about Yokozuna? Hey, they've got rights and shouldn't be inconvenienced either, correct?

Yeah, dude, everybody today is a victim. Everybody has to bitch about something. Why don't you stop complaining and either fix the problem (by opening your own stores) or deal with it? You do that by finding out where you can find clothes that fit. It was quite a disappointment when I was a 6' 6" junior in high school and I figured out I had to buy all of my pants and shoes (and most of my shirts) from a catalog for the rest of my life, but I GOT OVER IT. Life goes on. With the internet, it's easy to find all kinds of big and tall stores.

Cook County Board still loves those new taxes

An effort to repeal the punitive new sales tax in Cook County failed yesterday. I like how those who want to let people keep more of their money are irresponsible:

Peraica took most of the heat. Commissioner Earlean Collins said Peraica's move was "all talk." Other board members criticized Peraica for being "irresponsible" by trying to repeal the tax in the middle of the year.

"To vote in favor of the repeal of the sales tax today would be to send our government to bankruptcy court possibly or to stop essential services," Commissioner Roberto Maldonado said.

Right, and what services are so essential? Certainly not the black hole that is the county hospital system. The county has no business throwing money at poor people and illegals who want free medical care.

Board President Todd Stroger was predictably modest about his efforts in the position so far:

When the rather long-winded arguments were over, Board President Todd Stroger said he is irritated by the constant criticism of his administration.

"I'm doing what's best for the people. That's how I'm running the government. And until this place falls apart, then I'll step up and say, you know what, I screwed up," Stroger said. "But until then, I'll tell you I'm doing a damn good job."

Sure you have, Todd, what with the hiring of your cousin as the budget director (I'm sure she is perfectly qualified, but she just happens to be related to you) and the ridiculous tax increases, one of which gives us this:

On July 1, the county's portion of the sales tax increased 1 percentage point -- a penny on the dollar -- to 1.75 percent, giving Chicago the highest sales tax in the country at 10.25 percent.

Let's not forget he wanted 2%!

We'll see if people remember this next election. I'm sure they won't, since Republicans are too mean for some people to ever vote for them. Add that to blacks monolithically voting for Stroger, and you have a mini dynasty. Great.

Starving people in the heartland

Yeah, as Jonah Goldberg points out, these guys look like they are really struggling with hunger (see the picture):

The rising cost of food means their money gets them about a third fewer bags of groceries — $100 used to buy about 12 bags of groceries, but now it's more like seven or eight. So they cut back on expensive items like meat, and they don't buy extras like ice cream anymore. Instead, they eat a lot of starches like potatoes and noodles.

Al Gore needs some perspective

Or so it seems, via Fark:

"I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously," Gore said, having never heard of the Great Depression, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War or the World Wars.

Also, Jim Geraghty has some commentary about other parts of Gore's big goofy environmental speech yesterday. This part is good:

Today's Washington Post notes, "As people filed out of the hall, three black cars waited for Gore and his entourage. A young woman walked up to the first one, a Lincoln Town Car, and stuck a handwritten note on the windshield: 'I wish I were a Prius.'"

A 2008 Lincoln Town Car gets 15 miles per gallon in the city, 22 on the highway.

Robert Redford is a dumbass

Sorry for the profanity, but it's true:

Asked by Michael Dwyer, film correspondent of The Irish Times , if he was looking forward to "regime change" in the US, Redford said: "Yes. Where my country is at the moment, I'm not confident of anything. I'm hopeful.

"I think Obama is not tall on experience . . . but I believe he's a really good person. He's smart. And he does represent what the country needs most now, which is change.

"I hope he'll win. I think he will. If he doesn't, you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye. I think we need new voices, new blood. We need to get a whole group out, get a new group in."

Wait, what?

Parties do disappear, even in our system of winner-take-all elections (as opposed to the European parliamentary system). See the Whigs. They don't happen because of a single election loss of one person. They occur because of internal dissention over issues, or even a single issue. The Whig link above mentions how they collapsed, for example.

To pound the point home further, even if McCain beats Obama, the Democrats are still almost assured of majorities in both houses of Congress. Are they just going to become independents?

Black politicians in Dallas don't know anything about astromony

What other conclusion can we draw from this? Oh yeah, they are also ridiculously sensitive. Maybe the NAACP can just shut down if this is the kind of "racism" that exists nowadays:

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.
County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term.

I love how the writer threw this in at the end just to completely humiliate these two clowns and point out to science-dopes what the phrase means:

A black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."

Shhh! Don't tell the health Nazis!

Second-hand smoke is no danger. What a surprise! (Not to me, I mean.) I could see that old people, people with respiratory problems, and small children shouldn't be exposed to all kinds of it. For normal adults, though, the nanny-staters who want to ban indoor smoking just had their main rationale (the health of workers in bars and restaurants) destroyed.

Oh well, it was never really about the health of workers. If it was, why is smoking banned in beer gardens of bars in Chicago? Once again, facts become inconvenient to those who want to take away freedom.

Rant time

Most people think I'm kind of a mild-mannered guy who doesn't get worked up about anything. Well, folks, prepare yourself for a rant that's been building in me. There is going to be some foul language, so be warned.

Auditors are fucking idiots. There, I said it. IDIOTS. What do you need to do that? An accounting degree right? You know who gets accounting degrees? Business majors with ZERO personality. What cranks me off about it is that the lay person thinks accountants are good at math. That is so fabulously untrue I almost cry whenever I see it. If they were good at math they would have been, you know, MATH majors. A corollary is when people think accountants and actuaries are similar. NO. NO. NO. Accountants make sure the numbers add up in a column. Actuaries have to actually think about the numbers to make sure they make sense (ignoring for a moment the fact that actuaries also use math functions more complicated than addition and subtraction).

I first learned this fact when I worked at the credit insurance company. Every month, I had to send some premium, claim, and other information to the internal accountant so he could put together his reports. Every once in a while, I would send numbers with a mistake. I was new, so I didn't really know how to analyze the numbers terribly well, and I had to send lots of them. Still, this dope wasn't smart enough to figure out when he used them that these obviously wrong numbers didn't belong. He would just go ahead and dump them into his spreadsheet. "A negative number? Who cares? The numbers add up! Also, I have to go to my Special Olympics training now!"

Different, but similar, situation now. This dumbshit auditor keeps asking for all kinds of information that no auditor has ever asked for before (and I've been doing this for 9 years). It's the most mundane shit that, if she had any clue how pension plans and their administration worked, she wouldn't ask. I mean, at this point it's just embarrassing. I would feel sorry for her if she wasn't such a stupid-ass who keeps annoying me with these silly requests. I blame Sarbanes-Oxley. Yeah, it makes PwC and other accounting firms rich as hell, but it gave auditors too much power. As a result, morons like this who have no idea what they are doing hold everyone who works on the plan over a barrel while the poor plan sponsor has to pay out the ass to the audit firm AND us. I would name the firm this dullard works for, but I don't think it's terribly big. I mean, it's nice they hire the "mentally challenged" and all, but I have real work to do!

You know how every once in a while you run into people who are just really stupid? You kind of wonder, "How does that person get through life? What does he do for a living?" I will forever now assume the answer is auditor.

If you are an auditor and you read this, it's time you heard the truth. The rest of us hate the work you do, as you are a nuisance and drag on the economy and all who actually produce things. Auditors are even starting to reach the level of lawyers in my mind.

Dumb hippies

You know what grinds my gears? Simplistic ideas from lefties who think they have stumbled upon something brilliant. It's usually the same dumb crap.

Take this silliness I found on CTA Tattler today. Now, I like this website for its information about the CTA. The sidebar on the right, however, is just mindnumbing.

Someone or another is interviewing random people on the CTA for some purpose. Fine, whatever floats your boat. The subject is some dopey high school kid who answers thusly to a question:

If he could say one thing to the entire world what would it be?: World Peace Now!

OK, he's just a stupid 18-year-old, right? (Except he can vote despite his extreme naivette, which is mildly disturbing.)

Here is the beginning of the interviewer's summary:

I think that it is very mature of him to think on World Peace at his age. I sheds a light of hope for the future of this world.

Um, no.

Demanding world peace now is NOT going to bring it. Does this kid think that Kim Jong-Il will read this and say to himself, "You know what? He's right! Let's have world peace. I am going to give up my nukes." Does he think Iran and Columbia and Syria and China will do the same? Oh my, if only the world listened to his wisdom.

The interviewer has earned a special scorn from me, though. How is is mature to say such things? I's what kindergartners say! "Stop fighting." Wow, really mature. And this kid's attitude sheds something on the future of this world, but it sure isn't hope. It's more like the pansification of our foreign policy the likes we haven't seen since Jimmy Carter (and soon, possibly, Barack Obama, aka, JC2).

You know the best way we can have world peace? By taking out bad guys and having a benevolent superpower with a kick-ass military like us who up-and-coming bad guys are scared of.

Surprise, surprise

Everybody remember the famous new 5 cent per bottle of water Chicago tax? It's a real shocker, but money is coming in at less than half of projections.

Two posts in one day about how so many Democrats don't understand economics? Today's news is a veritable goldmine:

David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, responded by essentially saying, "I told you so."

Vite predicted the tax would fall far short as Chicagoans fled to the suburbs to buy cases of bottled water, along with the rest of their groceries.

"Single-bottle sales have not been dramatically hurt. It's the bulk purchase, the six-pack and the case that has just been killed. There's no reason someone is gonna pay $1.20 extra for a $4 dollar case of water when they can go to the suburbs to buy it without that," Vite said.

So when you tax something, you get less of it (in this case, bottled water purchases)? Revolutionary! If only there were people out there who understand such phenomena and implement it into their political philosophy...

By the way, I just noticed the comments at the bottom of the article. It's full of the usual stuff like, "When will these guys stop taxing everything?" Are people this stupid? When you elect an entire city council of liberal Democrats, you are going to have liberal governance! That means high taxes and spending, and you will also have high rates of nanny-state-ism such as the smoking and foe gras bans. Why not mobilize and vote some of them out? A real shocker would be to start electing conservative Republicans, but that will never happen because to too many people in the city think they are "mean". Yeah, well, how "nice" is it to tax the crap out of everything just to piss the money away on the Olympics?

I just wish people who vote for certain candidates would understand what they are getting. If you vote Democratic, this is what you will get. If you are fine with that, then that's OK. Just don't complain afterwards when the guys you vote in do exactly what anyone who follows politics at all could figure out they would do. At that point, you are just being dumb.

This is mildly horrifying

A bunch of girls at some high school, none older than 16, made a pact to get pregnant. People are trying to figure out why they would do so. Um, part of it may be the school's culture towards high school mothers:

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.

Sure makes having a kid in high school seem not so bad, huh? I mean, except for all of the other kids that have to deal with strollers in the hallway.

House Democrats want to nationalize an industry

They are not only adamantly opposed to off-shore drilling for oil, but now House Democrats want the federal government to take over oil refineries. Government bureaucrats obviously know best how much oil should be refined and not the market.

I guess basic knowledge of economics isn't necessary to most voters to be in Congress.

Compare and contrast

Good questions! Reminds me a recent flood...

Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

Help! Some of you are enterprising...

I consider myself to be pretty good at tracking things down on the interwebs through Google due to my tremendous gift for knowing the right phrase to use. However, my weakest area, by far, is shopping online.

For example, I'd like to have some headphones that I can plug into the elliptical machine at the gym so I can hear the Simpsons episode I'm watching. However, I'm too tall to use regular headphones because the cord isn't long enough. I'd love to phone some regular, lightweight headphones with an extra long cord, and I'd think they exist somewhere. I just can't find them. Can anyone help? Any ideas on where to look, either online or brick-and-mortar? Please post suggestions in the comments.

Also, I'm note sure what happened to the format of this blog, but for some reason it's become harder to read due to no space between the main text and both the headline and the signature line. Does anyone know how to make it go back to having a space? I could (I suppose) just put in extra return lines at the top and bottom of each post, but that's kind of ghetto.

Europeans are damn weirdos

So here I sit watching the first game of the Euro 2008 (some soccer tournament for the national teams), and there is some kind of opening ceremony. It's a bunch of goofy music and cubes and costumes. Since it's live, I don't have a video link to offer. Trust me, it's lame.

The worst part is the poor announcers. These guys are just here to call the game, and they have to describe all of this artsy crap. They must want to kill themselves.

Yet I can't turn away...