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?

Comics: Hands off Obama!

The late-night talk-show hosts have apparently decided that Barack Obama cannot be made fun of in their monologues. The reasons are numerous (or so they say), including that the audience members don't like it and that a bunch of white (guilty liberal) people are uncomfortable making fun of him since he's black. I guess the Obamessiah is beyond criticism.

Then there is this:

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Obama: There is no comedic "take" on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton's womanizing, or President George W. Bush's goofy bumbling or Al Gore's robotic persona.

"The thing is, he's not buffoonish in any way," said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson's monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Letterman. "He's not a comical figure," Barry said...

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the ABC late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live," said of Obama, "There's a weird reverse racism going on. You can't joke about him because he's half-white. It's silly. I think it's more a problem because he's so polished, he doesn't seem to have any flaws."

What?

Oh dear, people have lost their minds about this guy. Here's some easy stuff that's non-political: he's inexperienced, and there is also the way his followers swoon over his every utterance. That's not too controversial, I would think, even to Obama supporters. I could come up with lots more that many people wouldn't agree with, but then I've never agreed with the cartoonish depiction of our current president, not that it ever stopped these guys from continuing that.

The worst part is this:

But Barry said, "I think some of us were maybe too quick to caricature Al Gore and John Kerry and there's maybe some reluctance to do the same thing to him."

Wow. I mean, wow. I can't believe he actually came out and said it. He gets honesty points, at least, for admitting that he doesn't want to doom his favored candidate. After all, he didn't mention how much these writers screwed over Bob Dole in 1996, did he?

Britain is falling apart

This is what happens when leftism and political correctness runs amok in a country, as Jaime Sneider writes. Britain released a terrorist from prison and not only lets him walk the streets (he's technically under house arrest, but he's pictured walking around his neighborhood), but pays him $100,000 a year in welfare for his supposed bad back:

Al Qaeda foot-soldiers behead our soldiers while we pay their leaders disability. Qatada is living in a home worth $1.6 million. He's receiving government benefits totaling $100,000. This goes well beyond not deporting him. There really are no words.

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.

Rob Neyer is a machine

For Opening Day yesterday, ESPN.com baseball writer Rob Neyer decided to do a 12-hour online chat. It was supposed to go from 1 pm ET to 1 am ET. He also wanted to destroy Bill Simmons' chat record of 7 hours 12 minutes.

Mission accomplished. I'm amazed how cogent his answers at the end are.