Max: Rat Out A Hippie, Get $50

The University of Colorado is offering a $50 reward for turning in pot smoking, filthy hippies.

Max: Neat

Aerial Photography

Max: I Gotta Get Me Some of That VD

YouTube - VD is for Everybody (1969)

Max: Heil Shrub

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Silencing The Squeaky Wheels

"The CIA has imposed new and tighter restrictions on the books, articles, and opinion pieces published by former employees who are still contractors with the intelligence agency. According to several former CIA officials affected by the new policy, the rules are intended to suppress criticism of the Bush administration and of the CIA. The officials say the restrictions amount to an unprecedented political 'appropriateness' test at odds with earlier CIA policies on outside publishing."

Max: 837 is 12 less than 849

849 is the lowest passing score on the CCNA test.

837 is the score I received today.

I'll leave it to you to draw the obvious conclusion.

Max: Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth

Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth

Thanks to Jason-Wan for the link.

Max: More Bullshit From "The Decider"

Protester Yells at Hu; Bush Apologizes - Yahoo! News: "'President Bush, stop him from killing,' the woman shouted, to the surprise of hundreds of guests spread across the lawn on a sunny, warm day. 'President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong' — a banned religious movement in China."

...

"The Secret Service identified the protester as Wenyi Wang, 47. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said she had been charged with disorderly conduct and that a charge of intimidating or disrupting foreign officials also was being considered."

Max: Ban The Fish!

Men hallucinate after eating fish | Practical Fishkeeping magazine: "Two men have suffered terrifying visual and auditory hallucinations after eating a popular local seafish in Mediterranean restaurants.

According to a clinical study on the patients, which is due to be published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, the men started seeing and hearing things after contracting a rare form of hallucinogenic poisoning from the Salema fish they were dining on."

If we don't ban the fish, the aqua-hallucino-terrorists win!

Max: Happy Easter

I wish all a Happy Easter as we all celebrate the day that Jesus nailed a rabbit to a cross and the rabbit shit out funny coloured eggs.

Jericho: Not THAT desperate ...

Check out this link ...

Then check out this one ...

Now, read this:

Date: Apr 1, 2006 9:09 PM

Subject: Too old to dream?

Getting old sucks.

Here I am, at 34, and I feel so freakin' old.

Do you care? There's no reason you should.

I think I was born with a rock and roll dream. I was playing air guitar before I knew it was called air guitar. In my mind, I have joined every band I have ever loved. I have played drums for The Eagles, I played bass for Genesis, I was a roadie for Rush, because they don't need any help. I'm pretty sure I'd have to be a roadie for Queensryche as well, hmmmm ...

Anyway ...

When I was younger, I often dreamed with a friend of mine that we would form a band. He would play bass and I would play drums. We decided I would sing and we would write the songs. All we needed was a low hassle guitar wizard and we were a power trio! Nearly 20 years later, he is still learning the bass and I never did buy that drum kit. We both work in computer tech support. It's like a punch line to bad joke.

But, even with all of that, I still have the dream. A rock and roll dream.

Why am I telling you this. I dunno. If you're going to be rock stars, you'll probably have to get used to people dropping their hearts and souls in your lap. Here's your first taste.

A poet's heart, a story teller's soul and an engineer's mind all wrapped around a rock and roll dream. All of it encased in a 34 year old, 450 pound body. Not an ounce of musical talent. It's pathetic.

So, I read your ad here on MySpace, I checked out your profile. I love your music! It's raw and hard, yet controlled. It's properly targeted.

As I listen, the dream wakes up. Here's our chance! the dream says. We can finally be a rock star. We are willing to jump up on stage, scream, shout, growl, let loose, give our head a good banging, give the crowd a good show. That's what we want to do. Give the crowd permission to let it out! Feel the fear and the hate and the anger, feel the animal inside us all and just enjoy it for a minute, before we have to put it back in the box so that we can live in normal, everyday society.

And then the brain kicks in. The Great Analyzer. I'm kidding myself! Who would want to be on stage with me? I'm fat and ugly and can't sing. I have a wife and a job and a mortgage to think about. I don't have a swig of musical anything. They already sound great, they don't even need a singer! Even if they let you on-stage, you would only hurt them, hold them back. They have a chance to make something of themselves. Your old selfish dream could destroy them.

Here I sit, getting older and less punk-rock by the minute, writing this rambling email. What a waste of everyone's time.

But, I still have a rock and roll dream.

Just how desperate for a singer are you? :)


Jericho


They never wrote back.

Jericho: A Chat with Max, 3/20/06

Jericho: Laura is making me join MySpace. If I'm joining, so are you, pal.

Max: You could always not do it.

Jericho: And put up with her begging? I can't say no to women, you know this.

You have defenses against this, I was raised by amazons!

Max: Damn shame, that. I can say "no" to both of you.

Jericho: Oh, no, buddy boy. I will make you pay! I can't raise a hand to her, but you I know how to abuse very well!

One strip-ogram to the tune of "Coppa-Cabana" and you will be begging!

One well placed nude photo of me and you will rip out your own eyes.

Then, I'll get creative!!!

Max: You'll have to find a way to hack into my online study guides.

That is about all I see these days outside of work.

Jericho: What? You don't think I can manage that? You think I'm impotent?

Alright! Fine. You got me. Impotent as a Bobbit!

Please!

Just join so she'll leave me alone!!

Who knows. I might even be, dare I say, fun.

Max: I don't have any, dare I say, time. Maybe in late April when I finally become a certified looney.

Jericho: What? You don't love me anymore?

Fine. No. Fine. I see how it is.

You can't find five minutes to do this tiny little thing. For me. I see.

Fine.

Good.

I'm not crying because I'm angry. These are tears of understanding!

Max: Hmmm, that clocktower is looking better all the time.

Jericho: Sure. You have time for the clock tower but not me!

Max: I'll dedicate my first kill to you.

Jericho: Time for the clock tower - how ironic!

That's right. Time for your guns and bullets and "assassinations" - but nothing for me.

Max: That's it. I'm voting for the removal of the word "ironic" from the language. No one knows what it means anymore.

Jericho: What? That wasn't irony? I thought that was wonderful irony? "time" "clock" - what?

Max: That would be the opposite of irony.

Jericho: You were giving time to the clock - that's not ironic?

Max: Irony is using a word but meaning the opposite. Like calling a big guy "Tiny".

Jericho: Then what was I dodin?

dodin = doing


Max: Being odd?

Jericho: Oh. Well. Sure I was.

Then, I have been trying too hard when it comes to irony. Shesh! Much easier than I thought ...

Max: "Irony" has become a word people use when they don't know what word to use.

Jericho: I try not to use it at all, just for that reason. I thought I had nailed it for once. Silly, stupid me.

Max: It's okay. You may be an inbred, drooling affront to nature, but you are MY inbred, drooling affront to nature.

Jericho: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ironic

Interesting bit there under "Usage Note"

I only drool in my sleep!

Max: Yeah, that about sums it up.

Jericho: Okay, so, there has got to be a word for what I was doing - because it was pretty cool!

Max: There probably is. Check your copy of Elements of Style.

Jericho: Yeeeeeeeeah. I'll just dig that right up.

Max: Okay.

Jericho: What I love is that they couldn't get a full panel of experts to agree on this word's usage, only a majority.

Max: What? Unanimity has nothing to do with fact.

Jericho: If you put four artists and a color wheel at a table and asked the artists to point at "blue" - I'm betting none of them would be pointing at the orange.

If so, then I would have that one tested for drugs.

Max: But if that one did point to orange, would that weaken you confidence in the three that pointed to blue?

Jericho: Maybe a little. What does the whack know that the others don't? Is conventional wisdom wrong in this case?

Max: So, forget what they vote was and look to the facts.

Jericho: What facts? 100 experts sit down and only 75 of them agree. That's a fact?

Language is a protocol - you're studying those now, right?

If one device speaks cobol and one speaks BASIC - they can't communicate until they agree on a common protocol.

In language, we all have to agree what the words mean or else the words are meaningless.

Max: And how is any of that affected by the vote count?

Jericho: 25% of the supposed expert don't agree on what the word means. I'd call that significant.

Funny, I'm agreeing with you and you're fighting me on it.

Max: You're married. You should be used to it.

Jericho: Right. I forgot.

Let's just go have sex.

Max: If you are saying the "experts" are dips, yes, I agree. I just don't see it as any more relavant than the other 90% of the anglophone world who don't know what "irony" is.

Jericho: Right. Let's abandon the freaking word - no one knows what it means.

Max: Amen, sister.

Jericho: You realize that I am going to be forced to post this chat to IWDC. This is totally classic "us" ...

Max: Feel free-ish.

Jericho: Ish?

Am I editing something out of here?

Max: Dunno. Are you? I have enough trouble keeping track of what I am doing.

Jericho: Oh. No. I thought it stood well on it's own. But if you are troubled, I'm here for you my child ...

Max: I am troubled, but twenty years of you has not exactly helped.

Jericho: I thought I had a calming effect on you. Like a wind swept ocen coated in crude oil.

ocen = ocean

Max: You certainly are crude and slick. But you are more like a fireman who filled the wrong tank when he stopped at the gas station.

Jericho: Ah! Good one.

That would be one HELL of an expensive mistake these days!

Max: Yeah, but imagine the footage on the news.

Jericho: Fireman with a flame thrower quickly followed by exploding fire truck. That's good teevee!

I think there should be more flame throwing on teevee.

Max: You might want to check out Braniac on G4. It pretends to be a science show but is mainly about blowing shit up.

Jericho: G4 is now doing a Mythbusters rip-off?

That network needs to find an audience or give it up.

Max: No. Braniac is not quite a Mythbuster type show.

Their "science" is even thinner. Sometimes they don't even bother coming up with a reason other than flame throwers and high explosives are fun for all.

Jericho: Well, okay. That I can live with.

Max: Once, they had an "experiment" to find out if you would get a better workout riding a stationary bike for a period of time or staring at a woman's breast for that same period.

Jericho: Okay, now I see where their audience lives, in my shorts!

Max: Good Lord! How do they breath in there?

Jericho: My penis is actually the business end of my internal HVAC system.

Max: Chilling

Jericho: Or heating, depends on which way my nipples are tweaked.

Max: Pardon me while I go soak my brain in bleach for a while.

Jericho: I can only produce that three days out of the month. Cast off from my internal peat moss plantation.

Max: I would have thought you would have gone pellet.

Jericho: Um. Okay.

That was the wife on the phone, I have to go now.

Max: Kewl. C ya

Jericho: Buh-bye!

Jericho:Um... Hi! I'm going to remain calm this time!

Howdy folks. Long time since my last post. I'm sorry.

One of the problems I experience being a blogist is that I have a desire to share everything and I just cannot do that. I have a Non Disclosure Agreement at work. There are things you don't say in a public space for fear of losing your job. There are things that happen between you and your family that are private and need to be kept that way. So, unless I wanted to come out here and detail for you my daily lunch menu (usually a Slim Fast Low Carb chocolate shake, BTW) I really don't have a lot to write about. I have my life, my passions and this blog, that's it. A good portion of my life isn't fit for print.

I find a kindred spirit in Howard Stern, of all people. Love him or hate him, he is doing all of us a favor by finding ways to push the envelope and keep free speech free. Anyone else find it sad that two of our biggest free speech advocates are Howard Stern, Shock Jock and Larry Flynt, pornographer? Anyway, enough of this digression ...

If you have never seen Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts", give it a look. Yes, there are boobs flashing at random and Howard's naked tush, but it has other valuable bits as well. I saw the movie and I read a $1 copy of the book for a giggle. The movie hits this topic, but the book hits it harder - the topic is truth. Howard points out in the movie that he needs to come up with four hours of material a day, and either he uses his life for material or he is going to come up short. At one point, he realizes that he is holding back and he needs to go further, to tell the truth about himself and when he feels he shouldn't say anything, he knows right there that he should say that thing. This causes friction between he and his wife, as he shares their most intimate events. Believe it or don't, these intimate events are the "Private Parts" referred to in the clever title.

Now, IWDC isn't my job. I wish, but it's not. I don't share that aspect with Howard. I don't owe you, constant reader, a damn thing. I just don't. You, my dear reader, aren't paying my bills. I write here when I can about what I can. I write here because I want to write. But, many days, the blog calls out to me. "Write in me" it says "tell me your feelings. Share your life with me." And I want to, I want to share all of my life. I want to tell my blog everything, because I know my friends read this, so it's telling them everything about my life. Since this takes the places of my private diaries of the past, I'm missing huge parts of my personal story, all for the sake of an NDA or the privacy of family and friends. I'm a writer, I just am, and this is most of the writing I do these days, so I miss doing it.

Screwing up my relationships or my job over my blog just isn't worth it. And I feel like a moron putting up silly stuff. Max does a good job of balancing silly to worthwhile - I don't think I have his flair for it. So, I don't write out here nearly as often as I want to.

I've probably covered most of this before. You are probably sitting there wondering why you have read this far. If you are looking for a payoff, forget it, stop reading now. This is just me rambling. I'm justifying my lack of entries with one long entry about the fact that I don't have any entries out here. Sorry to waste your time.

Pretty much, that's what IWDC is: a waste of time. IWDC has been a huge time sink. Think about it. Think about the time in the last four years that I have invested here. Think about the time Max has spent. Think about the time our handful of readers have spent. On top of writing and admining this site, Max and I leave a lot of comments out here. I know I hit this site at least once a day, even when I haven't written out here for weeks. There are days I hit the site five or six times and don't even leave a comment. Think of all that time, time that could have been spent on so many other things. Yet, here I am, writing my pathetic little whiny rant. To profit whom? What do I have to show? One more entry.

But I love this little site. I'm oddly proud of it. Whenever I tell someone about it, I have this huge smile on my face. Then I spend the next half hour apologizing for it. "Yeah, it's just a blog, my friend and I keep it, so it's not just me." I always have a feeling of inadequacy when I admit that. I feel like I rely on Max to carry this project. "Yeah, the subjects are our own twisted view of the world. We tend to say exactly what's on our mind and we both suck at editing ourselves." Especially me, I think. "Oh, yeah, the language is pretty fuc..., I mean we use some pretty rough language sometimes, it's pretty much PG-17 out there." Apologizing for my love of free speech; my liberal tendencies tripping over my non-confrontational need to please others.

I wanted to do this to have something for Max and I to share. I wanted to do a project online. I wanted to have some long term thing I could point at and be proud of. I guess I have all of that here. I just feel like I'm not keeping up my end of the deal usually.

Should I tell you the boring stuff? Has our reality television obsessed/corrupted society gone so far that what I have for lunch is interesting to our readership? If you, the reader, think so, say so! The comment thingy is there for you to exploit. Telling you all about my daily lunch will make for easy writing on my part. I'll add daily bits about my bus rides and the joys that are our cats - if you wish. Unless I hear from you, I'll stick to the odd, long post about things that really interest me. Things I feel are worth your attention.