At Least They're Targeting the Real Criminals

Between busting medical mj dispensaries and online poker players, they're going to go after food stamp fraud. So glad they arrested all those banksters who nearly ushered in the new Dark Ages. After all, $753 million a year ain't peanuts. It would only take 17,264 years for food stamp fraudsters to steal as much as the Fed secretly gave to the banks.

The Great Flood of 2011

The Mississippi River is predicted to crest in Memphis at 48' on May 10, a half-foot higher than the crest of the Great Flood of 1927. Here are some photos I received in email yesterday.

Wolf River flooding of school bus depot.

Wolf River flooding CBHS football field.

Wolf River flooding Al's Golfhaven



Wolf River flooding Humphrey's Blvd.



Mississippi River flooding of Harrah's Casino in Tunica.



The casino closings, for who knows how long (at least two weeks) will cost millions of dollars.



The Mississippi is about steal the show in Tom Lee Park.



I-40 crossing into Arkansas. Those were farm fields. 



In other news, teh kittehs are two years old.

Happy birfday to we.

Governor Haley "Larry Vaughn" Barbour

I had a dozen oyster po-boys and now I don't feel so good.

Hard Core Inflation

Just doing a little back of the envelope calculation for the inflation rate on my grocery bill.

I know that 9 years ago, my average grocery bill was $75 a week.

Over the last 3 months, my average grocery bill has been $175 a week.

According to my calculations, that's an increase of 233% over the past 9 years, or roughly 25% inflation per year.

Because the price of a pound of peaches varies from season to season, food costs are too volatile to be included in core inflation rate calculations. Because I can now buy a computer with 233% more processing power for 50% less than it would have cost me in 2001, somehow everything balances out. 

If the inflation of the average grocery bill (not individual food costs) were included in the core inflation rate, there would be panic in Washington and New York. Regimes would fall. Banks would collapse. That's why when they talk about the economy, they brush the ugliest numbers under the carpet. Those numbers are too volatile.

Hell yes they're too volatile. They keep going up! At 25% a year!

From the Department of Brilliant Ideas

Looks like Obama picked a bad day to approve more offshore drilling in the Gulf.

Coast Guard to Set Fire to Oil Leaking in the Gulf

NEW ORLEANS – The Coast Guard planned to set fire to oil leaking from the site of an exploded drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, a last-ditch effort to get rid of it before it reaches environmentally sensitive marshlands on the Lousiana coast.

Sooooo, instead of a giant oil slick washing up on the Lousiana coast, we'll get a giant flaming oil slick washing up on the Louisiana coast.

I'm sure no one could have foreseen this would happen. Much like everything else that happens.

Rollin' on the River

Google's satellite maps are teh awesome. Check out this whirlpool on the Mississippi River.

Clash of the Please God No

Just when you think Hollywood can't get any more pathetically unoriginal, they remake Clash of the Titans.

Breaking Addictions

If you've seen my previous post about quitting smoking, I make something of a hobby of breaking addictions. I am now 15 years without cigarettes, 6 years without Coca-Cola.

Now I am one month without chocolate, and it has been teeeerrrrriiiiibbbbbllllleeeeee. The other day, I was buying some ice cream and realized, I can't have chocolate ice cream. I can't have a chocolate eclair. I can't even have a chocolate donut. Never mind the dark chocolate that I love. I have given it all up.

Why? For years I have had this pain in my right side. When it first appeared, a doctor checked me for gall stones and liver disease and there was nothing there. But the pain was always there, sometimes bad, sometimes not, but always there. About a month ago, I had the idea that maybe it was something I was eating.

What is the one thing that I eat every day? After thinking about it for a long time, I realized that the only thing I ate every day, or almost every day, was chocolate. As an experiment, I quit eating chocolate. After about a week the pain in my side went away. I still get twinges, but for the most part it is gone. I also feel better overall.

But dear God in heaven, why did it have to be chocolate?

safe to say this probably will not turn out well

Disney is buying Marvel.

Hulk no like wearing stupid mouse hat. Hulk smash.

Predicting the Future

via Atrios



In 10,000 years, some archaeologist will discover this and describe it as an elaborate temple complex.

Then someone else will say aliens helped us build it.

Your Modern GOOP

Palin'nglui deth'panl! Cthulhu R'lymbaugh wgah'nobama fhascist!

All hail the Great Old Ones Party.

Please note that the three stars at the top of the logo have not been altered. In the actual GOP logo, they really are point-down. What can that possibly symbolize?

I'm not sayin'.

I'm just sayin'. That's a bit weird, don't you think?

The Media Michaelpalooza

Since everybody else is paying tribute, I might as well chime in.

I loved Michael Jackson - when I was seven, and he was with the Jackson 5. But ultimately, I needed music with a bit more backbone and soul, so I moved on to Elton John and never looked back.

When Thriller came out, I lived too far out in BFE to get cable, but I saw it in the common room at the dorm one day and I remember being completely blown away, thinking, Jesus that was stupid. This is what the media and the world is creaming over? We're doomed.

Turns out I was right.

John Bonham, why did you have to die?

What I Learned Today

How it feels to be hit in the face with a 2x4.

Lesson learned - duck.

Next Book of the Month Pick

Now that this woman and her fake pregnancy and fake dead baby have been exposed as a fraud, some asshat of a publisher is bound to give her a six-figure book deal. Because that's just the way the world works.

Don't Taze Me, Sonny

When a deputy can't control a 72 year old woman without resorting to his Tazer, that deputy needs to find a new job. What was dude afraid of - breaking a nail? Granny hitting him with her purse? Maybe he could get a job as a towel boy, or something in ticket sales. Anything other than behind the wheel of a cop car and the trigger of a gun.

Don't they train these officers anymore? Or is the need for police officers so much larger than the available pool of candidates that they have to hire just about anybody, even those incapable of learning basic human relations skills like how to defuse a situation without resorting to violence?

Don't Turn Around

The economic monster that can't be killed is standing right behind you.

A Damn Shame

The man who drew this and many other excellent political cartoons was recently laid off by the Commercial Appeal, where he had worked for many years, and now he's facing foreclosure.



Meanwhile the banks get all the bailouts they need, so they can stay afloat long enough to gouge their way to solvency.

What Wall Street needs is a dab of red matter shoved up its ass. Then we can reset the timeline and start with a clean slate.

Pity the Poor Little Rich People

Boo-fucking-hoo. This is what happens to monsters.

Uh, Netflix Sux, M'kay?

I just signed up for Netflix, and within 10 minutes cancelled my account. Want to know why?

Three reasons:

1. I wanted to watch video through my TiVo, but nothing about this service mentioned that I had to have an HD TiVo to use it, until after I had already signed up.

2. Still, I thought, I can always just watch regular DVDs. So I started browsing. When I hit the eighth straight title that was only available in Blu Ray format, I said WTF?

3. So I thought I would contact Netflix to find out why they don't offer the movies I want either as instant download to a regular TiVo box, or in DVD format, but I couldn't find any way to actually contact them, either by phone or email. That's some customer service they got there.

Hence - Netflix just lost this customer forever.

A few years ago, I had a Netflix account, but I cancelled it after three straight DVDs that wouldn't play due to their poor condition. After this experience, I don't know what would bring me back. Even free Netflix forever would be pointless, as I have nothing with which to play what they offer. In this economy, I wonder what Netflix is thinking, excluding the vast majority of their potential customers.

School Location Madness

So far, we couldn't be more pleased with our decision to move. My son's new school is excellent in every regard, and he is much happier.

But I do have one complaint. What idiot on the planning board thought this would be a good location to build an elementary-to-high-school campus? The Google picture isn't up to date, so you can see how it looked before construction began several years ago. The school is miles from even the closest subdivision. No child walks or rides their bikes to these schools. Every student has to arrive and depart via some sort of motorized vehicle.

Why would they do that? It's insane. Yet they did the same thing here - buidling a school in the middle of field, miles from everything.

Why not build the school here instead? Look, some kids could actually walk or ride their bikes to a school built here, yet there is plenty of open space in which to build and expand.

Or take a look at some older schools in the same district. Within this area, there are currently two elementary schools, one middle school, and one new high school (again, an old picture, but trust me, they're there). These schools were built to serve the community, thus they are located within the community - not a remote cotton field. What a novel idea - make the school a part of the community to engage the community, rather than the rabbits and owls.

In the future, would it be possible to build our new schools closer to the students who will attend them? And how about we build more schools and smaller schools, rather than giant mega schools of thousands of students and six or eight classes of every grade? I know, sounds crazy, but it's just crazy enough to work.