Of all the sites on the internet, this is one.
Either the story I linked to in my previous post about this wasn’t clear enough or I just flat out missed it, but apparently the anti-commercial skipping technology that Philips has developed would not only prevent you from fast forwarding the ads during programs you have recorded, but also keep you from channel surfing during commercial breaks on regular TV as well.
I used to just hate hate hate this idea, now I’m looking for a word much stronger, since hate seems far too generous.
A while back under my post singing the praises of Swiss chalet’s soup, Barbie wondered if it was cuppa soup and I laughed at her. The reason for all that is one day, after eating a simple cuppa soup, I went from normal to absolutely crazily filled with some kind of inhuman energy, and among other things, wrote this piece of complete insanity! Sadly, that was the last thing I wrote for the Ham before I realized that I do not a columnist make, *sorry Roland*, and do better doing things like this. Anyway, it appears that I’ve stumbled upon the same brand of cuppa soup, because here I go again. Brace yourselves, if all goes well, for an absolute barrage o posts. And as I write this, I realize that this will make no sense in the archives because things go backwards. Oh well.
For some reason Carin and I got talking about the Gummi Bears today and it made me think back to a few years ago and the time I randomly heard the German version of their theme song. I’d only ever heard it once and I’d always wanted to hear it again because well, to me and my childish self, hearing things sung in other languages is pretty damn funny. Come on, tell me you never watched French or Spanish TV and thought it was the greatest thing in the world even though you had no clue what they were saying.
So today I decided that no matter what, I was going to find it. And yes, me having too much time on my hands is certainly a very debatable point, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because not only did I find what I was looking for, but I also found
the same song in a bunch of other languages, and even a ska version!
How cool is that?
Ok, I’m off to finally eat lunch now, and to hear what this bit of musical greatness sounds like in Danish.
Philips creates anti-ad skipper
I don’t have a TiVo or anything, but I still hate this idea. Hate hate hate it! It’s kind of like telling me that I can’t use my VCR (remember those?) to fast forward something.
And I love the way they try to justify its creation by saying “don’t worry, we’re not the ones who’ll be using this, so feel free to keep buying our stuff. All we’re doing is enabling everybody else to hold you up for money. We’re the good guys here, honest we are. We just wanted to invent this before somebody scooped us. Come on, cut us a break, we’re just trying to make some cash.”
Our whole society is slowly going mad. Let me sum up what it is about this story and things that surround it that makes me think so.
Seemingly nice guy visits dad in Maine. Guy finds out about two sex offenders in different towns, we think through the sex offender registry. Guy borrows dad’s truck and guns. Guy kills two sex offenders. Police find him. Guy kills himself on a crowded bus. Now people talk of shutting down the registry!
And here’s a surprise for you. It’s not the first few sentences above that make me think we’re going mad, it’s the last one! chew on that for a while.
Done chewing? Now it’s my time to start. This one guy went cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Does that mean we shut down a service that probably keeps thousands of people safe? Personally, I’d like to know if neighbour Bob who keeps offering to walk with me somewhere, keeps inviting me over to his place, keeps making passes at me is Bob the nice guy, Bob the creap, or bob the rapist. I’d like to know that John who buys my son candy, if I had a son, is not John the pedophile. It’s not enough that police checks are available, because only possible employers can do them. The public has a right to know that, queue the sesame street music, the sex offender is a person in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, in your neigh-bour-hoo-ood. It’s not that I’m saying the public has a right to scream, don’t throw your junk in my backyard, they just have a right to the knowledge that there *is* junk in their backyard in case it starts to stink.
Boys and girls, how many of you know the recidivism rate of sex offenders? That means the likelyhood that they’ll reoffend if you didn’t know. When it comes to, well, molesting boys and girls, it’s way too high, and when it comes to other sexual offenses, it’s way, way too high! So no matter how you slice it, the community should have the ability to find out if there’s someone they should be careful around.
It even says in the original article about this guy and what he did that the registry where they think he found his victims had been in operation for five years. So, because of one incident, should we shut them all down? Does that make any sense to you? And, why are people reacting more strongly to the idea of a sex offender registry being used as a vehicle to find victims than anything else? All the registry is is a deviant phone book. What’s stopping another guy from picking up the yellow pages and letting his fingers do the walking when he decides he doesn’t like plumbers? TV repairmen? Whatever profession someone might decide to hate? There’s no reason to freak out so much, and there’s no reason to shield sex offenders any more than anyone else! They have to face the fact that the time for the crime they’ve done, whether served in jail or in the community, is life!
Well hello again. What is with my random posts and all the thinking back to being 4? Well whatever it is, it’s making me laugh.
After I wrote my other post about being a kid, some comments made me think about other things I thought back then, so I guess I wasn’t as weird as I thought. Steve got me thinking about things I used to think about the radio. He thought the stations were inside the radio. Well at least he realized what DJ’s were. I thought they were just holding the doors open for bands to come in and play. I couldn’t figure out how a band could always sound exactly the same and be in a whole bunch of stations all at once. What really stumped me was the day I was turning the dial and they were at the beginning of a song and then I flipped it again and the same song was playing at a different point. It was once again time to burst Carin’s bubble and tell her, no no no, they were not live.
I also couldn’t figure out why a lot of bands had identical lead and back-up vocalists. I thought, “Wow, there are a lot of talented sets of twins out there.” And then in songs where the lead singer would sing multiple tracks and have them overlap, I’d try to figure out who was the real lead singer until my head would spin.
And then I always thought people were eating while on the radio. I thought gees these people are pressed for time. They have to eat and play their songs. Give them a break! There was Roy Orbison. I thought he was always eating, and cookies of all things. My dad would always freak me out too. Every time Roy Orbison would come on the radio, he’d say, “there’s that dead guy again.” So I’d picture a dead guy eating cookies.
There was this news guy who’d come on who had a mumbly voice, and he’d only read the news at noon. Because his voice was mumbly, I thought he was eating cheese. I’d always think that he must be really hungry since he had to eat through the news, and wonder why he’d never eat *before* coming to the studio. I just have one question for my four-year-old self. cheese? Why cheese? Maybe that’s two questions, but who’s counting? Damn now we’ve got 3!
Something else I thought about while listening to the radio was a commercial I’d always hear. It told people not to drink and drive and made it sound like the people who drank and drove were criminal bastards. I of course didn’t make the leap that drinking referred to only drinking alcohol. I’d sit there and think, “Do you not drink anything and drive because you might spill it? Or maybe you didn’t have both hands on the wheel and then you’d have an accident.” Well at least I got the accident part right.
Ok let’s get away from the radio for a bit. Let’s go to the kitchen and bake a pie! I’d watch mom baking pie and wonder how a bunch of eggs, sugar, butter, flour and fruit could turn into pie. I’d notice how when warm water got cold it would be cold water again. So I’d wonder if letting pie get cold would make it magically turn back into dough and then get scared when mom would put the pie in the fridge. “You’re going to wreck the pie, mommy!”
And I think that’s all the weirdness I can think of for now. At the rate I’m going, I’ll think of more later.
I know this is a pointless post, but what I’m about to describe disgusted me so much that I had to write about it.
I went to this Vietnamese restaurant. It’s a cute little place and they even serve you tea before you order, so I’m a pretty big fan of theirs. I wasn’t feeling that well that day, so I thought, I’ll order this chicken dish that’s on their menu. It has chicken, noodles, and some veggies. What a perfect dish for someone with a stupid cold. And bring on the tea!
So, after waiting a while, and drinking more tea, the food finally came. I was merrily chowing down, enjoying it quite a bit, when I speared into something that almost put the brakes on my appetite. My fork hit it and I thought, that’s the strangest piece of chicken I’ve ever seen. That should have been the warning. I put it in my mouth and started to chew. It was then that I noticed that it was not like chicken at all. It tasted more like rubber that had been dipped in eggs. To my horror, I could finally name this oddly-textured piece of garbage. That name, my friends, is tofu!
Now why in the good Christ would they need to put tofu in this dish? It had chicken in it for crying out loud! I can half understand why they put tofu in vegetarian dishes, although I’d never eat one with those hunks of chewy tasteless crap in them if I knew it would greet me. But I can understand its presence. It’s giving them protein since they refuse to eat anything with a face. And, they must have a different idea of what tastes good because they’re willing to eat things like Texturized Vegetable Protein, *gag*, and vegan cheese! *puke* aaaa! There goes my breakfast! But I asked for meat, I don’t need or want this in my meal.
So Here’s my question to people who have eaten at different Vietnamese restaurants. Are they all big tofu fans and it’s some kind of signature ingredient in Vietnamese food? Or is this one of the hazards of living in this town full of vegan and veg freaks? Maybe this traumatizing experience is all my fault. After all, I chose to live here.
Here’s another story update for you.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission’s brilliant plan to
arrest people in bars because they’re drunk.
Well, after almost 2000 arrests and seemingly a lot more public outcry, the program, which they ended up naming Operation Last Call, has been
called off,
hopefully for good.
Remember the
gun safety video
that I posted a link to a couple of months ago? Well, the star of that clip, Drug Enforcement Administration officer Lee Paige, is now
suing his employer for letting the video get out.
Here are the important parts of the story, just in case the link doesn’t stay active for very long, which it may not since it goes to a newspaper website.
DEA agent who shot himself sues government
BY PEDRO RUZ GUTIERREZ
The Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO, Fla. – Two years ago, DEA Special Agent Lee Paige shot himself by accident while giving kids a talk on gun safety in Orlando.
Paige, a 16-year veteran, wounded his thigh with a .40-caliber Glock pistol after reassuring children and their parents that the weapon was not loaded.
Someone who captured the gaffe on a video camera submitted it to the Drug Enforcement Administration as part of an internal investigation. The video has since surfaced on the Internet and has been shown repeatedly on late-night national TV shows.
Paige now is suing the U.S. government, saying his agency failed to safeguard the video and leaked it intentionally, thereby violating his privacy.
“As a result of the disclosure … by the DEA, Mr. Paige became and is the target of jokes, derision, ridicule and disparaging comments,” Paige wrote in his lawsuit, which was filed in Washington’s federal court April 7.
Rogene Waite, a DEA spokeswoman in Washington, would not address Paige’s complaint because she said Department of Justice guidelines prevent her from speaking about ongoing lawsuits.
Paige – who has been assigned to the DEA Orlando office since July 2003 – also says he has been unable to work undercover assignments as a result of the notoriety and he is barred from conducting speaking engagements.
Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show Friday morning, Paige said he had cleaned his gun but forgot to release the magazine.
“I was at the point of attempting to demonstrate how the gun could be disassembled and put back together,” Paige said. “It is something I had done hundreds of times throughout my career.”
Paige’s footage was shot on April 9, 2004, as part of “The Game of Life, The Game of Golf” presentation before the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association.
Paige, who could not be reached for comment at his Windermere, Fla., home Friday afternoon, told “Today” that he is constantly recognized on the streets and when he travels as the officer who shot himself.
“It’s something I can’t get away from,” he said in reference to the video files circulating on the Internet. “It’s caused me a great deal of embarrassment and stress to me and my family.”
“The Easter Bunny is a sadistic and unscrupulous offender who preys on people’s sweet tooth.”
