This Blog Is Full Of Crap

Couldn't give less of a crap about them.

However, how about a Blogger Winter Olympics?

Events like Bawdy Snowmen Building and Complaining About The Weather.

Nah.

Blogging will be light today because I'm heading up to Pennsylvania for a really good practical joke.

You see, I'm going to gouge out Punxsutawney Phil's eyes with a pocketknife and then stick him back in his hole. When they drag him out to see his shadow, the crowd will see nothing but a pair of empty bloody eyesockets.

And I will have a new set of cufflinks. Not that I wear anything that requires cufflinks, but I've always wanted a pair of groundhog's eye cufflinks.

What better groundhog to blind for my fashion statement than the most famous of all?

Isn't that a cool joke? It's not like I can do it on April Fool's because that will give those Punxsutawney bastards ten months to cover up my crime and train a new groundhog to get doped up and not attack the handler.

It's what they did in 2003 when I first tried it, you know.

Don't ask about 2004 and 2005. Let's just say that the Pennsylvanian Prison System leaves a lot to be desired.

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

Well, Pajamas Media has decided to further stratify their lineup of weblogs by establishing a list of 22 "PJ Bloggers" on the sidebar.

Just when I thought I was part of the "Elite G-70" list, looking down my nose at the B-300 blogrolled peons and not even acknowledging the unwashed non-PJ masses, now I've got a bunch of aristocrats laughing and knocking their champagne glasses and caviar plates on my head.

Hold on... maybe IMAO made the list...

Nope. Double-denied.

Oh well. Instead of bitching, I'll just ask Mohammed about it later.

While chowing down on Kung Pao Seafood at the restaurant last night, I was reading through Islam For Dummies and came across the following paragraph on page 94:

The day Prophet Muhammad died, the Muslim community faced a state of chaos; for the first time, Muslims had questions that couldn't be answered directly by God through the Prophet.

During this critical time, Abu Bakr (a close companion of Prophet Muhammad and first Caliph after the Prophet's death) stood in front of the Muslims and emotionally recited a passage of the Koran that suddenly came to life:

"Muhammad is no more than a messenger. Many were the messengers that passed away before Him. If he died or was slain, will you then turn back on your heels?" (3:144)

Then, Abu Bakr said, relating to the meaning of this passage to his people:

"If you worshipped Muhammad, then know that Muhammad has died. But, if you worship Allah, know that Allah is living and He lives forever."

If one is to believe that Muhammad and the other prophets of history were through messengers of a Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever), then that Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever) stated through sura 3:144 that the messengers were insignificant and not worthy of veneration of worship. The only being worthy of worship or veneration is the Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever) himself.

Which means that Muhammad himself had no value whatsoever to the world beyond being a conduit through which the Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever) spoke. Just a disposable meat-flavored radio through which that Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever) talked to the world.

So why threaten to kill people who depict Muhammad in any way, shape, or form? Why take it as an insult at all?

The cartoonists were mocking Muhammad, but not Allah. Not even mocking the Quran, the message of the Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever). There was no depiction of the Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever), no mockery of the Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever). Just the messenger. The humble messenger whom the Higher Power (God/Allah/George Hamilton/Whomever) has commanded you not to elevate to the status of any more than a messenger.

If you elevate the status of the messenger beyond just a mere messenger with a reverence that inspires you to kill others, then are you not failing to honor the message itself in Sura 3.144?

So these web developers write in with a whole laundry list of demands.

Not requests. Demands.

They aren't the server owner, though. They're not even in the account contacts. So they're not authorized to make technical support requests.

If we let anybody make technical support or account requests, we'd be out of business in a day, buried under lawsuits for random reboots, reimaged drives, and stolen data.

So, I write the owner, telling them we received this request, but they're not authorized. They need to work through the server owner or get added to the account.

Guy writes back, all snippy. But he doesn't authorize them. Because he doesn't want them on the account doing things to his account. Although he does want them capable of making major changes to the server on a whim.

Lazy, irresponsible prick.

Yesterday's mailbox filled up with angry rants from someone who had his servers cancelled out from under him because Customer Service got an email asking to cancel servers and they apparently didn't bother looking up the account to make sure they're the owner.

I wonder how these people deal with their bank. Do they just scream at the teller to get their money, yell at the lock on the safety deposit box to open it, and let anyone just walk up and take money out of their account?

Whatever.

Pharaoh Hosni the First is telling Hamas that they must recognize Israel's right to exist and honor any and all treaties with Israel.

Never mind the fact that Hosni hasn't sent an ambassador to Tel Aviv for almost five years, despite it being a requirement under their 1978 treaty. The one that earns them $2 billion a year in US blood money.

Now that the catcams are somewhat stable (except for the focus in my chair), let's see how the rocking chair is doing...

Excellent.

I thought I had the focus just right on my chair this morning. I spent five minutes with some writing trying to get it just right.

Oh well. I may just swap the IR and the front-view rocking chair cam again.

Coretta Scott King's body has been flown back to Atlanta from Mexico.

I wonder how many Mexicans were hiding in the coffin.

Wait.. .hold on... Mexico?

That's right. She was down in a holistic therapy center in Baja, Mexico that's famous for killing Steve McQueen and several other moribund celebrities.

So let me get this straight: this is an African-American icon in rapid decline. She has vast medical resources at her disposal due to wealth. She also has the loyalty of every African American doctor who got a chance to prove him or herself in medical school because discriminatory admissions policies were abolished.

And she goes to Mexico for treatment?

Well, there you have it. Another example of Mexicans stealing jobs from African Americans.

If the Burger King died, I'd think he'd want to be cremated.

It's the closest thing to flame-broiling available at the mortuary that I know of. However, they may have some "off-menu" options available for celebrities.

I am #5 on Google for Mohammed Cartoons but #2 Mohammed Cartoon.

Intelligent search-engine, my ass!

Cindy Sheehan getting tossed out of the gallery before the SOTU for wearing a protest shirt got me to wondering.

How quickly do thermal-sensitive dyes change color?

Individuals could get access to a public event and the seemingly innocent patterns on their shirt slowly change to the seditious message. Or they could come in with clothing that's chemically-sensitive which can be activated with something as innocent as the perfume compounds in a moist towelette.

Also, one can take advantage of the television medium. Some weaves and patterns are lousy with television cameras, causing remora effects due to the refresh rate and the resolution of the cameras. One could design a pattern which to the human eye is innocent, but to a standard television camera will paint an entirely different image.

A two-layer jacket could be worn with a transparent or mesh-like colored layer on top that's makes the cloth underneath appear like a near-solid pattern, but when removed it displays the desired message.

And there's always the use of strong concealed velcro fasteners if you're looking to revive that goofy "nude-in" protest wackiness that was going around a few years ago. It would take some clever engineering to design an outfit that's sturdy enough to pass inspection but can be quickly removed in a third of a second or so.

How would *you* sneak in a message if you had that kind of ace to grind and an unfettered path to the rich, lush forest?

Gizmodo is featuring what they call an electronic homing pigeon device.

I'm wondering if this would be handy with a long-distance bus commute. You get on at a particular stop, activate the unit, take nap, and when you're near your destination the thing goes off to wake you up.

I'd set the timer alarm on my phone, but the ETA at work changes depending on traffic and the occasional light-passenger route where the driver blows past stops like Mario Andretti.

This is the third anniversary of the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia .

I remember that day quite well. My wife was going into work to feed in the shuttle's landing. She was going to pick up kolaches for brunch while I was making some special coffee.

She didn't come home until the sun was long, long under the horizon.

Technology Bytes is in fundraising mode for KPFT-FM.

I missed last week and didn't catch the podcasted episode, but I heard I was being run down for my psycho entry for the SWSX contest.

Yeah, I deserved it. I kinda went off the deep end with the pool empty.

As usual.

Don't look now, but Katrina Kitties are weighin in on the Ray Nagin "Chocolate City" speech.

Blogging will be light today because every time I try to blog, Shelia Jackson-Lee wants to shake my hand or pat me on the back while photographers take our picture.

Who's the jackass who told her that shaking my hand would get her votes and money?

The bitch runs unopposed every year, and she goes through this crap every damn year.

I swear, if I find out who did this to me, I'll kill you.

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

I firmly believe that if the white head of a public university had done what this woman did, they'd be fired and facing serious jail time...

Texas Southern University President Priscilla Slade has reimbursed the university more than $138,000 for the cost of landscaping her new home, according to records released Wednesday.

Slade, who wrote the check Monday, is hoping to get back into the good graces of the university's board of regents before they meet Friday to discuss her future. She is also under scrutiny for charging roughly $87,000 to TSU for household furnishings, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.

Ah, yes. She's stolen more than just the landscaping costs.

What about the board, which should oversee her spending?

Although some board members have been strongly supportive of Slade, there are still unanswered questions about the source of the money and whether she needed their approval. The regents have asked for an internal audit, and a representative from the Texas Attorney General's Office will meet with them Friday to discuss state laws on bids and contracts, three regents said.

How many people on the board received any of this money in payments for services?

How many people on the board are stealing money themselves?

For as long as I've been down here, TSU is in some kind of bizarre warp-bubble that resists reason and law, so university presidents can just smirk an "oops" and promise to pick up the tab or scum like Louis Farrakhan can claim that rabbis were dancing on rooftops at university events and people in the audience shout Hallelujah and Amen instead of protesting.

Sometimes I wonder if it's our own little Al-Quds University down on the bayou, manufacturing hate and corruption.

But you know what? It's a self-regulating system. If the university is more intersted in being a factory for corruption and evil, teaching ideology instead of job skills, then it will lose focus on education. Graduates of the university will be less competitive in the job market. The value of the diploma will go down.

In the long term, problems tend to solve themselves when the free market takes over.

Elisson nails it.

So, who will be the first to recite Red Green's infamous poem?

Lo and behold, Mozilla has plugged the infamous memory leak of Firefox!

And there was much rejoicing.

So, when will Mozilla plug the leaks in the CIA and the State Department?

I think the Danish ambassador should issue an apology.
I also think that the Norwegian government should issue an apology.
And since Soir published, so should the French government.

Let them gather together in the largest church in Saudi Arabia and issue their apologies together.

And me for my own blasphemous cartoons? Well, I'll apologize from the largest synagogue in Riyadh.

When Edloe was still around, I'd do a whole Grumpus Day ceremony in the morning with her in the morning

She'd be dozing in her Grumpus Cave, and I'd call her out. Or I'd just wait for her to realize it was time for her to crawl out and sit on my boots to keep me from putting them on for work.

She'd poke her nose out and see her shadow...

And there'd be six more weeks of kittytreats.

Not this year, though. The Grumpus is gone. The Grumpus Cave is gone.

There is no Grumpus Day Festival.

But...

Speaking of Elisson, he's got his own Mohammed Cartoon within a tought-exercise examining a single new story from different blogger perspectives.

He forgot Glenn Reynolds: "Heh. Indeed."

We've shut down our member's area and ticket system for an upgrade. Right at the peak traffic time for the business, of course.

Genius, man. Pure genius.

Man's greatest asset is the opposable thumbs. Makes them so much easier to twiddle, you know.

But here? Yeah, just knock the heart of the business down during the day, whatever... hey, check out this cool site... (whistle)

Customers see the "Back in a moment" message. Some just shrug and wait patiently.

Some. More are getting pissed, calling. Getting the same response, because internally we can't get to it either.

Then they hit the chat system. Same thing.

Infuriated, they turn to writing their requests in emails.

I'm responding "I can't enter a ticket for you." Not taking any of their bait to fight. Not worth it.

Nor does this workstation talk to a printer, so I can't even walk the request to a datacenter technician.

And if you send them something through the internal chat system, it's not just like talking to a brick wall, but talking to a retarded brick wall.

I hope the system comes back up soon.

What puts this all into perspective was a big speech a week or so ago about taking ownership of issues, solving them, working through management to make it possible for us to work smarter and more effectively.

I'd start with running upgrades of mission-critical systems at night or the weekends.

When the glorious day of turning in a two week's notice comes, I figure I'll staple a list of other helpful suggestions to it.

After years of practicing with Ted Rall, an I ready for Tom Toles?

Yeah, I'll give it a shot later. My first instincts:

"Not only should this solve your nailbiting problem, Mr. Smith, but I think you'll be jerking off a lot less on the subway."

"All things considered, I'd prefer you signed the bill with the pen stuck in your mouth, Mr. Cleland."

"Perhaps you should consider less extreme sports to pursue in your retirement, Phevos?"

Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah demonstrates that huggy-happy love for his fellow man that's earned him diplomatic ties with the terrified EU...

"If there had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's fatwa against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared to do so," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in remarks published Thursday .

Muslim anger has continued to swell over the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and several other European papers.

"I am sure there are millions of Muslims who are ready to give their lives to defend our prophet's honour and we have to be ready to do anything for that," said Nasrallah, whose movement is backed by Iran.

If you're so sure of that, Nasrallah, then shouldn't one of those "millions of Muslims" managed to have killed Rusdhie by now?

When I last checked, Salman Rushdie is still alive.

So either:

• Out of 1.3 billion Muslims, nobody has the balls to go after Rushdie.
• Out of 1.3 billion Muslims, nobody has the balls to shut Nasrallah up permanently.

If that psycho Nasrallah is right, well, it sounds a lot more like the Religion of Pussies instead of the Religion of Peace to me.

Around here, we have a little document that starts with "When in the course of human events..." and ends with the British king getting the finger.

Consider that when you look at some of these crazies waving your beloved Quran around threatening death, destruction, volcanoes of revenge, and earthquakes of retribution.

What do you believe? What Religion do you follow?

If the EU and US cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority...

Who will pay for the flaming hoops?

Remember all those times your mother told you "Well, if X jumped off the Empire State Building, would you jump with him?"

Well, hopefully you and your mother didn't know Dovid Abramowitz.

So, how long will it be before Disney's entire legal staff calls up Chris Muir threatening him with everything up to and including crucifixion?

Never mind the fact that based on the Constitution as writted by the Founding Fathers and displayed in Washington D.C. for all to see, the copyrights on the character of Piglet actually expired decades ago.

Will Alito and his fellow conservatives declare Congress' granting of extensions for proftable copyrights in exchange for millions of lobbyist dollars Unconstituional, or is strict-interpretation just a fantasy for getting through confirmation hearings?

There are now 219 names that are better than "The Houston 1836" listed in the database.

Thanks for everyone's suggestion, and I look forward to the glorious day when we break the 1836 mark.

So I check the stats on IFOC... closing in on 10,000 hits today for the blogs, a few thousand for the photo gallery.

Gee, I wonder why.

You know, If I were a greedy lying sack of shit like Andrew Sullivan, I'd beg for tens of thousands of dollars to cover bandwidth costs.

But I'm not a greedy lying sack of shit like Andrew Sullivan

Oh, and I'm doing fine on bandwidth and load. Server's peachy-keen, scrumdillicious, and supercalifragil... um... groovy.

Thanks for asking.

Well, Ted Rall's crawled out from under his rock on the outskirts of Columbia University to issue his take on the whole Mohammed Cartoons kefuffle, and it starts off reasonable enough:

My first reaction is disgust. Why did the Danes apologize? They ought to have stood behind their cartoonist. And even if the cartoons were offensive to the point that they crossed the line (an impossibility as far as I'm concerned, but then I make my living because of freedom of the press), the editors who published them is wholly to blame. Artists create; editors censor. Once an editor signs off on a cartoon, it becomes his or her responsibility.

Sadly too few American editors seem to grasp that. They fire the cartoonist when it's the editor who should step down.

Sounds reasonable enough to be.

He then draws on personal experience:

I'm also disgusted at American newspapers who did not reprint the cartoons, if only to show their readers what the big fuss was about. How can readers judge a graphic without seeing it? I too have been victimized by this practice. My "cartoon FDNY 2011, about the firefighters after 9/11, was not nearly as offensive to actually see than it was to read about in brief excerpts.

Sounds almost as reasonable as the first statements, but he's leaping into the realm of resentment, envy, and frustration. Plus, he's lowballing the odiousness of his own product, much like a reeking bum not noticing his stench after a while.

Then, the reason vanishes, and reason becomes merely a launchpad into the stratosphere of moonbattery, envy, and rage...

More disgust: Why don't press accounts reference the cartoonist's name? They're not "Danish magazine cartoons," they're cartoons by a Danish cartoonist that ran in a magazine. You see the same forced anonymity here, e.g., "a New Yorker cartoon shows a man..." There ARE no New Yorker cartoons. There are cartoons that appear in the New Yorker. It's gross that word guys are so determined to turn cartoonists into non-persons. At least this guy might get a little PR out of this mess.

Minor problem, Ted - they're all signed works. You know, like yours, only with actual adult signatures instead of blocky childish letters as your cartoons are. And Franz Fuschel and Claus Siedel are easy to recognize.

And in a few of the archives, they are labeled clearly by author. For instance, check out Human Events Online.

Of course, saying that the cartoons aren't referenced by author would mean that you haven't bee... oh, what were your words... judging a graphic without seeing it?

Oh well. Same old Ted.

I'll make a note to buy him some more stuff off of his Amazon wishlist when the next Pajamas Media check comes in. That'll make him happy.

If you play Bridge with the table on top of the North Pole, is everybody South?

Who cares what I think about John Boehner? It's time for a new feature of TBIFOC called Ask The Cats!

What do you think about John Boehner?

Frisky: These ribbons belong to me.	Piper: As long as he doesn't dissect cats like the Majority Leader in the Senate did, why should I care?
Nardo: I really hate pirates. But not as much as lizards. Is it Spring yet?	Matata: Heh Heh. You said "Bohner." Heh.
Beezer: Does he have a cat? I never trust a human who doesn't have a cat to tell them what to do.	What does your cat think?

Thank you, kittycats.

Does your cat have an opinion on the subject? Then send the following to askthecats (at) isfullofcrap.com:

• A photo of the cat or cats in JPEG format (If you've already submitted the photo, it will be in my gallery archive and just let me know the URL of the thumbnail photo to use again)
• Their opinion, whether it pertains to the subject or not
• (optional) Your URL

And you'll see them up here with the rest of the kittycats!

French Culture meets Palestinian "Culture" in Nablus:

The hoods are so Seventies, darling!

(Via BlogHouston)

A Federal judge has ruled that the Houston Police Department cannot shred the First Amendment:

HPD commanders gave officer Thomas Nixon desk duty after he complained the department is unnecessarily putting the public in danger.

His comments came after a chase last month in which a suspect hit a family head-on.

Nixon said it could have been avoided if officers had permission to ram the suspect’s car.

But HPD commanders punished him for his comments.

A federal judge overruled that Thursday morning.

“Rather than take affirmative action to prevent a subsequent chase or an innocent citizen for having to die because we’re not doing our jobs, they instead decided to spend their time attacking me instead of attacking the criminals,” Officer Nixon said. “They’re paid to attack.”

If Tom Nixon needs a site to post his thoughts, I'm more than happy to set up hpd.isfullofcrap.com or hurtt.isfullofcrap.com or linkappleyard.isfullofcrap.com or whatever IFOC subdomain he desires.

Apparently, a high-speed chase on I-45 has completely crippled that route.

Southbound's shut down, Northbound's rubbernecking Hell.

I need to decide whether to nap on the 102 "Express" for a few hours or use 56 through the Third World to avoid the mess.

Either way, I know one thing for sure.

I have to pee.

Apparently, our driver tried to call METRO Dispatch for suggestions to get away from the I-45 nightmare, and all he got was static.

If he'd have just gone a mile East on West to the Hardy, we'd have gotten Downtown at 5 instead of 6:15.

But we all saw the alert sign, and he just moseyed on to the freeway as if nothing was wrong.

Priceless.

A BBC poll ranks Iran and the US as the countries with the most negative roles in the world.

Iran is the country most widely viewed as having a negative influence in the world, with the US in second place, a new poll for the BBC suggests.

The survey for the BBC World Service asked how 39,435 people in 33 nations across the globe saw various countries.

Views of China, Russia and France have declined in comparison to a similar survey at the end of 2004.

I guess the folks surveyed either refused to recognize that Israel exists or they thought it was wiped from the map by Iran.

Blogging will be light today because I have been wiped of of the map by Iran.

I checked the map this morning, looked for myself, and couldn't find me anywhere.

"Where am I?" I asked my wife.

"Let me sleep," she said.

I checked the messages on the machine, and sure enough there was one from Iran letting me know I'd been wiped off of the map.

So I called Rand McNally, asking them why they let Iran wipe me off of the map.

"Don't look at me," said Rand. "It was that prick McNally."

"Bull," said McNally. "Rand is a Jew-hater."

They bickered for about an hour while I got a bit of vacuuming done.

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

Customer writes in a full-blown panic over that Kama Sutra virus-worm thing. Wants to know how to block Spam and viruses.

Pal, if you're asking now, it's too late.

For the n-th time, a leader of Hamas says they won't recognize Israel...

The head of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, said on Friday that Hamas would never recognize Israel's right to exist, but would be willing to negotiate a long-term cease-fire with the Jewish state.

In an interview with the Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayyat al-Jedida, Mashaal said that Hamas would "never recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state that was founded on our land."

Thanks to the smoke and mirrors paid for and set up by the State Department, UN, and EU, it doesn't get any clearer than that, folks. Negotiations are just a temporary step to obliterate that Zionist entity: Israel.

I'm sure the Suicidal Left and EU appeasers will have multiple orgasms of joy over the willingness to negotiate a long-term cease-fire. In much the same way that Michael Hutchence probably rubbed a last one off before blacking out.

Load spiked to 120 on the server for a bit there.

If comments and trackbacks aren't working every now and then, blame Mohammed.

I'm actually getting tired of him. There's so much more to do that I actually enjoy.

Maybe someone should tell Jimmy Carter that the Palestinian Space Program is still in operation and it's landing on 7 month-old babies.

Perhaps someone needs to negotiate with Rosalyn to have the old coot stuck in a retirement home.

Meanwhile, in Damascus...

Khaled Mashal prays for the baby to die.

(Via J-Walk)

Take a look at these fine Dr. Pepper knock-off brands of soda.

Especially this one:

Gotta love the Piggly Wiggly.

Think they've got any stores in Mecca?

I know it's just an artifact of the catcams, but it still freaks me out when one of the cats appears twice:

I was nearly late to the bus this morning because of Nardo and Piper. Piper insisted on some quality lap time at 6:29, and I pet her until 6:35 or so.

I then sliced up some bread, had a snack, and then realized it was right at 6:41.

I ran for the stop. And sure enough, the driver was there 4 minutes early.

Should I even bother writing METRO at this point? After yesterday's nightmare on the 102 because Dispatch didn't answer the driver to other shenanegans going on, it's just demoralizing.

Oh well. Maybe I should have just stayed in my chair with Piper in my lap, blown off the early bus, and just staggled into work late.

Texas A&M is fighting the Seattle Seahawks over the trademark for "The Twelfth Man."

If a Canadian team called their fans "The 13th Man" would Texas A&M sue them?

Guy orders a KVM.

Then, after it's plugged in, he asks what KVM is.

Sometimes you just have to wonder.

It looks like there's a call for a Danish cartoons blogburst...

Blogger E.L. Core e-mailed me with an excellent idea for a Muhammad Cartoons "Blogburst":

Hi, Michelle. I'm sure I'm not the only small-time blogger who decided to post the cartoons. I actually came out of an indefinite blog suspension just to do that. Maybe you could invite other bloggers to send you a link to their cartoon blog entry, and we could all start linking to them?

Ok. Let's do it. If you've posted some or all of the forbidden Muhammad cartoons on your blog in support of Denmark and the Jyllands-Posten, send a track back or e-mail me your link. It'll actually be a very useful road map for the enormous number of Internet users around the world who are trying to find the cartoons (just check Technorati and you'll see what I'm talking about). I'll get started with a few right now and keep adding as many links to this list as humanly possible.

You know, copy-pasting the original cartoons takes zero creativity, style, talent, or effort.

If anything, the folks PhotoShopping and drawing up their own cartoons and parodies in defiance of the Islamist threat are doing something.

But... but... but Hamas runs schools and charities and soup kitchens and...

See? He's holding a toddler! He's holding a to-

Pardon me while I go vomit up my lunch.

Well, this isn't very nice:

A Metropolitan Transit Authority bus driver was in stable condition at Ben Taub Hospital with stab wounds in the chest after an altercation today with two young men who allegedly tried to board the bus without the proper fare.

The male driver, whose name was withheld until relatives are notified, was conscious and talking after the stabbing at Griggs and Cullen in southeast Houston. He was undergoing surgery later in the morning, said Metro spokeswoman Sandra Aponte Salazar.

I don't see "Stab driver repeatedly" in any of the steps listed in the How To Ride Guide. Maybe METRO needs to print up a few thousand of them?

So, now that a driver's life is worth less than two bucks, how long before we're told that all of METRO needs to be covered by Light Rail because the operators are in secure cabins?

Of course they won't do that. They'll just say that bus needs to be replaced with models with separate driver cabins.

You might notice a new icon in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

Go ahead. Click on it.

I baked a loaf of Parmesan Garlic last night, so I decided to give it away to a friendly neighborhood coworker today...

Because there's nothing that says "Thank God It's Friday!" than a fresh loaf of bread.

Well, at least it's the weekend.

Have a good one, everyone.

ME: Well, I got threats today.
THE MRS.: What, for the catblog?

You're probably wondering where a certain picture gallery went along with a few posts here and there.

I've put them on ice for a while. Not sure I'll take them out.

So I get the threats rapid-fire around 15:00, and I'm thinking "I'm not a Yankee, I'm a Texan. Come on." and I'm not feeling fear..

What I feel is tired. Lily Von Schtupp levels of tired, folks. Atlas with people jabbing at his ankles and tickling his toes tired.

Yup. After four years and a month, after rotating through meme after meme and doing countless different things to keep things fresh to avoid burnout, I am feeling the notorious Blogger Burnout.

Watching this whole gigantic spat over freaking cartoons and crazies on both sides of the fight only made me that more tired.

When I got home, I looked back at my archives, and the one word that comes to mind is angry.

Not funny, but angry. Some outright hate, but that's the angriest of angry. That's concentrated angry, one drop will turn you into Hermit Crabs angry.

For a while, sure, things were funny. And every now and then, funny comes to the surface, pokes around, and then dives back under an ocean of angry.

The funny feels good. The angry, not so good. And it's tiring to keep pumping away at the angry when it's no longer self-sustaining.

Maybe there's some funny wrapped around angry, but you bite through the hard funny shell and taste the anger within.

Like an angry M&M, I suppose.

The shell gets thinner. And thinner.

There's a lot of angry people out there. And unlike me, they don't take a moment or two to laugh about things for purely humor's sake.

They cannot look in the mirror and laugh. Or maybe they're not allowed to laugh. And I think that's horribly, horribly sad.

But what disturbs me the most is that in their angry, I saw something familiar. Something disturbing.

Their angry reminds me a bit of my angry. It's not the same, nor is it one casting the shadow that is the other. But, still, it reminds me of it.

I will not become them.

So, maybe I'll take a break from the angry for a bit. There's a lot of angry out there if you need your fix, but I'm cutting back on it before I look in the mirror and see them in it and not me.

I'd rather focus on the funny, the absurd, and the strange.

I like those things. The "Blogging Will Be Light" and the 100 Word Stories might just be the funny trying to break free of the angry.

Okay, so maybe there will be the occasional WTF horror stories at work. Those are shake-your-head-at kind of funny.

And, as always, the catblogging. I think Catcall has opened my eyes to the fact that if I were to whittle everything away, that''s what I'd want to be left with.

I'm King of the Catbloggers, after all.

DUCKMAN: "Nobody cares if I live or die."
FLUFFY/URANUS: "Package for you, Mr. Duckman."
*KABOOM*
CORNFED: "Good news. Someone cares."

Have I mentioned recently how happy I am with the Tissuecam being in its new location?

Sure, it's somewhat flaky about updating, and I wouldn't recommend the Sony wireless products at this time, but when it works...

Priceless.

If you're wondering, he's in my wife's lap right now, watching a chickflick that gives me the dry heaves.

Blogging will be light today because Richard Simmons wants me to sweat to the oldies.

He's not very specific about either the sweat or the oldies.

"How old is oldie?" I ask him.

Sure enough, there's an entire string quartet playing a Mozart waltz.

We dance. And we dance. And then, we dance.

My, how we danced.

Just in case you're curious, Richard dances divinely, but it's those shorts that scare the bejesus out of me.

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

All they did was wanted some fun. Now, it's not so fun.

Why is it that celebrities who use their relationships for publicity purposes always whip out the "respect for privacy" line to the press when things go sour?

Let's take the latest flame-out, where Lance Armstrong doesn't appear strong enough to be Sheryl Crow's man:

"After much thought and consideration, we have made a very tough decision to split up," a joint statement by the couple issued to the magazine said. "We both have a deep love and respect for each other, and we ask that everyone respect our privacy during this difficult time."

A publicist for Crow said he was not aware of the statement and had no immediate comment. Armstrong's agent could not be immediately reached for comment.

Crow had recently posed for Allure magazine trying on a wedding dress and had told the publication that she and Armstrong planned to marry in his hometown of Austin, Texas.

Ah, yes. The double-edged sword of celebrity and fame. The same press you use to sell records or promote your charity becomes a horrifying nuisance.

Maybe it's like that puppydog you hug and snuggle and take on walks and feed and clean up afterwards. It's so cute then.

Until it's time to go to bed, and your exhaustion is the exact opposite of the puppy's nocturnal rambunctiousness. So it starts to destroy the rug, claw up the back door.

So many candles, so much wind.

As for me, well, I'd rather read about robots. Unike humans, who constantly strive to unleash their full potential of annoyance or mirror-watching, at least with robots we can build them to do more and more interesting things.

I consider the downfall of the Aibo to be a temporary bump in the long and winding road of robot development. Maybe the time will come when super-robots will be asking the robot-press for privacy.

One thing I don't have in the Bingo card is a square for "innocent bystanders."

Even though I'm not terribly sympathetic to supporters of Hamas or Islamic Jihad in mass rallies, I will admit that there's folks who are tired, frustrated, and just exhausted from all the madness in the maelstrom they find themselves in.

So when Palestinians hednap their own, you just have to wonder.

We Jews hear "Funny, you don't look Jewish." all the time.

Is there a similar gag on the other side of the fence?

I've got Nardo in my lap, the keyboard on top of Nardo, and Piper on the back of my chair looking down at both of us and growling with jealous rage.

I guess it's a good a subject as any for The Catcall.

Sure enough, I lean forward, and Nardo spazzes. Piper freaks out. Both leap to the floor, looking at each other, confused.

Forget repo men. The life of a catblogger is always intense.

Have there ever been stampedes and mass casualties at the Western Wall?

Shire Network News is the official podcast of Silent Running, everybody's favorite Anglospheric blog.

I guess I should take a moment explain this week's Full Of Crap Report.

You see, I'm frustrated that the so-called Civil Rights Movement has become a for-profit venture. Institutions that are supposed to be about helping people out of the cycle of poverty and frustration are just turning into jobs programs for high-profile activists, attorneys, and an ever-closing circle of back-patters.

Not only do the press stunts and antics end up failing the individuals these organizations were established and given tax-exempt status to serve, but they're also failing every other racial and religious group. They've put themselves in the positions as guardians of the less-fortunate, but in the end they're acting more and more like the exploiters skimming more and more money out of the till in corrupt schemes and scandals.

Jesse diddles the secretarial pool. A university president of a predominatly black college gets her house landscaped and furnished for over 200 grand. A professional grandstander ands up being a professional spokesman to issue the apology because he can't distance himself quickly enough from the disaster.

It's frustrating to those who want to see people succeed when they're willing and capable of putting in the effort, but those who are meant to help people succeed end up as tools to vent anger and cause those who have succeeded to fail. And the worst par