This Blog Is Full Of Crap

Blogging will be light today because I like to run.

Don't you like to run?

It's fun to run.

Especially when you run programs that you have no idea what's in them.

Whoops!

Ran something I shouldn't have.

(Where's the XP SP2 CD?)

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

Roger Clemens whines that he is failing at retirement:

Clemens threw batting practice in Houston for the Astros this week, mostly to minor leaguers.

"I probably threw 45 minutes of BP on Monday and again on Tuesday," he said. "It's supposed to be good for your heart. I'd rather have a glass of wine."

Oh wonderful. Now Drayton's going to offer to build him a massive wine cellar in his house. (No wonder why they brought Ensberg and Lane back instead of shopping around for real players in those positions... wine cellars aren't cheap to build and stock.)

No, really, Roger. Quit screwing around and piss off to New York for a year with Raggedy Andy.

Then, when you're done blowing it in the playoffs, you can come back and stare at kid pitchers with Nolan Ryan for two weeks out of the year and pick up some folding money.

You know, it's too bad that NL Central isn't playing AL East this year. It would be nice to boo both Roger and Andy at Minutemaid.

But then, rotations can be funny things. The Astros faced off with Kansas City when Lima was having a 5-and-16 season, and he never came up in the rotation.

I am working on a Valentine's Day Special for the 100 Word Stories Podcast.

This podcast would collect up 100 word stories that are on the subject of Love... or Valentine's Day... or, from Planet Z's twisted and cynical perspective, the Valetine's Day Massacre... anything pertaining to Valentine's Day.

If you're feeling up to it, go ahead and send in your stories for the special to 100words (at) isfullofcrap.com.

Considering that he's going to be extra busy that day provision love and occasional BDSM services, the banjo-playing sex slave midget will not be available to track stories for writers, so you'll have to record your stories on your own.

Thank you, good luck... and keep it brief.

Apparently, the folks at Linden promised Deskmerc that they'd get back to him about restoring access to his account.

It's been... weeks? Over a month?

Sounds sort of like some of the people we've got here...

"X is fucked up again."
"X is always fucked up."
"Well, he's fucked himself to hell this time."
"That's nice. What's for lunch?"
"Want the ticket?"
"Hell no."
"Okay... wanna play ping pong?"
"Dude, you're on!"

Of course, not all of our people are like that.

Recently, Dominique de Villepin claimed that France would always stand by Israel and be their ally. I scratched my head at reading that, wondering when his boss would scream out APRIL FOOLS!

Sure enough, the mask is off.

After his French bluster of 2006, Jacques Chirac has finally decided to come clean and wilt like wet toilet paper over the prospect of a nuclear Iran:

On Monday, Mr. Chirac began by describing as "very dangerous" Iran's refusal to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used to produce electricity or to make nuclear weapons. Then he made his remarks about a nuclear-armed Iran.

"I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb," he said. "Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that's not very dangerous.

"But what is very dangerous is proliferation. This means that if Iran continues in the direction it has taken and totally masters nuclear-generated electricity, the danger does not lie in the bomb it will have, and which will be of no use to it."

Mr. Chirac said it would be an act of self-destruction for Iran to use a nuclear weapon against another country.

"Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel?" Mr. Chirac asked. "It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

Now that they're out in the open, Jacques Chirac should clarify his remarks.

After all, openly stating that France is absolutely unwilling to stop the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons technology that they have stated repeatedly would be used to obliterate Israel, both Tehran and Paris would be razed if Israel is struck.

Dolphin + Popeye + 1 Dimona Special With Anchovies = Napoleon's Fallen Arch.

Not very dangerous at all, Jacques. Probably less dangerous than having Shimon Peres visit and shake your hand over and over, getting into a smile-off competition as the cameras flash.

I'm not exactly sure how to react to the death of Molly Ivins other than reading some of her writing last night to Nardo before nodding off to sleep.

With the passing of Ann Richards and now Molly Ivins, the rare Tough Texas Broad is all that more rare a bird.

I may not have agreed with everything she said over the years, although she was dead-on about George "Shrub" Bush being a piss-poor governor during his tenure here.

He had this to say about her publicly:

Molly Ivins was a Texas original. She was loved by her readers and by her many friends, particularly in Central Texas. I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. She fought her illness with that same passion. Her quick wit and commitment to her beliefs will be missed. Laura and I send our condolences to Molly Ivins' family and friends.

All nice and proper, not a single expletive or off-the-cuff remark.

Doesn't suit Molly at all, either.

If you're going to talk about her, you need a drink in your hand and it had better be your fourth or fifth one that night. Plus, everybody still facing you when you say it needs to blush, not counting those that have turned away in shock and disbelief.

This parody is more to my liking... the God's honest, toothpick-in-mouth truth. Something from someone who really clears underbrush from a ranch would say, sober up, and be shocked he'd said it (but have to admit he meant every word).

Maybe Bush will say similar things to say about her privately, or maybe not. But the man really ought to put a thank you in there because you don't get to the national stage without having your rough edges knocked off at the local and state levels.

Let's see... drill sergeant... master-student Shaolin Monk training... rock tumbler... aha!

You could even say that Molly Ivins helped show Karl Rove how to shape George Bush, her mouth acting like a rock tumbler and her words like the grit smoothing and polishing the future president. Although, what exactly prepares a man for the deranged, senile antagonism of Helen Thomas?

Current Governor, "Goodhair" Rick Perry (Molly gave him that name) has crumbled to bits under that same withering scorn. Somehow, despite all odds and sanity, the voters decided to vote those bits and pieces back into office, and he turned around and told everyone he was only kidding about being tough on border enforcement and cracking down on illegal immigration.

You should have swallowed those pieces, Molly. Kinky Friedman would have handed you a beer to wash them down, too. Maybe even a cigar to get the taste of hair gel out of your mouth.

Yes, I didn't agree with a lot of what she said later on. But what she said, she said it well and with a lot of folksy charm to it.

I'd like to think that some of my own writing has been influenced by Molly's brand of gonzo with a Texas twang. I'd also like to think I can fly, the Houston Texans don't suck, and I can eat a whole cheesecake a day without exercising and still fit in the bathtub.

Heck, I was in her presence once and only once. It think it was during the Republican National Convention down here in Houston where she nailed Pat Buchanan to the wall:

"Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German," Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful's speech to the Republican National Convention.

"Tall, drunk, funny, and forbidable," I thought.

Or maybe it was some other time and some other place. I lost all my journals and notes from back then when moving from place to place, and my memory's gotten pretty jumbled up from spending most (if not all) of my 1997-2001 off-work hours with my mouth firmly wrapped around the spigot of a Cabo's margarita machine, only briefly coming up for air to clear out brainfreezes.... oh, and those awesome soft tacos and salads!

I do remember from back way back then asking Bush-41 something when he was doing an interview with Todd. It may have been "How long do you think Saddam will still be in power?" or like that.

I wish I could remember his response. It was unusual and not what I expected. But maybe James Baker was hiding behind a curtain, pegged me in the back of the neck with his blowgun, and dragged me to a cantina where I'd wake up with a half-empty bottle of tequila in my hand.

Maybe that's how I got introduced to Cabo's in the first place?

The biggest shame in this is the loss of Molly herself, but it's a bigger shame that being being eulogized so ineloquently by the teeming nutroots masses of Democratic Underground, DailyKos, TalkLeft, Huffington, and the other sites on the Internet that act as flypaper to the barely-evolved swarms of stinging, biting gnats and nuisances.

Same goes with some far-right sites today. Probably best if you take a holiday from reading the extremes of the Blogosphere for a spell and stick to Peanuts reruns or running those backups you keep putting off.

Cable companies and Baby Bells make getting to the Internet inexpensive, but it's the deranged masses they keep insisting on selling that access to that make it cheap.

I'm sure y'all can navigate through the chaff and flak out there and find the right and proper eulogies... certainly better ones than mine.

Maybe the only person who could tackle the assignment of eugolizing Molly... is Molly.

And I reckon she ain't getting all four bars of cell coverage right about now.

There are just some things beyond parody, satire, and mocking in this world.

Crap like this fits within that category.

I'm not sure what $76k plus bennies is supposed to buy METRO, but if something like that was what they had in mind for the sole post of the day for their vaunted public weblog, they must have some kind of compression chamber in the basement of the DTC for cranking up and giving each other nitrogen madness.

Sure, I think at some point I suggested to her a ride-along liveblog of the buses and trains, using her keen reporter's eye to watch for itneresting thigns that happen whoch others might benefit from.

But this? Packaged as a lame excuse for why Austin and other municipalities have in-vehicle wifi access and METRO's still trying to figure out how to screw people with smartcards or run a trian through a city that doesn't act as an informal left-turn-and-red-light enforcement device?

What am I not getting here? What am I not seeing?

I remember not being able to comprehend MeMo or the au pair Chron.Commie blogs, and it had to be explained to me by Dwight... I am not the target audience.

I remember not understanding why Debra Duncan was handed a radio show, and Baker explained Ken Charles' logic of counter-programming Limbaugh to me. (Looking back, it was still pretty fucking stupid)

But this piece... this Gibbonsesque liveblogging piece by Sit on a template so much more wretched than Liveblog itself... do my best... grandmothers with whips and chains, chitchatting about BDSM... a gang throwing signs to each other in the back of the bus (happens on the 9 every so often)... a deranged drunk shouting to his fellow nutcase conspiracy whack-jobs...

There's so much potential, but someone might point to Sit's piece and say "Sure, it's loony, but you didn't even come close to the original."

Maybe she's testing us, trying to throw up parody-proof garbage that will rob us of our momentum and end the constant ridicule she's being subjected to on MIFOC?

While going back through some of my ancient posts, mining them for a project which I can't discuss (or discus) for the moment, I have created a new category called Classic Crap.

This will contain classic posts that I've decided to rescue from the ancient vaults and post up here to IFOC for your amusement.

(Unlike those pricks at Disney, I won't be returning these posts to the vault to scare you into buying some direct-to-video sequel piece of crap.)

Anyway, here's the first one...

"The roaches around here fly"
Originally posted on April 22, 2002

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Flap-flap-flap-flap-chikkit-meow-flap-flapflap.

Piper's chasing a cockroach. There's two things you need to know about the cockroaches in Texas:

• They're huge
• They can fly

There's this monster-sized bug flying around the room, evading my radar and swatter. Piper, the lanky-thin burble-kitty of the family, is watching the brown little bastard with keen interest, chirping at it and occasionally pouncing from one vantage point to another.

Do something useful and catch the damned thing, you furry little rat, okay? I'm busy loading up the MP3 player for the next few days worth of walks. Gotta get my Fibber McGee and Molly dose for the week.

Eventually, the bug flies at the back of my neck, bounces off, and Piper makes her move. She launches herself at the back of my neck, swats, and ends up grievously injuring her daddy while the bug flies off. In the War on Bugs, this will be cataloged as a Friendly Fire incident, minor casualty.

Piper wiggle-butts her intention to launch again. I grab her in a tummy-hold, look her straight in the beady green eyes, and calmly tell her "Don't."

Her tail whips twice. Kitty wants to romp and play.

Eventually, the bug settles on my leather jacket, which is resting comfortably on my spare chair. This leather jacket gets about a month and a half of use in this town, but I look good in it so I occasionally stretch the leather jacket season to two or three months with a bit of sweat or casually laying it over my shoulder when I get somewhere. By now, however, it ought to be in the closet and not on the chair where a bug can land on it.

Swatter at the ready, I creep up on the bug. I launch and...

SWAT!

Direct hit! The bug falls off, mortally wounded. It tries to crawl away, but Piper pounces on it and bats it around. She crunches on it a bit before I can mop it up, which means that Piper doesn't get to rub her bug-breath face against mine for a day or two.

Piper and Daddy... the exterminators!

Guy comes into the chat channel and asks about free webhosting.

No, really.

Now, the way he asked his question, it could have been asking for free turotials about webhosting, but it turned out he wanted free webhosting.

I'm tempted to send him the email addresses of the worst resellers in our customer base.

Especially the one who suckers people in with free webhosting, and then demands payment for backups, services, etc... the small print on that free webhosting contract.

Or wait... can't find them in the accounts list... maybe they got their ass booted for pulling that crap on people.

I kinda liked what they were doing, weeding out the greedy and cheap. Doing the online community a favor in a way.

It looks like the Palestinian Space Program has encountered another setback...

Defense Minister Amir Peretz chose on Thursday a short-range rocket defense system developed by Rafael - Israel's Armament Development Authority - as the system the defense establishment will develop to defend Israel against Kassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

The Jerusalem Post first reported that Rafael would win the tender in November.

The system developed by Rafael and dubbed "Iron Dome" is planned to be capable of intercepting Kassam and Katyusha rockets with a small kinetic missile interceptor and is scheduled to be operational for deployment outside the Gaza Strip and along the northern border within two years. The final decision on the system - whose development is valued at $300 million - will be made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

How will this defensive system be condemned as an offensive and too of genocide?

Just sit back and wait... when Google News comes back up, I'm sure you'll find lots of examples.

First, Catcall. Now, Shire Network News.

Yup. I'm dropping out of SNN.

Feel free to keep listening for the good interviews and such, but I'm too busy to get who.isfullofcrap.com up and running, and it appears that my focus these days is on Local and State.

Oh, and somewhat not funny.

I guess they have an opening for commentators... toss 'em a note, eh.

Blogging will be light today because The Riddler just isn't trying any more.

I saw him at a coffee shop the other day, and there he was, just sipping a coffee that had gone cold long before I'd gotten there.

"Hey, you're Riddler!" I said.

"Yeah," he said. "Hey, can I borrow two bucks from you?"

"You're, like, a criminal mastermind or something," I said. "What are you doing in here?"

"Just hanging out, you know," said Riddler. "Planning stuff. And... stuff."

"Have you got a caper planned?" I asked him.

"No," said Riddler. "And even if I did, that stupid Batman keeps stopping me."

As if on cue, Batman stuck his head i nthe door. "I'm watching you." He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at Riddler, and then back at his eyes. "See?"

"Asshole," said Riddler.

"Well, can't you just come up with a riddle or something?" I asked him. "You know, one that's not a clue to a crime."

"What am I, a vending machine for riddles?" he said.

"Oooooh... that's... um...." I thought out loud. "Wait. I don't get it."

Riddler sighed and sipped at the coffee.

"Okay, I'll give you the two bucks," I said, handing over the money. "Now can I have a riddle?"

The Riddler thought for a moment and said: "What have I got in my pockets?"

Once again, Batman stuck his head in the door. "Did I hear a riddle? Are you planning a caper?"

"NO!" shouted Riddler.

Batman did the eye-point thing again and left.

"All of your pockets?" I asked. "Like the ones in your jacket. too?"

"Yes," said the Riddler. "All of them."

"Um... keys?" I asked.

"Keys?" he whined. "Is that all you can think of? Not even what kind of keys?"

"Well... a car key for starters..."

"Batman wrecked my Riddlermobile," he pouted. Then he leaned close. "He drives drunk, you know."

"Okay - that's nice," I said, looking at the door. ". Well, I've got to be going."

"Aren't you going to solve my riddle?" asked the Riddler.

"It's not a riddle," I said. "It's just a guessing game."

"Well, I know that," said Riddler. "But if I give you a Riddle, that asshole out there will beat the crap out of me."

"Oh, come on," I said. "He won't. It's not like you're trying to commit a crime."

So, the Riddler started a convoluted riddle weaving 15th Century BC Egyptian recordkeeping and the Reniassance when Batman interrupted him with a storm of punches.

"I didn't even get to finish!" Riddler shrieked as Batman dragged him off.

You know what?

Now I'm curious as to what he had in his pockets.

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

Where most folks see the second of February as Groundhog Day, watching some big fat vermin poke his nose out of a hole and looking for his shadow, around these parts we still remember when Grumpus Day was all the rage...

You don't know what Grumpus Day is?

Well, pull up a chair and I'll tell you.

We're not supposed to say which stories are ours in this whole Escape Pod 300 Word Story Contest thing, but I'm watching the results and having a blast at reading the reviews and tips and suggestions...

And the rare out-and-out slams.

I feel like Tyler Durden in the basement of the club, getting his ass kicked.

And laughing all through it.

When the first round is over, all three of my entries will probably have fallen by the wayside, but it was a blast trying to comb through the 100 word story archive and see what stories were really three times their original length.

And then tossing them out for fresh, new 300-worders.

Speaking of competition, Phil Rossi ran one of my promos.

When I get home today, I'll run his.

I'd have done it sooner, but I was just popping in to check up on the new comedy/streaming radio project when I got called away for some kind of bizarre SoHo mashup danceoff that the Diva was having.

Kinda hard to run Audacity when SL wants to strangle the CPU like JonBenet Ramsey in the basement.

I know what you're thinking... Phil running my promo? Me running Phil's? What's going on? Isn't Simon a dastardly backstabbing cut-throat son of a bitch?

Yeah, it's weird that we're doing this, but I think Pickle Tales has brought all of us together in strange ways you wouldn't understand.

We've been getting some great feedback on METRO Is Full Of Crap, with emails and links and a few forum posts here and there around town.

I have yet to see a negative reaction, but then I'm not looking too terribly hard for those.

You know, just like METRO. Can't spoof them if I can't think like them.

Accentuate the positive... ignore the negative...

I figure up Sim City, pull up the Traffic scenario, and start whacking bus service while jacking taxes.

Ahhhh... this must be the "simulators" they claim to be using to model their service.

Once again, my thanks go out to the motley crew that are letting their imaginations roam free on the site, coming up with some damn funny material that keeps me chuckling all the way home.

Despite METRO's hit-or-miss service.

In case you're wondering, the new 9 driver in the evenings is a hit-or-miss proposition when it comes to being there at 4:44 or 4:45 as expected.

He was a bit late yesterday evening, which got me home nice and early.

But I've learned not to count on such things.

We'll see if the week wraps up with the usual traffic jam on I-45, the 102 being late into Downtown, and me dragging in the door just in time to head out to the Geek Gathering.

It is spring;

But not for him.

First visit to doctor: 232
Second visit to doctor: 228
This morning: 225

I will make the 220 by eight weeks and 200 by year's end at this rate.

But can I do better?

My most frequent meal has been raw garlic, peppers, onions and olive oil topping pasta.

The Mrs. has been great about not bringing in chocolately sugary snack crap that I cannot resist.

Willpower? What's that?

Oh, and salads for lunch, under the watchful gaze of Deskmerc.

I get one non-salad meal a week, and that's today.

If Deskmerc helps me keep to this diet, he gets bread on Monday.

Which, this upcoming week, he will.

It's good to have a support structure in place.

I grabbed up my stuff for the ride to work when I couldn't find the dongle for syncing Ziggy's chip to a desktop.

I looked in all my pockets... again and again... and...

Then, after 5 minutes, I checked my shirt pocket.

It was in there. The pocket I forgot about.

Oh, and Frisky was running out of water this morning, so I put his water bowl in the sink and turned on the faucet.

It wasn't until the bus got to Kirby that I couldn't remember if I had turned off the faucet and put the bowl back in his drinking spot.

I picked up the phone and called my wife's cell phone... and...

Wait. I remember turning off the faucet and putting the bowl back.

...

It would be amusing if it weren't disturbing.

I was watching something on TV during lunch when I was reminded that it's Black History Month.

Then I came across this in my archives...

Another way of looking at things
(Originally posted on February 02, 2004)

Dear Blacks,

Don't think of it as an insult when you have the shortest month of the year set aside for Black History Month.

Think of it as having the eleven biggest months of the year left over to focus on the future.

Signed,
Laurence Simon

Looking in my archives, it appears that they never wrote back, although Ralph said: "Wouldn't Women's History Month be comprised of about three days out of each month?"

This one's easy: everyone calling, chatting, or emailing for reactions to some story or another making the rounds about someone whining about something.

We're technicians. We fix things.

Do you have a problem needing to be solved?

No?

Then hang up, disconnect, or expect Strong Bad to slam the DELETED key with his big red boxing glove.

Dwight pointed out this cool new site called WidgetBox that lets you build blog widgets for other sites.

It's got a pretty simple interface to it, and you can set up widgets for nearly anything with a feed or content.

Here's one for Carnival of the Cats:

And another for Metro Is Full Of Crap:

So now you should be able to go to that Widgetbox place and include the COTC as well as MIFOC if you want!

Now, I've been using Feeds.App.Lite and the Feeds Widget here for my own internal link tables (see top of IFOC site), but this will make it easier for people to include Carnival of the Cats on their own sites.

Neat, eh?

If you're not reading METRO Is Full Of Crap, this is the kind of post you're missing:

METRO, which never makes mistakes or admits to ever having made them, has rescinded controversial changes to Route 68 under community pressure, but now demands payment of the community's souls as tribute.

"I demand payment for my services!" shouted N'gorash, the 10,000 year-old demon that infests Community Relations Director Karen Marshall. "Your puny supplication tires me, and I must feast on life-essence before dusk!"

Residents of Cuney Homes, a public housing project affected by the recent routing changes, were appreciative of the restoration of their nearby bus stop and bus service, but protested the demand for their immortal souls.

"Maybe if I were younger, I'd think of doing it," said 81-year-old Mary Thomas. "But I'm pretty old and I'd kinda like to make sure my soul isn't in the clutches of an infernal immortal being instead of going to Heaven.

"I mean, just think of all that time I wasted in church if I did."

METRO's Routing And Planning Division is working hard to ensure that a scenario like this does not happen again, where residents of a community affected by routing changes won't feel like they're being short-changed by the all-powerful, all-loving METRO.

"We're thinking of hiring famous hypnotist Mysterioso the Great to mind-wipe anyone into not remembering we provided bus service to them all," said METRO Spokeswoman Raquetball Roberts. "But we'll get them to cluck like a chicken first, or maybe think they're having an orgasm right up there on stage."

Mysterioso the Great was unavailable for comment... or... was he... we're not so sure... BAWK! BAWK! BAWK!

It's world-class hyperlocal satire!

The latest Weekly Challenge is up at the 100 Word Stories Podcast!

There's some really good stories this week, so I hope you'll give it a listen.

Right now, Ziggy has a 1GB chip in him.

However, there are times when I want to carry around some music to listen to in addition to the podcasts I keep syncing up.

There's also the need to shuttle around a few documents and archives of things.

So, I'm buying a 2GB chip for Ziggy to double his active capacity.

I'll have the 1GB chip as additional storage.

Not sure whether I'll switch my PodcastReady installation to the 2GB chip or keep it on the 1GB and let the 2GB accumulate music.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I find I'm wanting more music selection as well as document space as I go back and forth from work.

I'll try it one way, see how things go, and then try it a different way if that doesn't work.

Or maybe I'll just get a whole slew of ultra dirt-cheap 512MB chips for easy music swapping.

Over at the Gimme Liberty Bar in Second Life, you'll be able to catch the avatars of the Lagwolf and Lair show.

The show begins at 14:00 Central Time, which is 15:00 New York Time and something something London Time.

My wife reached for a bottle of spaghetti sauce on the shelf and the bottom of it broke off, splattering sauce all over the place.

She had to get her breaded ravioli snacks and stuffed mushrooms to the folks that we're watching the game over at, so I've been cleaning this up and picking out the broken glass.

Oh well. The shelves and carpet there needed a touch-up anyway. Hd to pry the bottle bottom off of the shelf with a screwdriver... pop!

Then Nardo decides to go out and chase the black interloper for a bit... had to grab him.

Life... ain't it grand?

The post-me era of Shire Network News has begun.

I'll give it a listen when I have a moment, but it's Superbowl Sunday as well as Lagwolf and Lair day.

Good luck to all.

It may rain in Miami during the Super Bowl.

It rains a lot in Miami, apparently.

Here comes my rusty rant...

It's hard to believe, but this is the Sesquicentennial Edition of the Carnival of the Cats.

That's 150 carnivals, lovingly hosted by dozens of volunteer hosts.

So, what's it all about? What's all the rage?

The Carnival of the Cats is a weekly roundup of cat-related posts on weblogs. Its purpose is to provide a non-political respite from the vehement echo chamber that the Blogosphere spins itself into during the week, demonstrating that even the mightiest and meekest of pundits have a love of cats in common.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Now that the carnival's home home for a week, let's catch up...

• Want to keep up with Carnival of the Cats on your own page? Then get the Carnival of the Cats Widget! There's also RSS feeds listed on the right side of the Carnival of the Cats homepage.

• Daily catblogging news can be found at The Catblogosphere and Prayer and Praise

• I've left Catcall to focus on other projects.

• There are only 34 catblogs in the Cat Community. I know of at least 200 strong and consistent catblogs out there. Let's get that number up, okay? Spread the word.

That's it for the announcements. Let's get right to it, shall we?

The final round of Pickle Tales at Podcast Pickle is up.

I swore an oath before the first round that I'd pull a Terrance and Phillip in the final round, and I stuck by that oath.

So, here's what you need to do:

1. Listen (If you don't want to slog through all the lead-in garbage, Phil's story begins at 36:00 into the show.)
2. Register
3. Vote
4. Spread the word

There will be three promos appearing on the 100 Word Stories Podcast feed in the next three days for your amusement.

Thank you for your support so far, and thank you to Phil Rossi for being a more-than-worthy opponent.

Blogging will be light today because breakfast was a leftover stuffed jalapeno from last night.

Countertop pizza - good
Countertop roasted stuffed jalapeno - bad.

Let the vomiting begin!

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

Good news, Houston. Murderers are moving back to New Orleans.

There were 161 homicides in this city last year, and there have been 18 so far this year, making New Orleans by most measures the nation's per capita murder capital, given its sharply reduced population. Many of the victims and the suspects are teenagers. About two-thirds of the deaths have gone unsolved: the killers, in many cases, continue to walk the streets and are likely to kill again, the police say.

Better there than here.

I'm sure that Chief Hurtt will take credit for this.

I went through all the old File13, ATS, and IFOC1 archives this past weekend and gathered up all the comedy gold I could possibly want.

Of course, I still have IFOC2 to slog through.

So many memes I've started and discarded over the years... this was the first "Ask The Cats" I ever did, for instance.

I had a lot of fun withit, too.

Now, when Edloe died, I opened up the fourth square (and fifth... and sixth...) to audience participation. And I think it worked out for the better.

But when Piper died, well, Cat-Countercat (mocking 60 Minutes' Point Counterpoint) didn't quite catch on for me.

I've gotten a few ideas from looking through all those old posts. Maybe a few memes will come back, and maybe a few new memes will be added to my arsenal.

Adapt or die, I guess.

Until then, stay tuned.

There are some days when you just end up pigging out.

Super Bowl Sunday is one of those days.

Yeah, I'm going to do the Salad Thing for the next five days at lunch and keep dinner down to a pasta, olive oil, and chopped peppers/onions/garlic minimum, but it looks like I'll need to be taking the 25 home and jogging through the Tunnel Of Mud to make up for this weekend.

I should have brought carrot sticks and celery with as a munching alternative when I had gorged myself on the other things.

Yes, I occasionally deserve a break from the diet, but that's how I got into this mess in the first place.

A break became a habit... then routine.

I really need to focus on this. I don't want to backslide like I did before.

This one's for keeps.

Well, yesterdays Lagwolf and Lair show featured the following Jerry Springer-esque confrontation between various Second Life... personalities:

• Anonymous, from the Patriotic Nigras

• A furry from FurNation

• A security specialist for a major VC group in SL

And two hosts who should have known when to step back and let them slug it out.

Andrew started off by calling them terrorists, so I had to take the Alan Colmes/Reuters/AFP position that they were militants... activists...

Then the guy says that they'd disband if they'd succeed in their mission, so I slipped in a little something to catch him off balance.

His response had me hit the mute button and shouting obscenities and references to his questionable ancestry that would make Furries blush at the microphone for a minute.

Anyway, Crystal Clear will be streaming it out on SLXG at 14:00 Central Time (Noon SLT) in case you missed and, and I'm working on getting space set up to host these things in an archive...

As y'all know, I'm not a big fan of blogging and podcast awards.

However, when it comes to being a part of a collaborative effort that gets nominated, I tend to moderate my scorn for the whole process and remain silent.

After all, the other folks might actually want to win, and I'm supposed to be a part of a team, right?

That's how it was with IMAO and SNN this past Awards Season.

So when I saw this in my referral stats, I had to take a moment to ponder...

How much of 100 Word Stories is me, and how much of it is the Weekly Challenge crowd or the folks that throw in stories for mid-week play?

So, I'm not going to yank the podcast's name out of contention like I do when any other IFOC site gets thrown into the ring.

But I've got to say that there's a lot of storytelling podcasts out there, and I'd think that folks like Digital Flotsam and King Bonk would rank much higher than 100 Word Stories in a rational unvierse.

Well, it's time for another episode of Kitty Karma, where I bring you Bad Cat News and then you give treats and love to your own kittycats to let them know how much they mean to you.

Wales is the site of our latest dastardly tale:

A woman who killed her boyfriend's cat by putting it in a washing machine after an argument was given a four-month suspended prison sentence on Monday.

Diane Hannon, from Old Colwyn, in north Wales, was looking after the white fluffy cat called Paws last summer while her friend Duncan Carthy was away.

She put the six-year-old cat, which was deaf, into the washing machine before switching it on. Paws died from a heart attack and suffered loss of hair and scalding.

RSPCA Inspector Kevin Paton, said in a statement: "This is the worst act of deliberate cruelty I have ever seen."

But there's good news in this:

Hannon, who admitted last December to causing unnecessary suffering to the animal, was banned from owning animals for life.

Although I wouldn't mind if she was still allowed to own a large number of pit bulls...

I deleted the Dead Pool blog out of the site, but it appears that the version of MultiBlog I had running kinda doesn't know how to deal with one of its affected blogs being pulled out from under it.

MultiBlog won't let me back in it to fix it's brains.

So, I removed it and went to install the new plugin version.

I'd been running 1.10 while 1.99.7b is the latest.

I try to load it up... nope. Doesn't see it.

Then I look for the documentation.

Documentation wasn't there this morning. Now it's there.

Weird.

Hrm... unpack into main directory... ok...

Nope. Doesn't see it.

So I tear out all the old MultiBlog components... try again...

Hrm. I'd better just temporarily remove that link table up there for the time being.

Apparently, some customer paid us to keep a dedicated tech on standby during some period over the weekend.

I've been digging around, but the short of it that it kinda looks like nobody told the techs about it.

What a great new revenue opportunity: Phantom Geeks On Call.

I'm going home now... or... am I going on standby?

I received a package in the mail today from METRO.

Restraining order... restraining order... restraining order...

Nope. It's a Q Card packet.

These folks will give these things away to just about anyone, I guess.

The packet contains:

1) A cover letter in English, telling me that I get 5 free rides for every 15 paid trips for now as well as an email address to narc on feisty drivers/buses.
2) A cover letter in Spanish, probably telling me that the gringos are occupying my land, Viva La Raza! Viva Pizza Patron!
3) A list of Q Card locations in table format. A map would be nice. But we all know how nice METRO was to the riders on Route 68, right?
4) A nice glossy packet in English and Espanol hawking the Q Card, telling me how wonder it's going to be to pay more to ride METRO.
5) A nice glossy packet in English and Espanol called The Q Card User Guide providing a FAQ about the Q Card. (It does not say how I should shove this card up my ass, but I'm assuming sideways.)
6) The Q Card, which states on the back that I should not punch holes it it. (Sorry, Uncle Walther)
7) An Official METRO Q Card Pen, which will be great for stabbing myself in the leg over and over for funsies.

It looks like there is no online component to this thing. No audit trail, no way to buy up Zunepoints, no nothing.

I've surfed ridemetro.org for a bit... no map of locations, either.

The guide says to hold the card against the reader for 2 seconds. Sheesh, I can swipe my 30-day pass and walk into the bus in one fluid motion these days. Waiting 2 seconds does not make the process much faster. Maybe for wobbly cripples... but they're already slow.

So, the adventure begins tomorrow. Half of the buses I board have "SHIFT CLOSED" on those suckers, so those drivers had better be ready for a ration of Official Laurence Simon Crap if they don't let this Q-Booster board.

I'm a beta tester, dammit! Make way!

Well, the first day of voting at Pickle Tales is coming to a close, and I'm getting pasted 26 to 16.

I've received several complaints from people over these past six rounds that voting is a royal pain in the ass. The registration process takes you out of the thread, then you go back in, need to refresh... oops, you registered for Podcast Pickle, not the forums, and so on.

However, unlike certain minority groups in the Deep South who freak out over any requirement that would make them show a valid ID at a polling place that might stop them from bussing churchmembers and bums all over the county, I'll just say that if the process is too difficult for you to register and vote, don't worry about it. Forget about it. Don't stress.

Just listen, enjoy it, and if you're still irritated that you can't vote, well, respond in the comments here and let me know that you need help getting through the maze of registration.

Keep on thing in mind - in joining this competition, I've agreed to the process for what it is, no matter what its flaws or limitations or barriers it throws in the way of fans wanting to make their voices heard in the polls and the forums.

It's not the best system, for sure, but it's the system that's there and it leaves a lot of room for improvement come Season Two.

Of course, then there's the demonstration that it's possible for out-and-out cheaters to game results, using multiple IDs to throw the polls, but that's corrected itself two rounds ago, I believe.

Anyway, there's tomorrow, Wednesday and half of Thursday to go.

Thank you for your support, and may the best man continue to wear my underwear.

Blogging will be light because I'm having a blast with my new friend, Little Frankie.

He's my Q Card. I named him Little Frankie.

I need to pimp out my Q Card. Just writing "FUH" over the Q isn't enough for me.

So, will this thing's radioactive properties make me retarded or impotent?

Will I become a Q-Tard?

If so, I guess I won't be blogging as muchly.

Regularistic blogging will resumed tomorrowish.

John Whiteside offers his opinions on a month's worth of Sit and Spin.

I agree with the following suggestion:

Put on your asbestos sweater. When a public agency starts blogging, everybody who's mad is going to come out of the woodwork. Your job will be to keep the online community working anyway, let the personal criticisms roll off of you, and identify the people with a genuine beef and respond to it. It can't have been fun for Mary to read local bloggers calling her an overpaid hack. But I think this comes with the territory and anybody in her role has gone to be ready for it.

If she didn't know what she was walking in to, she's pretty damn clueless. After all, she was a local reporter for how many years?

As for the other suggestion:

Give it all time. Nearly every blogger needs time to find her voice, settle into a posting schedule that works, and establish some consistency. A month is a very short time. I think everybody needs to take a breath and wait and see where the METRO blog goes in the coming months. I suspect the blog will look a bit different later this year.

When you copy-paste from press releases, it doesn't matter how you try to customize what's on the page - it's still someone else's voice.

Sit's about as worthless as an ombudsman at a liberal MSM newspaper.

As of 08:30, it was 36-29 in Phil's favor.

38-30 as of 09:30... now it's 39-30... it's not trending well. But at least the forum thread is heading into the funny-asburd quickly.

The final show is here, and just skip the first 36 minutes if you want to get right to the two stories.

If you are having difficulty registering in the forums to vote, even if it is to vote for Phil's story, feel free to leave a comment or message me at isfullofcrap on MSN, Yahoo, AOL, or GTalk.

Your vote will be counted, no matter how many barriers The Man throws in your way.

Moxie and Steve have a new collaborative podcast up.

After having Pajamas Media pass on coverage of the dog-eat-dog final round of the Pickle Tales storytelling competition, in which a blogger on three of their member sites is competing, it is clear to me that I must now use this final upcoming check from Pajamas Media to aid in that traitorous organization's destruction.

I will burn in hell with their dirty money in my pockets. Pajamas Media delenda est!

Okay, so I'm back to taking vitamins.

That means I have to remember to take my vitamins as well as take my double-dose Vytorin pills.

Now, that's nothing compared to what a friend with a transplanted kidney had to take, but it's still kind of disturbing when I take more than one pill a day.

Well, when I remember to.

I can get forgetful sometimes.

I had one of those old people's pillreminder things, with the SMTWTFS on the little compartments, but I kept forgetting to get my pills from it.

Or filling it, for that matter.

I've sworn to get better at this.

Oh, and Frisky's running out of his first round of pills. Time to head back to the test, let them steal more of Frisky's blood, and then decide if he needs to keep on the drugs or can go off of them... or must resort to more drastic measures.

Frisky's been great about the pills. All it takes is 30 seconds to grab him, toss a pill in his mouth, and he does his best to swallow it to avoid the squirt of water step of the process.

Bless his furry little heart.

It's time for a new feature called Cat/Countercat where the resident IFOC Cats debate the issues of the day.

Today's subject: Rudy G. running for President.

What do you think about Rudy filing papers to join the presidential race in 2008?

Frisky: I don't trust Rudy. The last time he was up against Hillary, he got sick and then cheated on his wife. What's to stop him from doing that again? His wife and prostate have suffered enough... and so has America.

Nardo: America's Mayor? When I first heard that, some dumb ex-Police Chief was mayor and bleeding HPD dry of officers. Then that jerk got term limited out so some bald white guy could come in and tow cars on the freeways. Forget Rudy G. I want to see Rudy T. run for president. Then he could debate Kermit Washington.

Thank you, kittycats.

I was down by 7 votes in the Pickle Tales storytelling competition.

So FrankJ got out the word.

Now I'm down by eleven.

As a result, I've been forced to dig into my bag of dirty tricks and come up with some short campaign pieces to motivate you, the apathetic non-voting online public:

• Dead Cats And Rocky
• Thanking The Competition
• The Panda-Molesting Hitler Clone

Thank you for your support. Even you, FrankJ, although it has resulted in my slipping backwards into further oblivion, despair, and defeat.

Remember:

• Listen (skip first 36 minutes if you don't want to listen to all the lead-in)
• Register
• Vote
• Comment in the forums

What really got me smiling was that d_fly said they listened at my urgin, and yet they voted for Rossi.

Loyalty has its value, but I value honesty even more.

(Maybe Kos could raise money for my opponent?)

Ingrid Newkirk's PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) claims to be an animal rights group, but their outrageous headline-grabbing tactics are rarely more than criminal thuggery laced with fits of blatant bloody-handed hypocrisy.

In response to the "Holocaust On Your Plate" media campaign that mocked the Holocaust, blogger Meryl Yourish responded with "Eat A Tasty Animal For PETA Day" (EATAPETA) campaign on March 15, 2003. Bloggers and non-bloggers are invited to revolt against PETA's ham-fisted tactics by eating animals on this day.

This year will be the Fifth Annual International Eat an Animal for Peta Day. Join us - it will be delicious.

But wait... how can you join in the fun?

Go to the Eat A Tasty Animal For PETA Day Homepage and look for a gatheringplace in your town. If your town is not listed yet, well, why not let us know when and where you will be hosting a gathering.

Sure, you can eat animal food products all by your lonesome, but you are encouraged to organize an promote your own gatheringplace to celebrate the carnivore side of your omnivorous nature.

I have a question about the whole Space Cadet Love Triangle thing:

The judge told Lisa Marie Nowak she could be released on $15,500 bond, then asked if she understood the conditions. She responded "yes."

All things considered, an astronaut is the ultimate flight risk.

NASA's killed seventeen of them in missions, and I think one or two did a little test piloting on the weekends and ended up cutting their flight time short i nthe worst way possible.

Putting on a wig and sticking a BB gun down her pants, well, that's child's play for a NASA astronaut. They can whip up anything out of duct tape and spit.

Imagine what she'll be like in a prison cell... just give her two spoons and a shoelace and she'll be calling in air strikes!

It takes a lot of balls to cheat on an astronaut. This is someone who can wipe your town off of the map with a large billion-dollar projective hurtling from space at orbital velocity...

"You think sending me flowers will make all-nice with me??? Try this derelict satellite on for size!"

I guess the fact that her cheating boyfriend was also an astronaut explains it.

Now she's being charged with attempted first degree murder, so she's going to stay in jail.

I wonder how judges feel when they agree to bail on someone like that.

The DA low-balls the defendant, the judge offers up something a bail bondsman will float without question, and then the DA hammers the defendant with a huge charge.

It's gotta suck, being the judge who would release a person like that for such a low price.

This guy ordered a server.

At what point do they realize that it really isn't?

Got a better one.

There's this prick that hangs out i nthe chatroom who always shrieks the moment he put sin a ticket, thinking it'll get his stuff done before anyone else.

Well, he firewalls himself out of his server, needs the firewall set to something else.

It takes an hour for a tech to get free, but when they check, the jerk's changed the password o nthe server to one not on file.

He never sent in an update.

So, this guy shrieking he needs help NOW NOW NOW NOW has waited one... two... three... he just hasn't respond