Month: November 2009

Picked the wrong day to quit microprocessing

To illustrate the situation for us, he threw human feces at an oscillating fan.Flights across the country were delayed by a problem with the FAA’s computers in Salt Lake City and Atlanta. Air traffic controllers were forced to enter flight plans by hand until the systems could be brought back online.

When we asked FAA officials, “The computers? What is it?” they responded, “They’re boxes full of chips and circuits that use a binary language to perform advanced calculations in the blink of an eye … but that’s not important right now.”

The Guys took some pictures and left, knocking over a row of phone booths to call in this story.

Hand-charted flights, phone booths, actual human reporting …. All in all, everyone had a wonderful time reliving the 1970s.

Put on your panic hats

Libby’s Pumpkin, the company that brings all that delicious canned pumpkin filling which is then put into the delicious foods that are pumpkin anything, fears that it might not have enough canned pumpkin for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“Our calculations indicate that we may deplete our inventory of canned Libby’s pumpkin as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday,” Paul Bakus, vice president for Nestlé’s baking division, told the New York Times.

Commercial pumpkin-producers in Midwestern states blame the shortage on heavy rains and thus overly wet fields. With little back-up supply from a lackluster 2008 pumpkin harvest, West Coast organic pumpkin growers are trying to fill the void.

Now are the end times, ladies and gentlemen. It would not be out of line for you to throw your hands up in the air and scream in horror. I know that I am.

Nevermore

Animals are not human. That is one of the biggest things that separates us from the animals (the biggest: we are able to update our Facebook status).

But in Alaska, the humans are often surrounded by animals, so they form illegal bonds, and start attaching human characteristics to them. That is why this story claims birds are “mourning” the death of some ravens. This simply isn’t true.

Sure, some ravens got zapped on a power line, but that was intentional. We wanted the other birds to swoop in and see what happened. We wanted them to know that we assassinated those birds and the same thing would happen to them, too, unless they stayed the hell away from our children, our homes and our cars.

Take it from Snee: We need more swearing exceptions

As a child, my parents had a no swearing rule. They worked hard to clean up their language, and the resulting stress caused them to flip out whenever I broke that rule.

There was one morning, though, when my dad was watching a movie with explosions, camouflage and all of my favorite words. I asked why the men in the movie were allowed to cuss, and he said, “Because they’re at war.”

Imagine the impression this would make on a 5-year-old boy. From that point, I resolved to become either a soldier or a war movie actor, just so I could say whatever I wanted. (This same logic made me want to become a bowler so I could smoke and Robocop so I could eat baby food.)

Growing up, I learned there are a few other exceptions to the no swearing rule in the general public beyond international conflict.

  • Moments of great pain
  • In newfangled non-rhyming poetry
  • While making love for the first time

But is that all? Surely there are more situations where we–not just I–need to express ourselves with the lambada dance steps of communication. Continue reading Take it from Snee: We need more swearing exceptions

If you love marriage so much …

Is it just us or does it seem odd that a group of unmarried freeloaders are considering themselves experts on marriage? It’s kind of like learning the ins and outs of scuba diving from people who are afraid to swim.

That hasn’t stopped the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from issuing a series of letters to explain their positions, again, on marriage, reproductive rights and cyborgs patients on life support.

We haven’t read these earth-shattering documents, but we’ll sum them up for you anyway:

“You got married, now have babies and don’t you stop until the corpse of your spouse is cold.”

(If the other week was bad for Scientology, how weird is it that the Catholics were next for this week?)

Don’t ever expect CostCola

Who would ever think that a gigantic bulk store could be the underdog in a situation? Believe it.

CostCo has decided to stop carrying Coca-Cola products at their stores. The reason why? Coke refuses to give them a larger discount for their products. Which, given the current economic climate, is pretty important to both companies, seeing as the two would very much like to keep a strong price margin.

Guess you’ll have to find a another way to get 64 cans of Diet Coke all at one time.

Certainly beats the hose alternative

As part of our ongoing coverage of how cool the Catholic Church is, we turn now to the Church waging war against H1N1. Sure, you might think that holy water can kill the flu simply because it’s blessed by priests, but that’s not necessarily the case, apparently.

An Italian inventor has created a holy water dispenser that requires no touching at all, which makes the transmission of H1N1 much less likely. Wave your hands underneath it and holy water comes out. In case you’re wondering, yes, that is the same technology you have seen in public restrooms for the past decade or  so.

Hey, it took these guys centuries to apologize for calling Galileo a heretic. Ten years behind is nothing to them.

Eat My Sports: Bizzaro Manning

Did you ever read the “Bizzaro World” DC Comics series? Or how about the short lived “What If?” series that Marvel came out with? If you said “yes” to any of these, you’re a dork, and you’re just like me.

Twelve seasons into the Peyton Manning regime in Indianapolis, Manning is poised to break every quarterback record there is. But many people forget that before the 1998 draft, the Colts had a very hard decision to make, Manning or Ryan Leaf? From where we stand now it seems simple, but what if their fortunes had been traded … I wonder …

The Ryan Leaf side
After showing the Colts a huge amount of poise and maturity, the Colts select Leaf with the number one overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft. Keeping his pill-popping a secret, Leaf graciously accepts his number 16 Colts jersey. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Bizzaro Manning