Invest in Soup.

Colbert invests in soup. Behold:

Colbert was right.

Last night, we were catching up on The Colbert Report and he brought up an interesting observation. While everyone is losing their shirts in the stock market from investing in Ford, Apple, Exxon, etc., the people who invested in Campbells Soup are making out like bandits! I guess people are opting for the $0.89 meal-in-a-can nowadays.

Take a look at how the stock has done in the past 6 months:



(I was going to add the clip from The Colbert Report, but my browser keeps crashing while trying to load the site. If you go to colbertnation.com, I'm sure you'll find the clip. It's from either Wednesday's or Thursday's show. I'll try to add it later if I can.)

Ask for your own bribes.

Now Accepting Bribes...

Our absentee ballots arrived today! I honestly thought that we would never see them. Tuscaloosa continues to surprise me.



I plan on voting soon and, in the spirit of the U.S. legislative process and the First Amendment, I will be accepting donations. The size of your donation will be directly proportional to the amount of consideration I will give your voting request. I will not place restrictions on the size of donations that I am willing to accept.

Fun and Not-So Fun.

First the fun. Check out this video from San Francisco of the Imperial invasion. It may be time to get your midichlorian count checked:



Now, the not-so fun. I'm guessing that a lot of people don't know where money really comes from (I really didn't either). The common assumption is that for every dollar put in a bank, a dollar can be lent out (for mortgages for example). That is not the case. In fact, for every dollar put in a bank, about $100 can be lent out! The money is created by debt. This video does a really good job of explaining how the financial system works and one can see why the US government wants to give $700 billion to the banks for the bad mortgages rather than the people with the mortgages. If the people get the money, the debt goes away.

The video makes some conspiracy theory accusations toward the end, but the beginning is really informative.

Oh Sh*t!

In case you haven't heard, Travis Barker of Blink 182 fame was critically injured in a plane crash. He was the drummer that took over for Scott Raynor, for what ever reason, and helped create the bands first album that was a mainstream success (Dude Ranch had some success but not as much as Enema of the State).

< aside >
...yes, I love this band as much as your 14 year old sister does, but I also had the Cheshire Cat album when they were still called Blink rather than Blink 182.
< /aside >

Travis is a very talented drummer but he's no Neil Pert. Check out his skillz:

Better Know a District: Florida's 7th

My Mom lives in this district!

Fett's Vette

Fun with hadrons.

Zombie Season.

Here's a great, out of print shirt from shirt.woot.com. I hope they bring it back.



Now that I have your attention...

In her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a `community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Nominally, her words were an assault on Barack Obama's early career as a community organizer on Chicago's south side. But the impact reaches farther than that and is a direct affront to the thousands who have dedicated their lives to making America great.

I just signed a petition to tell Governor Palin to apologize for her disparaging remarks about community organizers -- I hope you will too.

Please have a look and take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/community_organizers/?r_by=-1781216-9JNBQvx&rc=paste

Thanks!

September 3, 2008...

...The Daily Show was on FIRE!

Yeah, I know Becky already posted a piece of this, but you need to watch the whole thing.

Drunk History... a la Patrick.

So, I've had about a liter of of Martinique rum and Coke/French Antilles rum and Pommac so far tonight. I've also started reading Whiteout by Greg Rucka, which is an upcoming movie starring Kate Beckinsale. If you have never read anything by Rucka, I highly recommend Gotham Central.

Anyway, the first few pages of Whiteout state that the Nazis laid claim to an area of Antarctica by dropping thousands of metal swastikas from an airplane. I didn't know if this was fact or "artistic license," so Becky did a search for me on the internet. Sure enough, the Encyclopedia Britannica claims that it actually happened in 1939. I am amazed by this, especially in light of Hitler's vision of Berlin as the capital of the world.

Wow, that's ridiculous.

Watch as Megan Callahan tries to keep controversy alive.

Irony Defined.

Here is an interesting non-scientific poll of Fox News' viewers.

Hanging Out Downtown.

It was a really nice day yesterday so we decided to go hang out in downtown Oulu. This wasn't a well planned excursion, so we didn't leave until about 3p. When we got there, we first had a hearty and healthful lunch at Hesburger (the Finnish version of Burger King). We followed that with a stroll through the market square and examined the wares being sold by the local shopkeeps. Unfortunately, a lot of them were already packed up and gone for the day. Here are some pictures of us posing with the statue of the rotund policeman in the market square.







Near the market square is the public library, so we decided to check out their selection of books in english. We were also going to get library cards while we were there, but forgot to bring our passports with us as official identification. We browsed for a little while and I decided that they had a decent collection of novels from both major genres (science fiction and other). We also found the graphic novel section but it was minutes before they were going to close, so we didn't get a good look at what they had.

After the library, we headed for the park and the little cafe located near the center of it. We each had a baked good and a cup of tea while sitting outside and enjoying the weather and scenery.

Here's Becky happily knitting a pastel sock in the sunshine with her cup-o-tea.



Here's the scenery near the terrace of the cafe.





Here are a couple of shots of the fountains in the Oulu River.




Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died so I didn't get any pictures of the beautiful flowers throughout the park. I also didn't get pictures of the U.F.O. landing, the clown handing out 500 Euro bills, or the cloned velociraptor eating children. We may head back to downtown today since it's supposed to be nice again. If we do, I'll bring some freshly charged batteries and capture all the excitement.

Comedy Extravaganza: Final Day

Lewis Black is going to wrap up the comedy extravaganza. I love this guy. I can't remember if I first saw him on a stand-up special or doing Back In Black on The Daily Show. I did manage to see him live in Birmingham and I got to meet him afterwards. It was a lot of fun.

Here is Lewis Black live on Broadway. It's an oldie but a goodie.

Comedy Extravaganza: Day 3

Today's comedian is The Amazing Jonathan. I remember first seeing this guy on Lounge Lizards at Scott's parents' house years ago. We still bring up this guy's jokes from time to time.

Some of the routine was edited out of the first video, probably because you can't have drug references and Alan Thick in the same show.








Sometimes magic sounds like tape...

Comedy Extravaganza: Day 2

Today's comedian is Demetri Martin. I first saw him on The Daily Show and the graphs he made always cracked me up.



Here's a good one to listen to:

Comedy Extravaganza!

For the rest of this week, I will be giving you a taste of some of the comedians I enjoy. "Why," you ask? "Eh, why not," I reply. It gives me something non-work related to do and everyone likes comedy, right? So stay tuned!

Today's comedian is Daniel Tosh. I saw him once on Comedy Central and he left a big impression on me. Here is his Completely Serious special.

This Looks Sweet.

Here's a new trailer for the upcoming game Spider-man: Web of Shadows.