Bumblebee Genocide

This guy does bee extermination the way you've always wanted to: with fire.

I suppose this is a good chance to kick off a "Reading Material" series, wherein I tout my favorite blogs and websites while adding them to my links on the side here. If you haven't already, check out the Something Awful forums. The GBS forum is faster than the AP with global and local news, only they have the collective emotional maturity of a 15-year-old.

The Prez reads the news now, apparently

Flash! President Bush Says He Reads Papers



You may remember our Commander-In-Chief saying a few years ago that he didn't read the newspapers. He got whatever crucial current events that were needed to do his job through his aides (never mind that his aides were petrified to have to break the bad news to him, for fear of getting their heads bitten off) causing many to believe that the Administration operated from inside a bubble, governing according to their own set of facts.



Whether or not he's really reading the papers, you've got to wonder why, with just over two years left in his presidency, he's decided to make a big deal about this now. Or why the New York Times believes that because the President does it, millions of Americans are going to start reading the daily periodicals again. Bush's overwhelming failure to rapidly adapt his presidency to current events is eerily similar to what's happening to the newspapers as a medium. They've ignored the wave of technology that's rendering print obsolete the same way Bush has ignored the news in general, and now both are losing supporters at a similar pace.



Suddenly paying attention to the news isn't going to save this Administration any more than it's going to boost readership and save the newspaper industry. Whatever those parties are doing to try to right their ships now, it's a case of too little, way too late.

Gerald Ford dead at the senseless age of 93

Surely in all the coverage of this, we haven't missed one of Dana Carvey's best political sketches?

Google Video

"Stunning news from Michigan, as former President Gerald Ford was
chopped into little bits by the propeller of a commuter plane."

Not "accidents" anymore - they're "crashes"

Police Urging Highway Safety During Holidays

by KYW’s Suzanne Monaghan

The number of highway fatalities, injuries and crashes on Pennsylvania roadways dropped during the five-day Thanksgiving holiday. State Police are hoping the same will be true over Christmas and New Year's.

President of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, Bruce Edwards, says the harsh reality is holiday cheer can turn to tragedy:

"Any time of year it's not good, but at holiday time, one of the things I guess I would say troopers most dread is when you have to go to a home and report that a loved one is deceased."

Edwards says especially when the death was preventable. In fact, collisions are no longer called accidents. Police refer to them as crashes because most of them could have been avoided.

This is a step in the right direction that will hopefully catch on not just in the news but in daily conversations. "Accident" is a word that conjures up a child that can't get to the bathroom in time, or someone eating shit on a ski slope.

There is no guessing about what is meant by using the word "crash": a violent impact between a (your?) motor vehicle and another object of substantial size (another car, a telephone pole, a pedestrian, a deer, etc.) Just the sound of the word is more violent than it's predecessor.

thoughts

I'm thinking that anything halfway insightful or intelligent will go on here, and anything to do with my portfolio and/or the carnyfeet server is going on that site where future employers and colleagues will read it and not be too impressed.

basically, the portfolio site will be a "hey look what I did" blog, and this site will be a "hey look what I thought" blog as well as a "hey look what color my vomit is" blog.

I have to mention in passing that I haven't blogged regularly in about 2 years and I am very impressed with the whole Google suite of programs and utilities.