B's younger sister is gradually moving in with us. She brought her cat Remington with her first stuff a little over a week ago. But you know how you never see Clark Kent and Superman in the same room together? We don't have two cats now, we have one quantum cat. She is always gray and adorable, but sometimes she's Remi and sometimes she's Chita Rivera. Late at night you can hear her quantum states growling at each other, but when you come into the room, they collapse into one or the other with a flurry of galloping feet.

- Z

As the 1972 election results came in, my uncle locked himself in his bedroom and drank one shot of whiskey for every state Richard Nixon won. He was very drunk indeed (WIKIPEDIA - United_States_presidential_election,_1972) I'm much more of a lightweight than he is, but in his honor I introduce the Sarah Palin Drinking Game. Since this will play out over the next week or two, the drinks will become payable at the Halloween party.

1. If John McCain doesn't fire Sarah Palin, take a drink.

2. If Sarah Palin is 'allowed to resign,' take a drink.

3. If the campaign cites sexism as a contributing factor to her departure, take a drink.

4. If the campaign cites liberal bias in the mainstream media as a contributing factor to her departure, take a drink.

5. If campaign spokesperson Tucker Bounds names the New York Times specifically as a contributing factor to her departure, take two drinks.

6a. If Thursday's debate is cancelled because the campaign has not yet appointed a new vice presidential nominee, take a drink.

6b. Alternatively, if Palin hasn't mercifully dropped out by the debate, drink heavily throughout.

7. If the campaign replaces Sarah Palin with Rudy Giuliani, take three drinks - you'll need them.


- Z

If you don't love politics read this instead.

I try to steer away from political stuff since there are already too many commentators on the Internet. But I can't resist now that McCain/Palin has jumped the shark and half a dozen schoolbuses on a motorcycle while wearing a wookiee suit and singing Blaze of Glory.

First we got John McCain over here calling his second time-out of the game. No man, you can't stop the roller coaster when you want to get off. If he's trying to grab headlines, the liberal press just keeps giving him the wrong ones. Yesterday a Google News junkie such as myself would have seen 'agreement in principle' in the afternooon, 'John McCain arrives' in the evening, and 'partisan chaos' by nightfall.

And then there's the debate tonight. Seeing as how you can't have a debate without two people and a moderator, I'm totally geared up tonight to see Barack Obama, Jim Lehrer, and King Friday XIII.

Then we got Sarah Palin over here. She's been a VP nominee for a month and they still won't let her talk to the press. Now we know why. She finally gives an interview and manages to make Joe Biden look like William Jennings Bryan. The VP debate is going to be a train wreck with tankers full of vinegar and boxcars full of baking soda.





- Z

Mr. Bernanke, how's the economy?



If Enron and WorldCom are proof that the system works, what are Bear Stearns, FNMA, FHLMC, and AIG?

Edited to add Ron Paul and the Chamber of Commerce

- Z

I'm going to take an unpopular position: I liked Microsoft's ads. I don't even like Jerry Seinfeld, but I liked the idea of Bill Gates as a warped Dave Thomas. I liked the idea of two out-of-touch dudes trying to reconnect with America in the most awkward way possible. They weren't funny. They weren't supposed to be funny. They were weird, but I guess weird doesn't sell.



Here's an even more unpopular position: I kind of like Bill Gates. He's really chilled out since Steve Ballmer took over. He no longer sounds like some college sophomore who's just discovered Ayn Rand. Now he's just some dude you might find hanging out at a bridge tournament in grungy jeans. [True story: my brother-in-law played him at bridge, and won.]



But of course people hated the campaign so they're scrapping it for something that's clever but predictable: a bunch of people who are not John Hodgman, with not-combovers and wearing not-business suits, being not-pathetic, and holding up signs that say "I'm a PC." Lame.

- Z

_______________
ps. Yes, I'm famous for being lazy. I think that's worse than being famous for being fat.

I made a meatloaf last night and it smelled like hot dogs. I don't know how something like that even happens. )-:

Natalie Dee is funny in a way that is difficult to explain.


'dead in the eyes and coming for you specifically'

- Z

1: WANTED: Stats geek to hang out with hot babes. Inquire within.

2: Q: When did Russians start being awesome? A: Once you click this !!!

3: The problem with me in living in the suburbs across the street from a very expensive private high school, is that I just don't have any empathy for anybody around here. A kid from the school was driving his Audi hatchback like a dickweed, and the person he cut off and/or tailgated followed him until he parked [in front of my house] and started yelling at him. Then her shirtless, shoeless husband started getting all up in the kid's grille. And as the argument got more heated, I realized I wasn't on the side of the kid or the 'adult'- I was really just hoping for mutual assured destruction, and maybe some fire. Instead, police were called and, in true Kenmore fashion, three squad cars showed up.
Moral: Don't be an asshat in front of my house, unless you have the courtesy to catch fire.

4: 'I forgot to opt out' email marketing is in some ways worse than spam. You can't mark it as spam in good conscience. I have a mailbox called Unimportant and a rule set up. The rule got so long that I had to split it in two due to a bounds error/distributed infinite loop in Gmail [good work guys]. My shit list:



5: Everybody seems to be talking about Chrome. I like that it keeps track of your most often visited sites, but I don't think that's enough to set the world on fire.

6: Cloud computing is keen but I wish it wasn't all in beta. Google App Engine is very tightly integrated and free, but how much can you do when you don't have write access to the filesystem and all your requests, responses, and database records need to be under 1MB? Amazon Web Services don't care about file or transfer size, but their database isn't totally online yet. And when Yahoo gets into the game I'm sure it will be totally awesome except that nobody will realize that it exists.

- Z