BunkBlog

I’m inspired by Ferrett’s confession. I, too, am a magazine addict. Here are the ones I can recall that show up in my mailbox (only the ones I actually pay for-some freebies show up that I don’t care about at all):

• Cuisine at Home
• PC World
• PC Magazine
• Computer Power User
• Maximum PC
• Seed
• MIT Technology Review
• The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Granta
• Mental Floss
• Wired

I can quit any time I want.

I was keeping discussion on this JoeUser article in a friends-only post on LJ, but I’ve stopped worrying about offending people who cannot listen.

To recap for those who didn’t read it already: someone posted about abortion. One commenter pointed out that the Roman Empire prohibited abortion, even though they mandated killing deformed babies. I thought that was unlikely, so I did a 20-second Google search, and found that the Roman Empire didn’t forbid abortion until the Third Century. Silly me, I thought pointing out that the Romans (and Greeks and other ancient cultures) allowed abortion would be an interesting but minor factoid in the discussion.

Somehow, I’ve been accused of saying that abortion is acceptable and that the Roman Empire is a fantastic role model for modern ethics.

You have got to be freakin’ kidding me!

The folks over at JoeUser are a bit more right-wing than most large groups online, it seems. They’re not even, in general, libertarian but definitely a preponderance of Bush-lovers. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se; it does make for some interesting discussions at times. This post stimulated a lot of responses, most of them (to my mind) unthinking. The original poster is a retired Colonel and was sharing his personal economic status change over the previous year, as contrasted with the “great news” about the economy that is trumpeted on Fox News. He was, of course, attacked as an idiot on multiple occasions. The fact that few people on that board seem capable of spelling much correctly does distract me, but here’s one correctly spelled response that jumped out at me:

People don’t know if they are better off or not.

Oh, well, then. We’ll just tell people they’re better off, and even if their checkbooks tell them differently, they’ll believe us.

Which of these have you done? Add up the dollar amounts and repost in your own journal…

Smoked pot — $10
Did acid — $5
Ever had sex at church — $25
Woke up in the morning and did not know the person who was next to you — $40
Had sex with someone on MySpace — $25
Had sex for money — $100
Ever had sex with the a Puerto Rican — $20
Vandalized something — $20
Had sex on your parents’ bed — $10
Beat up someone — $20
Been jumped — $10
Crossed dressed — $10
Given money to stripper — $25
Been in love with a stripper — $20
Kissed some one who’s name you didn’t know — $0.10
Hit on some one of the same sex while at work — $15
Ever drive drunk — $20
Ever got drunk at work, or went to work while still drunk — $50
Used toys while having sex — $30
Got drunk, passed and don’t remember the night before — $20
Went skinny dipping — $5
Had sex in a pool — $20
Kissed someone of the same sex — $10
Had sex with someone of the same sex — $20
Cheated on your significant other — $10
Masturbated — $10
Cheated on your significant other with their relative or close friend — $20
Done oral — $5
Got oral — $5
Done / got oral in a car while it was moving — $25
Stole something — $10
Had sex with someone in jail — $25
Made a nasty home video — $15
Had a threesome — $50
Had sex in the wild — $20
Been in the same room while someone was having sex — $25
Stole something worth over more than a hundred dollars — $20
Had sex with someone 10 years older — $20
Had sex with someone under 21 and you are over 27 — $25
Been in love with two people or more at the same time — $50
Said you love someone but didn’t mean it — $25
Went streaking — $5
Went streaking in broad daylight — $15
Been arrested — $5
Spent time in jail — $15
Peed in the pool — $0.50
Played spin the bottle — $5
Done something you regret — $20
Had sex with your best friend — $20
Had sex with someone you work with at work — $25
Had anal sex — $80
Lied to your mate — $5
Lied to your mate about the sex being good — $25DONT FORGET TO REPOST WITH YOUR DOLLAR AMOUNT

$290.50

Check off the stupid things you have done. DO NOT include explanations!
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Which Lovely Doctor Who Companion Are You Ashamed To Admit Your Crush On?

Looks as though you’ve got your heart set on the second Romana, as played by Lalla Ward! This tempting Time Lady conceals her inhuman cleverness behind a disarmingly enthusiastic and girlish demeanor. She’s an eclectic blonde who loves to travel and enjoy herself, and if you gaze too long into those summer-sky eyes, she’ll have you wrapped around her finger. Not that you’ll mind.
Take this quiz!

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Yeah, I can go along with that. I remember the Baker years.

Back in 1987, when I first started driving, I had a 1967 Dodge Coronet. It got 17 miles per dollar (mpd). That car had horrible mileage, a cranky carburetor, and generally drove like the tank it resembled.

When I got back from my first tour in Korea in 1992, I got a cheap Toyota. With advances in technology, I was able to average 25 mpd. Of course, I had rare need for air conditioning in Monterey, but that 25 mpd was mostly city driving.

My next car, the Dodge Neon, was a victim of a slight rise in gas prices, so I only got 23 mpd when I first got the cute little thing in 1995. By the time I moved on to the next car, I was only able to squeeze 17 mpd from the Neon.

The Ford Contour (crappy car, don’t ever get one) I got saddled with in 2000 made a then-sad 15 mpd. Power locks, air conditioning, but otherwise a simple auto.

Now we’ve got these insane fuel prices, and I drove to and from Dallas this weekend. The previous week, with commuting the primary fuel usage, I only made 7 (seven!) mpd. The highway trip made things slightly better, with a massive 11 mpd.

Of course, even a Toyota Prius would only average around 15-17 mpd nowadays. I don’t even want to do the math on that old Coronet (OK, fine – it would be five mpd). I think my “Check Economy” light is flashing…

Make your own, be a lemming!

A few credit card companies sent me updated cards in the past month, including one which didn’t expire for another two years.  Makes me wonder if the credit companies know something I don’t.

Anyway, all these credit cards require activation, including my ATM card. The activation procedure for one is simple: call the number, they hit the caller ID database and say, “Thank you for calling. Your card is now activated.” Other companies require you to type in the credit card number in full, others the last few digits of your Social Security Number (which is illegal to use as an identification number), etc.  Do only a very few companies know what Caller ID is?  And what’s with the plethora of calls trying to get me to buy the oh-so-useful credit insurance crap lately? Leave me alone!

This has been your random surreal moment of the day.  Please pull through.

Yes, I do have too much time on my hands. Why do you ask?

Because Perich and Visgoth did it and I’m a geeky sheep.

Every Hugo-winning novel since the dawn of the Hugo Award. The ones I’ve read are bolded.

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I got 10 of the 14 quotes correct. I actually assumed that some of the more archaic language had to be Hitler, when it was Coulter trying to sound erudite and just sounding like Hitler.

According to today’s Parade magazine, men have a 50% decreased rate of heart attacks when they have sex at least three times per week.

Happy Father’s Day.

Congress just passed a bill to increase the maximum indecency fine by an order of magnitude. This is the same day they voted on the completely symbolic “we hate gays” amendment. Could the legislature possibly have actual work to do that could somehow assist the citizenry in any way? If not, maybe they should stay out of DC for a while, because they’re just wasting our tax dollars and causing more stupidity than we need.

Gloom, despair and repeats on me. Deep dark reruns, excessive reality (shows). If it weren’t for Stargate, I’d have no shows at all. Gloom, despair and repeats on me.

Alex gets a billion new shows on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon showing up on the DVR, while I get…a few episodes of That 70s Show that I missed years ago, and some old Stargate episodes. Hell, I can’t even count on Battlestar Galactica to make the summer “oh hell it’s hot” TV schedule better – it’s supposed to return in October. Thankfully the Dead Zone and 4400 are coming back soon, but what are they running, 10 or 12 episodes? *sigh*

We have a municipal pool here in beautiful San Angelo Texas, which opens tomorrow for the season. The hours are 11am-6pm on Saturdays, 1-6pm on Sundays, and 1-7pm the rest of the week (for open swim, which is all I’d care about for Alex). The pool closes for the season on the 13th of August.  So, it’s open 10 weeks of the year.  In west Texas.  Where it got to 100 degrees in April.  Where we use the air conditioning well into October most years. WTF?

What do you expect for 3 bucks per day, right?  So, what about the local swim & racquet club? It costs over 500 bucks for membership the first year (400 the following years – what a bargain for you). Their pool opened today (a day earlier!), and stays open until the 4th of September (three more weeks!). For five hundred bucks, I want to be able to swim on Christmas freakin’ Day, folks. At least the swim club pool is open 10-9 five days a week, and 1-9 on Sunday (like many things in West Texas, it’s inexplicably closed on Mondays).

The only way to use a pool here for the period when someone would reasonably want a pool to beat the heat is to own your own.  I live in bizarro-world.

Probably not safe for work.

Sex Toy or Baby Toy? – Take the Quiz

I got 10 of 15 correct.  Is that good or bad?

So Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly. Maybe it was to be expected, if he’s the person described as the “person who now holds a powerful intelligence post” who is also a former lawmaker, who just so happens to be one of the participants in that whole sex scandal. You remember the Poker Party story, right? C’mon, it’s only been a couple days! You don’t remember the sex scandal that was all over the news this week? Oh, right. It wasn’t all over the news. Of course, that darned liberal media kept it from you. Which is really amazing, considering that the only people implicated are Republicans, but that liberal media is wily. They must just be biding their time, waiting for the next thing they can attack the President with.

What I can’t figure out is why all this stuff keeps happening at the Watergate Hotel. You’d think people would stop going there, what with the whole “every scandal has a -gate” thing. They don’t even have to make a stupid “Plamegate” or “Iran-contragate” out of it – it actually is the Watergate!