Is it too much to ask . . .

. . . that our state legislators actually READ a bill before passing it into law?

LSD Pioneer/Psychonaut Albert Hoffman dies at 102.

Here he describes the very first LSD trip ever:

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.

"I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness," he subsequently wrote in a memo to company bosses.

"Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror," he said, describing his bicycle ride home. "I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast."

Upon reaching home, Hofmann began experiencing what he called "wonderful visions."

Do they make tie-dyed caskets?

And if he lived to be 102, how bad for your health can it be?

Questions.

If all that's standing between your 'tween and sluthood is not seeing this or this, then isn't it pretty much inevitable anyway?

How many 'tweens read Vanity Fair anyway?

And finally, shouldn't somebody FEED that Cyrus girl something?

ECOCAPITALISM - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover Expenses.

I can finally ditch the hippie bag. Besides making me look like some tree-hugging granola muncher, it was a pain in the ass to keep up with. I had to remember to put it in the car, and I didn't have it with me for impromptu stops at the store, and if I was getting more than a case of soda, I'd have to get some plastic bags anyway, so it kind of defeated the purpose.

I'd always quasi-assumed that stores got their plastic grocery bags for free, especially those small stores that give you bags from other stores. I guess I thought they were overstocks or misprints or the wrong size or something that the store's suppliers just handed out free like poppers at a gay dance club in the '70's. Turns out I was wrong.

A week or so back, I asked Mildred, the owner of Lane's Grocery, if she got her bags for free or if she had to pay for them. Not only does she have to pay for them, they're pretty pricey and getting worse. I thought to the Big Bag of Bags that was sitting on my kitchen counter and volunteered to bring them to her the next time I came in.

As a child, I had a similar arrangement with Fran the elderly lady that ran the little bodega up the road, only back then the bags were paper and she'd give me a free candy bar for every Bag of Bags I brought in.

Mildred didn't offer up any similar arrangement, but if I can keep her costs down, maybe she won't have to raise prices on me. The Ferengi call it the Great Material Continuum, a great river which carries all goods, services, and money. I call it the Circle of Thrift.

So over the weekend, I uncrumpled them all and sorted out the ones with holes in the bottom. And Monday, I dropped them off at Lane's.

A hundred bags reused is a hundred new bags not needed is a hundred bags kept out of the landfill is a hundred bags worth of plastic not taken out of the petrochemical supply.

But more importantly, it's a hundred new bags Mildred doesn't have to buy, which may delay any further markups she might have to make, which makes my shopping there continue to be inexpensive.

Anything worth doing is worth doing to save money.

Celebrity Birthday.

Willie Nelson has 75 doobies on his birthday cake today.

Song of the Day: Who shot Lt. Yar?

Bastard left out Fruity Pebbles.

Somewhere on my ex-blog, I lamented about the Star Wars Effect. I can't find it now, but it commented that often the superawesome things from one's childhood are best left cherished memories and not revisited, because many times they disappoint.

As a child, Star Wars was this magical, state-of-the-art epic tale of good versus evil.

As an adult, it is a hokey little thing with over-the-top acting (especially Han Solo) and bad special effects. See toward the end when Darth Vader's TIE Fighter and his two escort fighters launch from the Death Star in such perfect unison you wonder how long it took them to cut them out of cardboard.

J. Scott Wilson tests several cereals to see if the Star Wars Effect applies to breakfast.

If he'd asked me ahead of time, I could have told him that in most instances it does.

Honeycomb as a child? Awesome!!! Honeycomb as an adult? Hideous.
Rice Krispies as a child? Cool! Rice Krispies as an adult? Dried, puffed maggots.
Cheerios as a child? Good! Cheerios as an adult? Tiny, floating buttholes.

There are a few exceptions, of course. Fruity Pebbles still rocks. And Super Sugar Crisp and Sugar Smacks WOULD still rock if they weren't now Golden Crisp and Honey Smacks. And when you can find it, BOOBERRY still smells like childhood.

But he didn't test them.

Nor did he test Smurfberry Crunch or C-3PO's, which may no longer exist.

Song of the Day: That Mustachioed Man in the Flowerdy Shirt.

Possible solution . . .

. . . for Fitch-gate.



Was Obama flash-mobbed?

Speaking of farts . . .

... apparently, the British Heart Foundation is a No Farting Zone.

I say we all go there and have a Fart-In.

If they were making the Six-Million Dollar Man today . . .

. . . would they include modern anti-brain-fart technology?

Song of the Day: Just maybe think of me once in awhile.

Profound question.

If you teleported a minor directly from, say, Utah to Branson MO, could they charge you with crossing state lines?

The following is presented for no other reason than the theo-meddlers don't want you to see it.

Who says socialites are brainless?

The Socialite Report asks if the unidentified, flying objects over Phoenix are a U.F.O.

That's a very good question, Mr. Hanna.

Tom left a snark on one of my previous posts, where I suggested that we are at the point in Atlas Shrugged right before Hank Rearden leaves.

He asked:

"Who is Brad Pitt?"

Answer: He's yet another one of those children from a third-world country that Angelina Jolie has rescued/adopted, apparently because she is in some sort of race with Mia Farrow.

Maybe a better question would be:

"Do we know Brad Pitt's whereabouts on June 7, 1992?"

Do the recent temblors have you thinking you might oughtta buy some quake insurance?

If so, too bad.

You can't.

Heston's not even cold yet . . .

. . . and William Shatner (Celebrity Bowling) has already swooped in and snatched up the role of Moses.

Next thing you know, he'll be expounding on thedamn . . . dirty . . . APES.

That's as good a number to be as any, I suppose.

Lee Majors is 69 today. No word on how old Bionic Bigfoot is.

Haiku.

So much depends
On a little red wagon
half-filled with rainwater
beside the purple irises.

Barack McClinton working to secure the Chris Benoit crowd.

Umm . . . but I thought steroids were a BAD thing.?

Song of the Day: Be careful out there.

It's a V.L.P.* Day...

... because I have to go to the glass shop to get the rear driver's side window on the titty-pink Escort replaced after the neighbor flung a rock at it with his gas-powered lawnmower.

Damn fossil-fuel addicts!



* - V.L.P. - "Very Light Posting"

Maybe we should change the state motto to "The We-Is-Stupid State."

It's not even so much that they inadvertently left out the hyphen.

It's that they refuse to fix the error.

Missouri's Department of Revenue said it will not correct a grammatical
error in new license plates because that's how voters want it to be.

"Show-Me" is one adjective. It describes the state as one in which the residents want to see things before believing them.

"Show Me State" has two adjectives describing "state." One is "Show," as in "show dog." The other is "Me," as in "the Me Generation."

If that's how the "voters want it to be," then voters are too stupid to trust democracy with.

Democracy is three wolves and a lamb voting on whether or not to use correct English.

I can just hear Jim Taggart indignantly asking, "Who's to say there's only one correct usage?"

I think we're at the point in Atlas Shrugged right before Hank Rearden leaves . . .

Song of the Day: When the boys you used to hate, you date...

Illinois Senate launches the War on Flavor.

Now taking bets on which plague comes next, frogs or locusts.

Let's see; we've had a snowstorm, tornadoes, two 500-year floods in the space of less than a month, an apartment building consumed by fire and now an earthquake*.

God must really hate the Ozarks.

I'm wondering if maybe a volcano is next.

Or if maybe this was just a foreshock.



* - For those of you in the inner city, that's "Urfquake."

I have to wonder . . .

. . . if somewhere someone in the shadow government is amassing a database of all the rabblerousers that get one of these, but if you want a free pocket Constitution, you can get one from the Heritage Foundation.

Song(s) of the Day: Take off your socks and put on your ice-cream-colored suits, people!

If the Health Nazis had gotten the tobacco ban they wanted . . .

. . . then this convenience store worker would in all likelihood be dead.

Police said a masked man flashed a knife at the Cigarette Outlet on Friday and forced one employee to the floor, then demanded money from another worker, Ruth Wright.

Instead of cash, Wright threw two cans of chewing tobacco at the robber, and one hit him in the face.

Officers said a customer then tackled the man, but the robber broke free and bolted out the door.

Monday Night Adventure -- No Dan Dierdorf or ball lightning this time. Regular lightning yes, ball lightning no.

I am in a room in Hammons House. From the layout of the room (front, sideways-sliding picture window on the front wall and small window on the right wall) and the view outside (parking lot and tennis courts to the front of me, Blair-Shannon in the distance to the right) I can tell I'm in one of the *12 rooms, fairly high up. Probably 612, 712 or even 812.

There are a lot of people here, random people I have experienced in my past. There's my high-school salutarian (or is it salutatarian? maybe if I knew, I'd have been salutorian instead of 7th in my class) and the woman who used to waitress at the restaurant I frequent, who now works at Wal-Mart. Oddly, there's nobody here who is contemporary to the time I lived in Hammons House.

It is some sort of party, although not a rambunctious one. I don't think anyone is drinking. The atmosphere is more like a reunion of some kind.

It is storming like hell outside. It is nighttime, but the yellow lightning is so constant it allows no darkness. We are all watching the storm.

Then I see it, flying across the sky from left to right in the distance on a slightly downward trajectory. Some sort of object, shaped like a cross between a bullet and the old teardrop manned space modules that parachuted back to earth. Even at the distance, I can see it's features in remarkable detail. Metallic, battered. The color is somewhere between aged copper and bronze.

It disappears beyond view to the right, and another object appears in front of us, flying toward us. This one is white, shaped like a soup can, and seems to glide more than fly. I get the sense that it's rather flimsy. Think styrofoam filled with helium, with a thin plastic coating. It glides over our building. Or maybe lands on top of it; I don't know.

That's when the military gets involved. I see it coming fast. I only have time to point and say "Chase Plane" before it's on us. Seems to be a heavily armored F-14, coming straight at our window. There's no time to get out.

At the last second, it veers to our right. We can see the underside of the plane as it passes in front of us. It is covered with a red and gold fabric that reminds me of a bedsheet. It disappears from view.

We all take a sigh of relief and begin to discuss "What the hell was THAT?" when someone goes all ashen on us and points to the side window. It is covered with the red fabric, as if the plane is parked on the side of the building.

The murmurs of "What do we do now?" rumble through the group. I decide the first thing we should do is find out what is beyond the red fabric. I slide open the side window (from what I remember from my time in Hammons House, the side ones didn't slide open; only the front ones did, but apparently here they do) and grab the fabric (there doesn't seem to be a screen on the side windows either) and pull it in.

The size of this piece is about a quarter of the size of a bedsheet, the edges somewhere between frayed and ripped to tatters, as if something grabbed it as the plane went by and ripped it off, then threw it onto our window.

The fire alarm in the building goes off. Over the intercom comes the familiar "There is a fire emergency in the building; Exit via the nearest stairway immediately" that happens everytime someone in the residence hall burns a pancake or fires up a doobie in their room.

We know there's no fire and that someone wants us out of the building.

The question is - is it the good guys trying to get us out of harm's way, or is it the bad guys trying to lure us outside where we'll be easy targets?

Collectively, we decide that if we're dealing with a malevolent advanced alien intelligence here, they'd have no problem finding us even if we stayed inside, so we leave the room. Scattered all over the floor of the hallway are shredded pieces of the red fabric. We head down the stairs and exit the building.

Here the surroundings are drastically different from what I remember. We exit the building at the back, but when we get outside we're in the little parking area at the front of the building. And Hammons House is, like, fifty stories tall and has identical buildings to my left, right, and straight ahead, with a courtyard that looks remarkably like Tiananmen Square in the middle.

And the military's already here, herding us away from the building and keeping us from looking up too closely.

Surprisingly, they don't gather us all somewhere for interrogation about what we've seen. Instead, they tell us to get away from campus and stay away until we get the all-clear.

We fast-forward a little bit, but apparently in the interval I have decided that when one is in the middle of an alien invasion, the thing to do is to go antiquing.

Because I find myself in a flea-market, looking over a used-book rack in the booth belonging to some stoner. At least I ASSUME he's a stoner, judging from the black lights, Doobie Brothers apparel, grow lights, and "Cannabis for Victory" literature.

One book in particular catches my eye. "Springfield's History of UFO Activity." It costs a buck. I buy it, although who I buy it from is kind of fuzzy, because I never actually SEE the stoner.

I wander around the flea market awhile and come across another booth with used books, this one run by a Mexican gypsy type woman. I come across what appears to be a small graphic novel, a Star Wars/Transformers crossover. On the cover is Optimus Prime on one side, R2-D2 and C-3P0 on the other, with what is apparently a new character in the middle, who looks like C-3PO had sex with Iron Man.

It costs fifty cents. It says so right on the first inside page. I take it up to the Mexican gypsy woman.

"That will be a dollar fifty," she says.

"But it says it costs fifty cents," I reply.

"That one does," she tells me, pointing to the graphic novel, "And that one costs a dollar." She points at the UFO book.

"I didn't get this here, I bought it at another booth."

An argument of what seems like several hours ensued. At some point, she got both books away from me and refused to give them back until I paid the buck fifty. At another point, I showed her the receipt from the first booth. At the top was something like "Mike's Marijuana Funhouse." And a book was one of many items listed as bought, although I only remember buying the book.

She was not impressed. "That could be ANY book, not necessarily THIS one!"

I suggest she look inside the book and see that it has a different vendor number under the price than hers. She refuses, telling me she doesn't HAVE to look because I am drunk and that she smells whiskey on my breath.

I forget that we weren't drinking at the party (maybe I had gotten drunk in the fast-forward time) and tell her she can't do anything about it, because I don't have any alcohol on me.

All the while during this epic argument, one by one, these men would show up and take a chair and watch us. They were dressed in fatigues and combat boots. Some clean-shaven, some not. I got the sense they were Soldier Of Fortune, survivalist types.
Finally, I give up and tell her. "Look, I don't want YOUR book anymore. Just give me MY book back and I'll leave."

She goes into this little rant parsing the phrases "your book" and "my book," still intending to make me take both books and charge me for both.

Then this guy steps up from the Soldiers of Fortune and approaches me with an angry, wild look in his eyes. He has black hair and an ample beard. He is wearing combat boots, fatigue pants and hat, and a black T-shirt with white writing on it. I can't read what it says. I don't know if it's the standard not-being-able-to-read-in-dreams or if it's a foreign or perhaps alien language.

He is holding an icepick. He grabs it with both hands and raises it high above his head, intending to plunge it into my skull. I tackle him and try to pin his arms down, but his comrades are getting restless.

And that's when I woke up.

Hey, THEANTIDRUG.com . . .

. . . suppose I'm a teenager who wants a free, easy high but I can't think of how to get it.

Got any ideas you can give me?



Gee, thanks, THEANTIDRUG.com! I wouldn't have thought of looking in the medicine cabinet!

But what sort of drugs should I look for there? What are the really good ones that give me an intense high?



You're the best, THEANTIDRUG.com!

Suggestion for California's idiot lawmakers.

Why not just pass an Omnibus Prohibition Law that bans everything and get it over with instead of banning everything one thing at a time like you're doing now.

What do they want to ban now, you ask?

Balloons.

No, seriously.

Profound question.

What does it mean when you wake up with a hangover after dreaming you were drunk?

Song of the Day: Best Bad TV EVER!

Evening Sunlight on Redbud Tree.

Question.

Are we certain Romania isn't a territory in Poland?

Romanian firefighters were shocked after a farmer was spotted using an
unexploded missile as an anvil.

Song of the Day: Embedding Disabled By Request.

It's here.

I have to wonder what the point of posting a video on YouTube is if you don't want people spreading the word.

More flooding.

These pictures were taken this morning in the area of Warm Fork Park in Thayer MO.

That last one shows water up to the roofline of the pavillion and restroom.

Needless to say, my basement is flooded again. It's about an inch from ruining my water heater.

I sent these pics to KAIT. Dunno if they'll use them or not.

This forces me to take a break from 80's TV Awareness Month to bring you a different Song of the Day.

Nature? No.

Nurture? No.

Figure skating? Yes.

Paradoxically, if you're gay, ice dancing can make you straight.

Brian Boitano and Scott Hamilton should show up at this dope's house and kick an arse or two.

Obama Campaign: Pro-Affirmative-Action-For-White-Folks!

For those interested in objective news, this is a marriage made in hell.

See-B.S. attempting to collude with the Ted Fonda Liberal Opinion Network.

CBS, the home of the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday.

The product will no doubt have the eloquence of Wolf Blitzer, the charisma of Lou Dobbs, the humility of Jack Cafferty, and the gravitas of Katie Couric.

Black man sneaking up on white woman in PA.

Song of the Day: Woop woop woop woop woop woop woop woop.

Apparently, I suck.

I got 13 votes in the election last night. My opponent got 55.

And I discovered that a sixpack of Shiner Bock drunk over the period of an hour and a half following the announcement of the election results, tends to knock one on one's ass if they haven't drunk anything in about a year.

Somebody in Thayer is $10K richer . . .

. . . and it ain't me.

Election Day tomorrow.

I guess they can take Charlton Heston's gun away from him now.

SEE I TOLD YOU SO.

Remember when I came up with 1001 Simple Observations on a Complicated Existence?

Me neither, mostly.

But I do remember that one of the observations was that it's usually easier to make three right-handed turns than one left-handed turn, because left turns are kind of hard.

UPS agrees, and adds that they burn more gas too.

The company employs what it calls a “package flow” software program, which among other hyperefficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).

Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.

Song of the Day: Some day the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will.

IMAGINARIUM curse?

First, Heath Ledger died.

Now, MiniMe has been rushed to the hospital.

(When you get better, Vern, tell Mike Myers has HAS to make at least one more Austin Powers movie, with Dieter from Sprockets as the villian.)

Sounds like either a reality show on Fox or a nature show on the Discovery Channel.

The Poop Daters.

Poop dater. That wasn't an option that came up at Career Day in my high school.

And rest assured, in my class SOMEBODY would have wanted an application.

One in particular means I ate a burrito.

MSNBC wants to help you decode your body noises.

Off all the places they could think to put a robot . . .

. . . this would have to be my least favorite.

Robots tapped for colonoscopy work
Researchers developing self-propelling probes that crawl inside colon

R2-D2 wept.

Okay, it preceded the 80's. A little.

But does anyone else remember when "Wiki" meant W.1.K.1. and not what it means today?

Peepo for President!

Well, he was TIRED!

Gulf Breeze's bizarreness isn't just limited to UFO weirdos anymore.

Deputies say William Hutson found the body of his good friend, 47-year-old Charles Boylan in his front yard, but instead of calling deputies, investigators say Hutson went inside and took a nap.

Song of the Day: Cosmic forces beyond all comprehension.

There once was a Bugs Bunny cartoon . . .

. . . where Bugs got a hair (hare?) up his arse about the low bounty paid for rabbits and rebelled against the government and sawed the Florida peninsula off so that it floated out to sea.

No, seriously, there was.



All that's missing is a Guy Fawkes mask.

Anyway, my point is -- I wonder if we could enlist Bugs to do the same to Seattle.

Paper or plastic? Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin say the answer is neither.

The two are proposing a 20-cent fee on disposable shopping bags at grocery, drug and convenience stores. Their plan announced Wednesday also calls for a ban on foam take-home containers, plates and cups at restaurants.

Remember the little yelow foam Big Mac containers McDonald's used to have? How convenient they were to put the burger in one side and the fries in the other? The squeaky feel of them?

And how McDonald's lost a lot of it's charm after it gave into the greenies and gave them up, first switching to totally unacceptable paper wrappers for the Big Macs, then responding to what must have been millions of customer complaints and building a lame little box?

That is what is about to happen to Seattle.

Remember when Republicans were against pork?

Kit Bond (R) ninth largest earmarker on the Pig Book list. Senator Ratchet dead last.

FEMA seems rather surprised . . .

. . . that people in Thayer took matters into their own hands during the recent (and ongoing) flooding rather than wait on a handout from the government like a bunch of New Orleaners.

“Most people around here just take care of problems like that themselves. They stayed up all night and pumped or dipped water out of their basement,” King said.

Well, Twin Peaks was ALMOST in the 80's...

If you eat them, it's only HALF-cannibalism.

Cow/Human hybrids?

Just what the world needs -- more Mancows.

Let me get this straight.

Selling lollipops to minors is legal in Georgia.

Selling hemp essential oil is legal in Georgia.

Combining the two is illegal in Georgia.

Where's the logic in that?

Another profound question.

On Anti-Easter, do parents give their children chocolate bars made out of rabbit meat?

Profound question.

In an all-pig production of Deliverance, does the redneck pig tell the floattripper pig to squeal like Ned Beatty?

Song of the Day: Maybe you can hire . . . The A-Team!

Was her name Carrie Underwood?

Jilted woman torches house with doo-doo/Molotov cocktail.

Gee, I don't know why ANYONE would cheat on such a woman, do you?

Full story on the flaming poo attack here.

Shouldn't they arrest ESPN2 as well?

Reporter arrested on child porn charge for photographing fully-clothed cheerleaders in a public performance.

Apparently, I was mistaken.

But I thought when athletes talk about "making it rain*" it meant . . .

Oh, never mind.


* - There's a definition of what I thought it meant here.

California state Senator Alan Lowenthal (D) proposes the More Communists As Educators Act.

"Being a member of the Communist Party in and of itself does not mean you advocate the overthrow of the government. It doesn’t mean we agree with them, but they’re not a threat to our survival," he said.

It takes commitment to steal a building.

Plans for a new youth centre to tackle teenage delinquency and crime have had to be put on hold - after the building was stolen.

He never hit the brake and he was shiftin' gears.

Song of the Day: A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist.