Rush Limbaugh is still mad, sky still blue, sun allegedly continues to rise in East and set in West

RUSH: Now, it's a big, big day at the Supreme Court.

There was a snowstorm, six inches, but it has not stopped the long lines of people trying to get in to watch oral arguments at the Supreme Court on gay marriage and specifically the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California. And guess what? The LA Times is reporting today that a lesbian who is the cousin of the chief justice is going to attend oral arguments. "Jean Podrasky, 48, a lesbian who wants to marry her partner, will be at Tuesday's US Supreme Court hearing on Proposition 8 in seating reserved for family members and guests of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

"'I am so excited,' said Podrasky, an accountant and the first cousin of the chief justice on his mother's side. 'I feel quite honored and overwhelmed.'" Now, the LA times says, "Roberts is a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005. Podrasky, who is more liberal, said she rooted for his nomination to be approved by the US Senate. 'He is family,' she said. Podrasky lives in San Francisco and usually sees Roberts only on family occasions. His mother is her godmother, whom she adores.

Thus far, we have learned that Justice Roberts will be hosting his cousin as a guest at a Supreme Court hearing, and she will be allowed to sit in a section reserved for his family and guests.  Rush, of course, has a problem with this:

"She said Roberts knows she is gay and introduced her along with other relatives during his Senate confirmation hearing. She hopes he will meet her partner of four years ... during their Washington visit. The couple flew to Washington on Sunday. 'He is a smart man,' she said. 'He is a good man. I believe he sees where the tide is going. I do trust him. I absolutely trust that he will go in a good direction.'" So, you see, folks, the pressure is being brought to bear on these justices any way possible.

Yes, being openly gay near family members is certainly applying some pretty extreme pressure.  Everyone knows that's inappropriate; the correct way to apply pressure is to invite a Justice on a private hunting trip right before a significant Supreme Court case you're directly involved in, or donate large sums of money to him and his wife without properly disclosing it to the public or acknowledging his influence on your lobby!

Now the chief justice is faced with, "What do I do if I rule against my cousin? What will they think of me if I don't rule in favor of my family?"

I don't know, maybe the exact same thing they'd think of him if he made that decision NOT in front of your cousin?  If her presence in the court materially affects his decisions then he is a horrendously bad Supreme Court Justice.

This is what I mean about the blurring of media citizenry and the stage, the Supreme Court.

Yeah, citizens shouldn't be allowed to make their feelings known.  Unlike massive financial contributions, emotional pressure can't be properly documented and is therefore clearly wrong.

(New Castrati impression) 

This is actually how Rush described his voice for this bit on his own website.  Since you have no reason not to wonder what the hell New Castrati means, Rush himself defines it as: "Men Who Are Bullied By Women And The Power Structure And Liberalism."   So, remember: the sentiment he's about to share is something that a only a poor bullied man who has been put upon by women and liberalism would say.

"Mr. Limbaugh, it's a democracy and people can petition the government to work any which way they wish!" 

Indeed, Rush.  Good conservatives know how ridiculous that is!  As an aside, it's actually pretty depressing how close to ridiculous that statement is, when you think about it.

Yes, they can. But what happens at the Supreme Court is not democratic. It's the law. It should be insulated analysis, constitutionality, what have you. It should be insulated from all these other things.

But, of course, it isn't and it has been for a long time.

That's actually not a horrible point, but it's pretty unavoidable unless we move the Supreme Court to Antarctica or something.  Also, Justice Thomas has likened the public demonstrations outside the Supreme Court to basketball fans trying to distract a free throw shooter.  I tend to think it's more the Justices' job to ignore this stuff than it is the public's responsibility to not show up for decisions that might affect the lives of millions.

There's a comparison here between this, gay marriage, and Roe v. Wade in one sense.

Really?  I'd love to hear more, Rush.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Oh.  Nothing else to say on that?  I assume he's suggesting that these are cases where public demonstrations applied pressure to the Supreme Court and swayed some Justices to go against their better judicial thinking.  Two problems: one, the Justices themselves don't seem concerned by this.  Two, Roe v. Wade was a 7-2 decision, and if a few demonstrations are enough to sway three justices on any given case, then our judicial system is fucked anyway so why even try.

RUSH: You know, we had stories last week. I'm sure you'll recall. There are studies -- there are actually academic, scholarly studies -- being undertaken and the focus of the stories last week was the money being spent on this research, even though we find ourselves in a sequester.

Saying "we find ourselves in a sequester" is an excellent way to avoid actually mentioning why we find ourselves in a sequester.

What was it, there was $2.5 million dollars spent to study why 75% of lesbians are obese and gay males aren't. Homosexual men aren't; lesbians are obese, 75%. Why? That cost two and a half mill. 

Well, it was 1.5 million, not 2.5.  And it was over the course of two years.  And that amount equates to about .08% of the total money spent on obesity studies last year.  And the study is not confined to a certain orientation--in fact, the major finding was that both straight males and gay women have higher rates of obesity than gay males or straight women.  As the Atlantic put it, it'd be equally valid to say that the study was about any of the following: "Obama administration spends $1.5 million to figure out why straight men are fat." Or: "Obama administration spends $1.5 million to figure out why gay men have rocking bodies." Or perhaps: "America is overweight (except for gay men?) and scientists are trying to determine why."

There's another survey, or another project, spent, I think, $1.5 million to find out why lesbians are alcoholics.

Something something lazy joke about using alcohol to cope with women

Brief interlude here, as Rush chose to post this photo, which I thought was worth sharing, because it's the first photograph I've ever seen of Scalia's bed.

Aaaaand, we're back!

And, of course, the answers to the first case is they don't have to deal with men, so they don't have to worry about their appearance. They're not trying to please men. So they can be obese. It's no big deal.

Um.  The only way you could make yourself look worse here is to actually make the lazy joke about drinking and women that I alluded to earlier.

Alcohol, who knows? They're having to deal with women so they're drunk. Who knows?

Right.  Probably should have seen that coming.

The bottom line is that if I were to now ask if any of that research is relevant in the case of the cousin of the chief justice, can you imagine the howls of protest I would get from people who do not know of these two studies that I would be bouncing off?

You'd probably get howls of protest because it's not really okay to ask whether one particular lesbian you know of is an obese drunk.  Apparently this is unclear, but federal research on a population does not actually entitle all Americans to know specific things about individuals within that population.  I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that it's weird that someone who used to be a pill junkie is this upset about research into substance abuse.

In other words, the context? So I can't ask whether chief justice's lesbian cousin is any of those things, because people would think I'm being mean.

Because you are.

But I'll tell you what, seriously, on this Roe v. Wade versus this gay marriage business: One of the reasons why abortion so roils our culture is that it hasn't been democratically decided.  The Supreme Court, nine people in black robes, just decided one day that abortion is in the Constitution, and that has led to constant acrimony.

I really don't understand how you can be so confused about the purpose of the Supreme Court.  They exist in no small part because sometimes, when the majority gets to vote, they vote for things that are better for the majority, so we have the Supreme Court to step in when minority groups are treated unfairly.  This whole point about abortion is ridiculous anyway, since Roe v. Wade has been supported by a majority of Americans since the decision occurred.  It's pretty funny that Rush doesn't say that the Supreme Court's decision is wrong for any, you know, legal reason--he just says it was bad because people argue about it, because obviously if abortion was illegal no one would be upset at all.

If they do the same thing here... You know, if gay marriage in this country were voted on by the people, fine. Okay. That's it.

I suspect that would not, in fact, be it.

But if nine guys in black robes

Try to remain calm here, but they aren't all guys anymore, Rush.  I know, that's probably a bit of a shock.  I don't really understand why Rush thinks it's so powerful to keep citing how many Justices there are--you could just as easily dismiss Congress by calling them "just a few hundred guys in suits" if you wanted to. 

decide that "marriage" can be defined as two people of the same sex, we're gonna have the same kind of roiling of our culture that abortion has given us.

Right, because under the status quo, no one is acrimonious about gay marriage at all.  This is just such a terrible argument, even beyond the fact that it makes no sense--Rush really seems to think that it is wrong for a Justice's family member to show up and sit nearby while they make their decision, because that would apply undue pressure.  However, it's totally fine for him to argue that the Supreme Court should pick the side he likes, because otherwise...people might be mad.  We can't be having that!  Sorry, gay people, you can't get married, because people will be upset and that's just the worst, when people have to be upset. 

Step 1: Put on mask

That's a lot of information for just one headline

Science tackles the pressing issues of our time, this time regarding whether you should fart on planes

Their conclusion: it's better for pilots to fart than not fart.  For safety!  Seriously, this is a thing people are studying, right now.  They probably earn more than you do!

A team of Danish and British gastroenterologists produced a paper on flatulence on planes after one of them, Jacob Rosenberg, was inspired on a flight between Copenhagen and Tokyo.

The problem is that farting is an invariable consequence of digestion and people do it about 10 times a day.

Was there a need for that Wikipedia link?  Pretty sure people have figured out what that word means.

Hans Christian Pommergaard, Jakob Burcharth, Anders Fischer, William Thomas and Professor Rosenberg have told the New Zealand Medical Journal the holding back option may seem "alluring'' but there are drawbacks.

"Alluring" is not the word I'd have picked.  Maybe "painful" or "excruciating"?

Stress, discomfort, pain, bloating, dyspepsia and other symptoms could ensue, while not discounting the chance that all the effort may be sabotaged by turbulence in any case.

CAPTAIN: Please be advised that we are encountering some turbulence.

EVERYONE ON PLANE: <releases pent-up farts>

"There is actually only one reasonable solution ... just let it go,'' the medicos say.

They warn of consequences in the cockpit.

"If the pilot restrains a fart, all the drawbacks previously mentioned, including diminished concentration, may affect his abilities to control the airplane,'' the researchers say.

"If he lets go of the fart his co-pilot may be affected by its odour, which again reduces safety on board the flight.''

Yes, smelling a fart is in fact a serious safety concern on planes now.  Can't wait til the TSA gets involved.

The specialists did not recommend setting farts alight, either on land or in a plane, despite its proven ability to reduce odour.

Were people previously trying to do this on planes?  Everyone knows the best method is to shift blame to others by peering around in an obvious manner after you fart, to make it seem like you're trying to find the real culprit.  Also acceptable: asking if someone just stepped on a duck.

They reluctantly dismissed the notion of rubber pants with an attached air container for collecting gas as "somewhat extreme''.

I'd hate to see the options that were deemed "way too extreme", given that the "somewhat extreme" option already sounds like some sort of bizarre BDSM equipment.

But they reckon putting active charcoal in passenger seats is a winner of an idea that could be backed up with special undies.

Pre-flight passenger methane breath tests and reducing fibre in airline food options were also considered.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't board.  According to this highly scientific breath test, your toots are a safety risk."  

 

To close this article out, the writers have provided a dubiously helpful list of travel tips:

• There are roughly two types of fart - silent, also known as sneaking, and loud.
• The average person farts about 10 times a day.
• Women's farts smell way worse than men's.
• Sulphur containing gasses are responsible for the pong.
• Burning the gas does reduce the smell but lighting farts is not recommended on land or in a plane.
• Exercising the pelvic ring is essential to maintain the ability to fart silently.
• For people with a weak pelvic floor, decoys can be performed such as coughing, sneezing, verbal outbreaks or spontaneous applause.

Holy shit, that last tip is phenomenal.  You could try verbal outbreaks--your fellow passengers will have no idea you're farting!  They'll just think you have Tourette's.  Even better is the spontaneous applause option.  Ideally, nearby people will hear both the fart and the applause, and they'll think you're just super proud of your digestive system.  Thanks, science!

Wealthy financiers sometimes have to do household chores, not always able to afford new shoes

As someone who sometimes is a bit short on cash, I'm always looking for ways to save a buck.  Thankfully, some British bankers have compiled their tips!  I'm sure this will be helpful and not at all hilariously out of touch.

If you want ways of saving money, an investment banker may not seem the best source of advice. Believe it or not, however,  bankers are changing their spending habits as their bonuses shrink and become allocated over several years. Both bankers and their once free-spending wives

Bankers are fiscally responsible, of course--it's those durn free-spending wives you gotta watch out for!

are suddenly becoming familiar with the art of thriftiness. For your benefit, we’ve spoken to a selection of current and ex-bankers and to their spouses about how they’re cutting their personal spending.
 
This is what they have imparted. We hope it is of use.

1. Go on a clothes diet

Sadly, this doesn't mean eat your clothes.  2-4 are all basically the same and could be summarized as "sometimes spending a gazillion dollars on your children will not be affordable".

2. Involve the entire family

3. Put your children into the state school system
  
4. Make your children pay their own university fees

“People forget that in the UK the government offers student loans that cover fees,” said one ex-banker who is making his son pay his own way through higher education.

Indeed!  People just forget about that option, and by "people" I mean "all of the people except for the ones who make merely a reasonable income and always have to borrow money for large purchases because damn, I don't just have fifty thousand bucks lying around here."

In any case, I'll acknowledge that these first four were a little out there and not pertinent to most people, but hardly offensive to less-well-off individuals.  Rest assured, that will change shortly.

5. Change your travel habits

Oh, you mean maybe drive to family vacation instead of flying, or travel a little less to save money?

Eli Lederman, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley who has reinvented himself as an author,

said he’s ditched business class flights.

“I still go to New York  five or six times per year, but now I forego business class to travel in premium economy,” he said. “With the new flexibility to plan ahead – which was impossible when I worked for a bank – you can get good fares. And if you’re smart about it, the airlines still give you all the perks.”

So you had to give up business class for premium economy?  I'd be sympathetic if I had a fucking clue what the difference was.  You said yourself that you still get all the perks.

6. Start ironing

This may sound like a small thing, but while they’re working most bankers do not iron their own shirts. When they stop working or lose money, they start ironing.

“Now I iron all my shirts,” one ex-banker told us. “I’ve always loved doing this in a Zen kind of way, but I never had the time to do it.”

In all honesty, this is the one guy in the article I felt any sympathy for, because this is the kind of thing that only someone desperately trying to come to grips with losing their job would say.  "Oh, no, getting fired was great!  Now I have plenty of time to spend in the outdoors, since that's where I sell all of my worldly possessions at garage sales to feed my family."


Another banker, who used to work at Goldman Sachs and now runs his own business, said he gets his wife to iron his shirts nowadays. “At Goldman there was a service in the basement where I dropped my shirts off for a fee, but now I ask Jane to do it for me,” he said.

How self-sacrificing of you, taking on the monumental task of making your wife do your personal chores for you!  Let's see if we can find a worse way to say that, though.

“The wife is doing the ironing,” another banker told us. “She’s not loving it, but she doesn’t want to get a job herself so is having to accept it.”

Nailed it!

7. Don’t carry so much cash

“Stop carrying a wedge of cash around with you,” said the ex-Goldman banker. “It reduces the temptation to tip people so much.”

The problem with carrying around cash is really that you're tempted to be too generous to the minimum-wage-earning folks serving your food?  Glad we fixed that particular money sink.
  
8. Start tutoring your children yourself

Well, that's just crazy.  What's the point of being a banker if it doesn't get me out of actually raising my own children?  I know it seems like I'm joking, but wait until you hear what bankers have to say about going on vacation with their kids.

9. Stop skiing, or ski more cheaply

Thanks for offering a backup option in case "not skiing" was too extreme for me.

In the ideal world, financial services professionals in the City of London would take a Powder Byrne skiing holiday every year. Unfortunately, this can be a little expensive.  “I took the family skiing with Power Byrne last year and spent £13k,” one hedge fund manager told us. “It was great – they take the kids away from you in the morning and only return them in the late afternoon, but you pay for that kind of attention.”

You took the family skiing so that someone else could spend quality time with your kids.  Thus far, the main benefit of being rich appears to be that you don't have to do any of the actual family stuff yourself.  Chores?  Nope, sorry.  Take care of the kids?  Why am I paying for a ski vacation if I have to do that?

10. Stay with friends

You mean when you're broke and unemployed, and just need a place with a roof to sleep?

When you go on holiday in the summer (or over Easter)

Oh. 

don’t pay for your accommodation – stay with friends. “I went to the Maldives six times in a row,” said the hedge fund manager. “But last year we didn’t go to the Maldives for the first time in six years – we went to stay with friends in New York.

Yes, save money by staying with friends when you vacation internationally.  That'll really help!
 
11. Sell the second home


Do you really think people with a second home just forget they can sell it if they run out of money?  "Sorry, kids, no dinner tonight.  We're broke!  Don't forget to pack for our trip to the summer home in the countryside tomorrow!"  The best part about this tip is that apparently, no one's actually using it yet:

“The second home in the country is where you rack up the most serious costs,” said the hedge fund manager. “A lot of people I know are talking about ditching the country house. No one’s done it yet though.”

Revised title for this tip: "Think about selling the second home.  Don't do it, though."

The remaining nine tips are pretty repetitive, so we'll call it there.  Apparently bankers think that tips like "sell your old clothes instead of trashing them" are useful thrifty pointers, so, thanks for that, guys!  I'll stop setting fire to my belongings when I'm done with them.  They also advise those seeking to cut costs to...buy expensive cars!

20. Get a Prius

I put on my robe and wizard hat

Source: Seattle PD

Texas Congressman says most Texas Congressman-y thing possible

Today in misleading headlines: snakes now committing arson

See:

Anyway, as you might have already guessed, the snake did not just decide "oh hey let me set this house on fire because fuck you I'm a snake".  In fact, the article begins with a statement from the authorities which calls the snake's guilt into question:

BOWIE COUNTY, TX (KSLA) -
Authorities believe a homeowner's response to finding a snake in her yard may have led to the fire that destroyed her house Wednesday.

Ah, so she saw a snake in her yard, which presumably had on its person (on its snake?) gas cans, matches, and other arson equipment, yes?

"While cleaning up, she saw snake,

1: See snake.  Snake is just a snake and is at present not particularly dangerous.

threw gasoline on the snake,

2: Oh god damn it what are you doing no no no

lit the snake on fire," said Deputy Randall Baggett with the Bowie County Sheriff's Office.

3: Of fucking course this is going to go badly for you.  "Oh no, a snake!  Let me set it on fire, so that it becomes a fire-snake, or basically a goddamn dragon.  That'll be way less dangerous."

4: Profit?

"The snake went into the brush pile and the brush pile caught the home on fire."

Despite the efforts of several fire departments that responded to the scene, the flames completely engulfed the home. It is a complete loss. A neighboring home was also damaged on one side.

Please, do not set snakes on fire.

An inspirational book for your Thursday

If you hit a deer, make sure it's actually dead before you put it in the trunk, mmkay?

I strongly advise you to skip to 0:45 or so, because local news is boring.

Donald Trump attempts to eloquently attack Mark Cuban on Twitter, fails

This is a moderately fair point, in that Mark Cuban does occasionally comport himself with the dignity of a particularly mature toddler.  Unfortunately for The Donald, he didn't stop at just one:

I believe only the last sentence there is Donald's, but he's terrible at tweeting so there's no way to be sure whether this is a coherent response or the insane ramblings it at first appears to be.  Still, this is (at best, with all the benefit of the doubt I can muster) a solid insult for a 3rd grader. 

Next, Trump goes to yet greater heights of sophomoric jabs:

Ha!  Swings like a girl.  That's real fresh.  How about you, Donald--what's your swing like?

HAR HAR HE'S A LOOOOOOOSEEEEEER RESPECT MY CHAMPEENSHIPS

At this point, Trump began receiving displeased correspondences from some of Cuban's fans, which he responded to in classic Internet fashion:

Perhaps sensing that this new tactic of threatening to visit the homes of all Cuban fans was backfiring, Trump then returned to his earlier discussion of golf skills.  To my knowledge, Trump is actually quite good at golf, so of the available options, this was the second best one after "don't start juvenile insult wars on twitter ever, like seriously, what the fuck are you thinking, that's dumb as hell".

Having suitably chastened Mr. Cuban, Trump decided it was time to fluff his own ego a bit while delivering the killing blow.  FINISH HIM!

 Dopey!  Whoo-ee, that is some hard-hitting stuff right there.  Cuban's response to all this was reasonable, and I'd deem it the second-best option after, again, "don't start juvenile insult wars on twitter ever, like seriously, what the fuck are you thinking, that's dumb as hell".

In which an Australian who has never had a hangover tells you how to deal with hangovers

Shonagh Walker would like to share some of her hangover cures.  I'd love to tell you that they work, but that would be the height of mendacity, so I won't do that.  That said, if you're interested in solving your hangover with just 7 complicated steps and approximately $185 in cash, maybe these will work for you!  I found reason to pause very early on--the headline made sense, but the subheadline was...perplexing.

Sunscreen!  I never thought of that, because even really drunk me does not think sunscreen would ever possibly help with a hangover.  Points for creativity, if nothing else.

WE'VE all been there, and I defy anyone to say they haven't. Well, I've got some just-for-the-guys

Because hangovers are gender-dependent.

tips, to make it easier for you to front up and look fresh, all day long.

1. Water

1. The most obvious hangover cure ever that everyone already knows.  Thanks for that.

Drink the largest glass of water that you can find, the second you get out of bed. Make sure it’s at room temperature, or warmer, and add the juice of half a small lemon to it (that helps to remove the toxins you ingested last night).

I don't think that's how science or lemons work.

2. Eat a green breakfast
Slice up half an avocado and sprinkle it with lemon juice.

Always with the lemons!  How much citrus fruit do you use in a typical day, Shonagh?

Steam a few mushrooms and then blanche a handful baby spinach by pouring boiling water over it. 
Add a couple of certified free range, cage-free eggs – boiled or poached. If you want toast, ensure it’s wholemeal and go easy on the butter. Serve the lot with a side of organic baked beans, and you’ve got yourself a pretty healthy, and delicious, hangover breakfast.

Given that one of the key parts of a hungover breakfast be that you should be able to get the food down, this is not promising. It does sound healthy, sure, but it's really lacking in the all-important grease department.  

It will make you feel better, give you energy to last until lunch time and contribute to a healthy pH of your body.

I think that last bit about pH might be pseudo-scientific bullshit, though per Wikipedia, "Outside the acceptable range of pH, proteins are denatured and digested, enzymes lose their ability to function, and death may occur."  I kinda doubt that you would die from a pH imbalance created by drinking, but what do I know?  (Hint: nothing).

3. Take a warm-to-cold shower
Take a warm shower and do all you need to do in your daily shower … shave, exfoliate, whatever.

• Stumble upstairs to shower
• Turn it on blindly, hope it's some variation of "warm"
• Get in without remembering to test the temperature
• Scald face
• Half step, half fall out of shower, causing injury to knee
• Adjust knob to "warm"
• Get back in, stand under showerhead with head down and eyes closed
• Ponder how much everything sucks

5. Moisture plus Radiance
Combine your regular moisturiser

Sure, that's a thing I have.

with a boost of vitality. Pick a product with energising ingredients like, Biotherm High Recharge Energy Shot, $65, www.biotherm.com.au, which uses ginseng, vitamin B5, vitamin E, magnesium, copper and zinc, to bring life back into your skin.

Pick a product like this one, that I'm definitely not being paid to advertise!  Here, I'll just give you the price and the website, in case you want to, you know, buy some.  Just buy some!  Look at all these ingredients!  Ginseng!

6. Bright Eyes
Ok you’re on the home stretch and can almost safely head out the door. Just make sure your eyes get treated. You may wish to douse them with Visine, depending on the level of red veins apparent, but what you sure want to do is apply a soothing, de-puffing eye cream. I love Clinique Skin Supplies for Men Anti-Fatigue Cooling Eye Gel, $52, www.clinique.com.au. Its medical grade stainless steel roller ball offers a draining massage, which will move away all the fluid that’s causing your eyes to bloat up like that. At the same time, it deposits a liquid gel-serum, which cools the skin on contact, and absorbs quickly to address dark circles.

Whenever I'm hungover, my first thought is always "I could really use a metal ball to roll around on my face right now, especially if it puts me out $52."

7. Take the red out
Finally, before you step out the door, tone down the red in your skin with a high SPF sunscreen that has a slight tint, like Ultraceuticals Ultra Protective Daily Moisturiser SPF30+ Sheer Tint, $65, www.ultraceuticals.com. Don’t worry it’s not make-up. It simply adds a sheer tint to your skin that knocks out any redness and uneven tone, so you turn up to work looking fresh faced.

I was really hoping the sunscreen would be for an even more ridiculous purpose, such as applying before bed to supplement melatonin or some bullshit.  As far as I'm concerned, there are precisely three things you need when hungover, and not one of them costs more than a couple bucks.  They are:

• Water
• Coffee
• Sleep more, you dumbass

New Pope reminds church leaders to be selfish, apathetic assholes

Paul McNamara is easily amused by jokes about butts

Paul McNamara of Network World has discovered browser plugins.

Specifically, he has found this plugin:

It's a browser plug-in for Chrome, Safari or Firefox -- posted to Github by someone going by the name panicsteve -- that simply replaces every reference to "the cloud" on a webpage with the words "my butt."

Hilarity ensues.

Quite.

Now I say hilarity ensues despite the fact that I wasn't willing to install the extension myself. As Rick Harrison of Pawn Stars fame might say, it's not that I don't trust panicsteve, it's that I don't trust anybody.

So you cracked yourself up just imagining what a webpage would look like with the words "my butt" on it?  That's kind of precious, actually.

And besides, you can achieve the same hilarious effect, 

Hilarity!

albeit nowhere near as elegantly, by using the find-and-replace function in Microsoft Word, which I did do

using a recent story written by Network World's in-house authority on all things cloud, senior writer Brandon Butler.

I hate to spoil the story for anyone, but I will tell you this: McNamara finds the result of his Word find/replace efforts to be just the most fucking hilarious thing ever.

The result was seven sentences in which the phrase "the cloud" was replaced by "my butt." Some of the sentences were funny.

Others not so much?  Guess you can't win 'em all, McNamara.

Some were way too funny.

And others, well ... After a few minutes of professional reflection - much of it spent starring at pictures of my kids

I decided I wasn't willing to actually publish the sentences here. Sorry, you'll have to do your own experiments.

So it was okay to tell us about the plugin that inserts the words "my butt" into articles, but actually showing us a nonsensical sentence where it's been done is going too far?

But, if you're willing to go that far for a cheap laugh, I suggest you try one better:

Something involving fart jokes?  They're like butt jokes, but improved!

Years ago - many years ago -

 someone suggested that I take any old Word document and do a find-and-replace on it swapping out every "the" and replacing it with "the f*****g."

A thousand times funnier than cloud-my-butt.

One thousand times the hilarity!  I wish I were as easily amused as you, good sir.

Well what did you want him to do, put down the tortilla?

Source: koco.com

Ukrainian military dolphins have left their posts for sex reasons

Per RiaNovosti:

SEVASTOPOL, March 12 (RIA Novosti) - Three of the Ukrainian navy's “killer” dolphins that swam away from their handlers during training exercises probably left to look for mates, an expert said on Tuesday.

Great, there's nothing that can go wrong when sex-crazed dolphins with military training are on the loose.  On the plus side, maybe they don't exist:

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry denied the reports, while refusing to confirm the navy makes use of dolphins, despite the frequent appearance in Ukrainian media of photographs of dolphins with military equipment strapped to them.

I don't mean to say that those photos are definitive proof, but...

Photo credit: Gizmodo

they're kind of definitive proof.  Any final words that might further terrify people who are envisioning a wild team of horny warrior-dolphins cruising around the Black Sea?

A military source in Sevastopol told RIA Novosti last year that the Ukrainian navy had restarted training dolphins to attack enemy combat swimmers and detect mines. The killer-dolphins would be trained to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads, the source said.

Great, thanks.

Photo credit: Heavy

Basic household tasks are effing impossible

Of note is that the normal reaction to any slight difficulty is to scream loudly at whatever you're holding in your hands. 

Bonobos now selling stripper clothes that you can wear as regular clothes

I just spotted this on my Facebook feed:

Yes, Bonobos now has stripper pants.  Observe:

And one more for good measure:

And in case you were wondering about the detailing ("Tournament brackets on inside pockets for keeping track of your picks."): that is in fact a real thing.

Chinese criminal mastermind would fit right in in Florida

Source: Shortlist

Floridians know how to get arrested in style

Nwfdailynews.com reports that a Florida man has been arrested for resisting an officer without violence.  This being Florida, there is of course much more to the story than that.  And by much more, I mean cocaine.  Take a look; I've helpfully illustrated the story here.  The headline is a bit of a spoiler, but what can you do.

CRESTVIEW – A 21-year-old man who told officers he loved cocaine and needed more cocaine was arrested after he was caught running naked through an apartment complex.

On Feb. 24 the Crestview Police Department received numerous reports from Bel-Aire Apartments about a man running naked and yelling through the complex. At one point he tried to get into a car of a woman and her young child. 

When lawmen arrived the man, now wearing pajama pants, leaped onto the hood of the patrol car and wouldn’t get down until ordered. He lay down on the grass nearby, where he made several comments about loving cocaine and needing more cocaine.

Then, he got up and tried to run away. When the officer ordered him to stop, he ran back toward the officer and dove head-first in a slide to the officer. The officer tried to handcuff him but he got away. The officer gave chase.

 The man was Tased but when the charge ended, he tried to run away and received a second jolt from the Taser. At that point the man took off his pajama pants and was naked again.

“Statements from the defendant were not possible as he would only state he loved cocaine and needed more cocaine,” the officer wrote in the arrest report.

The man was charged with resisting an officer without violence. His court date is March 26.

Yes, follow your dreams, Florida man.  Except maybe don't follow the ones where you are naked, high on cocaine, yelling, and running through an apartment complex telling police about how much you love cocaine.  Those ones will lead you astray.

Google Drive's autofill feature is both useful and bizarre

 Autofill is a common feature on spreadsheets where you can enter a few items (typically, numbers) like so:

Then, if you click that little blue square and drag down, it'll know that you want to just keep counting up:

Useful!  However, as this story over at TechCrunch today notes, Google Drive has an enhanced version of this, where you can ctrl-click instead of just clicking before you drag and Google will attempt to guess what you want to autofill with pretty much any data you want.  As TechCrunch writer Drew Olanoff notes, you can do this with beer types to produce a comprehensive list of beer varieties (albeit with some noise thrown in):

Obviously, I wanted to try for myself, so I put in a few beer types, autofilled the column, and ta-da!

So that list was populated using three entries ahead of time--as a certified lazy person, I wanted to see if I could use just two for the same result, which did in fact produce basically the same list:

Using just one, however, yielded more unusual results.  If I started with "ale", I think Google assumes I'm looking for country abbreviations:

Using "ipa" yields what appear to be names of college majors in Indonesian:

Starting with "lager" gives us some words I had to translate, but they appear to be basic German (and some Dutch) words that have to do with either A) business transactions or B) automobile repair.  The word "lager" just means "stock", so I guess that's the common thread.  I am not sure where the Dutch words came from.

If we use "porter", we at first just get a list of other jobs, including some oddly specific ones.  The Japanese characters below translate to "Yoshida bag", which seems random at first--however, apparently Yoshida makes a line of porter bags, so that explains that.  Zozotown also seems wholly ridiculous, but it's apparently a Japanese retail site that sells items such as porter bags, so there you go.

I thought typing out the full name of a beer style might help, so I tried "india pale ale", but that just gave a series of "________ pale ale" results, which is boring.  "Imperial pale ale" was more interesting--we got off to a good start, but then it just started naming German months (from 2011, for some reason) as well as the German word for "pages".  No clue.

"Pilsner" was the only single beer type that really worked--it yields a similar list to using several beer types:

Having confirmed that this feature works (mostly), I decided to try a couple other things.  Obviously, I was curious what using my name might yield:

Not much of use there, though I noticed that Google appears to be subtly hinting that others, as opposed to myself, arouse.  Daily dose of damage to self esteem: ☑

Lastly, I wondered if Google's smart autofill could count.  Obviously, the basic version can, since it can only use basic mathematical progressions, but can the more advanced version figure out how to count?  

 Ah.  Well, it did get to eleven, I guess.  It's probably kinda unfair to use the spelled-out versions of numbers--what happens with just the digits?

 No idea what happened there.  Anyway, if you're interested in seeing the results on a spreadsheet, all the images come from here--feel free to add your own if you find some interesting results.