You Too Can Be An Asshole

This seems to be the point of the new Hummer ads.

Especially the 'Get Your Girl On' spot. In the ad, we see a slightly mousy woman and her son get cut off at the slide. This proves to be enough of a psychic event, that she goes out and gets a Hummer, so she can be every bit the bitch on wheels that the bitch who cut her off was. Nice. "Buy a Hummer so you can be an asshole too!" Same kind of thing for the other spot- where tofu man sees he-man buying meat, so he has to get a Hummer to make up for not being a carnivore. Or something.

This is truly how pathetic advertising execs thinks the public is.

Dicks.

Frippin' at the Jim Jam, Frappin at the Kropfz

These 'tards over at Dodge are pissing me off.

They sent a letter saying basically, 'Happy Anniversary for Getting Your New Car' and 'by the way, here's who are new lease manager is.'

There would be the very same 'tards I have yet to get my floor mats from. Or working headphones for the DVD player. After a year. Yeah. I'll really do business with them ever again.

Oh, and it's not a lease.

'tards.

In Honor of the World Cup

I've only got one thing to add.

That's Just Wrong

Warning: Vulcan Hobbit. You were warned. Pues.

Eau. Migh. Gaud.

There are no words...

I'm going to have to go somewhere and get some talcum powder now.

Dirty Dancing

Before "Sprockets"...

Bitte, Baby!


For those who don't remember, "Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance..." and "Would you like to touch my monkey?" may refresh the memory.

The World's Biggest Problem

Is stupidity. But I'm going to rant about spelling. Take this comment post for instance:

Incidently, I remember reading an article in The New Republic wear the writer attended anti-Iraq war rally. The entire article was the guy seathing with rage invoking 9/11 as the reason we were invading iraq and dreaming of having the protestors arrested and deported. I bring this up because I know how TNR can get there circulation up. See, they’re marketing themselves to the wrong crowd. If they started putting girls in bikinis draped over the hoods of cars on their front cover, they’d reach a friendlier audience.

First, "Incidentally". The word's been spelled that way since the 1800s. "Incidently" is archaic. Get with the program. Come join us in the current effing century. Next: "wear the writer". I think that's illegal. Jeff Dahmer & all that. WHERE the writer attended AN anti-Iraq war rally. I don't even know where to begin with 'seathing'. Is it a thing from the sea? (See Russell, Kurt, Thing, The). Seething would be an actual word that one could use in this instance. Eye-raque needs to be capitalized, regardless of one's opinion of it. Next, we come to 'get there circulation'. Typical misuse of 'there'. Should be 'their'. This error is particularly odd, because in the very next sentence, the author (holy carp) uses "they're" correctly. Seriously, what's up with that?

I rant because I strongly feel that these sorts of error detract from the thrust of one's argument. And apart from the above mentioned errors (don't get me started on the grammar), I think that the ideas expressed are not without merit.

Possible definition of 'seathing':

The Below Post is Brought to You

courtesy of Spacey Stacey, who, by inadvertently generating a rant involving Tenacious D, Cleveland Steamers, and Tea Bagging, inspired me to write that post. Also brought to you by the number 42.

The Creepy Thing About E-Harmony Ads

I finally figured it out the other night. These ads had been creeping me out for some time, but I could never put my finger on why. I finally got it tho- all of the couples' noses match. It's really weird. The guy with the long nose is with the chick with the long nose, the guy with the broken looking nose is with the chick with the broken looking nose, etc. Is this how they really do their matching? Is this really what they mean by profile? Maybe I've stumbled onto the secret of love, life, the universe and everything by accident. The *real* question, then, is how do noses relate to 42? Is it just that the 4 looks like a nose in profile, while the two is... well, I'm not sure what the 2 is.

Should I adjust my meds?

Because I Can

Ladies and Gentlemen- or, more accurately, Lady and Gentleman (I know my traffic)-
Cyndi Lauper with a Fire Hose:

Not Albatross

I pick not albatross. An' I'm all out a Zom-B-Gone.

I Bought The Kaboom

Went over to see the lovely folks at the explosives store this morning. They were both very helpful and informative, and I walked out with over 110lbs of kabooms. Very nice.

They had a 2 for 1 sale (ends monday).

Howling Error

When a coyote barks at the moon and misses.

Thank You. I'll be here all week. Don't try the veal.

Gift Cards - Not So Much

What the hell is the deal with Gift Cards?

You can walk into a grocery store (for example) and get a gift card for Target, Chili's, Toys R Us, or even frikkin' Bass Pro Shops. It's the gift that says 'I cared about you enough to think about the vague area you might be interested in, but not enough to actually go there and get something.'

Seriously.

WTF?

You pay extra for something that the recipient can use almost as easily as cash. Which brings me to the Generic Gift Card. Visa, MC, Amec, they've all got them. Why would we want them? If you want to give someone money, give them money. Or, if you have to send it, send an effing check fer cripe pete. It costs more money to give someone somethig they can use almost as easily as actual money. What's the benefit? Wallet thickness?

Faugh.

Gotta Love It

Putting CEO Pay In Perspective

Hank McKinnel, Chairman & CEO of Pfizer, will get paid $6.5 MILLION A YEAR AFTER HE RETIRES.

That's the equivalent of 1,624 doses of Viagra a day.

Schwing!

The Problem with Actually Knowing What You're Doing

The problem with actually knowing what you're doing is that if you really do know what you're doing, and you're doing something that effects other people, people will start to assume that you know what you're doing in general, instead of in relation to the specific thing where you actually DO know what you're doing. The problem is a lot worse if you happen to actually have some expertiese in more than one area. The problem becomes exponentially worse if the areas of expertiese in question happen to be diverse and unrelated.

The problem, in case you've lost track, is that people will just assume you know something about any given random subject. The worst case scenario is when the random subject just happens to be in a previously unknown area of expertise.

There's a couple of ways to approach the situation. You could a) bullshit, or b) fess up and admit lack of knowledge. I don't like option a). I won't deny having used it, on more than one occasion even. But I don't like it. Option a) sets you up for a fall. Potentially a big and embarassing one- which is why it shows up in sitcom plots so often. Unlike sitcoms, in real life the end result, while sometimes a font of hilarity, is more often than not just the source of a reputation as a bullshit artist. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There is great artistry to be had in bullshit, and artistry in this area is a skill in its own right, which can serve one well if one chooses to go into politics, for example. Not so useful for everyday, tho.

On the other hand, option b) is not without difficulty. If enough demontrations of Actually Knowing What You're Doing have actually occurred, when you do fess up to know knowing, the audience might juist assume you're lying, or blowing them off because you just don't want to deal. (Which happens too, sometimes.)

In the end then, the best approach seems to be to be a stone cold fuckup. You'll get to be president one day.

They Might Be Particle-ular

They might not be. But, since triangles were up for discussion, why not segue?

Kryptonic Analysis of Particle Man
In this song, we have Particle Man, Triangle Man, Universe Man, and Person Man. I believe that these represent four approaches, or outlooks, if you will, to the state of man, or more succinctly, philosophies.

Partilce Man. Who is particle man? Particle Man represents the scientific community- and/or realists/factualists/scientific athiesm, that sort of thing. The references to dot and speck, and the appearent play on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are what lead me to this conclusion.

Triangle Man. Next up is Triangle Man. Funny thing- Triangle Man hates Paricle Man. They have a fight, Triangle wins. Triangle Man also hates Person Man. More on this later.

Universe Man. Universe Man is a powerful man, and seems immune to Triangle Man. Universe man seems to have an inclusive philosophy, and as such, I think this points to Deism, or a more generic belief in oneness or wholeness, as in "the oneness of the universe." Universe Man doesn't cause Triangle man heartburn, but There could be cause for strife betyween them, althoug this remains unexplored in the song.

Person Man. Lastly, we come to the poor wretch that is Person Man. He's seriously put upon-= being hit in the head with a frying pan and living his life in a garbage can. I think that this is a derisive take on secular humanism. Person man never looks up. Never sees anything larger than himself.

Triangle Man also hates Person Man. They have a fight, and, naturally, Triangle wins. This is the final clue as to who Triangle man is: Organized Religeon, specifically Christianlty, possibly as specific as Catholicism. In the case of Particle Man, there is a natural tension between those that must live by faith and those that must find out how things work. Additionally, there will be tension between those who live by faith in a higher being, and those who deny the existence of such a being.

The cautionary tale of the song is this: Triangle wins.

Birdhouse In Your Soul

It's a song about night lights.

And other things.

Get over it.

I'm Not Puh-Sychic

To be clear, I have no idea what the internal dialog of a gay cop actually would be. The entry below contained an idea which was a supposition only. No actual police were harmed in the filming of this episode.

No, Really. They Don't

For simplicity's sake, let's assume that everything in flatland is either material X (which is flexible enough to resonate), or air (which has no resonant frequency), and that both have the same rate of propagation of pressure waves. Let's also assume that there's constant temperature and pressure, and that the speed of propagation is therefore always 100m/s, a nice round number that's easy to work with. (The actual speed of sound in air is 331.4 m/s + 0.6 m/s per degree C. FYI at freezing, that's just a bit faster than 1000 ft/sec). Lastly, let's assume that in Flatland, pressure waves are able to propagate from air to material X, but will tend to prefer to remain in whatever substrate they're in, and will lose energy when changing substrate.

So, with those assumptions, we can concentrate on the geometry.

Let's begin with an open figure- a line segment. The reason to start here is because it's easy to think about. The length of the line segment is also it's wavelength, and therefore the only thing effecting the resonant frequency. If the line segment is 100 meters long, then the resonant frequency is 1 Hz. This works to scale, too- if the line is 10m long, the resonant wavelength is 10 meters, or 10Hz. A 1 m line segment resonates at 100Hz, and so on. (0.1m at 1kHz, 1cm at 10kHz, 1mm at 100kHz). This is not unlike the arrangement of strings on a Greek harp- where the length of string is doubled to halve the frequency.

Let's start closed figures with an open square- that is, the same shape as if one were to draw a square on a sheet of paper, drawing only the edges; i.e. 4 line segments. Let's draw the square so that it's 100m on a side. In this case, it's going to resonate at 1Hz, since the wavelength at 1Hz is the same as the side (100m).

Next, let's consider an open triangle. In this case, the same rules apply for the basic resonance. A 1m to a side equilateral triangle in Flatland will resonate at 100Hz.

Now, if we fill these shapes in, things get more complicated. In the examples above, there's only one path for the pressure wave to take, so it's easy to tell where a resonance will occur, and what the frequency will be. In the case of a filled in object, there are multiple paths for pressure waves to take, a situation that has 2 effects: 1) There are resonances available in any direction that the wave can propagate, and the wave will propagate in any and all available directions equally, which means that instead of a single resonant frequency, there will be multiple resonant frequencies; and 2) because the pressure wave is free to propagate in any direction, the available amplitude and power in any given direction will be much reduced, which makes the resonance far less noticeable.

The next logical question is, "Why is this so?" To answer this, you have to think about what a mechanical resonance actually is. A mechanical resonance with a pressure wave occurs when the wavelength (or a whole number multiple of the wavelength) of a pressure wave is equal to the distance between opposing boundaries that the wave can reflect off of. When a pressure wave encounters a boundary, it reflects back from the boundary at the reciprocal of its angle of incidence. When the angle is 90 degrees, and the wavelength is a whole number multiple of the distance between the reflecting surfaces, the reflection of the wave tends to reinforce the wave, so that it loses power and amplitude at a slower rate. This is because the peaks and troughs of the reflected wave match the peaks and troughs of the original wave. When the wavelength is not a whole number multiple of the distance, the peaks and troughs of the reflected wave don't meet with the original, and the result is interference, causing the wave to lose power and amplitude more quickly. In extreme cases, the reflection can nearly cancel out the original wave. This is the effect employed by those Bose noise cancellation headphones- by inverting the incoming wave, they cancel it out, producing a quieter environment.

Going back to our triangle, no matter where the original pressure wave comes from, there are multiple complex paths through the object. Further, pressure waves reflecting off the boundaries at various angles will intersect and interfere with each other. The net result is that the triangle will probably have resonances in certain cross sections at certain frequencies, but wouldn't really have a definite centered frequency we'd call a resonance per se. In 3 dimensions, the problem naturally becomes worse.