Too Stupid for Words category archive

I was thinking earlier today on just how the wingnut reaction to everything seems to be to monger war. When all you believe in is a hammer &c., I reckon.

Noz had similar thoughts.

I will grant that killing people occasionally solves problems, but it really doesn’t serve well as a first resort.

That’s “deep end” as in “off the.”

. . . the Kleberg County (Texas–ed.) commissioners on Monday unanimously designated “heaven-o” as the county’s official greeting. The reason: “hello” contains the word “hell.”

“When you go to school and church, they tell you ‘hell’ is negative and ‘heaven’ is positive,'” said the 56-year-old Canales, who owns the Kingsville Flea Market. “I think it’s time that we set a new precedent, to tell our kids that we are positive adults.”

Via Wait Wait.

Duncan explains.

Advertising, advertising everywhere, nor any thought to think.

Advertising, advertising everywhere, and Twitter use will shrink.

She’s (Jen Diaz) closing in on 100 followers of her business account, people she hopes to turn into customers for her store, Oh Scrap, after its grand opening.

“It is such free, great advertising,” she said of the microblogging service. “People who don’t use it are at a disadvantage, especially with the younger crowd.”

(snip)

But businesses around Charlotte – ranging from Fortune 500 powerhouses such as Duke Energy to restaurants such as Matt’s Chicago Dog – are joining the social networking site.

Via McClatchy.

Apple has banned another program from its iPhone Apps store.

This program, called Eucalyptus, goes directly to Project Gutenberg, a highly respected repository for public domain ebooks, to allow the user to download ebooks. I have, in fact, often used Project Gutenberg, downloading books by Mark Twain, R. Austin Freeman, and others.

Seems the issue is that, among it’s other umpty-ump thousands of titles, the site contains Sir Richard Burton’s (no, not that Richard Burton; the sober one) translation of the Kama Sutra.

The Guardian reports:

However, not only does Eucalyptus not actually contain the book itself – users would have to actively find it and then download it – but the same title is already accessible through a number of other popular ebook applications for the iPhone, and even through the handset’s web browser.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Kama Sutra, it is sort of a poetic Indian “how to” of sex and love. Only a teenaged boy could find it at all prurient.

Of course, a teen-aged boy can find the Hanes catalog prurient.

Is Apple hiring teen-aged Mac fanboys to run the Apps Store? Inquiring minds want to know.

The straight and narrow . . . minds:

Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. made his first public comments today about the university’s suspension of the campus Democratic party club.

“That club still has the right to exist,“ Falwell said, although it cannot use the university’s name in its activities.

Furrfu.

Includinding Yellowstone National Park. And Zion. And Bryce Canyon. And Grand Canyon. And Kolob Canyon. And Shenandoah. And several others.

There is no freaking reason on or off Earth that anyone needs to pack heat to visit a National Park.

Unless I guess the gun is his Viagra.

I visited the parks. Brendan made the phone call.

(When I read this story, I thought I was back in high school in the olden days when the fight was over boys having long hair.)

A local school district, which is down the road a piece and on the right, mandates that girls wear skirts or dresses at graduation.

Christiana High School senior Morgan McQueen does not wear skirts or dresses, and she does not want to start now just to attend her graduation ceremony.

But that’s what the school says she has to do.

High school graduations in this part of the world are usually held outside to accommodate the crowds and normally take place on a broiling hot day–even if all the surrounding days are cool, graduation day is broiling hot. It’s a law of nature.

Unless it’s cold and downpoury (it’s never just rainy on graduation day–on graduation day, it doesn’t rain, it monsoons–another law of nature). Then the ceremony is held in a broiling hot, steamy gym whose HVAC is incapable of dealing with the crowd.

Also, what the students wear will be covered by polyester graduation robes which are designed primarily to cut costs while raising the skin temperature by five degrees (I know the robes are polyester–I have two of them left over from various kids hanging in the attic), since polyester is to air circulation as a space suit is to a vacuum.

Let ’em wear shorts and halter tops (remember halter tops?) under their gowns if they want.

That would probably still be more formal than what they wear to school every day.

Addendum, the Following Tuesday:

They’re making an exception for the girls who are protesting. The girls have to wear slacks and ties, like the boys. They are going to “study” the graduation dress code.

The ACLU is looking at the case.

Put butter on it. The dress code is toast.

Words fail me.

As my mother would have said, “The biggest nothing.”

Addendum:

The Booman.

Afterthought:

If mustardgate is all they got, they truly got nothing.

Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Myron T. Steele, the national face of Delaware’s powerful and highly respected courts, used his state e-mail account Monday to send a sexually suggestive video to 38 men.

That’s what the home computer is for, for Pete’s sake.

The video is here. Any grunt-level employee would have already been fired.

Sure, the BCS system is stupid, but this is even more stupider.

Republicanism: Slogans looking for a cause.

Texas Rep. Joe Barton likened college football’s Bowl Championship Series to “communism” Friday, even as he made the case that the system is what it is because of money.

In his opening remarks during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee, Barton — the panel’s ranking Republican — recalled the hearing he held on the same matter several years ago.

“That time, I had hoped through a spirit of volunteerism, the BCS would decide to go to a playoff system,” he said. “That hasn’t happened yet. It is interesting that people of good will — I think everybody on whatever side of the issue is a person of good will — keeps trying to tinker with the current system.”

“It’s like communism, you can’t fix it.”

And the cause they find is . . . .

. . . . college bowl games?

Furrfu.

H/T David Dayen via Facebook.

In wingnut land.

And what is a “luxury lifestyle hotel” as opposed to a “luxury hotel” anyway?

Weird:

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. on Thursday sued Hilton Hotels Corp. and two former Starwood executives for allegedly stealing confidential information used to help Hilton quickly and cheaply enter the lifestyle luxury-hotel market.

(Major Snippage)

According to Starwood, the allegedly stolen information included strategic plans for creating a lifestyle luxury hotel brand, and enabled Hilton to launch its Denizen brand in nine months as opposed to three to five years.

(Must. Restrain. Impulse. To. Rant.)

If more companies paid more attention to providing good value for the money and less to “branding,” they and their customers would all be better off.

Dumb. Just dumb. Makes TSA’s fear of shampoo look profound:

Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city’s sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as “modern sculpture”.

But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.

Dave Weigel on his experiences at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot.

Note that no one in the federal administration has said anything about restricting guns.

The passage speaks for itself.

This is a place where vendors can sell T-shirts that read “The Fourth Reich: Obama-Biden 2012,” and “Hitler Gave Great Speeches Too..” and, most succinctly, “Fuck Obama.” It’s somewhere for people with hard-to-explain interests in World War II memorabilia can pick up items from Wehrmacht uniforms (”I’m putting the stuff together to make me a German officer,” says a man buying a Wehrmacht officer’s cap), Adolf Hitler mousepads (”Next time… no more Mr. Nice Guy”), and coffee mugs with Nazi commanders’ faces etched on them.

This leads to a certain skepticism of the media. Mark Stevens, whose Nazi merchandise is not moving very quickly on Saturday, declines to talk about it. “Any publicity from the media is bad publicity,” he explained.

One man asks a vendor if she has any “Impeach Obama” bumper stickers. Initially, he’s open to talking about his problems with the president. “There’s a black man in the White House,” he said. “What else do you need to know?” He suggests that journalism isn’t much of a career and tells me to look for something else to do. But 15 minutes later, he spots me in the range’s gun shop and asks me to cross his name out of my notebook. He grabs the book, grabs a pen, and scratches dark black ink onto the paper. “I don’t know who you are,” he said. “I don’t know if you work for the Southern Poverty Law Center. I don’t know if you work for the government.”

But it is not a nutcase.

Via Oliver Willis.

Read more »

CC lays it out.

Whether it’s the one your parents gave you or one you chose yourself, at least until a wingnut tries to take it away.