Not Lions But ...

Once upon a time, I gave you a small but perhaps disturbing look into the collective thinking of Abs and Lawton. It was ludicrous, I know, that whole thing with terrorists using lions as weapons and trying to hide them under their coats. Or was it? Lawton sent me this, and I'm wondering if mayhap those crocodiles were just a test run. At least the "woman's shape raised suspicions." I say goodonya to those border guards for being so alert.

My Kind of Town

I often wonder what's going to be on TV on any given night, or what channel a game I want to watch will be on, or whether The Office is new this week. I usually wonder these things when I'm not in front of my TV. That doesn't really matter all that much, though, as my cable company DVR isn't particularly adept at speedily answering those questions for me. So, as is my wont, I turn to these internets for some good and speedy info. But I have rarely been satisfied with the solutions there. Sites that will show me stuff are all the time requiring me to refresh the page to go to a new day, then a new time, then a new page of channels. Then, to see more than just the title of a show, I have to battle with their weird show info pop-over to get the full dilly. It irks me. I don't want to go through several pages. I want to see the info NOW. I am petulant about this, and I realize that's not a good thing. Still, I am gratified by the new-to-me Beta of Couchville. With it, you can quickly jump to a day on the calendar, or a channel, or the current time. But more impressively, you can move up and down the channel list or forward and backward in time just by dragging the grid in your browser. It's simple, clean, and it's marvelous. I love it.

Besides, how can I not love a place called Couchville? I feel like I live there already.

Question of the Day

I like to think of myself as pretty decent at coming up with plausible explanations for things that seem silly, even though I still like to think of them as silly. For example, after giving it some thought, I was even able to come up with some explanation for why the drive-through ATM at the bank has braille options.

Still, some things persist in puzzling me.

Today, I was walking back into the building from the parking garage after lunch, and I was struck by a puzzling situation. Near the garage's exit, there were numerous spacious and well-marked handicap spots. That's not the puzzling part. Naturally, I understand that. On the other side of the entrance, there were a whole mess of places reserved for expecting mothers. Still not the puzzling part, in that I kind of understand it, although I'm skeptical of just how many expecting mothers are ... expected ... to be in this particular building at any given time. Still, I can see how reasonable people might want to make it less of an effort for these to-be moms to get to and from their cars and offices.

What puzzled me, though, was that between the expecting mother spots and the garage exit were a number of spots designated for motorcycles. It was pretty much 2 motorcycle parking spots per normal car spot. I can see why it's good to designate spots for motorcycles. You probably don't want them taking up an entire parking space and all, but why the hell do they need to be right next to the building? Wouldn't it be just as good to put them on the other side of the garage? Why should those who ride motorcycles get to park closer to the building than the handicapped or women with buns in their ovens?

Please explain it to me. These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night.

The Lengths People Will Go

OK, I know it's been a long time since I've put anything up here, but I've been a bit preoccupied lately. There's this little thing called the NCAA Tournament going on, and it takes up a lot of my time. I had to watch ridiculous amounts of basketball last weekend, and I had to handle the tourney pool Lawton and I run as we led up to it. So that's what I've been doing, and I haven't had much to write about.

Luckily for me, though, other people keep coming up with things worth sharing. For example, my buddy Doc sent me a link to this article showing that people will go to any lengths these days to avoid riding coach.

I just thought you might want to see that.

Beware the Dangers of the Elephant Johnson

No, I'm not talking about a pachyderm named Johnson. A co-worker sent this to me, and I laughed out loud. While there is some serious stuff going on that this article mentions, what really stood out to me was this:

"One guy I know got a black eye from being hit by an elephant’s
penis."

These are things you just don't hear often enough! It's marvelous. Along the same lines, next time you have the chance to go to the National Zoo, check out the video of their baby elephant being born. Sadly, I couldn't quickly find this video online because it's fascinating, if a little disturbing. The zoo didn't have the great quotes that the linked article did, though. So remember, next time you're in such a situation ...

"When you touch an elephant there it starts to flick backwards and forwards
and it’s so strong it can knock you off your feet. It’s such a strong
movement."

Have a great weekend.

Go Team!

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but I didn't manage to pull the pictures off of my phone until now. It turns out that I'm not the only one who felt the need to evaluate things and set some goals at the beginning of this year. In fact, I guess it's pretty normal. Two days a week or so, I travel to the offices of a big company to do work there, rather than tooling from home in a virtual kind of way. Early in January, I found the evidence that someone in the big company had done some evaluation and wanted to set some goals. However, as is often the case in a big company, this evaluator couldn't achieve this goal alone. To solicit help, this person posted a nicely printed, laminated sign in all the kitchens. (Really, I only know that it was posted in one kitchen, as I didn't check any of the others, but it would really not make sense to put it the others. So we'll just assume it was put all over the place.) Here's a picture of the sign they posted:

Now, I think we can probably agree that this message conveys a serious, noble, and worthwhile message. Using fewer napkins seems somehow eco-friendly, and it's pretty easy for most people to get behind eco-friendly. However, it's even easier for me to get behind funny, and I enjoyed seeing that there are other people who think funny beats most things, including eco-friendly. This funny person posted a sign in response:

I love it! And I'm glad I snapped some pics, as the second sign was removed quite speedily. The first one remains, though. I still chuckle when I see it, just thinking of the second one.

GO TEAM!