Honking....

You are supposed to "Honk" to support the Bay, "Honk" if you are Horny and "Honk to see our tits" but you CAN NOT honk to correct a Police officer.

Clay Palmer, a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, honked his car horn when he saw a policeman turn on blue flashers to pass through a red traffic light. The officer then turned the flashers off after moving through the intersection.

Palmer said officer Matthew Puglise then stopped his patrol car and issued him a ticket for honking his horn for no reason -- a violation of the city noise ordinance.

It seems deep down, so far down I never knew it, but I think I must be a police officer.

"The horn blowing is not the real problem here, it's that you were trying to correct the police and they didn't need correcting," Judge Russell Bean said.

You see, I DON'T NEED CORRECTING EITHER. So I must be a Police Officer. You know, since I'm better than you.

Otter

Crap...

It looks like March 15th is the end of the US Governement as we know it. A group of peace actvists are going to storm the White House and arrest Bush. I don't know how this could fail. I mean they have a flyer!

I'm tempted to go down to DC and watch the end take place... Or you know... if the opertunity arises... punch a dumb ass hippy or two.

Otter

Bolton...

I wanna know how a guy who shares a last name with Micheal Bolton can be such a hard ass. He's the only thing worth saving from the U.N.

Otter

Jack Bauer 2008

Jack for President in 2008 - Imagine a life where the President single-handedly hunts down every living terrorist himself. Imagine a life where national crisis happens only within 24 hours...after that, everything goes back to normal.

Boortz put together a great read on "Jack Bauer Truths." It's hiliarious. My favorite line is:

"Jack Bauer won the Tour de France on a unicycle to prove to Lance Armstrong it wasn't a big deal. He thinks yellow wristbands are gay."

Even the Tax Companies Can't Get it Right

Just a heads up if you were going to get H&R Block to do your taxes this year...might want to give THAT a second thought.

I'm damn proud of myself for knocking out my taxes early this year. I just finished them up last night and I had to literally smack myself for giving Uncle Sam a no interest loan for the last 12 months. What the hell? Give me my damn money people! Just because I'm a dumbass and can't figure out how to do my exemptions properly, stop holding onto my money! (Fortunately, I did find this nifty program that calculates your exemptions for you. It's pretty damn cool and if I can find the link, I'd be happy to pass it on.)

But seriously, I have no problem paying taxes...but can't we hire those folks who write those "Beer for Dummies" book to write our tax code so I don't feel like I need a CPA to understand it?

Sue Happy

Stupidity once again wins in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing a Pennslyvania woman to sue the U.S. Postal Service for leaving a package on her doorstep, apparently causing her to trip and suffering "injuries" to her wrist and back. Wouldn't it just be great if her mail service was suddenly "denied" make her come to the Post Office for all her mail? Dumbass...watch where you walk.

On the Fence on Port Security

I may have to disagree with Bortz's latest column regarding the acquisition of port security contracts to a UAE-based company. Initially, I admit, I was shocked that the Pres. was on board for this. UAE has an interesting stance when it comes to terrorism - they tend to avoid it and all involved. This passive attitude tends to piss people off, particularly in the U.S. who will remember that an UAE-born flew one of the jets during the 9/11 attack. But I can't say that I blame the UAE for taking this passive approach - since if they were to side with the U.S. voluntarily, then they would probably suffer the same fate as Israel today.

Whether you agree with this stance or not, I have a hard time faulting a company JUST because its based in the UAE. Besides, if we didn't want a foreign company managing our Ports, perhaps we shouldn't have awarded that contract initially to the London-based company that has held onto it up until now.

Slackers Weekend

Slackers Weekend Starts in 5 minutes!

Otter

Visit FARK

'cause after this Photoshop contest, well.. they might be beheaded soon.

Otter

Batman vs. Terrorists

Frank Miller (Forget Sin City, read THE DARK NIGHT RETURNS) is releasing a comic where Batman hunts down Bin Laden.

Should be good, Batman is the best!

Otter

Hunting with Cheney...

On Neal Boortz's site he has a link for a bumper sticker that says...

"I'd rather Hunt with Cheney than drive with Kennedy"

Classic, and at least in my case, true.

Otter

If Only All Hunting Accidents Were So Scrutinized

I found myself in a quasi-rage last night when news surfing only to find the main headlines on the tube was the conspiracy to hide Cheney's hunting accident over the weekend. In this story that I linked actually lists a chronology of events that followed the accident up to when the accident hit mainstream media. You have to be kidding me.

First - how is this something worthy of national news? Somebody please explain to me how an accident like this gets national attention over (I don't know) the political comments made at MLK's wife's funeral?

Second - how ridiculous did the press corps sound when they were bitching and moaning that the Corpus Cristi paper released the story before they found out? That was funny. They looked like 2nd graders who just missed out on play time.

Now we hear that Cheney's staff neglected to purchase a $7 stamp as part of his hunting license. Wow. The angry libs sure are getting desperate.

Zero Tolerance for Sugar

The Aurora, Ill school system lost its sense of humor when it suspended a 12-year old six grader for carrying a "look-alike" drug. The kid brought a bag of powdered sugar for a science project and joked with other students that the bag was actually cocaine. Shortly thereafter, he was suspended for 2 weeks. Felony possession charges are also pending. If convicted, this poor kid could find himself dealing with 5 years probation and placement in a "residential treament center."

Apparently its difficult to determine street-grade cocaine from standard household powdered sugar unless you're 12.

An Actor Who Knows How To Shut Up

Harrison Ford doesn't think he should speak publicly about politics. Finally, someone who's got it right.

Note to other Hollywood Actor types: Generally speaking you are not very well educated and your views are often uninformed and unsupportable - it is that fact (along with your public stage) that makes me more angry than the fact that I disagree with your conclusions. You see, if your conclusions are baseless, I can't really argue them or change your mind (or attempt to). I can only call you an idiot loudmouth.

Kid

Ray Lewis Leaving Baltimore?

Yikes. As an avid Ravens fan, this caught me by surprise. Does anyone know is this is true?

More Americans Bashing America Overseas

We have yet another American traveling overseas only to bash America. Still cannot understand why we let these folks back in, but I’m sure a liberal could try and explain this to me.

Former VP and inventor of the Internet, Al Gore made an appearance in Saudia Arabia over the weekend for the Jiddah Economic Forum. Although I have to give Al some credit for trying to gain some support to knock down Iran’s nuclear weapon program, he still managed to bash America’s post September 11th visa policies.

Gore alleges that the current practices of “indiscriminately rounding up” Arabs for violating the new policies is just wrong. So wrong in fact that he even used the “D” word. Apparently Gore favors the previous administration’s policies of “fast tracking” visas for Saudia Arabia. These policies worked out so well that we can now attribute multiple terrorist attacks on U.S. soil – not to mention how many of these terrorists are now suspected of being safely harbored by the Saudis today.

All alone on 695

We had some snow here last night. Quite a bit for Maryland.

Last night I also went to visit some out of town friends of mine who were in town.

Common sense told me to stay home. More common sense told me to stay at the party once I left home.

I don't have much common sense.

So there I was in Towson, which is normally about a 40 minute drive from Scaggsville. It's 2 oclock in the morning and I decide to go home. If I was drinking I would have stayed, but I just couldn't seem to put enough beer in me to get my second wind and hang out all night. Being one of the sober ones at a drunks party... Well, there's a reason I don't do that too often.

Starting off, the back roads were pretty bad. There was 7 to 9 inches on the ground. All I had to do was make it to the Beltway I figured, that would be clear for sure. Umm no.

I've never seen the highway like this. For most the drive NO ONE was on the road. There were no lanes. At some places there was no tracks. Artic wasteland. At least 4 to6 inches covering the whole damn road.

This link is a small movie (1.4 megs) I took with my PDA while driving. That section of road was 695 and 83.

Did I mention I was running out of gas. Well I was. The light came on with about 30 miles to go. Normally that's no big deal. Of coarse normally I'm going faster than 35 miles an hour.

Anyway, everything worked out fine. I had a good time at the party and had a good time driving home. The new tires I got for my car amazed me yet again.

Otter

Death by Shrimp

Dangerous little critters...

Vote Early and Often in Maryland...

Third reason this month to consider moving to another state.

Otter

Ender's Game

Wow...

Yesterday I received Ender's Game in the mail from Amazon. I had a gift card from mom (from like 2 years ago or so which she just rememebered / found) and it was right at the top of "Otter's Store" recommendations. It's one of those books I've heard about time and time again.

"Dude. You haven't read Ender's Game?"

I've heard that a bunch. IF my friends AND Amazon recommend something....

Well, it was good. I finished all but 60 or so pages last night. This evening I read the rest. It was good. Real good. The ending was incredible and at the same time a disappointment. It's a lot to digest.

I really don't know how I feel about. The end hit me in such a way I felt like I needed to DO something... So I'm writing this... and it's not cutting it. The book came bundled with two other books, Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hedemon. I'm not sure I wanna read them.

I often get "Post Novel" depression (I coined the phrase. You can use. It's ok.). I hate it when the story ends, and don't like to "loose" the charactors I've grown to love. Even when I cruise through a novel in 5 or 6 hours, if I love the book, it stills feels like I'm losing something. With this book, I loved it, yet I don't feel like continuing the story.

Anyway, this is a blog. Not MySpace. Enough is enough. If you haven't read Ender's Game. Do so.

Later,

Otter

Relief from Katrina Relief

It appears the first wave of 4500 freeloaders are finally getting the boot by FEMA. But don't get too excited because a good number of these folks are just going to end up in local shelters, once again sapping up taxpayer dollars because they can't fend for themselves.

You have to give FEMA credit for giving it a good go. They even tried to give a good number of these folks extensions to find other arrangements, but check out the reception they got with this quote from FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney:

"We’ve bent over backward to reach out. We’ve gone door-to-door to all of the 25,000 hotel rooms no fewer than six times. And there are individuals who have refused to come to the door, refused to answer. There are people who have run when they saw us coming — those are the ones that are now moving on,” said FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney.

At 522 million spent on hotel rooms alone, where are the spend police on this one?

Happy Birthday...

I miss you Ronald.

Otter

Burn Scaggsville Burn

So I'm a tad fired up about this (pun intended). I had dinner the other night with Otter and another good buddy, and among the many issues we discussed was the burning of the Danish Consulate in Beirut which was the apparent retaliation by Muslims who clearly have thin skins when it comes mocking Islam's ban on depicting the prophet.

Yikes. Maybe by me saying this, Scaggsville with burn. Hope not. Can a webpage burn? I digress. But either way, I don't want to bash a prophet. That's not my beef, so put down that match buddy. What does strike me as odd was exactly how Muhammed would feel today knowing that 20,000 mob strong felt that burning down a building somehow makes everything ok. Not to mention all the looting that occurred that somehow missed mainstream media... I can just picture the conversations:

"Hey, we're pissed at the Danish government, so pick up that flaming torch and
throw it into that window. That'll show them. Oh wait - let's grab some of these computers and red staplers on the way out... We can give them to the poor or maybe we'll just keep them until we find another excuse to riot again."

Oh yeah...and it's all Bush's fault too ;)

Rumsfeld...

I actually really like the Secretary of Defense... but I couldn't help doing a little bit of Photoshoping on this picture of him. It was just asking for it. Don't get too upset at me Rummy... besides, Vampires are cool.

Otter

Guess What Just Made the Top of Otter's Wishlist?

Holy crap. Time to mount these puppies in Scaggsville.

New Interface...

Those of you who just link to the Blog... Check out Scaggsville Proper if you want to see what Otter learns when he is sober over the weekend!

Otter

Learning a new trade...

It's not a dirty joke... But it's damn funny...

A gynecologist had a burning desire to change careers and become a mechanic. So she found out from her local tech college what was involved, signed up for evening classes, attended diligently, and learned all she could. When the time for the practical exam approached, she prepared carefully for weeks, and completed the exam with tremendous skill.

When the results came back, she was surprised to find that she had obtained a mark of 150%. Fearing an error, she called the instructor, saying "I don't want to appear ungrateful for such an outstanding result, but I wondered if there had been an error which needed adjusting."

The instructor said, "During the exam, you took the engine apart perfectly, which was worth 50% of the total mark. You put the engine back together again perfectly, which is also worth 50% of the mark. I gave you an extra 50% because you did all of it through the MUFFLER..."

Otter

Fear of Western Culture, and Pictures of Piglet

Cox and Forkum do it again.

Otter