Best Value is No 2

A few year's ago I was at a Carl's Jr. and had an entertaining conversation with an employee who attempted to convey the lack of a large drink cup using some rudimentary charades game.

Well yesterday, I was again at a local Carl's Jr. (not that I am saying it has been years since I have been at a Carl's Jr.). I was in the drive thru, having been sent by my lovely bride to get food at a newly renovated Carl's advertising the addition of Green Burrito food. The first thing I noticed was that the menu board had the Green Burrito items listed as "Coming Soon" and a note explaining their arrival would be this Wednesday.

When I began to place my order, I was informed that they had just run out of large cups (sounds familiar to me). This time there was not charades, which was good as I would have been even more confused with them in the drive thru.

After placing my order I pulled up to the window. As I waited for the car in front of me to get done, I noticed that the drive thru employee was spending a long time leading out the window explaining something to the driver ahead of me.

When I arrived at the window, I was greeted with the news that they not only did not have large cups, but they had also run out of American cheese. They had yet to have their delivery of food for the day and were starting to run out a many standard items. At this point, I just wanted to get my food and get out of there, so I selected swiss cheese for our Western Bacon Cheese Burger and Famous Star (the other choice was pepperjack, which I thought would not quite work) and headed home. The swiss was not the worst choice, but it was clearly not the way I woudl have preferred by burger to have come. At least we go a senior's discount to help even the balance.

Great Quote

"I love Vegetarians. That's all I eat." Ted Nugent

All Star Balloting

OK just have to get on this soap box. Not to worry, this should be brief. To date Manny Ramirez has received 858,353 votes for the MLB All Star Game. This places him 5th in voting for Outfielders. What further message is this to our kids? Dope up and not only succeed, but get honored for your troubles. Fantastic message, thanks Major League Baseball.

Destructive Use of Language

I am a firm believer that the way in which one uses the English language has an impact. When a society loses the clear definition of a term, conceptual understanding related to that term is sacrificed. The recent news about Judge Sotomayor's comments with regard to her being more qualified to make judicial judgments based on her race and gender has been described as "reverse racism." Adding the term "reverse" implies that racism is something white people do, but not something done to white people. This is utter foolishness. Racism is racism is racism. Regardless of the races involved the intentional denigration of one race in favor of another is racism. Calling this "reverse racism" is dangerous because it divides these kinds of comments into categories that can be used to establish justification for dismissing so called "reverse racism" as something other than true racism. I was pleased to see that Sotomayor repudiated her statement, but the lasting damage from the media mismanagement in covering this, I fear will be longer lasting.

The Quarter I cannot discard

Last week, while at lunch, someone put a quarter in my that I have not fully been able to discard so... here is a brief rant to the subject.

I was chatting with a Red Sox fan, yeah, I don't know why either, when the question of the name of the Angels as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim came up. He questioned whether, I as a fan objected to the name change or found it as obserd as he did. Now, I grant that the "of Anaheim" bit is nutty, but the team has merely reverted back to its original name. Besides (hear the quarter drop now) there are plenty of teams with similar name issues that you don't hear much about. Here are the examples that came to my mind (feel free to add any I miss):

1. New York Giants/Jets - Play in New Jersey
2. Golden State Warriors - Not ever the actual name of a locality
3. New England Patriots - What Boston not enough for you or Massachusets for that matter (Why not just let Jerry Jones do what we all know he would love to do and rename the Cowboys the "Cowboys of America")
4. Any team named after a state - Need I explain?
5. Any team named after a non-thing - What is a Wild, a Magic, or Heat?

OK I feel better now. Time to move on.

Obama's 100 Days

Since the media is having so much fun extolling the virtues of President Obama and his first 100 days in office, I thought I might review just the past few days to see just what we are not looking at in order to examine the grand fiction that is his first 100 days.
$328,835 spent on a flight by Air Force One over New York. The President claims his did not know and has ordered and investigation. There seem to be two potential issues. 1) He did know and has lied now that it back fired. 2) He really did not know and thus we have a President who can lose track of Air Force One. Neither is a good option.

Then there is tonight, on the news President Obama referring to his administration not recommending closing the Mexican border due to swine flu as akin to closing the barn door after horses have gotten out. Thus since we alreay have cases in the US there is no point in preventing more. What? How does that make sense? How about this analogy? Well since you have already hit me with your car, why don't you just back up and try again.

All this is ignoring the 180 on many social issues, homeland security, and international relations issues that have marked the first 100 days, and some how NBC runs with the idea that Obama's first 100 days have hurt the GOP. I am not long sure what planet I am on.

What's in this mush?

Have you ever taken the time to read the ingredients on a jar of baby food? Yesterday while out to dinner, my wife pulled out a jar of what on the front label claimed to be ham, pineapple, and rice. Odd combination in my mind, and apparently in the mind of both my wife and her parents also at dinner with us. So we read the ingredients. Apples, water, ham...wait, what? Apples? Further down the list we found peach puree. What do apples and peach puree have to do with ham, pineapple, and rice? One could only assume that the original combination was just as odd as I thought, and perhaps was a bit nasty tasting. At any rate it was interesting to discover that the largest ingredient was not even listed on the front label.

Useless Media Words

Listen to political coverage these days and you will hear a pair of trendy words that in fact bear no meaning. "Unity" and "bipartisan" lack any substantive meaning in today's political rhetoric. At least their meaning is not revealing in an honest way. I have come to believe that bipartisan, when referenced by the media, is a call for conservatives to knuckle under and just go along with a liberal/progressive agenda. Similarly, unity is intended to convey the need for America to come together, forsaking all prior ideologies and adopt a liberal agenda. In both cases, I fail to see any true unity or bipartisan considerations. Unity is not adopted by force of will and bipartisan politics do not come at the expense of alternative views.

For more thoughts on Obama's notion of unity read here.

First Recording

Tonight our son, a lad quite fascinated with remotes, got a hold of our TV remote, rather than his remote that controls nothing, and not only turned on the TV, but also recorded 8 minutes of the NBC Nightly News. Good times!

Stonehenge Cracked

Wally Wallington (wow) a retired construction worker believes that he has cracked the mystery behind how Stonehenge was constructed. Using only technology from the time period he seems to have devised a method capable of such an engineering feat.

Moral Equivalency or Why PETA Members Cannot Think

The fallacy of moral equivalency occurs when a person or group fails to understand the existence of distinctions between types of entities. For example, PETA protested at the Westminster Dog Show in KKK attire. Their claim was that the selective breeding of dogs was morally equivalent to the "master race" theories of the Ku Klux Klan. The fallacy comes into play here as the members of PETA fail to understand, once again, the distinctions between humanity and canines. While it is noble to protest the abuse or mistreatment of dogs, if does damage to their cause, when PETA demostrates their inability to think clearly and protests at an event where the dogs in question receive better pampered treatment than most of us receive ourselves. What might have begun as a nobly intended organization, has once again demonstrated moral and intellectual bankrupcy. Just like you cannot cry "Meat is Murder" without redering our food equivalent with our children, you cannot have equal moral distain for the KKK and the Westminster Kennel Club.

Cut from the Super Bowl

The ad below was apparently set to be aired during the Super Bowl, until NBC decided not to air it due to its "political content." I am not sure why if the makers of the ad had the money to air it during the Super Bowl, they are not seeking donations to help get it aired elsewhere, but the ad itself is rather interesting.

New Skills

Recently our son has been working on waving. I say working because though he has the motion down rather good, the context for using a wave is sometimes off. Some of the time he seems to wave more at his friend the ceiling fan then his parents. When he does wave at us, like the first night that I came home to see him wave hello to me, it is heart meltingly special.

Now the interesting additional twist to his work on waving, is that while working out the motion with his left hand, he seems to have inadvertently taught himself how to snap. Yes, that's right, he will be nine months in a week and he has already figured out snapping his fingers. Now, really he just snaps while trying to wave, but I'll take it. Waving or snapping it is awful cute!

Driving It Into the Ground

Today, I was listening to Rocket to Russia by the Ramones. Track 13 is Surfin'Bird. Naturally I was then lead to recall The Family Guy driving the original song into the ground as only they can. So here you go, enjoy.

Two Prayers - One God - Maybe?

Here you will find two prayers offered on the occasion of the inauguration of Barack Obama. Listen carefully to see if the God that these two men pray to is in fact the one and same God that their Christian traditions claim to worship. The first is offered by Gene Robinson, openly gay Episcopal bishop. The second is Rick Warren, mega-church evangelical pastor and author.

A Spot of Political Humor

Odd Commercial - Thanks Skittles