It's a simple premise: People submit snippets of conversations they'd overheard, and the masses guffaw. The site has gotten so popular, it's now split up by eavesdropping location! There's Overheard At The Beach, At The Office, In New York, Everywhere, and special bonus -- Celebrity Wit!

Now go there.

Overheard Everywhere | The Voice of the Rest

Ecogeek is a sort of Boing Boing Gadgets for the tree-hugging set. It's all about the intersection of technology and environmental awareness, which is great, but the entries are also smart, interesting, and often surprising. In short, the site rocks, and if you visit it once, you'll probably visit it forever.

EcoGeek: Technology for the Environment

At last count, there were 34 hexagillion sites on the web that want to sell you funny t-shirts. Bustedtees.com has designs that are well above average, and some that are pure disaffected-hipster-ironic-pop-culture heaven.

Busted Tees - Jokes you can wear!

... if "cryptozoophiles" is, in fact, a word.

Regular readers of Fortean Times may recognize Loren Coleman as one of the world's go-to guys for all things cryptozoological. His site, cryptomundo.com, is probably the best resource for info on cryptids of all varieties. He's reasonable and scientific, and his writing is concise and accessible. Recent topics include a new Orang Pendek expedition and "Is Bin Laden As Tall As Bigfoot?"

These are the stories the mainstream media are afraid to touch!

Cryptomundo.com - for Bigfoot, Loch Ness, and More!


Of course, one can't mention Loren Coleman without also mentioning Dr. Karl Shuker, who has probably done more to legitimize cryptozoology as a field of study than anyone since Charles Fort himself. As an added bonus, Dr. Shuker actually bears a striking resemblance to Oliver, a suspected cryptid sometimes called a "humanzee:"



Dr. Shuker's columns for the Fortean Times are often the most fascinating part of that magazine. Here's his space on the web:

All About Dr. Karl Shuker

(Above: Sen. Craig demonstrates his technique)

I haven't said anything so far about soon-to-be-former-Senator Larry Craig yet, so her's a sampling of post-mortems regarding his downfall.

Time Magazine has a decent analysis of how the scandal will affect the Republicans as a whole. Executive summary: The GOP is running out of candidates that aren't crazy, corrupt or perverted, thus ironically de-motivating the one block of voters they can count on -- the crazy, corrupt and perverted Religious Right.

Republicans Lack Self Control, Common Sense

Speaking of right-wing kooks, The Boston Globe has a columnist named Jeff Jacoby who serves as their resident conservative on an otherwise mostly rational Op-Ed staff. He's wrong on most every issue he's ever written about, but never more so than in his recent column declaring Craig's behavior "odious," "squalid" and "degrading," but NOT hypocritical. Dubbleyoo Tee Eff?

Jacoby then uses as an example of somebody that IS a hypocrite "[t]he 'family-values' politician who blasts the sins of others while blithely carrying on affairs of his own." Huh? Isn't that what Craig was doing?

Another favorite: "opposing same-sex marriage doesn't make someone a "foe of gay rights" or of gay people..." It's a laff-a-minute!

Conan O'Brien had a line a few days ago, "Gay groups are calling Craig a hypocrite because Craig is a staunch opponent of gay marriage. Craig denied he's a hypocrite, saying, 'Hey, I wasn't trying to marry the cop in the bathroom.'"

I like the Boston Globe, and I absolutely agree that they need to maintain some philosophical balance on their Op-Ed page. I just wish they'd find somebody who isn't such an idiot.

Is Craig Really A Hypocrite? (HINT: Yes)

Finally, for those of you who aren't really sure what a jerk-off this guy is, here's a pretty good summation of how he's voted on issues:

How Not To Advance The Radical Homosexual Agenda

While we're on the subject of censorship, and the cowardice at its heart (see entry below), let's look at the other end of the spectrum.

The evil, wretched, corrupt and despicable MPAA ratings board has given Ang Lee's new film, "Lust, Caution," an NC-17 rating, meaning that only people age 17 and over can get in. It is, in effect, what used to be called "rated X." Apparently, there's a lot of sex going on, though it isn't base or prurient. Too many pelvic thrusts and that sort of thing. But the rating is more than a simple age limitation. Many (most?) theaters won't screen an NC-17 movie. Many newspapers won't even accept advertisements for them. So it can truly be the kiss of death for a movie.

Normally, an NC-17 rating would mean the studio would edit out the offending material and re-submit the film for an R rating, but I'm extremely pleased to report that Focus Features, which will distribute the movie, has said that there won't be any editing. They'll move forward with the film as-is. Focus Features CEO James Schamus said, "Every moment up on that screen works and is an integral part of the emotional arc of the characters. The MPAA has screened the film now and made its decision, and we're comfortable with that."

That's right. The distributor is on the side of the director, even though the potential revenue loss will be enormous.

Thanks, Focus!

"Lust" Begets Caution From The MPAA

Shame, shame, shame on the Washington Post and all the other newspapers that chose to censor Berkeley Brethed's "Opus" comic strip this week.

Why'd they do it? Well, it mentions Islam! The last thing we want our newspapers to do is deal with timely and sensitive topics, you know! We all know that newspapers are dying a slow death. Let's hope it's a painful one, too.

I won't ramble on. Below, you'll find a link to Salon's editorial about the matter, as well as a link to the cartoon. I hope I've earned a fatwa for linking to it!

Salon Cries Foul On "Opus" Censorship
Here's The Offensive Cartoon In Question

Yes, you read that correctly.

From MSNBC:

"In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is 'an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.'"

You can't make this shit up, folks.

The offshoot of this madness is that the Chinese government has effectively reserved the right to name its own Dali Lama once the current one dies. I think the government's staunch atheism may make it impossible for them to choose the right one. Hmmm....

Thanks to boingboing for the heads-up on this. Normally, I don't like to overlap my posts with theirs, since educated readers like you should be reading boingboing every day.


China's Totalitarian Freak Show Goes Apeshit

Normally, I'm a graphics snob. I skipped the original Playstation and got a Nintendo 64 instead. I skipped the Playstation 2 in favor of the original XBox. People will say to me "but there are more games available for the [Playstation/Playstation2]! Why would you ever buy a [N64/XBox]?" The answer is obvious: quality trumps quantity. Every great game obviously needs good game play; it has to be fun, regardless of the graphics. But if I only wanted good game play without good graphics, I'd shut off the TV and play cards. A truly legendary game needs to combine an inherently fun game with the best possible graphics. The Playstation and PS2 were always a step behind. If the sheer number of games was important, I'd still have an Atari joystick plugged into my Commodore 64 with a library of 8000 games all priced under $20. But I don't.

The Nintendo 64 had some stunning games, like Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, WaveRace and Mario Kart 64. Sweet God, those games were enormous fun, and the graphics were astounding for their time. I can still remember bringing home the N64 and playing Mario 64 for the first time. It was a revelation. I'd never seen anything like it. Mario Kart is still one of the most hilarious multi player games EVAH! The intensity and detail, along with the perfectly-executed 4-player split-screen, make GoldenEye perhaps the only game-based-on-a-movie that doesn't completely suck. (I'm talking to you, Harry Potter.) WaveRace 64 is one of the all-time great driving games, and it doesn't even involve cars. It's all jet-skis. The game may look a little dated now, but at the time, the water effects and the textures were unmatched.

The XBox was far, far ahead of the PS2. Halo and Halo 2 are examples of first-person-shooter perfection. They're epic stories, perfectly told and fully realized on the screen. They are completely immersive with enormous replay value via the multi player scenarios. Any video game junkie will tell you that Bungie, the company behind Halo, totally redefined the genre, and these games will still be remembered as groundbreaking 20 years from now, when today's consoles are nothing more than quaint relics in the back of the closet. Driving games like Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions and, of course, the Burnout series showed how much fun a car wreck can be.

But, as usual, things are more complicated in the present day. The most powerful system on the market is undoubtedly the PS3, but Sony seems to have truly screwed things up, like they've screwed up most everything they've touched in the last 5 years. (Digital music players that don't play MP3s? The completely unnecessary UMD movie disk? Ugh.) The system is apparently hard to code for, which is leading to delays and frustrations. After paying $600 for a video game system, people expect to have games available to play on it. And those games should be qualitatively better than the games running on less expensive, less advanced systems. So why does Madden NFL 2008 suck compared to the Xbox 360 version? No excuse for it!

I still think that the PS3's better capabilities, along with its Blu-Ray drive, will turn things around in the next 12-18 months. I hope so, anyway. I really want to like this system.

Which brings us to the Xbox 360. While not as capable as the PS3, Microsoft's gambit seems pretty smart these days. The decision to aim slightly lower in the hardware department and come out a year earlier looks pretty good in hindsight. The Xbox has an army of developers that are now comfortable coding for the system, so games coming out for the 360 are optimized, polished and mature. The growing pains are behind it, despite some highly-publicized quality-control issues that have left a bunch of people with expensive doorstops instead of game consoles. Of course, Microsoft is somehow unable to turn a profit on this thing, because the only thing MS does worse than software is hardware.

And then there's the Wii, Nintendo's bizarre little endeavor that throws out most everything we know about designing and using game consoles. The graphics are only marginally better than you'd get from the antiquated PS2, and the controllers are really just motion sensors with some afterthought buttons on them.

About 2 months ago, I started seeing a guy who has a Wii. Two weeks later, i bought one for my nieces. A week after that, I bought one for myself. The thing is genius. Absolutely brilliant. At $250, it's the bargain of the bunch, and the killer app for the system is included for free. It's Wii Sports.

Playing Tennis, especially, is a true joy. You just swing the controller like it's a tennis racket! No frantic taptaptaptap on the z button! No arcane combinations to memorize! It's so intuitive and so obvious, it's like Nintendo has torn the notion of video games down to its foundation and re-built it from the ground up. The graphics are simple and cartoonish, but it doesn't matter at all. In fact, the graphics' simplicity is the ideal aesthetic for the simple game play. Nintendo's game designer savant, Shigeru Miyamoto, clearly designed the game to be fun, and then stopped before it could get cluttered up with extraneous, distracting crap. Playing the Wii for the first time felt a lot like the first time I played Space Invaders some 28 years ago. I knew immediately that the ground had shifted. The curtain of Pong had been lifted, and the logical next step was revealed.

Now, Nintendo has sold nearly as many game systems in 10 months as Microsoft has sold in almost 2 years. Unfortunately, they're having production problems as a result of component shortages, so it may remain hard to get a Wii at your local store until next Spring. Nonetheless, go to eBay right now and find one.

Delicious irony: the Wii can connect to Nintendo's online store, where you can buy old video games to play on your Wii. As a result, I now have Mario Kart 64 on my TV screen again.

Oh, and here's a review of Wii Sports that misses the point 100%. The reviewer actually complains that the Bowling game doesn't let you switch to different ball weights. Sheesh!

A Moron's Review Of Wii Sports

I know a guy who watches movies and really connects with them through the soundtrack. If he enjoys a film, you'll know because he has the soundtrack. When he listens to it, he can sort of "re-watch it" in his head. It's a perfectly valid way to approach a movie, I suppose.

For me, a good movie becomes a great movie when the visuals grab you, surprise you and, naturally, augment the storytelling. I'm especially a fan of the surreal visuals in movies like Fight Club, Being John Malkovich and even the over-hyped Matrix movies.

Foreign films are sometimes the best place to look for bizarre images and extreme camerawork. Half of the jokes in the brilliant Kung Fu Hustle are purely visual, and they serve to create a live-action world with Looney Toon physics. If you've never seen Delicatessen, with its dark, hilarious and painstakingly choreographed sequences, please do so immediately.

Anyway, what I'm actually posting about here is a Hungarian film brought to my attention by the fine folks over at Fortean Times. It's called Taxidermia, and the small trailer they have is very intriguing. I look forward to digging up a copy of it. Click the link to see for yourself.

Taxidermia movie trailer

After a long absence, during which we toured Central and South America posing as gypsies in order to gather intelligence for counterterrorism operations, we will shortly begin our blogging again!

OK, so It's a rag-doll version of George Bush, falling helplessly through a sky of semi-hard bubbles. Yeah, I know. I've already seen it, and it doesn't make much sense to me, either. But it's magically hypnotic. You must see it. You MUST.

If he gets stuck, just grab him with your mouse and give him a toss. If only it were so easy in real life!
Bubble World

Finally, Windows Media Player for the Mac is dead. DEAD, I tell you!

WMP may be the most ill-conceived, poorly-executed, unattractive, bug-filled, feature-starved piece of crap Microsoft ever foisted on Mac users. And if you ever used Word 6.0, you know that's saying something. Imagine, if you can, a video player that you can't fast-forward, rewind or even scrub through. It's literally an insult to people accustomed to the elegance of OS X.

Now if we could somehow convince Real to stop assaulting us with their craptacular RealPlayer and take the entire .rm format behind the barn for the Old Yeller treatment, we could perhaps get on with the business of recognizing Quicktime as the common-sense default for audio and video content.

Microsoft also recently announced it was abandoning Explorer for the Mac, which was something of a surprise since most people assumed it had been abandoned five years ago. Their Office suite for the Mac will continue to be made at least until 2010, according to an agreement announced at MacWorld a few days back. This is Good News For The Mac, I'm told, since it maintains Apple's credibility in business environments. It's also great news for Mac users that want bloated hackware to make even their simplest documents look like abortions mounted on popsicle sticks.

Microsoft Quietly Ditches WMP for Mac

BoingBoing links us to a Flickr set showing photos of people seeing Goatse for the first time.



What's Goatse, you ask? If you don't know, you should probably look it up in Wikipedia before you actually see it. If you haven't been desensitized by war or videogames, or if you have any fleeting wisp of innocence left inside you somewhere, I urge you to leave now, and we'll never speak of this again. The picture is the very definition of "NOT SAFE FOR WORK," and may, in fact, be not safe in ANY context.

Anyway, the pictures of people seeing Goatse are taken by a Laszlo Toth, who may or may not be a.k.a. Don Novello, who I know is a.k.a Father Guido Sarducci, the only man I've ever known to be arrested at the Vatican for "impersonating a priest." This whole thing is a sordid and postmodern waltz down the dark side of internet pop culture, really.

If you haven't seen Goatse for yourself, and you think you might want to, have a friend get a camera, and then click here.

Boing Boing: Flickr set of people seeing Goatse photo for the first time

So, if God's all-powerful, why did it take him 6 days to create the world? And why did he need to rest on day 7? Some god this is!

Mmmmm... crack!
I posted previously about my irrational giddiness in the days leading up to the release of Doom 3 on the Mac. I'm here to report that said giddiness was not, in fact, all that irrational. The game is Bee-Yoo-Tee-Ful. Absolutely gorgeous. It's like walking around inside a painting that's equal parts Geiger and Escher.

Some folks have made hay about the actual gameplay being overly simplistic. While I agree that the game doesn't have the complexity found in a game like Rainbow Six, I don't care. This is DOOM, people. DOOM. The game isn't about managing an entire squadron of characters, or using some special keyboard combination to twist an opponent into a Boston Crab. Mankind is the most ruthless, efficient predator Earth has ever seen, and this game is about becoming the hunted. We're being attacked by things we don't understand for reasons we can't comprehend, just like every species mankind ever hunted to extinction. It's the ultimate role-reversal, and that's what makes the Doom games the greatest first-person shooters ever made.



The other game I've glommed on to in recent months is Pax Galaxia, a very, very different game from Doom 3. It's a riff off of the classic Risk formula, but I find it really well executed. I don't have time to get into it right now, but I implore you to check it out. It's essentially a board game, so it doesn't have the mind-blowing eye candy of Doom 3, but it's video crack in its purest form: easy to learn, near-infinite replayability, and supremely satisfying when you win. It's available for both Macintosh and PC, there's a free demo available for download, and the full version of the game is just $20.00.
Pax Galaxia -- Dio Games

Why? Because Doom 3 comes out for Mac OSX on March 13! It's all about ancient demons fused with modern robotics and futuristic weaponry in an orgy of evil so grotesque that I can't help but get a chubby just thinking about it! w00t!

Doom 3 for OSX -- GUSH!

A mindbendingly nonsensical collection of cartoons.

Let me be clear; nothing is being made glorious sun by anything around here. It's all discontent, baby.
See what I mean?

Here's a brief reminder, for those who may have forgotten, of why we think Rick Santorum is a dimwitted and dangerous monster.

I'm pleased to report on a growing movement to inject a new word into the english language. It is:

santorum: n. "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex"

The movement is being spearheaded by gay advice columnist Dan Savage.

So do your part! The next time you're talking about anal-sex residue, be sure to call it by name -- SANTORUM!

And I had another thought, while I was writing about this dickweed. The philosophical rationale that Santorum (and others) like to hang their homophobic hats on is the notion that the Constitutional right to privacy doesn't exist. That would be very convenient for Santorum and his ilk, since the right to privacy is the only thing that stops them from outlawing not only gay sex, but also most types of straight sex, masturbation, pornography, abortion, contraception, and even things like the ability to pay with cash, and write an anonymous letter.

It seems to me that the real question isn't whether or not the Constitution contains a right to privacy, but rather if Santorum thinks it doesn't, why isn't he proposing an amendment to add one?

Santorum

This cyber-house of horrors is not to be missed. It's a collection of old recipe books and advertisements showcasing some of the most ghastly epicuriousities ever documented, along with color commentary from the archivist.


Perhaps a nice batch of Scones & Pepsodent in a Banana-Placenta sauce?

Gallery of Regrettable Food

Not what I'd call pornographic, exactly, but certainly NOT safe for work.

The cover shows a woman flaunting her armpit hair, and it only gets worse from there. Funny, yet sad.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the heads-up.
Hubba-Hubba

"'Reagan proved deficits don't matter,' Dick Cheney told Paul O'Neill during a Cabinet meeting. 'We won the (2002) midterms. This is our due.'"
Passing the Bill to our Children

Via the glorious Wikipedia, here's a nigh-exhaustive list of ethnic slurs -- perfect for your next trip outside the lily-white trailer park that you call home.

My favorite: "Wonder Bread Wop -- U.S Italians; an Italian that acts white (does not make home-made pasta, did not grow up in italian neighborhood, does not have accent or does not use Italian-American slang, etc.)."
List of ethnic slurs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There's a site called howstuffworks, and it totally kicks ass. It has illustrated, informative and accessible articles on any number of subjects. Some favorites:

• How Lock Picking Works
  
• How the Eden Project Works
  
• How Chupacabras Work
  
• How Going Over Niagara Works
  

That last entry has a number of helpful hints for those dreaming of going over the falls in a barrel.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I want to talk about price-fixing, price-gouging, disinformed consumers and dirty politics. I want to talk about the De Beers diamond cartel.

Christ, but I hate the whole notion of a jewelry store. I shudder at the thought of either giving or receiving expensive jewelry as a gift. I wear a bracelet made out of a ball chain similar to that you'd find in a toilet tank or attached to military dog tags. I bought it at a hardware store. And I'm always on the lookout for stud earrings in funny shapes, like a bomb or a cockroach. That's about it. Spend hundreds or (gasp!) thousands of dollars on a necklace or a pair of earrings? Not a chance.

When I graduated high school, my father wanted to buy me a really nice watch and have it engraved and all that crap. I spent a considerable amount of time talking him out of it. I wanted a sunroof for my truck instead, and it's a choice I don't regret. The manufactured and over-marketed sentimentality of "heirlooms" is pure crap.

Oh, I won't blather on any further. Just take a look at the entry about De Beers and see for yourself how the jewelry business is so much bullshit.
How Diamonds Work

Wired.com has a list of "101 Ways to Save the Internet." Personally, I didn't realize it was in danger of extinction.

Nevertheless, some of these are good suggestions, such as "Dump the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Sadly, some of these are very bad ideas as well ("Add Mobile Numbers to [Google's] Phone Book" and "Unleash Vigilante Justice on Spammers"). But almost all are at least interesting. My favorite: "Appoint Larry Lessig to the Supreme Court."

Of course, the reality is that when Bush is through stacking the Supreme Court in his 2nd term, Lessig will be lucky if he's not arrested as a terrorist.

Oooo! I can feel the anger rising! Must... switch off... brain...
101 Ways to Save the Internet

This is what the internet was made for. Somebody found a hand-drawn poster alerting the world to a lost frog, and made a funny web page riffing on it. Now I'm haunted by the defiant and quasi-threatening tone of the poster and the police-style mug shot of the frog in question.

"P.S. I'll find my frog
Who took my frog
Who found my frog"

This kid ain't taking shit from nobody.



Thanks to boingboing.net for the heads-up.
ps. i'll find my frog

Oooo! Those homophobes make me so MAD!

In short: A high school kid wears a shirt saying he's gay and he's proud. School officials send him home because the shirt might "offend somebody." Student points to all the anti-gay stickers and t-shirts on display at the school. It makes no difference. The shirt might "cause controversy."

The ACLU has stepped in to bitch-slap the morons in charge. What the fuck were they thinking? Here's the press release:
ACLU Scolds Missouri High School for Censoring Gay Student

Additionally, You can click here to donate money to the ACLU, who have been overworked and underpaid even more than usual during this catastrophic Bush presidency.

This is a snippet from The Onion, shortly after we invaded Iraq:

---------------
Dead Iraqi Would Have Loved Democracy

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Baghdad resident Taha Sabri, killed Monday in a U.S. air strike on his city, would have loved the eventual liberation of Iraq and establishment of democracy, had he lived to see it, his grieving widow said.
---------------

Now, John Hopkins University has concluded that 100,000 civilians have been killed as a result of our invasion. That's 97,000 more paople than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, with which Iraq had nothing to do.

It's ironic that the only WMDs ever found there were the ones that we attacked them with.

More irony: The Bloomberg story linked to here notes, without comment, that "the majority of the casualties occured after the end of major hostilities," which, by definition, simply cannot be true.

Fortunately, Americans still have a chance to begin fixing this mind-warping clusterfuck by voting for the Kerry/Edwards ticket this coming Tuesday.
Bloomberg.com:U.S.

The man who wrote the iconic 1970's hit "Still The One" has complained because the Bush campaign has been using it without his permission, and without paying royalties. In true Republican fashion, they promised to stop using it, only to continue using it just hours later.

We look forward to the RIAA prosecuting the president for stealing music.
CNN.com - Bush camp drops theme song

Also on our radar gaydar is an interesting site that asks the question "Is Bush gay?" The answer may surprise you.

Or not.

If you use a Mac running OS X, you'll be pleased to know that there's an application that generates random country music lyrics. Stupid? Yes. But addictive. My favorite thus far:

I met her at a truck stop in September
I can still recall that burlap bra she wore
She was smellin' kind of funny near Poughkeepsie,
And I knew I'd have to scrape her off the floor;
The judge declared I'd swear off booze forever;
She said to me man wasn't meant to fly;
But who'd have thought she'd black out with no clothes on;
She sent a hired thug to say goodbye.

VersionTracker.com

This just in from boingboing.net:

Person 1: Knock Knock.
Person 2: Who's there?
Person 1: Control freak.
Person 1: Now you say, "Control freak who?"

Hernia-inducing guffaws ensue.

You've GOT to be kidding me.

Below, you'll see an actual absentee ballot being used in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Let's say you wanted to vote for George Bush (god forbid!). Which box would you check? Probably the one highlighted here in green, yes?



Wrong. To vote for George Bush, you'd need to check the box highlighted in RED. (box 4, like the arrow says). The John Kerry box is in blue.

Have we, as a nation, lost our fucking minds? How did the world's greatest democracy forget the recipe for holding an election? Does anybody remember the clusterfuck in Florida 4 years ago? We're not just quibbling here about nuances of design taste; we're talking about the legitimacy of a presidential election!

Here's a picture of the recent Afghani presidential ballot:



Notice how it's designed so that even people who can't read can still be confident that they're voting for the person they want? It lists the candidate's name, a photo of that candidate, the name of the political party they represent, and the symbol of that political party. And there, perfectly aligned with all that information, is an oversized white box into which one can put a big fact "X." Those white boxes aren't all jumbled up at the bottom of the page like some brain-teaser on the back of a cereal box. They aren't on some separate piece of paper somewhere else.

And these people have never held an election before! Ever! Not even once! They were run by the Taliban, and before that, the Soviets, and before that, they had a fucking KING!

Designing a ballot doesn't require the assistance of Edward Tufte, it just requires one rational person to design it, and a small group comprised of other rational people should be able to critique it and sign off on the design. The procedure is essentially the same one employed when the folks down in Human Resources write a memo amending the office dress code. Isn't that an attainable goal? Isn't that bar low enough even for the stupidest of election officials?

Alright, alright. I know. I'm blowing my top. I'll be quiet now. Just one more thing. Different topic: The election's about a week away. Keep your eyes peeled for Republican Dirty Tricks. As election day approaches and Rove starts to panic...

Thanks to H8ful favorite electoral-vote.com for the assist on this one.

Here's David Letterman's Top 10 List from Thursday night, as presented by Red Sox ace Curt Schilling.
Boston.com / Sports / Baseball / Red Sox / Stage presence

In 1986, Dan Rather was assaulted on a Manhattan street, knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked while his assailant demanded to know "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" Pretty bizarre crap.

This gave us, among other things, the R.E.M. hit of the same name.

Now, though, the mystery is solved, and the culprit has been identified! You'll be shocked to learn that it was a mental defective who thought the media were beaming signals into his head.
Rather Knows The Frequency

Sure, it's not like they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with an alligator, but giving CPR to a dog still makes these firefighters quality boyfriend material.
Firefighters revive dog with mouth-to-snout CPR

UPDATE: An observant HT reader points us to a similar story involving a parrot. Go figure!