Good Knight

Bono got knighted!


Not bad for a guy who spent the 1990s jumping out of a 40-foot lemon!

Profound Thoughts from Spam

In my spam email folder this morning I noticed one with this subject line:

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always outweighed the demand.

Kind of a profound thought for a spam message. Of course, the point of the spam was to sell me a seven-hour erection for pleasure my woman longtime... so I guess the whole thing was more like seeing the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast.

I don't do Marvel, part 2

From the Boston Globe, on the recent demise of Marvel's Captain America:

When Superman died in 1993, it was at the hands of a massive, spiky supervillain named Doomsday, and only after a cataclysmic battle that demolished whole sections of Metropolis.

When Captain America met his apparent end this week, it was at the hands of a sniper who left the venerable superhero ingloriously sprawled on the steps of a courthouse.

Quite a difference -- and one that illustrates a downsizing of the idea of the superhero and a broader change in the world of comic books.

No, all it illustrates is how much Marvel sucks if their main hero can get taken down by one puny bullet! Recall the scene in Superman Returns where Clark takes the same bullet directly to the eyeball and doesn't even blink! Booooyaaaahhhh!!

(Sorry, had myself a fanboy moment there.)

It's Meat, Not Cars

In 2006, the United Nations said that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.

It would be better for the planet to stop eating meat than it would be to buy a hybrid car.

Senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Henning Steinfeld reported that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.”

Also reported on the Huffington Post, in this article titled Vegetarian is the New Prius.

Last Day

Today is the last day of my first "real job." This was the best first job I think anyone could ask for. I made a lot of friends and genuinely liked working here.

My new job begins on Tuesday. For the first time in my life, I will be a commuter. Driving to the commuter rail, riding into Boston, working a 9-hour day, and trekking home with the crowds at 5:30. A totally new experience.

I'm sad to leave but I'm excited to start. My anxiety about the new job has worn off. Now all I'm worrying about is leaving myself enough time to get to the train in the morning.

Bye, CIO and CSO!

300

Ben, you said you enjoyed "300"?

Boston.com had a well-written review of the m0vie. The review was fun to read, but the reviewer said the movie was crap inbetween action sequences, which are the only good part.

Here is one of the best lines from the write-up, followed by a few lines that confused me. Does it mean "300" was homoerotic the way Troy was?

It's a testament to the inherent cinematic depth of Miller's graphic novels that the movies based on them are so vicariously dull. "Sin City" was like watching your buddy get a lap dance. "300" is often like watching that buddy play a video game.

"300" is about a bunch of hot white metrosexuals -- those pecs, those abs, that hair -- against a million freaky nonwhite club kids. In other words, the gays. King Xerxes's hangout is full hookah-puffers, derelicts, and girls making it with girls (let's call them lesbians). According to this outrageously flagrant movie, the Spartans didn't just die for Glory, Duty, and Destiny. They died to keep the Hot Gates from turning into another gay disco.

Mike is dragging me to see it tonight. I'll let you know what I think.

Springfield

The Simpsons movie, releasing this summer, will open first in Springfield. But which one?

A contest has been developed in which towns of Springfield in states across the country will compete to be chosen to host the opening of the animated movie.

Weird NJ

Before I was a teenager who spent weekends visiting Weird NJ ghost roads and abandoned structures with my friends, I was a kid in the passenger seat of my mom's station wagon.

We took Rt. 517 to Rt. 206 to go to antique shops or the Ledgewood Mall because it was the only mall with a Marshall's, which has always been my mom's favorite.

The highlight of this trip was passing an old man who sat in a folding chair outside his rundown house. The chair was inched right up to the place where the asphalt of Rt. 206 became the grass of his front yard.

No matter the season, when you drove by, he'd be there. Just sitting and waving.

You felt like the only one who knew about it, about him, until someone else brings him up and the shared experience instantly bonds you. "*You* know the waving guy? *I* know the waving guy! Why's he there?"

We never found out why he was there. But he always was. Every single time we drove by. And so it was weird when, one day on the way home from Ledgewood, we stopped at the grocery store that was on the way. We never went to any grocery stores other than the one in our town and so it felt foreign and strange. My mom and brother and I were there with my mom's best friend and neighbor Beth Leicht and her daughters. On our way out, Waving Willy, as he is known, was on his way in and he whistled at Beth.

So, he did leave his roadside chair on occassion. Probably more often than we realized. But he was always there when we passed and we never passed without slowing to wave and honk.

The summer before I left for college, I was hauling up Rt. 206 towards the Succasunna movie theater to meet my friends. Rounding the corner before Willy's, I started looking for him, as my brain was trained to do. You could see him long before you passed him. His chair was there, but he wasn't. It was covered in flowers and trinkets. Waving Willy had passed away. The papers ran a feature about him and called him a local legend.

Weird NJ magazine has covered him several times, from their initial discovery of him to his death. I was surprised to see his photo in the magazine when I first encountered it. He was mentioned in a section called The Cult of Wavers. New Jersey, it seems, has had several roadside wavers.

Willy's chair is still there. One of the most recognizable trinkets on it is a big red heart. I was just a kid, so he seemed funny, but became part of my memories. I imagine that for some, having him as a constant probably felt good. I think I'd find it hard to feel alone if I could wave to the same person every day, even if we never shared a word.

Pit bull Ban

Ben: Maggie, what were you saying about the pitbulls?

Maggie: I heard that California was trying to ban Pit bulls even though breed-specific banning is currently illegal in 11 states. There is some legislation addressing this.

Aside from what a terrible precedent it would set to be able to ban a particular breed of anything, it feels like crooked thinking. Pitt bulls have a bad reputation because of people. They are one of those breeds that people think are killers, and so people treat them that way. When Pitt bull owners try to make their dog tough, that just means they're abusing it.

The Pittie Love rescue group here in Massachusetts says that Pit bulls are "one of the most abused and misunderstood dogs of all time."

Pitt bulls end up spending a lot of their time chained in backyards and that isolation drives them nuts, just as it does to all other breeds. The more isolated they are while chained in back yards, the more likely they are to attack someone.

Pit bulls aren't like other dogs. While Labs were bred to retrieve birds and St. Bernards were bred as rescue dogs, for hundreds of years Pit bulls have been bred to fight other dogs. They do have the potential to be aggressive. But Pittie love says:

Pit bulls have superior physical and mental characteristics that make them excellent partners for responsible, active, and caring owners. On the other hand, these same outstanding qualities can make them a little difficult to handle for people who don't have a lot of experience with dog ownership, or for those who don't understand the breed very well. Luckily, pit bulls are very responsive to training and eager to lease. It is therefore strongly recommended to take them to obedience classes.

Every breed has problems that adopters should be aware of. For example, people think Huskies are great dogs because they seem so smart in movies. But Huskies were bred to work and if they don't get A LOT of exercise then owners will have A LOT of behavioral problems with their husky.

The flip side of the banning issue that if state governments don't address the fears that result from dog bites and attacks, people may take matters into their own hands. When Googling about this, I saw several references to incidents where people killed neighbors' or stray Pit bulls with golf clubs or guns because they were afraid of them.

Legislation should be addressing animal neglect and abuse, dog fighting, and other cruelty.

CNN

Has anyone else noticed that CNN's homepage hasn't updated in almost a week?

What's with that? I like to fill out their poll. Not only that, but I went there looking for information on the newest reason to hate Ann Coulter.

Come on, CNN, don't make me get my news from Fox.

My new specs

Here tickey tickey

Today was the second or third time in a month that the ticket-taker on the train didn't come around to take tickets. While a free ride is, of course, a great way to start the day, I can't help but think that if they actually collected the fees, they wouldn't have to keep raising the price of the T.

But I guess it all works out in the end.