It's Fall...

And with that comes pumpkin farms, and corn mazes. Last weekend I went to this pumpkin farm in Wisconsin to meet my brother's family for the afternoon. The highlight of the day was a jaunt into this maze. The corn was 10 feet tall, and the maze was pretty complex.

They had a vantage point in the middle of the maze where you could get above the corn. It's amazing to see the complexities of the designs used in the mazes. I suppose they use computers and GPS to map out the designs. Halloween is just around the corner (at which time I will be on vacation!)

My reaction to existing in the Bible belt.

http://www.talkorigins.org/

Believe whatever you want but educate yourself and keep your crap out the schools. If you want your kid to learn voodoo and daedra blood worship that's fine with me but teach it at home and keep it out of institutions of learning where standards and scientific principles still mean something.

I keep getting surprised and blindsided by this stuff. It seems to happen most often in situations where it would be inappropriate for me to jump up and say "I can refute that statement and all the rhetoric that follows it with logic and the lightest dusting of critical thought."

I know there are some of you who don't agree with my views on this matter and that's cool. It's not my job or my place to say there's no God or that God didn't have a hand in how the world was formed. I'm fine with that. On the other hand, sometimes people just step right out on the end of the plank and dare you to dunk them and you can't and that is frustrating.

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I'm out. Done.

Some asshole... and it's increasingly likely some self described Christian asshole found himself inspired, this weekend, to spray some manner of chemical irritant into the room at a local Dayton Mosque where the children and babies wait while their parents are praying.  Apparently they've decided that all believers in Islam are terrorists and decided to become terrorists themselves in order to combat them.  This wretched, scum sucking, waste of sperm... this unfit for use as an organ donor, maggot infested pustule on the taint of the town I call home decided to attack children.  I don't want him killed.  I want him burned... covered in oil and lit on fire.  Keep him alive, certainly.  I don't believe in capital punishment.  On the other hand, for a fucker that attacks children there's no reason he can't be left with just the minimum equipment needed to stay alive and then locked in a pitch dark room and left to gurgle his regrets until his biological machinery wears out.  Maybe they could leave him some unscarred skin on his back so he can feel his cold metal table, and maybe they could leave him one working eye so he could see the searing light come on when the nurse comes to replace his IV and empty his colostomy bag.  He certainly doesn't need arms or legs.  He  only needs one kidney and one lung.  Hell... who needs a body.  He can be a wad of organs in a plastic sack.  As long as he's still alive it's not violating any of my principles. 

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Pandemic, I miss you.

I bought Force Unleashed.  I got home and watched the G4 review before playing it.  I had to read other reviews to confirm what I saw.  I returned Force Unleashed unopened.  I'm a huge Star Wars fan but gone are the days where merely being about Star Wars is enough to interest me in a product.  Lucas, If it's crap I don't want it...  

...even if it's Star Wars crap.

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When you wish...

I went to Disneyworld last fall with my family. I enjoyed it so much that I have decided to go back again this fall. Last year it was with little kids in tow (my niece and nephew), but this year it is all grown ups. It should be a lot of fun.

One of the reasons for going back in the fall is for the food and wine festival which is run every fall at Epcot. Foods, wines, and beers from all over the world.

So I officially put the vacation time off in my work calendar, which makes it official, although I paid for the vacation package weeks ago. Just when it is getting cold up here, I will be heading for an extended summer. I can't wait!

Gas Shortages Being Obfuscated?

Granted, I'm not exactly the most ravenous news consumer but between Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Google News, The BBC World Service, and NPR I feel like I pretty much get a whiff of everything that's going on. Still, I had no idea that only the state of Kentucky separated me (on Southern Ohio) from major gas shortages and an ever increasing riotous freakout. Nashville, Atlanta, and many other cities in the Southeast are experiencing a gasoline shortage that's quickly reaching serious and likely extremely problematic proportions. Has the press completely missed this or was I having a mini-stroke when it was being talked about? A casual mention from the Roaming Gnome is the only reason I'm even aware that this is happening. Is the press keeping quiet to prevent a national panic? Is that their job? Shouldn't there be a national panic? Wouldn't that inspire some change? Who would have the kind of influence it would take to keep it under wraps and also want to keep this quiet? Well... the Bush administration...

...

...

...

Am I crazy? Let me go get my tinfoil hat...

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Mehaffie's Pies

For the 2 of you readers that live in the Dayton area, have you been to Mehaffie's?  You've probably seen it (Smithville and Linden just south of 35.)  $7.50 per pie!  Not the best pie I've ever had.  I had two baker grandmas after all.  It is, however, the best pie I ever had for $7.50 by a wide margin.

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Youtube. Teacher. Mother. Secret Lover.

If you don't find this cute or hilarious you are dead inside.

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Why oh why?

When I update shozu on my iPhone, does it always break my set up for blogger so that I have to re add it? Frustrating to say the least. Migration of new versions are supposed to be painless!!!!

Still Alive

Zombie need sleep. Fuck brains. Zombie no need brains. Brains only distract for tedious work and sleeping. Zombie lack ability create. Zombie sentence structure need work. Zombie refers to himself in 3rd person. Zombie dead sexy.

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Ike got depressed and then tried to kill me.

Long after Ike had been downgraded to a "tropical depression" it decided to shimmy its way up the midwest and fuck a bunch of people who didn't deserve it. The bulk of it passed right over Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Western Michigan. People in those areas got a lot of rain and a hell of a thunderstrom, I think, but I don't know that they got anything like what we got here in Southwestern Ohio. Nearly (or maybe over) a million people in SW Ohio are without power after nearly 16 hours of sustained winds, which reached tornado proportions (without the tornado), and took off with anything not nailed down. Trees and parts of trees are everywhere. Telephone poles, street lamps, and billboards everywhere are just blown over. Nothing hit them. They just blew away. I've seen a few roofless buildings (including the main building where our storage warehouse is located), a few tipped over cars/trucks, a tipped over boat still strapped to its trailer, a few stoplights blown hundreds of feet clear of the intersections they once governed, a crap load of accidents caused by stupid people who don't realize you are supposed to stop at intersections where the traffic lights aren't working, and my boss saw a Cesna upside down on the ground in Springboro. Throughout it all I've noticed one consistent thing that is irksome but also hilarious. Apparently people from Ohio don't think high winds are dangerous unless there's an actual tornado warning. They will happily stand outside with their hands shielding their eyes to gawk and wonder at the carnage as tree branches as big as my van threaten to pass me on the highway and roofing shingles whip around their scalps like pissed off Apache. Apparently, as long as the sky is blue and the sun is shining they don't think the flying cows and flailing power lines are signs that they should get their hayseed asses to shelter.

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Ike Hunt Hear You

According to the weather.com 10 day forcast the weather over the weekend will be rainy but mild.  I'm on call so that seems good to me.  However, the ever changing 3 day path projection of Ike seems to disagree with weather.com.  Color me concerned.

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Storms

I like storms.  I like them a lot... when I'm not on call.  I stuck, right now, in an eddy of indecision.  If I go to bed I'll get called out immediately but if I stay up and wait for the call it won't come.  Stupid ironic job...

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I've been cheating....

I have another blog. One where I do nothing but post photographs. I've mentioned it here before and am mentioning it here again because nobody ever goes there or comments on any of the posts.

I post there often. More often than here, in fact, and each photo has a comment explaining it or remarking upon it. Also, at the bottom of my other blog, you can listen to my 8tracks mixtape and chat with me via Digsby. Everytime I update the blog or the mix tape it's announced on my twitter feed.

It's a real tornado of awesome and you're totally missing out.

M.F. JR.

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Apples and String Theory

I'm going to hit two completely different subjects.

First, Sarah Palin. I don't buy that her son Trig is actually her daughter's and I don't really think it matters since her 17 year old daughter is pregnant anyhow. I've seen predictions the daughter will have an "accidental miscarriage." What trash. Some people like to assume the worst about people. I think Sarah Palin is genuine in her belief in pro-life. I don't think that makes her less scary but regarding abortion there's little evidence she's a hypocrite. However, her 17 year old pregnant daughter does kind of take a crap on the whole "abstinence only" sex education bullshit that she supports. Obviously, here daughter's pregnancy doesn't prove that abstinence only education doesn't work because it's an isolated anecdotal case and can't be logically used to win the argument. However, since we all know that abstinence only education is ineffective and nothing more than an attempt by self appointed morality police to bring back an innocent past that never actually existed in order to make people easier to control we can take the opportunity to lean back, point a finger, and say "Ha-ha!" Also, If anybody needs something to do, go back through the soundbites from Republican talking heads from back when Mrs. Clinton was still in the race and drag up every instance in which they attacked her by saying that she was just an ambitious harpe bitch who'd do anything to get ahead, or similar. All those comments should be shoved back in their faces because Palin makes Clinton look like Princess fucking Toadstool or the love child of Anne Frank and Mohandis Ghandi (I know that's messed up but Ghandi liked them young... I didn't make him a pervert). Seriously. If you were a republican who disliked Clinton for being a power hungry bitch then Sarah Palin should scare the living hell out of you. I didn't know anything about Palin until she was named in the neo-con veepstakes. Since then I've done some reading, trying to keep an open mind of course, through pro and con articles including many statements from people who know her personally (including more than one person who said something like "I'm only willing to speak up because she can't touch me. Everyone else is afraid to say anything because they're afraid she'll come after them in some way or another.") My conclusion is that there are only two people ff the top of my mind that could have been a worse choice. Michelle Bachman and Heinrich Himmler's closest living ancestor. It's possible, though, that my assumption that Heinrich Himmler's heir is as evil as old Heinrich himself is possibly faulty. Perhaps Himler's heir would have been better.

2nd I've come into possession of a file. It claims to be a 1080p version of Episode IV. I've watched it and compared it side by side with the DVD. It's definately not an upscaled dvd. It's much better than that. I don't know that it's full 1080p but I could believe that it's 1080p that's been upscaled from 720p. Every once in a while, though, I catch some detail that almost convinces me that it really is a full 1080p version. I wish I was enough of an expert to know how to find out. What I'm really confused about, though, is the origin of this file. The movies have not been released on HDDVD or BluRay. What was the source for this file? Anybody have any ideas? No, I will not share it or give you a copy. I will not say where I got it. I'm trying not to get in trouble with the MPAA (though, it'd be bad form for them to come after me over this since I have like every version ever released of the movies from VHS on up (I even had episode 1 on VHS!) and it's not like I wouldn't rush at breakneck speed to buy it on BluRay if I could. I'd buy a PS3 to watch it on, if I had to. My loyalty to Star Wars outshines my distaste for Sony. That's saying something.

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Team Fortress 2: Bureaucrats invade everything.

Valve's Doug Lombardi stated that they were working on getting the additional content out to console users and that there would be an announcement soon. That was 5.21.08, already over 6 months after the release of The Orange box. It was rumored that Valve didn't want to charge for the content and Microsoft wasn't having it. On August 22nd Lombardi told Kotaku (I haven't read the Kotaku article, only other things that referenced it) that the content was, indeed, coming to consoles and that there would be announcements soon. Wait.. that's the same thing he said before. There was one new thing. Valve lost and Microsoft will be charging for the content via Xbox Live and, supposedly, the content will hit before the end of the year. Great... new downloadable content for a great game that was released nearly a year ago (way over a year by the time the new content is released). I blame Valve. If you're going to string us all along, Valve, you should at least stick to your guns. If you'd have given in to Microsoft right away I could have paid for and been playing the new content months ago. Does anybody other than me even care? They've all moved on to other games. People who really loved TF2 that much probably bought it on P.C. and have been playing the new content for month after month... ...for free. The xbox live games get fewer and fewer and the likelihood that I'll get anybody on my friends list to actually play the game with me get's less and less likely. TF2 was the most fun I've had with a multiplayer game since Star Wars Battlefront and yet I might skip the downloadable content. I'll have Fable by then... and even if I don't I'll be the only one left who's interested in playing and I don't want to play a multiplayer game by myself. I don't want to play it will the other 3 strangers that are still playing on Xbox Live either. They are probably all unattented pre-teens and tweens who will spent the whole game making fart sounds into the mic, or yelling "Nigger" and "Faggot" like their overstimulated and underparented asses haven't overused the words so much in their lame little online rebellions that they've become meaningless. Don't you have to be at least 13? Don't these parents watch these kids? What parent thinks it's OK for their kids to play TF2 or GoW online? Do they know what these ESRB ratings indicate? Do they care? All parents... do me a favor. Sneak up on your kid playing online and listen to what he's saying into his microphone. Then break all his fingers so he'll never play again. He'll end up in foster care, unable to annoy me by yelling "Fuck!" every 2 seconds on Xbox Live and you'll be in jail where you belong for not parenting your kid.


P.S. Inappropriate anger my ass!

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DIY Web Comic: Add your own stick figures!

Yahoo The Zapper
9:19 PM chase scene
9:20 PM and it's daytime
9:20 PM noon
9:20 PM then they round a corner
9:20 PM and it's like nightvision past 11PM dark ouside
9:20 PM in the span of 45 seconds with no explanation

Yahoo MadHobbit
9:21 PM oh yeah - you told me about that
9:26 PM so other than poor editing?

Yahoo The Zapper
9:27 PM story thin
9:28 PM why do we always assume that some dork who is out of the girl's league can suddenly involve her in something dangerous and now they'll be in love forever and share a strong romantic bond?
9:29 PM and why does anybody give a shit in a movie about FIGHTING ROBOTS!
9:30 PM i want a movie about fighting robots that's robots fighting from beginning to end and the only hint a love story is every 20 minutes when the fight builds to a climax involving nuclear weapons the corresponding calm is filled by topless women pillow fighting on roller skates for 2 minutes before the fighting starts again
9:30 PM now THAT's a movie
9:31 PM speaking of which i saw babylon A.D.
9:32 PM not so bad.. except the ending failed to sew up any of the loose ends or actually fully expose the plot.. which sucked
9:32 PM because there was no sequel pontential either
9:33 PM so in the end it was like a dumbed down action movie version of children of men... which, although a far superior movie, was not nearly as fun and not coincedentally has far fewer hot blondes with french accents

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