Al-Qaeda type?

Hell, I've had Al-Qaeda-type girlfriends!

Gary Trudeau has been doing this for years and he can still make me laugh with his take on situations.

While I wasn’t really around for much of the Vietnam era (being born in ’73, I was techically “around” for some of it, but I can’t say that my memories of the time are all too clear), many of my impressions of those years stem from the hours I spent as a kid devouring my dad’s collection of Doonesbury books. Trudeau, along with Breathed (until his retirement), has continued to give me many laughs through the years as I’ve grown and kept reading. That pefect blend of cynicism, satire, and a keen eye for seeing the humor amidst the tragedy is all too rare. It’s harder for me to keep up with him these days, as I tend to eschew print media for the web, and don’t always remember to check in to his site daily, but I do try to keep an eye on what he’s doing when I remember.

He hasn’t let me down yet — here’s hoping he’s got many years worth of cartoons still in him.

India vs. New Zealand

Ever wondered what would happen if an English sports writer lost it while posting to a live website while covering a cricket match?

Well, okay, neither did I. But now we know…

It’s really simple: India are already through, New Zealand have to win.

Meanwhile, have you ever thought WHAT SORT OF LIFE IS THIS AND WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING BOARDING A TRAIN FOR MOORGATE AT 6.30 IN THE MORNING AND THEN STANDING AROUND FOR AGES WAITING FOR A TUBE WHILE STARING AT A SIGN TELLING YOU THAT IF YOU WAIT FOR FOUR MINUTES YOU CAN BOARD A TRAIN TO UXBRIDGE I’D RATHER WAIT FOUR HOURS FOR A JOURNEY WITH THE GRIM REAPER QUITE FRANKLY…

The entire thing is so worth reading. First the initial outburst, then the rest of the article is cricket commentary mixed with his responses to his readers’ messages. Wonderfully hilarious, and very honest.

If all sports writing were like this, I might pay attention more often.

The speech follows no logical pattern

From Tom Tomorrow:

The entire situation is reminiscent, as someone pointed out on Atrios, of the old Star Trek episode “Patterns of Force” (in which) Federation history professor John Gill becomes the drugged leader of a Nazi planet:

GILL (seen on TV at a rally): If we fulfill our own greatness,
that will all be ended. Working together —

SPOCK: Captain, the speech follows no logical pattern. Random sentences strung together.

MCCOY: He looks drugged, Jim, almost in a cataleptic state.

GILL: …reach our goal, and we will reach that goal. (cheering) Every thought…directed toward a goal. This planet…can become a paradise, if we are willing to pay the price. As each cell in the body…works with discipline and harmony for the good…of the entire being —

Happy Space Alien Day!

Dad sent me a link to an amusing story today about how New Mexico Representative Dan Foley has proposed legislation to create Space Alien Day — to “enhance relationships among all the citizens of the cosmos, known and unknown.”

Amusing enough on its own, but the kicker for me was the final quote from Rep. Foley, which goes down in my book as one of my favorite political quotes ever…

If we can capitalize on something that did or did not happen in 1947 then it can help the entire state.

Oh, the number of times in my life — past, present, and future — when it’d be so nice to capitalize on something that did or did not happen!

Star Trek personality test

Wil pointed to a Star Trek Personality Test based on the Myers-Briggs system. I wasn’t sure what to expect for an answer, but apparently the author did a surprisingly good job of translating the Myers-Briggs questions to a Star Trek format, as I ended up scoring as an ISFP — the same result as when I took an online version of the actual Myers-Briggs test!

Anyway, here’s what the Star Trek test said about me…

Read more

By the infinite dick of God

I first found this on the ‘net ages ago, and used to have a copy somewhere on my hard drive. I’d forgotten about it for a long time, then the phrase “by the infinite dick of God” popped into my head tonight, and I decided to search this out and preserve it for posterity. Enjoy.

I am forever astonished by how many mistakes could be avoided if people would just think about what they are saying. This is especially the case in religion. An example of this is the assumption that God is male. Obviously God is a woman, because God doesn’t have a penis. The proof of this is by omission: nowhere in the Bible is there a reference to the “Divine Penis,” and I am sure that if God were a man He would talk about it somewhere. No real man could go on for hundreds of pages about himself without mentioning that thing once or twice.

Upon remarking on the above observation, I was notified by someone that he heard the oath “by the infinite dick of God” around Caltech, though “semi-infinite” would be more precise. Unfortunately, this further muddles the issue. I am thankful that the ancient theologians did not realize this point, otherwise they would have wasted much time in debating this actually nonexistent part of God. I can see it all now…

During the fall of Rome, St. Augustine referred to “God’s mighty male member, wider than the Coliseum, more powerful than Zeus’s tool, able to take Athena in a single bound.” Then in the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, in an attempt to reconcile St. Augustine’s remark with the rediscovered writings of Zeno, declared that the length of God’s immense organ must be semi-infinite. But then Rene Descartes, after spending a lifetime in philosophical thought, stated that since God is greater than that which can be conceived, God’s measureless masculinity must be truly infinite, because an infinite length is much longer (in fact, infinitely longer) than a semi-infinite length.

However, the followers of Aquinas immediatedly countered with a simple argument: “If God’s tree is infinite, then what holds it up? Certainly one end of God’s tremendous tree must be firmly rooted in his loins.” Also, a minor philosopher (whose name I forget, but who liked perfect islands) argued “If God’s monument to life were infinite then there must be a fig leaf whose extent is also infinite. But then there is something infinite that is not part of God, which contradicts the assumption that God is the greatest. The only solution is that God’s rod must be semi-infinite, so that He can hide it by turning His back to the world and looking over His shoulder.”

Since both sides had such valid points, for a while the discussion reached a stalemate.

Then the great German philosopher Hegel attempted to reconcile the issue with his sword-plowshare theory, where he proposed that the infinite and semi-infinite are actually two manifestations of the same thing. Though it seemed impossible, Hegel claimed that God does occasionally beat His infinite sword into a semi-infinite plowshare. This theory gained great popularity, but it didn’t really solve anything primarily because no one could understand it.

Some time afterwards, the rise of non-Euclidian geometry seemed to favor the Cartesians when it showed that God’s wondrous worm could be infinite in this dimension, yet be attached to Him in a higher dimension. However this solution was not totally satisfactory either, because then there isn’t a preferred direction to God’s protrusion in this dimension.

The answer to the debate had to wait till the beginning of the 20th century, when Georg Cantor, attempting to cope with his strict religious upbringing, proved that a semi-infinite member is just as long as an infinite member; therefore God’s member may be semi-infinite and yet be no shorter than an infinite member. Cantor’s colleagues ridiculed him by showing that his theorems also proved that a finite real dimension is commensurable with an infinite one, suggesting that anyone’s piddling plow is just as long as God’s prodigious pecker.

This paradox was solved only with the advent of quantum theory, which demonstrated that the real world corresponds to the set of integers rather than the set of reals. In that case Cantor’s theory showed that the finite phallus was infact infinitely shorter than the infinite one, though the theory still retained the property of the commensurability between the infinite and the semi-infinite. So today mathematicians agree that Cantor was correct, finally and conclusively demolishing the central argument of the Cartesian theory.

Thus we see that if St. Augustine had thought about the nature of God’s member, only after several centuries of the application of logic and mathematics and physics would a definite answer be reached. And even then the answer would be wrong, because the very basis of the argument is nonexistent. For the reason described at the beginning of this treatise, we the faithful know that by simply examining the Word of God it is obvious that any discussion in this area is meaningless, since God hath no member.

— Robert Mokry

Need some free shoes?

Need a new pair of shoes? Head down to the beach, if you’re in the Pacific Northwest…

Enough soggy Nike basketball shoes to outfit every high school team in the state are drifting through the Pacific Ocean toward Alaska after spilling from a container ship off Northern California.

There’s just one hitch to finding a free pair.

“Nike forgot to tie the laces, so you have to find mates,” said Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who tracks sneakers, toys and other flotsam across the sea. “The effort’s worth it ’cause these Nikes have only been adrift a few months. All 33,000 are wearable!”

A beachcomber told Ebbesmeyer about the shoe spill after finding two new blue-and-white EZW men’s shoes washed up near Queets on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula on Jan. 9 and 16.

Unfortunately, they were sizes 10 1/2 and 8 1/2. Both were lefts.

(From the Anchorage Daily News, via Dad)