Horrible title for a new story

Check it out

Thanks to Geekologie for pointing it out.

Quick update on Illegal Situation

Original Story

"A judge today blocked the controversial Farmers Branch anti-illegal immigrant ordinance from taking effect tomorrow."

At the moment, they just have a fourteen day hold on this law, so the issue is still very much on the table. Truthfully, it got so down to the wire that I thought they would actually enforce this law. I am happy that they at least put this on hold because it is a really stupid and ridiculous idea. Not to mention selfish, since Farmers Branch is just trying to kick there problem into another city.


News story referenced

Think your day sucks?

The city I live in (Carrollton) just broke there main water lines. So for an hour we have not had running water (Toilets being the big thing). My bosses just confirmed that the entire city is being affected by this and it will not be fixed today. So tonight when I go home I will not have a working toilet, hot water, or shower. Same goes for tomorrow morning. So be happy in the fact that you don't have to worry about this.

Banned T.V. Commercials

This one is my favorite, but be sure to check out the others



Thirsty Baby

Shark Attack

Printer Commercial

Bikini commercial


Also, check out the Fake Mastercard Video(Language NSFW)



Via YouTube

Weird & Interesting Facts

Humans were first infected with the HIV virus in the 1930s.

Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.

Women blink twice as many times as men do.

We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening. Layers of cartilage in the joints gets compressed during the day.

The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They appear when the child is 2-6 years of age.

Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second!

The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you'll have a bad dream.

After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.

There are more people alive today than have ever died.

Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

As of 2006, 200 million blogs were left without updates

As of 2006, more than one in eight people in the United States show signs of addiction to the internet.

Men can breastfeed babies.

The Population of the world can live within the state boundaries of Texas.

Because of Animal Crackers, many kids until they reach the age of ten, believe a bear is as tall as a giraffe.

When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.

By law, employees do not have to wash hands after sneezing.

The average person will spend two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change

More than 2500 left handed people are killed every year from using right handed products

Via Berro.com

Link

Urban Legends

As an initiation into a street gang, potential members hide under peoples cars at night, and when the unsuspecting owners start to get in, they slash their ankles and when they fall they steal a shoe.

A not particularly bright man takes a high speed train to get home from a business meeting on the other side of the state. While riding, he looks out the train window to admire the beautiful country side. A woman from behind yells "Look out!" so the man leans farther out the window to see. A loud "whack" sounded as the man's head was chopped off be a passing tree.

Gang-members are swabbing the buttons and receivers of pay telephones with a deadly combination of LSD and strychnine.

A state trooper was driving through a rural area one day and as he passed by a farm, the farmer yelled "PIG! PIG!" at him while shaking a pitchfork. The trooper wasn't the sensitive type and began yelling out the window "Redneck! Redneck!" as he ran into the large pig crossing the road.

A philosophy professor gives a final exam consisting entirely of a single word: "Why?" One student answers "Why not?" and receives an A.

A couple had just moved into a small castle they'd recently purchased and were excitedly searching all the nooks and crannies. In a large underground room they found many empty barrels that had been tapped years ago, and one that appeared to be full. They immediately tapped it to find that it contained a delicious brandy. They drank and served it at parties enjoying not only it's flavor, but that it could have been hundreds of years old. Months later when the barrel ran dry, they noticed it was still too heavy to be empty, they cut it open and found a shriveled corpse curled up in the barrel.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves represent the seven levels of cocaine dependancy.

In the 50's a town in Japan was renamed Usa so that products could be shipped to the US with the stamp MADE IN USA.

An extremely stressed student realized he couldn't take anymore during a particularly difficult exam. He put the ends of each of his #2 pencils up his nostrils and slams his face into the desk.

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment he had been happily listening to his walkman.

Brazil legend - Homeless children are often "adopted" by a US or European agency where they are put into comas and they're organs are harvested as needed by the wealthy.

United Kingdom - Numerous Rolls Royce production plants around the country are actually secret nuclear weapons facilities.


A man runs off with a little cutie and sends his wife a Dear Jane letter telling him he's not coming back and he wants a divorce. He tells his wife to sell his Porsche and send him half the proceeds. She runs an ad "Porsche for Sale, $20" and sends him his check for $10.



Via Urban Legends and Modern Myths

50 dirtiest cities

Based on a whole lot of boring data, Readers Digest rated the 50 large cities from cleanest to dirtiest. Dallas came in at # 30.

NAME	Air	Water	Toxics	Hazardous Waste	Sanitation	Total
Portland (OR)	49	50	35	32	43	44.00
San Jose	41	50	50	21	32	40.71
Buffalo	34	50	27	26	47	38.29
Columbus	24	50	31	45	NA	37.33
San Francisco	47	50	34	16	12	36.57
Denver	27	50	44	19	NA	36.17
Rochester (NY)	46	32	32	43	19	35.71
Austin	44	9	48	50	NA	34.00
Orlando	48	23	9	38	48	33.86
San Diego	13	50	46	42	14	32.57
Hartford	32	29	47	9	44	31.71
Sacramento	4	50	49	40	24	31.57
Las Vegas	12	50	40	49	7	31.43
San Antonio	42	18	42	47	8	31.00
Oklahoma City	43	1	45	41	40	30.57
Minneapolis	33	30	21	35	31	30.43
Indianapolis	23	31	33	44	27	30.29
Salt Lake City	26	50	2	14	42	30.00
Jacksonville	45	24	19	20	NA	29.50
Charlotte	28	34	22	27	28	28.71
Virginia Beach	35	17	29	33	30	28.00
Cincinnati	19	35	11	38	34	27.29
Nashville	30	14	18	46	38	27.14
Riverside (CA)	1	50	43	25	15	26.43
New Orleans	39	13	10	48	21	26.14
Milwaukee	37	10	38	38	10	25.71
Seattle	36	21	37	15	13	25.57
Baltimore	16	33	14	24	41	25.29
Miami	50	11	36	8	9	25.00
Dallas	20	28	30	31	16	24.71
Tampa	40	3	17	17	50	24.29
Memphis	22	12	24	29	46	23.86
Providence	39	8	41	7	22	23.43
Louisville	21	15	15	39	35	23.00
Washington (DC)	25	19	12	13	45	22.57
Phoenix	17	37	1	22	23	22.00
Detroit	10	27	20	10	49	21.86
Richmond	31	4	13	34	36	21.86
Cleveland	9	25	26	31	26	21.57
Atlanta	15	26	4	11	39	19.43
Houston	7	39	3	19	20	19.14
Los Angeles	2	38	28	3	17	18.29
Boston	29	7	39	5	11	18.14
Philadelphia	14	22	16	2	37	18.14
Kansas City	19	16	25	13	NA	18.00
Birmingham	8	20	8	28	33	17.86
St. Louis	5	36	6	6	25	17.00
Pittsburgh	6	5	5	23	29	11.29
New York	11	2	23	1	NA	8.33
Chicago	3	6	7	4	18	6.71

To figure out what data they used to score the cities, go here, but the main point is the lower the number, the cleaner it is.

And I was looking for a list of the Worlds worst cities, but could not find it. Instead I found a bunch of stuff bashing Mumbai, India and Shanghai China, So I guess consider those dirty as hell.

10 Good Ask Metafilter Questions

People go to Metafilter to get any question answered. There is really no limit to what you can ask and you usually get comical stories with your answers. So join me as I take a look at some of the more unique Metafilter items. Click on the questions to go to the answers.

My dog has developed a romanitic interest in his doggy bed. What to do?

Is it possible to annoy an animal/person to death?

What should I name my hockey team?

I compulsively eat bits of myself when I shed them. How bad is this for me?

Long johns: Are you supposed to wear them accompanying underwear, or as underwear?

How can I stop caring so much about the appearance and status of my house and neighborhood?

My girlfriend is not fun. What do I do about this?

I was attacked by a house mouse.


Why does different sorts of alcohol affect you differently?

How do I tell my wife she's fat?

What should I ask metafilter? Leave your answers in the comments.

Via Ask Metafilter

Sitescore - website ratings

Sitescore allows you to input a web address and it will perform a list of tests on the site and rate your site. Its a great tool for people like me so I can figure out what my site needs changed or added. It gives a detailed summary of what needs to be done and also ranks your website. My rating was:
This website is exceptionally popular (approx #15 in the world)

As much as I want to believe that, I have the data to prove that statement wrong, but it at least means my readers are enjoying what they see.

I also found out that there is some British Disability Discrimination Act that I am not complying to. More on that here. And if you actually click that link and read that stuff, please let me know what it means. I got a headache after five minutes. Also I don't want to deny the handicapped there blogger goodness.

So go to Sitescore and enter a web site you go to and see how it ranks and how easy it is to navigate.

My results

B.B.Q. Grill for apartments

The site that sells this product is German so info on the product is sketchy.
From there site:
Bruce ist der Grill für den Balkon. Er hängt am Geländer in handels-üblichen Blumenkastenhalterungen. So nimmt er kaum Platz in An-spruch. Bruce wurde im Jahr 2006 als Teil meiner Diplomarbeit mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Firma Edelstahl Jaenchen Berlin realisiert.

My girlfriend is from Germany so I will update this in a little bit with the translation.

And you have to watch this video advertising the product. (must have quicktime)

Via this place

Graffiti Machine

Via YouTube

A version of Wickerman that doesn't suck

Judging by the box office for Wickerman, you haven't scene it and thats a good thing. It steers far away from the original and is just not worth seeing. But thanks to one man you can now enjoy a 2 minutes of out of context scenes. Enjoy!

Via YouTube

Chalkboard animation

Cool little sequence showing what someone can do using simple stop animation techniques.

Via YouTube

Another good one

Python swallows electric blanket

Official caption: Karl Beznoska's 12-foot Burmese python, Houdini, is attended to on an operating table, Tuesday, July 18, 2006, in Ketchum, Idaho. It took surgery to save the python after it swallowed an entire queen-size electric blanket _ with the electrical cord and control box. 'The prognosis is great,' veterinarian Karsten Fostvedt said after Tuesday's two-hour operation.



The blanket was in the cage for warmth and most likely got caught up in its actual food. The blanket was also plugged in at the time the snake started to eat it.

Via Cellar Image of the day

One pissed off dog

Via cute overload

Some local Dallas news

Many of you who read this blog do not live in the Dallas area so I thought it would be fine for me to detail one of the main issues we have been dealing with down here (or up here depending on local).

Basically the Dallas area is broken up into many small cities and suburbs, one of those being Farmers Branch. Farmers Branch has a reputation around the metroplex as being the place where illegal mexicans can live with little hassle. Well that all changed a few months ago when city officials proposed a law that would require all landlords to prove that there tenants are legal residents. So on Jan. 12, Friday, landlords are supposed to go door to door and check for citizenship. If it is not provided the landlord has to serve you with an eviction notice or the landlord will get in trouble for "harboring illegal aliens." Of course the landlords don't want to take this lying down so many have sued claiming this law turns them into immigration officers and because it violates the Supremacy Clause. Also the ACLU & MALDEF have also sued.

I of course have my own opinions on the matter which I will keep quiet about. Although I will say that a person must follow the proper procedure when trying to move to another country. Mexicans are so vocal about how bad it is in Mexico without any thought that many other countries have it much worse. Lets also look at how Mexico treats Americans and other immigrants:

• Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.

We have many hispanic individuals in government and if we had this law they would have never had that opportunity.

• Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.

So even if you buy a home in Mexico you don't really even own it.

• Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.

So you can't even get a job there.

• Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.

How wrong is it to ban immigrants from church duties.

• Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

So they can kick us out of there country even if we are legal citizens but if they are in our country illegally we can't even kick them out.

There are some others but they aren't as dramatic and it goes without saying that America does not inforce any rules like this towards its immigrants (you can't be president here unless born in America). So looking at it like that it seems that hispanic citizens want us to treat them better then they treat us.

Another point in this argument is that illegals will just move to another city. Common sense dictates that if they are kicked out of Farmers Branch they are not going back to Mexico, they will instead just move into the closest city around (Carrollton, Plano, Dallas, Coppell) and so other cities have started to voice there opinion on the matter. Carrollton specifically has an election today to pick a new city council member and the voting choice has come down to one thing, for or against what Farmers Branch is doing. I think it is an important issue and am voting for the candidate who wants to do the same to Carrollton. I am not racist and actually do think what they are doing is kind of wrong, but I also do not want the city I live in to deal with the crippling effects of such a change (Dallas is still trying to cope with all the Katrina evacuees).

So after all that, how do you think I should vote? And do you think the city of Farmers Branch is doing the right thing? Whatever you feel I know it will be a very interesting Friday and something I will remain very interested in since this is the first time any city has tried something like this and if it is successful other cities might follow suit.

P.S. - America got itself into this problem and is now trying to blame the Hispanic community when the US immigration laws are really at fault.

Dracula's castle for sale

This castle is actually called Bran castle and was home to Vlad the Impaler. Vlad would go on to be so horrible to the Romanians that the legend of Dracula is based upon him. Impaling his victims was his favorite way to torture his victims. He also would dine with the impaled, meaning he would have victims put on the spikes and then sit down by them and enjoy a nice relaxing meal as his victims weakly moaned out in pain.

So if you would like to own this guys former home, you can buy it for the price of just $77 Million. Of course the castle is now a tourist destination and you wouldn't really be able to live in it (there are stipulations set by the Government when dealing with historic landmarks), but it does make about 12 million a year at a production cost of 7 million. So you would have made back your investment in 55 years and then it would be all profit.

Via Slashdot

Daily commute

large version

Via Flickr

Rent Idiocracy

This is the movie that Fox doesn't want you to see. Why? Because Fox hates Mike Judge for making such an anti corporate movie (that no corporation would sponsor). I promise that it is good Mike Judge humor and its not being buried because it isn't funny. Definately worth renting, especially over the other Luke Wilson movie out right now (super ex girlfriend).

Worst amusement park ever

This amusement park is in Alexandria, Egypt. When I first came upon this park the site I was at stated it was abandoned, so I wanted to do some more research and figure out why it was abandoned with all the rides being left behind. I was thinking radiation, massive genocide on the roller coaster, something to actually warrant just getting up and leaving. Well it didn't take long before I discovered that this park is actually still open, and they are actually charging to get in. It is supposed to cost 7 egyptian pounds ($1.50 US) but apparently they try to charge you more.


The view after entering the park


The king of the mountain ride?


the monorail was out of comission


Yes a rollercoaster! No, its closed.


One of the only rides that was open


The main cafe (where they expect you to eat)


This is why the middle east hates us, our bumper cars work


Nothing says classy like a lake


You know it was closed

I just couldn't imagine going to six flags(or whatever amusement park) and it look anything like this. Hell, I get pissed when one ride is closed, even if its the carousel. Its just principle.

And if you can't get enought of the amusement park that makes kids cry, check out here

Thanks to It's Knuttz for thinking the park was abandoned, and Theme Park Review for setting the record straight.

And as a bonus, check out this:

Aquarium where fish can swim through the house

Berkshire Paranormal Group

I don't really know what to make of the paranormal, specifically ghosts. Common sense tells me that these things don't exist and what we see and hear is just a figment of our imagination. I remember that MTV show Fear that would put five people in a house that looked spooky. Then of course they would get the horrid backstory about how a circus midget went crazy and ate 20 people while a mad scientist mutilated peoples bodies while trying to build super-humanoids, or whatever. However, all that it seemed to be was a couple of cheesy effects, scrape some chains on the ground and you have enough of a catalyst for people to start having full blown hallucinations caused by fear.

Of course that is just my opinion, and the people at the Berkshire Paranormal group will gladly say that I am wrong.


Berkshire Mission Statement

As a group of dedicated investigators we will take all steps necessary to seek out, find, and document any paranormal activity. We will use a scientific and organized approach in all investigations and not make claims of “Haunted” or “Not haunted” until all evidence is collected and analyzed. We will carefully consider all evidence from a skeptic’s point of view to ensure the authenticity of such evidence and rule out any potentially false findings.

We will treat residents and their property with utmost respect and conduct our investigations in a courteous and professional manner. After a complete and thorough investigation, all findings will be presented to the requesting individuals with a complete explanation as to what was found. If a removal is requested and we as a group are unsuccessful, we will find someone who can help.

The Berkshire Paranormal Group - In Relentless Pursuit of Irrefutable Proof....

They do a good job of detailing the symptoms of haunting, readings and are very meticulous in recording all relevant data. Its worth a look if you don't know what to believe. Or you at least might learn something.

Berkshire Paranormal Group