Well well, the local teeny-bopper radio station has taken an interest in your humble host. There was an attractive young lady in the palatial YouBitch offices over the weekend, interviewing yours truly and the lovely Miss Moebius for a special on blogs, and the blogging bloggers who blog them. The interview was a lot of fun, but it brought to my attention a couple of things about myself. For example, I have no freakin' clue why I do what I do here at youbitch.org. I mean, really, how many of you bloggers out there could actually really tell someone with 100% honesty why you blog? I'm not really the interviewing type, so I couldn't really think of the proper bullshit platitudes to flesh out my meagre answers. Another thing I learned, was that I don't really know when to shut up once I get going. The interview was about 25 minutes long, and I got the feeling I talked for about 40 minutes of that.

I also got to hear myself speaking in German. I really thought I had this whole faking a native accent in German thing just about conquered. I've been practicing it for almost six years now, and thought I had it pretty much down. But goodness gracious, I sound like I just got off the plane and asked for the nearest McDonald's, goddamit, don't nobody speak English 'round here?! I guess I should try and figure out if German girls think a ridiculous American accent is sexy, and adjust myself accordingly. Then again, I can't imagine that German spoken with any accent can be sexy, but one can dream...

Du kannst träumen, baby. wink

I'll be posting a podcast of the interview after the show airs. It's in German, but you'll still be able to revel in the silky, dulcimer tones of the full-throated manliness that is Rube. Oh, and I think Miss Moebius Managed to get a word in, too.

According to this study, you shall all bow before the One True Rube:

A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.

I am bilingual. I play video games. Fear me!

This is one of the awesomest things I've seen in a long time.

Howdy, folks, just finishing off an evening of pub-crawling here in Dogpatch. Tonight was apparently Her Majesty's Eighties-Trash Night in the Old Country, and every song the bars played reminded me of sweaty, fumbling encounters in the back of somebody's brother's car with a hopped-up cheerleader and a bottle of Boone's Farm. The eighties were a sweaty, fumbling time for me, in the Biblical sense, as it was for the entire world, on a more philosophical level. Ah, good times.

So, I'm finishing up the evening, sitting on the couch, drinking brandy and water, while honey-baby is sleeping off the spins in the other room. Going through the iPod, I found some old INXS tunes, determined to extend the roller-rink vibe. Man oh man, Michael Hutchence, he had it all. Fame, looks, talent. Inspiration for such songs as Disappear, Listen Like thieves, the Devil Inside. Then, he died of asphyxiation while masturbating, hung from the neck by his own leather belt. There but for the grace of God, I thought to myself, then drifted off to sleep.

He's gone and done it again. I swear, I haven't seen this many people get the axe since Last of the Mohicans. Dax is an absolute terminatin' machine. I've read the stories like everybody else, and I know they all deserved it. But I was actually watching the CNN financial report today, and they had to come out and revise the unemployment numbers, right in the middle of the show.

You people may be wondering where he gets it from. Well, I've dug around and found the one person who inspired Dax's managerial style the most:

That would be Mr. Spacely, of Spacely Sprockets.

Let's see you top this Google Search!

This advertisement makes me feel happy. NSFW. I found it in the postcard bin last night, and scanned it in.

You never stop learning in that wacky little thing called life. And the world, big as it is, presents a moving target. What is it I'm trying to say? Waffle house is going to start accepting credit cards. As Sam says over there, "I just hope they do not change the grits policy". Amen to that.

In other Sam news, yesterday meant a trip to the Varsity. Poor dog.

You know, I'm getting sick and tired of all these towel-heads getting the good press. Do you think that Mohammedans are the only people who can hoot and holler and burn stuff? Cracka Pleez! I hereby call forth a hillbilly jihad on the following transgressors:

1. Warner Bros., for their insensitive, tasteless ridiculing of Southern sensibilities and history with that abomination of a show, The Dukes of Hazzard. This cut runs deep. It reduced one of our greatest historical figures' name to a car with a weird-ass sounding horn that even a Mexican wouldn't be caught dead with. Just check out this Google search result, and tell me the damage isn't already done. What's the number one hit for "General Lee"?

   

   The case, she is rested. Burn a cross on the Warner Bros. lawn, it's cookout time!

2. CBS Studios, for that slap in the face of Southern law enforcement, Deputy Dawg.

   

   It was bad enough to have that kind of patronizingly phoneticized name to deal with as a child, but how could an experienced Deputy Sherriff, who's such a cultured Southern gentleman, constantly get out-foxed by some hippy little half-blind rodent like Vincent van Gopher?

   3. Hanna-Barbera, for the Arkansas Chugabug with Luke and Blubber Bear.

   

   Let's see here. I guess if you be coming from anywhere South of New York City, well, you'll jes be drivin' top-speed away from the revenuers in your whisky-still-powered jalopy with your feet on the wheel. Oh, and not to mention we all drive while sitting reverse cowgirl on goddamn grizzly bears. So, we'll just be hanging around here, whislting Dixie. On Hanna-Barbera's skulls!
   

I can think of seven people that I know right now, off the top of my head, that eat their own snot, right out of their nose. Boogers! I can remember a period of my childhood where I actually did that. I was a world-class, pre-kindergarten gold-digger. I got busted by a grown-up once, and was immediately, irrevocably cured of the habit. That particular grown-up ridiculed me to the point that it almost became an obsession busting other people that do it, not to get too Freud on you, but probably to reaffirm my estimation of my self as a passable human being.

It's strange when you see it. You notice that light flick of the wrist, which sends the pinky into the nose, and then a non-discript motion that brings the nail down to the tongue, delivering the golden payload. It's probably a subconscious thing that people do, when they're under stress or in their cups. But still, I always wondered what would happen if I called somebody on it. How would that happen? What would be the best thing to say in that situation? Could I just say, "Hey, man, you just went diggin' and ate it. Give a hundred dollars."

A buddy of mine in college had a co-op job at an engineering contractor in Atlanta. He told me once that his boss, who was the owner's daughter, was an incorrigible, albeit extremely clever booger-eater. He said you'd be talking to her in a meeting, and if it got stressful, her hands would be all over her face. She'd pull amazing sleight-of-hand tricks and diversions, like scratching her eyebrow with her middle-finger, while her pinky was buried in her nose. Then, she'd rub her hand down her face, delivering the goods to her tongue, all while speaking to 15 to 20 people about a million-dollar job. He was horrified, and could only talk about it in hushed tones. I understand completely. I mean, how do you tell your boss that her booger-eating freaks you out?

I've not seen the color green for about 4 months now, except for the Christmas tree. Man, I could use some warm weather about now. In Europe, spring marches into town like a conquering hero, with maypoles and lusty maidens and flower petals strewn across its path . And I'm starting to see why. I don't recall ever getting teary-eyed over the weather in Georgia before I moved to Germany. I see pictures of myself now from childhood, and think, "Wow, I have pants without legs! Where'd they get off to?"

In brighter news, I actually walked across a lake today. I'm not Jesus, despite what you may have thought. You see, here in Germany, it gets so cold outside that water actually becomes hard enough to walk upon! That ain't right, my friends.

Soccer. Fussball. Futbol. Call it what you will, but don't ask me to get it. I've tried to assimilate, even bothering to learn the rules, and to participate in a soccer tournament last summer (a losing effort, obviously). It was a curiosity as I was a wee lad, the sport that dare not uses its hands, but now it seems there's soccer everywhere. When the local team wins, the locals here in Dogpatch lose their shit, and drive around town honking their horns and shooting AK47's in the air like a Turkish wedding. There's not much occasion for that, luckily, as the Augsburg soccer Club is a miserable failure. And anyways, it's not like there's any Augsburg natives playing for them, the team being mostly manned by drunken Chinamen, so what's the big deal? Like American professional sports, I assume it's a celebration of the winning style of locally owned and operated businesses, instead of a confirmation of the superiority of local gene pool in all things kicking.

Anyhoo, I'm getting pretty drunk now, and the yahoos in the bar here are getting roudy, owing to a 30-inch plasma in the corner showing the eagerly awaited Milan vs. Tobago game. I should quit now, and start rooting for Tobago. If I knew what the flag looked like, I'd strip off my shirt right now and paint it on my hairy, distended beer-gut.

I took another swing at the Worst Bar in the World last weekend, after taking in Walk the Line with my doll. It's the Chestnut Tree of the Augsburg bar and café scene: Just a bunch of aging socialite wannabes who've given in to horrors of Room 101, and now spend their days waiting on the lethargic service to bring their gin and tonics, talking nonsense about things that interest no one. And, like the denizens of the Chestnut Tree, they pray for death with each passing moment. I wouldn't have gone there had it not been for the after-movie party, hosted by Johnny Cash's German biographer, Franz Dobler. And while his knowledge of the Man in Black borders on encyclopedic, his public speaking skills lack flair. I settled, ordered some food; and, par for the course, I left before eating, lest I die of rickets and spider-bites before it got there. I wound up eating somewhere else, and coming back once the crowd had thinned out. I half expected them to arrive with my food when I walked in the door. But I jest; food, here? My view of the Worst Bar in the World has not improved after this last trip, but there's nothing new there. I've spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on them, compared to what they've spent on me.

There are a lot of bars here in Augsburg; some are good, and some are bad, and some are really, really bad. Right now, I'm whiling in the very acceptable corner bar, Barium. It's about 30 yards away from my front door, staffed by cheerful, attractive waitrons, and they serve cheap German beer to morons like me, without mocking me for tapping away on a laptop in a social setting. And, they bring me beer. I'm not sure why I ever go anywhere else, actually; force of habit, I guess.

That picture, by the way, was taken in a bar that's far from the Worst. It's called Annapam, and is a salt o' the Earth kinda bar, a reliable standby with good food and ugly waitresses. The people in the picture are Italians, who were apparently visiting Augsburg for the falafel and having a hell fo a time doing it.

Nice tat, Boogah:



Make sure to check out the bandage photo, too. This may be a little much for most Mac-fanboys. It would be cool, though, to put a big "Q" on your other arm. Then you could do that Constantine thing with your forearms, and whatever you pointed them at would go away.

From the New York Times:

The [27-3 vote] is the climax of a two-and-a-half year campaign by the Bush administration to convince the world that suspicions about Iran’s nuclear program are so serious that the issue must come before the Security Council for judgment.

If it turns out that they were not only developing nuclear weapons, but were also developing delivery systems for targets in Europe, Iraq, and Israel, will the New York Times be repeating that it was a "campaign by the Bush administration"? I imagine if that's the case, they'll be crediting Mohammed ElBaradei with the whole thing.

Tip #1: Never put a man named 'Mohammed' in charge of keeping the peace.

Making your mouse point look like a little dinosaur

Ever get tired of that little white arrow that moves around when you move your mouse? Despite the feeling of overwhelming responsibility one feels when pushing around a little arrow (it's a weapon, for G-d's sake!), the pointer serves an important purpose in the Windows user interface: It let's you know what you're going to click on, before you click on it! It's like a little psychic helper, letting you know what's going to happen next!

But if you're going to have a little psychic helper, why not make it a dinosaur!? Well, dinosaurs may be extinct in the boring old so-called "Real World", but there in your computer, in the wonderful world of Cyberspace(!) you can not only find dinosaurs, you can even find Friendly Psychic Dinosaurs!

Here's how!

First off, go to the "Start" menu at the bottom left hand side of your screen, choose "Settings", then "Control Panel", like so:

You still with me? Good, now double-click on the mouse control panel, like so:

Now, this next pop-up screen might seem a little busy, but you need to concentrate! At the top, there's a row of words like "Buttons", Motion", and even the scary word "Hardware", but we're looking for the one that says "Pointers". Click on that, and you'll see something like the following picture:

Now, choose that little box that says "Scheme". It'll scheme for a bit, and then show you a list of things to choose. Most of them are boring old do-nothings, but there, stuck in the middle, are our little psychic dinosaur friends. Choose that, and they'll just pop-up and say, "Hello there, Mr. User"! Like this:

Now, isn't that better than that war-mongering "Arrow" set of pointers? I think so, too! I hope you'll have fun with your new dinosaur friends, and I'm sure your network administrator will be amused, and amazed! the next time he sits down to work on your computer. Nothing says "Have a nice day, Mr. Computer Guy!" better than showing him that a computer can also be FUN! FUN! FUN!

That's all for this installment of YouBitch Worthless Windows Tips! I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it for you. Next week, I'll show you how to turn that boring-but-amazingly-helpful little paper clip that knows everything about Microsoft Office into something that's not only informative, but FUN! FUN! FUN!

See ya in the Funny Pages!

- Screens are from the English edition of Windows 2000. Actual screen appearance may vary.

I wonder how much of my life has been spent watching something on a computer screen counting to 100. I've been a Computer Guy for going on 18 years now, and I've probably installed 1000 computers, and untold tens of thousands of programs, and they all use the same lame-ass little percentage meter to tell you how far along they are. And they're always dreadfully wrong in their calculations, for some reason.

Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft even decided to put a little progress bar on the boot screen. Apple followed this with OS X, with the goofiest booting-progress bar ever conceived, the placebo startup meter, which signifies practically nothing:

I mention this only because for the last 45 minutes I've been looking at an installation screen that started out with "Time Remaining: About 16 minutes". Lying sacks.

A lot of people don't realize this, but when it's 4°F outside, you can smoke a cigarette in, like, 45 seconds. It basically involves optimizing workflow. When you cut out all the John Wayne grimaces, the french inhaling, the smoke rings, you've trimmed the cigarette down to its absolute barest essence; and it keeps you from getting the rats from nicotine withdrawal.

Whuuuh? I think my favorite is this stuffed bicycle accident:

via Tim Blair

The Real Story, not propaganda!
(click for full-size)

Man, check out the list of Amazon's top-selling computers.

This list gets updated hourly, so I'll just tell you what I saw: 8 of the 10 top-selling computers are Macs, and 12 of the top 25. I really wouldn't think the PowerPC-based computers would be selling all that well, but they're up there, too. In fact, PowerPC-based Macintoshes alone occupy 4 of the top 10 slots.

I'm not sure how many people buy their computers from Amazon, but I imagine it's quite a few, seeing as they're usually very competetive, owing to sales taxes and generally scurrilous, violent business practices aux Teamsters. I'm thinking by the end of the year, the whole market-share thing might start becoming interesting again.

Who knew that a company called "InDigEnt" would have trouble making money? That has to be one of the lousiest company names I've ever heard.

Top 5 Rejected Names For InDigEnt Studios

1. Po'House Productions
2. Abject Poverty Studios
3. Filthy, Depressed Hobos With Cameras
4. Black Friday Film-Works
5. Fuck the Investors, This is Art, Inc.

In Bad Journalism, a columnist lets their personal views completely distort the news they're trying to report. One example is in today's Wired online thingamapage:

Wired News: Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?:
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.

In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.

I suppose the author is trying to show us how big an asshole Steve Jobs is, in that he doesn't abuse his position of prominence (and his shareholders' trust)to espouse the Cause du Jour, be it global warming or Third World debt. I guess it's too much to ask of journalists that they at least try and assume that their points of view aren't universally accepted as Truth. Does donating lots of money make someone praise-worthy, despite his potentially RICO-liable business practices? Is being a 'single-minded capitalist' actually a bad thing for an ultra-successful American industrialist? Actually, I had always avoided looking into Jobs' background with the apprehension that he was another Bono. Color me relieved! Knowing that Al Gore has some shady connection with Apple, and that Jobs actually tried to work for the Kerry Presidential campaign, I had feared the worst.

The fact of the matter is that if Jobs was more vocal about his political beliefs, and Apple was more tightly associated with American Progressivism, I wouldn't buy an Apple computer, period. I have no desire to put my dollars into the pockets of thuggish busybodies like Greenpeace. And I doubt it's in the CEO of Apple's job description to alienate customers politically. Both Jobs and Gates have enriched the lives of millions more people through their respective corporations than if they both had thrown their fortunes into the NGO-money machine.

I do find it interesting that the Author makes no note of the fact that Apple offered OS X as the platform for the hand-cranked $100 computer, which is specifically designed for underprivileged, color-blind children. They were turned down, because it's not open source. No pleasing some people, I suppose. I guess it's more politically acceptable to funnel cash-money through relief organizations than it is to offer valuable products or services; at least with cash, it can be funneled by those organizations into Democrat campaign coffers.

UPDATE: Theoacao says it better.

I have no idea why this is so funny, but it's good for chuckles.

(click to play)

This little movie makes me strangely happy.

Via the Unstoppable Moron

When you live in Georgia, you keep an eye on the weather in Alabama, cause you know it's heading your way. In Germany, you watch Moscow. I think Georgia got the better deal in that one. It's cold outside, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

From left to right: That's the temperature outside on my balcony. And then, that's the bottles of coke that exploded. And then, that's the cokesicles that formed on the bench, and were still there in the middle of the next day. On my balcony. Where I smoke. Where I'm about to go right now, and light a cigarette. -15°C. I haven't even bothered converting that to fahrenheit yet; I don't want to know.

On the other hand, it's supposed to get even colder tonight, so I should just go ahead and smoke a lot now, and get it out of the way. At any rate, it might be time to get me one of these: * SLANKET : THE BEST BLANKET EVER *. It's a blanket, you can smoke under!

Slanket link via Rui "infamous port 0 bug" Carmo.

In the process of trying out the new iPhoto, I've put up a one of them thar PhotoCasting thingamabobs too enhance my already-ominous web ubiquity. Some of the big brains in the blogosphere are having conniptions about Apple not using proper RSS-semantics or filtering newsreaders. but they're probably just too smart to actually read the error messages they're getting, and to realize therewith they're typing in the wrong URLs. But, as in the old mathematician-and-engineer-meet-the-devil joke, Rube's already drunk: Enjoy! (if you have an RSS-reader). If you've got iPhoto 6, use the full-fledged photocast URL instead.

Schweet!

Well, mom's been here for a good 3 weeks now. Well, ok, 24 days and 12 hours, but who's counting? She's been an ideal guest up to this point: She slept 12 hours a day, she washed the dishes, and, as expected, is always the lady. We had a fine time, visiting beautiful Innsbruck, Austria for a weekend; we also took a gander at the Kaufering Nazi concentration camp, just for giggles; and tonight we went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together, which was great fun.

After the movie, we participated in the tradition German custom of going through some dead guy's stuff, as you can read about in my mom's new Blog, Cowboys Aren't Sheepherders. Go over and say howdy to the ol' cowgirl, but remember to be nice, it is my mom, after all.

Just a couple more things: First off, she said she would start a blog if, and only if I posted a humiliating picture of myself. Well, mom, here ya go:

We loved having her here, and I'm already looking forward to her next visit. Until then, I just hope she posts a bit on her blog, to let us know how she's doing, and what the cat's up to.

I might actually send this one off to the printers:

via the Mad Mulleteer.