“Supreme Court Ruling a Crock of Shit”.

via The Center for Inquiry’s Twitter feed, found when they started following me.  What the hell?  I know I’m cool and all, but how did I get the CFI to care about my tweets?

I think this (now housed near the top of my sidebar) is pretty rad:

I’m sure it’s been done, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

So: what (many) sites have I forgotten?

J:  How’s your smoothie?

N:  Deeeeeeetectable, Daddy!

BTW, the smoothie?  Frozen cranberries, frozen raspberries, frozen banana, orange juice, soy milk, soy protein powder.  I’m going to turn into a VitaMix evangelist pretty soon here.  Let’s see who bids on this ad….

… is small enough that one may safely round it to zero  –Bob Mike

I’ll just come out and say it: I really like Spider Robinson.  Misogynist, yes, but wonderful.  As in what?  Well, dedicating a book about a brothel to Heinlein and wishing that all prostitutes — “artists” — had a place as wonderful to practice their art as his fictional parlor.

But as embarrassed as I am to mention the book, and mortified that it will seem I’m recommending it, I have to quote a couple of lines:

[I]f there is any way that you can arrange your affairs so as to avoid dropping into whorehouse garbage from a great height, naked in February, then that is almost certainly the course your life should take.

and

A command is really just a request you don’t bother to phrase politely.

Just in time for Earth Day: recoil.

Yikes.

My mom took Niall and me to Santa Anita Racetrack last weekend.  I hadn’t been there in years (like fifteen) and certainly not since it was redone for Seabiscuit.  It’s really a lovely place.  Like The Bellagio, it is some truly gorgeous gilding over an addiction-based economy.  It is magnificently appointed, but very few people there seem to be asking how the owners can afford the upkeep.  They still figure the odds are in their favor in wagering — probably because they have “a system” or “inside information”.

My mom chose that day to go because there was free admission.  We went in and walked towards the General Admission seats.  I told my mom that I wanted to go look around, that I thought we could do better.  I ended up getting free box seats — a box to ourselves.  I felt rather like my dad.

So, we are in the box as the gates are pulled out for the first race.  Niall is thrilled, watching the horses get ready.  The horses leap out of the gates and start heading around the course, and Niall’s eyes are as big as saucers.  He pulls his gaze away from the race for a moment to look at me, and asks:

“What do the horses get if they win?”

Just a bit of tidying and name-dropping:

mcgees.org has started accepting entire-site sponsors.  There are three so far, and this is just a shout-out — I’m not trying to get new advertisers here, and you’re welcome to move right along.

Superior Titanium has some really cool products for sale.  I don’t like the business card cases (at all) but the money clips and guitar picks are awesome — the latter give an immensely satisfying “thunk” sound on my Les Paul.

ForexYard is a Cyprus-based foreign currency exchange site.  They are completely unvetted by me.  They show up all over the Internet with good reviews, but considering how actively they courted me, this may mostly be astroturfing.  They are offering me obscene amounts of money for referring people who open accounts, however — and I’ve actually violated my longstanding barrier between editorial and advertising content to change the link in a post about forex to post to them, rather than to a competitor.  Please advise if they are scoundrels.

Shoplet is the final new site sponsor, and they seem an entirely above-board office supplier: I’ve placed an order, half of which has arrived safely, and half of which will ship soon.  I’ll follow this up with more info.

And finally, Mozy, an online backup solution (which apparently gives you free online backups for $4.95 per month [?]) is advertising on a blog post about my not backing up data.

cheezburger…

Just in time for 15 April: The government can collect legal taxes from illegal money.

MSN: If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless, in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner.  Personally, I’d report it as “miscellaneous” income rather than “stolen property.”

(More…)

Dam furners.  Lettem in and soon theyll be corupting our spellling ‘n uzing punctwation marks insted of wurds:

“The immigration issue has touched every corner of society over the past two decades in some way, and this particular segment features experts’ commentary about immigration’s affect on critical issue facing the country … With our economy struggling, border violence reaching a tipping point & our natural resources beginning to dwindle the immigration issue is too important to our society to be ignored!” — The Federation for American Immigration Reform

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(Email subscribers, be sure to visit the site.)

In possibly related news, about halfway through the walk until about two hours after my return home was the first time I wasn’t thinking about a shot of Dilaudid in I-don’t-know-how-long.  A certain course of action suggests itself.

… actions.  Topclassactions.com maintains a list of active class action lawsuits.  If you are not opposed to the whole concept (some people are) it can feel really good.  This one, for instance, is for anyone who was charged overdraft fees related to use of their Bank of America debit cards between 2000 and 2007 — the stuff I’ve been complaining about for years, such as not denying debit card payment, expressly for the purpose of extracting overdraft fees, and clearing larger transactions first to maximize this revenue.  The payout is $78.

I have no financial interest in this website.  I have deep personal interest in sticking it to BofA, however.