The Funny Farm

Unquiet On The Personal Front

^{Humpday, 4 Gathring (Wintring/Winterfilth), 2005}

Not that it's necessarily a bad thing when that sort of thing happens - we can think of quite a few other details that we're glad are not under our personal radar these days. So it's not much of a story (and it's not going to be either) to tell.

There's also not much we can add to the discussion about the hurricanes, other than to express our admiration and respect for some of our cyberfriends who have gone far above and beyond the call in helping out those who have been disadvantaged without resources of their own to fall back on. There are millions who have been less able to feed themselves than they were a month ago. Knowing that there are many hands out there organizing the basics for them enables us to fan our small flame of hope that mankind will do the right thing and mature without self-destructing. Today.

We also couldn't help noticing that it appears that conglomerates will be conglomerates. What a surprise - for some strange reason the credit card companies feel that they should be entitled to receive the increased security their customers demand these days without bearing the cost of it themselves. They want retailers to pay for it in increased transaction fees. Gee, I wonder who's going to get screwed by this sort of thing when all is said and done?

We would be remiss if we didn't comment on the DeLay bugs scurrying out from under rocks karmic intervention indictments when he abused taxpayer-funded government largesse to gerrymander Tax-Ass. And still has the cheek to protest his innocence and bemoan the supposed partisan political nature of anyone daring to question his integrity. Blah blah blah IOKIYAR. Hopefully this time the sheeple get it...

Finally, on one of those personal notes: We can point out that it is now the month of Gathring in the Midling Calendar and let you know that we're finalizing the extra picture selection for the fourteen month 2006 Midling Calendar. And that it should be available for sale soon at Lulu.com as well as through the offices of Your Humble Narrator (as it has been for some time now). Email us and ask us for your own personalized calendar. We should be able to get it to you in under a month, and certainly before the start of the year!

Sad News

^{Sunday, 2 Gathring 2005}

Blah3 tells us that Joe Vecchio's wife has died. We mourn for Joe's loss, and hope that he finds peace and joy in his remembrances of his beloved, and the strength to continue his struggles with adversity.

We also noticed that Don Adams has died. Would you believe that we've been a fan of Get Smart for almost as long as it has been in existence? Would you believe that it's one of the few that we will try and Tivo if we find it in reruns*? Not to mention all of the other cartoon voices he was able to populate our Saturday mornings with when we were but knee-high to a grasshopper** on this run of the karmic wheel, so to speak...

* - Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,the Richard Pryor Show, and Laugh Trax are also on the short list here...

** - and twice as wide, as the saying went in the circles we frequented, for all of that time, too.

Not-So-Quick Question

^{Humpday, 27 Falltring 2005}

Can somebody let us know why this story saying New Orleans out of cash hasn't gotten much coverage? We haven't seen any mention of it from the media whores, and Google is telling me they can't see anything on the internets either. Has this been resolved? Are the police and other city employees supposed to forage for their daily bread these days?

We wouldn't have found it at all, except we've taken to checking out those around us in the TLB ecosystem, and fellow BBA member Dancing With Myself had the good sense to point it out to us. Of course we can't help but notice that the original article was written and blogged about on the 13th. What's up with that?

Speaking of the BBA, did you know that it appears that not even half of the BBA members are part of the ecosystem? There are 282 registered members of the ecosystem in the TTLB BBA community, vs 887 total BBA members Email me if you're in the ecosystem, but not listed on the BBA community page, and I'll add you to the group!

That's it for now. We hope you continue to check out all the other bloggy goodness out there on the Fashionable Left Bank Of Blogistan.

Update From The Front

^{Tuesday, 26 Falltring 2005}

We aren't sure if there are many of you out there who have even heard of the Veggie Van, much less keep up with its' adventures in traveling around the country and promoting biodiesel as an alternative to petroleum based fuel.

However, we have to tell you that Josh Tickell has been busy in the last few weeks helping out with NOLA disaster recovery*. Here's the latest update on his activities, as well as a request for some assistance. If you live in the Altanta area, we would like to ask that you pay particular attention to this message:

We wish Josh all the best in his efforts, and ask once more: if you're in metro Altanta, and you can give him and his group some assistance, please consider doing so. You'll be glad you did!

* - amazing how progressives seem to be helping out without even being asked, or being concerned about their profit margins on the recovery work. Funny how that works...

More Compassionate Conservatism In Action

^{Sunday, 25 Falltring 2005}

We really have tried to ignore that frelling irony alert monitor, but every so often it just becomes too much - and we are compelled to let you know about another straw that has been added to the pile...

Our first item today takes us to the city so nice they named it twice: Justin Raimondo shows us this article in the Village Voice informing us that Cindy Sheehan and Camp Casey NYC are being harassed by the NYPD. Such a wonderful use of public resources!

We have also recently been informed that Publicans like them some pork, and don't take kindly to giving it back. Even to help with the NOLA disaster.

Is anybody else pissed at these farging iceholes yet?

More Of Our Overweening Pride On Display

^{Fryday, 23 Falltring 2005}

We'd like to share with you some information about one of our more treasured possessions these days*. For quite some time now, we've been trying to find a hybrid vehicle to replace our 2000 Chevy Impala with something a little better on gas (the Impala gets about 25 miles to the gallon, but that has been starting drop off a bit. It seems that 100,000 miles on an engine tends to do that). So we've been searching Cars.com for used hybrids for sale**.

This led us to the conclusion that we would not be able to purchase a used Prius - they last somewhere between four and eight hours on the market before being snapped up. And they often cost more than a new one would. So we turned our purchasing power in another direction - that of the Honda Civic hybrid. we were lucky enough to test drive one last fall, and we were quite pleased with the experience. Unfortunately, we dithered around for a day, and somebody else bought the vehicle we were looking at. Fortunately for us, there have been other Civic hybrids on the market since then. We are very proud to say that we have been driving a 2003 Civic hybrid for a while now, and we strongly recommend that others consider this choice as well.

There are a few things to get used to with this vehicle - most of them positive:

- Once the car has warmed up, the engine shuts off when the car is stopped in traffic (at a red light, when things are backed up, etc.). The silence of the vehicle in this sort of situation is somewhat unnerving at first but it quickly becomes quite interesting - you can hear all of the vehicles surrounding you as their engines continue to idle. You can hear the sounds of the world around you while waiting for the light to change - which is often quite pleasant. The downside to this (at least for the 2003 model year) is that there is some sort of sensor which determines when you have started moving in traffic again, and this sensor does not get tripped if you crawl along. In other words, you have to get up to a certain speed before the vehicle will shut the engine down again. In our extensive experience crossing the border between the Detroit and Windsor, we lose at least five miles per gallon just going over the bridge and through customs.

- Acceleration off the line and at highway speeds is better than a regular Civic - however, you can quickly see how much fuel economy is lost by flooring it when the light changes. There's a cumulative mileage display as part of the trip odometer on the dashboard***!

- Regenerative braking captures some of the energy involved in slowing down the vehicle, and uses it to recharge the batteries. When you coast or use the brakes in most situations, this feature kicks in and starts recharging the batteries. Unfortunately, when you have a panic stop situation or a really bumpy road (both of which kick in the antilock braking system), regenerative braking turns off.

- Everything else is virtually identical to a regular Civic. So, if by some chance we have to replace any standard parts, there will be no enhanced costs for a 'hybrid-only' part to have to deal with.
- It co$t$ more to buy than a regular Civic - enough to almost wash out the savings in fuel costs. Today. Ask us again when gas hits $3 a gallon or more... what? It already has?

- The batteries are only supposed to last for 100,000 miles. We're relatively sure we will have this bad boy long enough to find out about that. Plus, we're reasonably confident that the price of replacement batteries will go down, along with the power that they can store and provide going up. They already have since the vehicle we own was created.

- The climate control system is an 'all in one' system - you don't turn the air conditioning on - it (or the heater) comes on automatically, depending on the temperature you requested vs. the temperature in the vehicle. So you can't just open the vents and let the breeze flow through the vehicle. It is also the case that (unless you set it to the auto settings) the engine does not shut off if you're idling and the climate control system is engaged. In auto mode, the engine will shut down when you come to a stop - but so does the climate control system. So we have gone back to our earlier days, and this summer we have largely used four-fifty air conditioning****.

The only other major difference in our driving experience these days is a reduction in gas station visitations in our schedule. Getting fifty miles to the gallon, even with our increased vehicular activity, gives us over five hundred miles of driving before we have to suck at the oil companies' teat once again. Oh yeah - although we still beat almost everybody off the line when the light turns green****, we are choosing not to accelerate to the posted speed as quickly as we could because it sucks fuel out of our tank at an alarming rate.

We have also been checking out the specs on the 2006 Civic hybrids as well. We'd like to recommend that you consider ordering one of these if you can wait a couple of months for it to be put together and delivered to your friendly neighborhood Honda dealer, since they have addressed some of the glitches in the earlier models, and are using a new hybrid strategy closer to the Prius methodology. The Integrated Motor Assist system in our 2003 uses the engine to power the vehicle at all speeds, whereas the new system uses battery power at low speeds, the engine kicks in at around twenty mph or so, and there is rumored to be an 'electric-only' option available. Which opens up the possibility of a Honda Civic hybrid PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid-Electric Vehicle) which would be able to be plugged in to your house overnight and recharged to give you 100 miles on battery power alone - yet still allow you to fill up at gas stations and take it for long drives. Unfortunately they're not available yet, and it will probably be difficult to get customized in the manner that we desire. We bought the Impala new from a dealer - our first new car ever! - but we have been unimpressed with the service we got from the dealership once they got us to sign on the dotted line.

Hopefully we'll be providing you with some more updates on our experiences with our new wheels. Stay tuned!

* - well, the bank really owns most of it right now. But you get the idea...

** - we tried to consider buying a new Prius instead of a used one, but the only option packages they would allow customers to order added at least $2K to the vehicle price . Hopefully some of our longtime readers will know that, when a company that we would like to buy something from starts telling us that we can place a custom order with them, but we can't get it customized the way we want, well, it tends to cause our enthusiasm for dealing with that company to wane somewhat. All of the Toyota dealerships in the metro Detroit area that will let you order a Prius gave us the same response when we made our inquiries. As did all the other dealership in the state of Michigan that we asked for a quote.

*** - actually, there's two trip odometer displays as well as the odometer for the total vehicle mileage (which unfortunately does not have a mileage display). The displayed mileage is very close (within 1/10th of a mile per gallon) to our own mileage calculations.

We have calculated mileage for quite some time by filling the tank, figuring out how many miles we drive on that tank, and then dividing those miles by the amount of gas it takes to refill the tank.

**** - four windows open at fifty miles an hour.

***** - we have been noticed to be almost turtle-like in our overall speed (in other words, we wouldn't be the best choice to bet on for any sort of foot race). But we have also been told we're very quick in our reactions, and have very good reflexes. Maybe that's why, when we finally got to be a goaler in our pickup hockey excursions, we found that we were pretty good right out of the blocks.

Another Fine Example Of Compassionate Conservatism

^{Friday, 22 Falltring 2005}

It appears that some Putsch fellators supporters decided that the items left at the Camp Casey site should be stolen. Somehow it also appears that this theft has not been noticed by any of the wrongwing blogs, nor the mainstream media. What a surprise!

A big tip of the hat to our favorite Suburban Guerrilla for finding this story.

Call To Action

^{Thursday, 21 Falltring 2005}

We have recently read that This Modern World has been dropped from our local alternative weekly, The Metro Times. We would like to ask those within viewing range of our own small contribution to the blogsphere to take a few minutes and write*, call or fax**, or email*** the powers that be at this fine newspaper, and politely let them know that you would like them to reconsider their decision, and bring back TMW to the metro Detroit area.

We couldn't possibly ask that you do anything that we ourselves haven't already done****, so we'd like to show you what we emailed to their offices eaerlier:

If you like, you can let us know about your efforts in the comments to this post.

Thank you for your support.

* - here's the mailing address to write to:

Metro Times
733 St. Antoine
Detroit, MI 48226

** - here's the number to call: (313) 961-4060, and here's the number to fax: (313) 961-6598

*** - here's the email addresses of the publisher and editor of the paper:

Publisher (Lisa Rudy) - lrudy@metrotimes.com
Editor (Ric Bohy) - rbohy@metrotimes.com

You can also visit this web page to find even more contact information, if there are others you wish to ask for help in reversing this decision.

**** - unless you're a Putsch supporter. In that case, we don't expect you to listen to us, much less do what we suggest you should. Most of our suggestions in this area are anatomically impossible at any rate...

And Now, We'd Like To Show You Something We're Very Proud Of

^{Humpday, 20 Falltring 2005}

One of the projects we have been frantically working on behind the scenes is the mixing of our first single in a long time. You can hear a copy of it by clicking on this link. Or you can right-click on the link and select Save As to download the song onto your hard drive. We've added an extra verse since we last posted the lyrics. You can see the new and improved lyrics below.

We would appreciate any of the more well-heeled among our readership sending a few sheckels our way. Just email us and we'll let you know the numbered Swiss account you can deposit the funds into.

Did You Miss Us?

^{Sunday, 18 Falltring 2005}

Sorry we've been away from our digs on the Fashionable Left Bank of Blogistan^TM for a bit. It was time for a slight break from dealing with the nonstop barrage from the propaganda machine propping up the sad excuse for a pResident that is currently installed in the White House. Who knew that being Stand-Up Philosopher General could be such a stressful position? We're sure it has nothing to do with being in an unsecure work situation for over four years, restarting our unholy dalliance with nicotine, not being able to get any offers for our humble abode after almost a year on the market, and the general aches and pains involved with dealing with BFE kimchee age. We're also pretty sure that this is around the time last year when we started to realize that we were no longer in a loving relationship - everybody else involved just forgot to let us know we were excess baggage, and started finding ways to get out of dodge.

Anyways,... we anticipate a slew of faithful Bartcop readers will find their way to our humble digs here in Blogistan over the next few days - last time we gots a link from that place, we got over thirty times our normal quota of daily visits - and now we have to find our muse, once again, in very short order.

What can we say about the supreme court clustercheney that others haven't already pointed out? How can we add a slightly different viewpoint to the thousands already on record regarding the monumental (some would say impeachable) level of the NOLA clustercheney? Where can we make our mark in the Cheney told to go cheney himself kerfluffle? We don't know - and so we are silent on these matters.

We have, however, seen many many excess piles of Repugnicant spin in the comments section of some of the progressive blogs these days. Their virulence and steadfast denial of the reality of the situation is still mired in Vince Foster murder fantasies, and year Fourteen of the Clenis^TM fixation is still under way amongst the more zealous Putsch fellators fanatics. That the spin is all that much more frantic of late reminds us of the cornered pResident Clark in one of the later Babylon 5 shows and his attempted scorched earth policy when his theft of the office was exposed. These critters be nasty when they be cornered.

So all we can do today is show you the latest workhorse of our bloghost, Marc Perkel. He installed a new server and migrated web presences so efficiently that never noticed any lag in service from our end. It also might have something to do with the fact that we've been away from the keys for a few days. But we wanted to show you all a pic Marc was kind enough to take for us:

Pull The Other One

^{Humpday, 13 Falltring 2005}

New hot star of the internets John Howard mentions in an off hand way that pResident Perpetual Vacation has a guitar with the presidential seal on it.

Would anyone care to speculate on the howling from the media whores if the last legally elected president had something like that emblazoned on his saxophone? Last month?

Update: Funny that we haven't seen more about this from the media whores. Can we put some more lipstick on this pig?

Update Too: Various and sundry spelling and/or grammatical fixes done later on in the day. Next time, we'll try and remember to post until after we've gotten at least half of that first pot of coffee down our gullets. D'OHH!

Update Five Three: Does the CokeSpoon Cowboy know how to play the guitar the way he knows how to ride a horse? Could this possibly be the debut of Air Guitar One??

Bloggy Goodness From Around The Zone

^{Tuesday, 12 Falltring 2005}

We've been busy trying to attain a zen-like state while holding weighted sticks in our hands and trying to cause a small dimpled ball fall into an artificially drilled hole in the surface of the planet. For which we help fund an entire sector of our service economy with our greens fees and our beer cart contributions.

But we see that while'we've been away some others found some of our fresh bloggy goodness and responded nicely. You should go see the ripples from our mind pebbles and grok on them in all their fullness.*

Many many others besides the small sample here have been busy showing us details of the disaster that felled New Orleans, and the pathetic last throes of an occupation that could possibly be headed for Chimpeachment in the near future because of their CEO pResidency.

In the You heard it here first department, watch, wait, and see if you don't start hearing about our newest source of animal protein, swamp rat. Thanks to Hoffmania for linking to this National Geographic special. We saw one the other night about natural disasters that also pointed out the lack of government care in supporting the infrastructure of the Big Easy. And how it could lead to problems if something ever happened.

As amazing as it sounds, now that Drinky McDumbA$$ and the God Squad have been caught with their pants down at home, those insurgents that flocked to Iraq once we "liberated" it have decided to make some moves of their own. We're reasonably sure the brain trust in DC has already well worked its' way into one of those hoary contingency plans they have dusted off and revamped for the current crisis. On the plus side, we're also reasonably sure that the rest of the world now realizes that the U.S. is beginning to notice that it is now roughly equivalent to one of those third world countries that have received American funding lo these many years. The graft is a little better hidden and America needs to take a while to get used to the idea, but those are minor details to be worked out over time.

We're afraid to feed one of our more virulent addictions**, although we feel that we should always confront our demons. And besides, some of the new Best Of Net collections are awesome!

We might be busy with some redesigns and some calendar finalization stuff over at our business site. And wethinks that the links zone is in need of some judicious pruning. More to the point, it might actually be a part of reality-based discussions involving the Funny Farm in ages to come.

So stay tuned and stay frosty - we might not put out much mind candy in the near future, but it will probably be pretty tasty. And there's always so much more out there to get into...

* - just before utterly destroying them. Wasn't that always the way those Martians behaved in Stranger In A Strange Land? It's been awhile since we viddied that particular tome...

** - he said, upon finishing his first pot of coffee for the day. Before making lunch and jumping in the shower preparatory to another day of work...

Credit Where Credit Is More Than Due

^{Friday, 8 Falltring 2005}

Some of you may be aware that we have become able to get close enough to the rough beast that is the corpo-weasel elite of our day and age to tweak its' nose from time to time. At this time it allows us to show you some positive actions we are aware of by one of those corporate giants:

[the following is slightly paraphrased from its' original version*]

We applaud and heartily support these companies' efforts to help in these times of need. and we encourage anyone eyeballing this post to go to your nearest KMart or Sears and drop a bit of coin into the fund. We will be trying to make some subtle efforts to increase the corporate matching on these funds. Wouldn't it be interesting if this company managed to make their $500K target in the first week? It certainly would be a way to help convince the powers that be to dig a bit deeper into the vaults, and match even more customer and associate*** donations.

This entry cross-posted at Key Questions.

* - and, no, we didn't take anything of substance or out of context as far as our limited capabilities can determine...

** - official disclaimer: corporate names, promises, jargon, and internal designations are anonymized where we thought we could get away with it. Nothing within this post can in any way be construed to be the actual policies of any actual corporate entity, unless you specifically see said corporate entity announce the exact same policies we are hypothetically claiming that they might, through their official corporate press releases****. And even then, you didn't hear it from us.

*** - the current company term for employees.

**** - thanks to Rook for locating the original press release, as well as linking to this post.

Quick Question

^{Thursday, 7 Falltring 2005}

After finally reading this post from Xoverboard as well as about a gazillion other comments on various blogs, we can't help but wonder if anyone even bothers with, you know, actually believing any of the kimchee spewing from conservabots these days? We can't believe that the media thinks this is going to work. And, if they are really seriously making statements along the lines that John lays into in his post, we sincerely hope everyone is parsing along.

We were also wondering if anyone else thought about at least temporarily (cough) relocating some of the victims of the NOLA disaster to a certain ranch that has just been vacated? It certainly seems to be rather large - maybe you could build a few shotgun shacks on approximately two and a half square miles?

This Is Going To Sting A Little

So it seems the latest game amongst our fellow blogthren is to list the Top 100 songs from the year you graduated high school, and then put the ones you like in bold (some even use bold and italilcs to denote extra-special faves), strikethrough the ones you don't, leave the ones you're ambivalent about as is, and mark the one you like the most in a unique way so's everyone can call you a dumbass for your musical taste (or lack thereof) know which song in that year's top 100 you like best. We'd mark the ones in the list that we don't know - but there aren't any, being as we were a deejay in a previous life.

So without further ado, we bring you the list:

As you can see, we're not a big disco fan, Player and Bob Welch had their career years that year, and any name artist who did crack the top 100 for this year wasn't producing their best stuff at the time. And we're somewhat of a tough crowd as far as musical talent is concerned.

Quick Note To Comcast

^{Humpday, 6 Falltring 2005}

We haven't gotten along very well with your organization during our previous experiences as one of your customers. However, we were prepared to hold our nose and talk to you about your providing our humble abode with replacements for both our DSL service (SBC's service bites the big one these days, too. What a surprise!), and our satellite TV service (which is okay but co$t$ a bit much), until we spent over three hours on the phone without speaking to a representative of your company. Now, we navigated through your automated menus for over five minutes each time in order to let your company know that we were wondering if we could give you some money on a monthly basis in exchange for providing us with cable TV and cable modem services. And we keyed our phone number in multiple times during the automated response portion of our call each and every time we tried to talk to someone in your organization. And we feel that we have given you more than enough chances to act in a professional and courteous manner. We're relatively sure that your organization won't give a rat's a$$ about their disrespecting us in this manner, either. But maybe - just maybe - someone will stumble upon this cry for corporate justice, and decide that they've had enough of your crap, too.

We respectfully request that any current customers of Comcast re-evaluate the level of service that they are being given, and find a way to use alternatives to this unfeeling corporate hegemon. For anyone who considers this option, please let us know how it works out in the comments section below this post.