Now, I've heard weather forecasters use some really bizarre adjectives before....



....but I really don't think I've ever seen THIS before on a weather forecast:









Patchy Smoke

Hi 94°F


Man, still wonder how or why anyone lives in California....

Speaking of weird adjectives....

I was back in Buffalo a while ago, and my dad asked my to install this weird-ass thing he bought (my father will see this shit on TV, nod his head thoughtfully, then go out and buy it on his next trip to Walgreen's!!). OK....well, I have a look at it, and somehow, it's supposed to clip on to the front of your air vent on your dashboard, and of course, thee little part that actually CLIPS the thing on is missing somewhere, no doubt lying on the floor in one of the aisles of Walgreen's. Whatever. So I re-read the instructions, and I mean, Ive heard of, like, East Asian translations of English (like my Chinese smokeless ashtray - "Ashtray blower-fan will suck in inhaust" - Wow....wish I could make up words like that!!)....but this was in (what appears to be) Yankee English!! Go head....click on it and read it.....

I mean....wow!!!

• "This is not a toy" - Ya think???!!?
• "Do not keep pets in car without adequate ventilation" - ESPECIALLY if they have to smell the stench that comes outta this Goddamm thing! Small children and infants are OK in the car without ventilation....it's just the pets you have to be mindful of.
• "Intended for adult use only" - Sorry....that scares me a bit....
• "Use only for intended purposes and according to instructions for use" - Wow.....cool....makes me wonder: So, what exactly IS the chemical composition if the ingredients of this Johnson Wax product?? And would I be arrested if I took it to Bhopal?

.

Her name is Reno and she dances on the sand.....

Went to Reno this past weekend.....

Had a bit of a going away send off blowout for my friend Gord, as he's leaving The Rose City after his wife and he bought a big-ass motor home and they plan to tour the U.S., stopping every so often to do contract work to pay the bills. Five of us flew down there....and, thank Christ.....five of us came back.

Reno is probably thee most morbidly depressed city I've ever spent time in (and believe me - I've spent time in several very depressing places). Nobody there is particularly friendly, happy or even remotely content. It has an almost overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and......I dunno.....almost resentment that one can literally feel in the atmosphere around there. It's a very difficult feeling to qualify very well into words. Was gonna try to take a whole mess of fotograffs to try to capture this sense in some sort of fotojournal.....but the idea of getting into a brawl with the locals by shooting their pictures without asking them first kinda put me offa that idea. Probably coulda just shot the buildings and maybe that woulda worked.....but I don't think it woulda conveyed the sense very well as pics of people on the street would have. So, the camera stayed packed pretty much all of the trip, as my lungs, liver and wallet proceeded to get dropkicked hard by this city.

No more Nevada forra long-ass time. I really don't think I could survive it....and besides, it makes me actually look forward to coming back to work! And you really shouldn't want to go back to work.....

.

Fin......

This entire Comcast thing kinda pisses me off. I had read a few days ago articles online about how Comcast had blocked and delayed access for its customers to some websites and how some people were up in arms screaming "SEE?? Without 'net neutrality, THIS is what you get!!! Ha ha!! Told ya so!!"

Whoooa.......hold the fone there, Tex.....

Now, I am NOT a huge fan of Comcast! They literally are OK. Not great at all, but not horrible (and, if you have EVER dealt with The Great Satan - a.k.a. Qwest Communications - you probably know what I'm talking about when I say "horrible"!) and my Internet has NEVER DIED! No...it seriously hasn't.....

OK, so whass with this blocking or slowing access to certain websites, then?

All right. For starters, when I think of what the perceived threat is from ISP's not following 'net neutrality, my image of that is where, say, if I want to order a pizza over the Internet, my ISP will DELIBERATELY SLOW my access to......say.....Papa Johns. BUT....BUT....if I go to www.pizzahut.com and order that pizza, it'll go thru at lightning speed? Why? Maybe because Pizza Hut is a paid advertiser for my ISP? THEN, THEN I have a big-ass problem with my ISP and that is not cool....naw....bye-bye!

BUT, BUT....if you'd get the entire story, what Comcast is actually doing is MANAGING the bandwidth. SLOWING access to sites like Gnutella, BitTorrent, etc. NOT for those downloading.....say....a three-MEG song or some shit......

.....noooo, Comcast is slowing down access for that asshole who pays thee same exact amount as you, and whilst you download a song or two every so often, send a few fotograffs every so often via E-Mail, and surf websites and read E-Mail, this asshole is downloading MOVIE AFTER MOVIE and trying to download War and fucking Peace and Christ knows what other 40-MEG files!!

Good for you, Comcast......kinda like Communism! Way things SHOULD be! Gotta problem wiff that?? Well, if you really enjoy downloading your 40+ MEG files, movies and such, Comcast has a tiered pricing package for how fast you want the connection and how much usage you need to get out of your broadband connection!! So buy the package that's a tier or two higher performing (and, therefore more expensive) than the standard cable Internet, and away you go, downloading to your heart's content!

I mean, thass kinda like, let's pretend, there's only so much oil that is obtainable under the Earth. And, let's say that the Earth is for all creatures to share....

....well, I mean, what if your group used more than 25% of such resources and yet had only 3% of the total of the world's population and, now, how would that......

OK...fuck it, I don't hafta give you an analogy - you get the point! Still, though....ya gotta admit....the granny with the claw hammer story is cool.....

Pics WILL be on the pic page by Thursday......still kinda in a daze....

GO ROX!!!!!!!

And remember.....real baseball forces the pitcher to take a few swings at the plate! Would we have had Babe Ruth if the Designated Hitter rule had been in place?

-E-