Mockumercials

My love of wearing kilts is well-known (and at least by wiwille, greatly disliked). So I was amused to visit the Utilikilts site recently and find a contest for mockumercials (fan-made commercials for Utilikilts) and a catalog of previous entries.

Most are at the very least amusing, and some had me cracking up. Except the "Trouser Witch" one (done as a Blair Witch parody, and exceptionally un-funny). My favorites are "What a waist", "They work", "Kilt Faerie", "Kilt Check", and "Good girls".

Most of the mockumercials center around women's fascination with and attraction to kilt-wearing men...which is truer than you pants-wearing pansies might think.

Weird omen

The collection of buildings I work in now were built about 6 and a half years ago. After our group took up residence here, a bicycle was parked in the bike rack in the underground garage. It was a beat up old blue-greenish 10 speed.

Every time I went to the underground garage level, it was there. Every day, same spot, same lock. For a long time, I was uncertain whether it was being ridden into work every day and parked in the same spot, or if it had just been abandoned. As the years wore on and most of the staff around here changed, I became more certain that the bike had just been abandoned. After over six years, there it was, in the same spot, with the same lock. The one constant in the ever-flowing change that is our office.

Today I went down to the underground level to walk over to the building with the cafeteria, taking the underground route to dodge the rain and cold.

The bike was gone.

I don't know why, but it made me feel strange. The one thing that's been the same since we came to this brand new sparkling campus six years ago just up and disappeared.

It's the most wonderful time of year...Dead Pool time

Every year, I run a Dead Pool game. Not for money, or anything like that, just for morbid amusement and the prestige of accurately predicting what celebrities will snuff it in the coming year.

The 2007 Dead Pool is just about up, and Charley and Cynthia, who created a joint list, are huge favorites to win. Predicting the deaths of both Anna Nicole Smith and Tammy Faye Messner (nee Baker) put them into the lead.

Given that it's mid-December, it is time for me to give fair warning to all those who play, and any who would like to join in the game this year, that it's time to get your 2008 list going. Just send me 25 celebrity names by December 31, and you have the chance to take the coveted title of Harbinger of Death for 2008. If you are an existing player and just want your list to ride, or just want to put new names in place of those who died, just let me know.

For those who haven't played, the rules:
1. Scoring: If a celebrity on your list dies between midnight Pacific Time January 1, 2008 and 11:59pm Pacific Time December 31, 2008, you get a number of points equal to 100 minus the celebrity's age.
2. Qualification: Honestly, the definition of "celebrity" is pretty loose. Basically, I better be able to find a Wikipedia article about the person.
3. Smack-talking: Encouraged.

Science is Kickass

I loves me some science. So I enjoyed reading that a recent NASA mission provided some new information about the Aurora Borealis.

Kickass!

The Bush Administration gets dumber, issue #3156

Apparently, the Bush administration has a policy for hiring the Press Secretary that includes a smart-dumb-smart-dumb clause. To whit:

Ari Fleischer: Smart guy, good mouthpiece. Clearly sold his sold to Satan when he accepted the Press Secretary gig.

Scott McClellan: Such an idiot he actually believed Karl Rove and the White House when they told him they had nothing to do with the Valerie Plame leak. Or so he says in his new book.

Tony Snow: Smart guy, with morals slightly exceeded by a heroin-addicted weasel. I think he not only got the Press Secretary job, but may also have gotten a mortgage on Ari Fleischer's soul as a part of his own deal with the devil.

Dana Perino: Recently admitted that she had no idea what the Cuban Missile Crisis was when a reporter asked a question referencing it.

To my readers: if you are past, say, junior high age and don't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, please quit reading my blog. You clearly aren't qualified. You may, however, be just what the White House is looking for in a Press Secretary, but only if two more resign inside of the next year.

What do you geek out about?

A certain friend's wife is fond of complaining when we play video games that we are "geeking out". She's right, and she's wrong. Yes, we're geeks and we "geek out" about our video games. But I maintain that everyone is a geek about something. Jocks are just geeks about sports. Botanists are geeks about plants. Everybody has something they focus on, obsess on, can talk for hours with someone else about even when the rest of the world couldn't care less. We're all geeks.

As visual evidence, check out the 56 Geek poster. I see at least half a dozen that could be used to describe me.