Has anyone made this joke yet?

As we all heard a passenger jet taking off from LaGuardia on Thursday lost power and ditched in the Hudson. The running theory at the moment is that the plane hit a flock of Canada Geese which fouled the engines like only bowling ball of a bird can do. The question on my mind - why wasn't President Bush's last act in office to declare it an act of terror and invade Canada?

Hurrrrrrr. Go Obama.

Winter at last

The Good News: It's so cold in our house that we can pretty much just leave food out with no ill effect. Which is actually doubly good, since we were doing that sort of thing before anyway.

The Bad News: see 'The Good News.'

PSA: Traffic Circles, Revisited

A while back I published the rules to bicycle traffic circles. I'm sure somebody else has published them too, like maybe DMV or the California Penal Code, but I figured as a public service I would bring the guidelines to my own enormous readership. It seems, however, that my instructions may have been a bit vague, and people keep nearly running over me from unexpected directions. Therefore, I offer the following, more specific advice:

If you are hellbent on demonstrating your free spirit through the use of some sort of non-bike transportation (razor scooter, skateboard, lawn mower, golf cart, bizarre snakeboard thing, UPS truck...) you are actually not exempt from the rules that govern bikes. Maybe technically you are, I haven't looked it up, but going backwards through the circle will still result in a pileup and subsequent beatdown at the hands of angry kickstand-having mofos. In fact, you should probably be more inclined to obey, since of the forms of transportation listed only the razor scooter and golf cart are known to have brakes. I make no apologies to the UPS truck here.

The pack attitude has its advantages, namely safety around predators and aerodynamics. Neither would hopefully apply on the way to grab a tofurkey burger after class. In this context, packs tend to result in congestion and domino crashes. They do, however, allow for excellent networking before the crash and something to talk about later.

Pedestrians: You can almost do whatever the hell you please. I'm going to step down to a slightly lower soapbox and give you some reign here. All I ask is that when you're walking through a busy intersection, you at least act like you're in a busy intersection. I know that you think it looks mega chic to ignore your surroundings, but it's gonna bang up your cool real bad when I deliver you this flying head-butt I've been working on.

VOTE or.....else?

As of right now the polls are still open in most of the country, and we have yet to see who the big winners are. But I can already tell you who lost big this election day: P. Diddy. Four years ago he lead the pathetic charge to get people to the polls, and tonight people are voting in record numbers in spite of his absence. Apparently all we needed were an additional battlefront, a failing economy, a candidate with some personality, and to lose the words "or die" from the slogan.

Story Time

Ok, it is seldom that anything that happens to me gets directly retold on this here internet. But this one is too much to keep to myself.

Monday night my roommates came home late from a bar where they'd been celebrating somebody's birthday. They brought back a friend, let's call him "Archie." Archie was going to crash on our awesome denim couch. Fair enough. G'night guys.

By 1:30am everybody was sacked out in their respective sacks, and I wandered into the bathroom to take out my contacts. While I was doing this I heard somebody rustling around in the kitchen, and what sounded like the oven door being opened and then water running. Ok, I know everybody is already down for the night. Who is baking?

A quick investigation was met with Archie, peeing into our oven. I checked that sentence, it came out like it was supposed to. He was peeing into our oven. The only words I could find were "What the hell?" and I haven't come up with anything better in the days since. The rest of the evening was spent barricaded in my room with my toothbrush and other valuables. When there's a drunk guy in your house who can still walk but can't differentiate between a toilet and major appliances, you don't take that sort of chance.

Hooligans

Dear sir, who stomped down my Obama '08 lawn sign on Saturday night:

Well done. The result of your actions is that I will go get another lawn sign and my candidate's campaign will have another $5 in its treasury. Thbthbthb.

Love,
Not redneck enough to pull that sort of shit, but redneck enough to consider booby trapping lawn sign v2.

PSA: Traffic Circles

It appears that people are once again in need of my services. Unfortunately, those people are probably not the ones reading this. Oh well, the better to amuse me during the coffee break, I suppose.

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Egads, man, a traffic circle of +4 confusion doth approach! What to do?
There are basically two states of being regarding traffic circles: In the circle and not in the circle. Whenever you change from one state to the other, you are merging. Merge, fool. Do not plunge. Do not dart. Do not bisect. Neither shalt thou count two whilst chatting with your friend, excepting that thou then proceedeth your arse out of the intersection.

Simple? Done.