Here's my obligatory link to Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam - Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

posted by Chris at 2:02 PM Permalink

 
Elliott made stuff like this sound so effortless, but gosh it's hard — I slapped this a capella thing together and posted it last November, not because it turned out particularly well, but because it almost killed me. In case you missed it, here's a link to Chris Benson sings I Didn't Understand badly. Some parts are pretty painful, but I guess some other parts are accomplished passably well.

posted by Chris at 4:18 PM Permalink

 
I wonder if Bill O'Reilly will ever figure out that if you're going to keep going around confronting people, you need to pick on people who aren't your intellectual superiors like Al Franken and John Stewart. If you ask me, Mr. O'Reilly is proof positive that there are worse things to be than a "stoned slacker."

(Thanks to Maya at Postcards from Sacramento for the link to Yahoo News.)

posted by Chris at 11:30 AM Permalink

 

posted by Chris at 8:47 PM Permalink

 
This little drawing from Reality Carnival makes my brain feel good.

posted by Chris at 2:05 PM Permalink

 
We watched the season premiere of Joan of Arcadia last Friday, and once again, I urge all of my loyal Asparagus Pee readers to make this a must-see. It bothers me a little bit that whenever they are in the police station where her dad works, the whole scene is filmed in NYPD-blue, but other than that, this show is near-perfect.

I mean, where else are you going to hear God advise a teenaged girl, "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. That's Sartre. Or was it Zappa?"

UPDATE — This is in fact a Frank Zappa quote, and there's a pretty concise list of good ones over here.

posted by Chris at 11:48 AM Permalink

 
My spambox, sorry, I meant to say my "inbox," is filling up now with stuff about refinancing my house "the Christian Way" and getting out of debt "the Christian Way."

What the bejeebus is that supposed to mean?

I've always kind of imagined that the Christian way to get out of debt would be to pay back the money.

And why do these spams always have the cross or the bible against a backdrop of an American flag? Can't the Canadians get out of debt the Christian way, or must they pay off their debts shamefully as the heathens do?

posted by Chris at 11:38 AM Permalink

 
Awhile back, I wrote about the wonder of writing my initials on the copper bottom of a Revereware pan using ketchup, and I'm sure everyone is dying to know how that works. Here's a link to a guy who's devoted way too much time to the phenomenon of cleaning pennies with taco sauce.

posted by Chris at 8:59 PM Permalink

 
I'm thrilled to hear and report that on October 19th they're releasing From a Basement on a Hill, the album Elliott Smith was working on last year when he allegedly took his own life. There are links to several stories on Google News Search.

Unfortunately, it's only one CD, not the double that was originally a possibility, but the good news is that it's already #113 on Amazon, and it's not even out yet.

I'd sure rather have Elliott back.

I don't know about you, but I'm going over to Amazon and order it now.

For more information, here's a link to his main fansite: Sweet Adeline.

posted by Chris at 1:25 PM Permalink

 
I'd like to rant about politics, but I don't have time right now, so I'm going to let Michael Moore's Message do it for me.

Here's a sample:

"WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?"

posted by Chris at 3:23 PM Permalink

 
Asparagus Pee's getting a bunch of hits on "Chris Benson's Wife" again.

If you're looking for her, go directly to annabenson.net. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. (Or hang around and read Anna Benson's Not Here, sign the guestbook, leave a comment, or whatever. Vote Kerry.)

posted by Chris at 1:00 PM Permalink

 
It suddenly occurs to me that I think I forgot to mention that I'm pretty sure the "widow's son" in that corny hidden message from The Da Vinci Code's dust jacket is none other than Hiram Abiff. That's probably old news to the folks who care about Masonic/Rosicrucian whatnot, but I stumbled on it all by my little lonesome, so there it is. Follow the link to Google on Hiram Abiff and draw your own conclusions.

posted by Chris at 5:56 PM Permalink

 
I know you're all dying to check out this Guide to Springfield USA. Someone has created a map with every place ever mentioned on The Simpsons™.

posted by Chris at 3:14 PM Permalink

 
I actually laugh a lot more than I rant, but I would like to state publicly that I refuse to use the abbreviation LOL. (The jury's still out on ROTFLMAO.)

posted by Chris at 1:49 PM Permalink

 
I am so tired of all the Bush/Kerry crap about military service and Vietnam. Who made up the rule that says a politician ought to be a veteran anyway, and better yet, a decorated one? Serving at all makes you a hero, but unless you have to hold up under torture or something, isn't getting wounded just bad luck? Is it better to have a medal you didn't really deserve, or no medal at all?

By the way, did you know that some people consider Clinton to be a draft dodger?

Now I know it ain't patriotic, but I for one would think that if you've got it together enough to find yourself leading an advanced country of 300 million, you ought to be clever enough to find legally valid ways to avoid serving in a badly justified war. So I wish Bush would quit trying to deny one of the few things I actually respect him for having the sense to do.

And if your daddy doesn't have enough clout to help you get out of it, dodging your way into a Rhodes Scholarship to wait it out at Oxford will do just fine, thank you.

posted by Chris at 1:10 PM Permalink

 
Several of the people I work with and for are nearing retirement age, and one guy has a sign up over his desk that he's updating every morning with the number of days till he retires on his birthday in 2006, so based on current assumptions regarding Social Security, I've decided to do the same for my 67th birthday.

As of right now, my whiteboard shows I've got only 9018 days left to go!

posted by Chris at 6:59 PM Permalink

 
I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I believe the documents CBS put out there re: Bush and the National Guard are forgeries produced in MS Word, and I'll be very surprised if it turns out to be otherwise, so I'm embarassed for CBS as they scramble to try to make good. The PDFs smelled wrong when I first glanced at them, and I just couldn't put my finger on it, but it was a perfect example of Blink, which is a pretty good book I've read as an advance reader's copy that unfortunately hasn't been published yet.

I'm also very disappointed to say that I'm afraid this will turn people against Kerry to the point where, were I a conspiracy theorist, I would almost suspect the Bush camp of misleading CBS on purpose to intensify and counteract the Swift boat fiasco and put the old AWOL rumors to rest at Kerry's expense.

posted by Chris at 4:26 PM Permalink

 
I was listening to Bush's RNC acceptance speech the other night, and I couldn't help thinking that the big multi-purpose question for almost every issue Dubya touched on is, "So who picks up the tab?"

As I listened to his aw-shucks good-ol'-boy rhetoric, I found myself getting sucked into the cesspool-like vortex of the swirling promise pit and thinking, well, if it really were possible to fight active wars on multiple fronts that were moral and necessary; simultaneously cutting taxes while not raising deficits, sacrificing education, or exacerbating the gap between rich and poor; and we could make sure that Social Security and Medicare were going to be around for the people that were promised them, without cutting benefits; and the next generation (i.e., me) really could bank their retirements in a private investment with a better guaranteed return without leaving an umpteen-billion dollar hole in the existing programs; well, hell, yeah, I'd vote for this guy - but it's all a not-very-well-woven fabric of lies, and I'd like to know who's getting the payoff, and who's really picking up the tab?

Them beautiful sheeps's got the stink of wolf all over 'em, and we can't afford to be naïve. It's not too late to register and vote. I would say, "for anybody but Bush," but you really do need to vote for Kerry. You do the math.

posted by Chris at 10:35 AM Permalink

 
Another era has come to an end.

Last night while I was grocery shopping, I happened to look closely at an endcap display of Coppertone™ products, and I noticed that the Coppertone Girl® has lost her tan line. That's right, that's what I said, she's got no freakin' tan line. I guess Coppertone decided that it was just not PC to have a tan line on their marketing mascot in the new era of SPF 150. I'm sure the sunblock line has been outselling the tanning lotions, so I guess they're just showing good fiscal responsibility. But still...

posted by Chris at 4:54 PM Permalink

 
In breaking news, a study in Exeter, England has confirmed something that I've suspected all along: you can do math problems faster and better if you memorize your times tables.

Alas, I did not bring this task to its full fruition, and even though I got a "C" or better up through Differential Equations, to this day I get really fuzzy in the 7-8-9 region of the multiplication problem space. Which reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

Q: Why was six afraid of seven?

A: Because seven ate nine.

posted by Chris at 1:00 PM Permalink

 
Well, that's too bad... the Genesis probe has crash landed in the desert because its parachute failed to open. But then again, it's amazing that we try to do some of this stuff at all.

Genesis : Search for Origins | JPL | NASA

posted by Chris at 11:46 AM Permalink