As someone who last week wrote a $365 check to the Town of Luther for a speeding ticket (valid, I was going 65 in a 55) and a ticket for “failing to yield to an emergency vehicle” (completely ridiculous, I didn’t pull over fast enough for Barney Fife) I take a tremendous amount of enjoyment in seeing a police force whose only seeming service is to poach money from highway travelers for a tiny town take such a black eye:

Jerry Pendley had worked for the Luther Police Department for about three weeks before his arrest by Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers on Monday. The U.S. Attorney’s office says Pendley lied on the documents by not noting he had been arrested and charged twice on suspicion of assault and battery.

moral of the story:

1. stay off Route 66 – take the Turnpike when you’re going between OKC & Tulsa
2. if you do happen to get a ticket in Luther, don’t go to court with a reasonable request to reduce payment on the meaningless ticket – they won’t do it and the judge will charge you $44 to appear in court
3. support politicians who strip little towns of the right to issue tickets on highways if their ticket revenue exceeds reasonable limits

I’ve seen a trend on websites like Lifehacker and Flickr where people show off the contents of their bag. Their bag is unloaded and the items are methodically laid out for others to review. (personally, I think 90% of this is designed to show off their Mac toys…)

I’ve decided to play along and show off what is currently in my bag, see below:

A quick review of the inventory (from right to left):

• A banjo – I can really only play one song, which my mom doesn’t like because it sounds depressing. I have always felt this was quite a feat – to play a depressing song on a banjo.
• The Complete Book of Breastfeeding – I currently don’t breastfeed, but if I ever start I’m fairly sure that if I suddenly start it will come as such a shock that I’ll require the use of a manual.
• Canned Pumpkin Pie Filling – This is good to get gum out of hair.
• Roomba – for quick carpet cleaning, as required.
• My super-cool iBook. I know you’re jealous. It’s a vintage 1998 model.
• A stud finder – for the joke that never gets old (where I hold the stud finder up to my chest and say “beeeeeep”).
• Prestone De-Icer – obviously for hair styling.
• My universally despised, yet oh so comfortable fur-lined crocs. I’m a slave to fashion.
• Ulysses by James Joyce – for light reading on the toilet.

There is an interesting series of op-ed pieces in the NY Times today about the turning points in the election. I was intrigued by a piece written by Howard Woffson, the former campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, about Hillary’s choice of her campaign song. If you remember there was a lot of silly attention paid to this process and it ended in a pretty good video spoof of the Sopranos finale with Bill, Hillary & Chelsea.
In his article he jokingly blames the downturn in Hilary’s primary run on her choice (selected by an online poll) of Celine Dion’s “You and I” as her campagin song. He says:

Ideas were put forward: Motown, disco, ballads. I pushed K T Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” because it seemed empowering and upbeat. It was immediately criticized. What about the singer’s use of the word “hell”?

To break the stalemate, we sponsored an online contest for supporters and gave them options to choose from. The votes and commentaries rolled in. Celine Dion’s “You and I” was selected, a decision I jokingly predicted would signal the end of the campaign.

I’m strongly considering running for President in 2012. I’ll only be 34 then, but I think I can pull a few strings and get the constitution amended (note to self, start working on that…). So in preperation for that event, and to prevent any crap Celine Dion song from being nominated I’ve preselected a five great songs for you to vote for. Please take my poll below.

Tonight I was putting Sam into his pajamas and asked him what songs they sang in church on Sunday. His reply was “Noggin, It’s like Preschool on TV.” That is the tag line for the little toddler channel that we put on for he and Lily to watch. I have to tell you, it’s moments like this that make you feel like a really great parent.

Google has unleashed a cool news search device which allows you to search a topic say “dingos” or “baby” and lets you see if either presidential candidate has made a quote on that topic. It’s pretty fun to play with.

So I decided to use this tool as a test to see if Obama & McCain were truly in touch with the pressing issues of the day. I went over to Reuters.com and picked three stories that caught my interest:

• China breaks up male prostitution ring
• Police arrest naked burglary suspect
• Climbers find footprints of abdomible snowman

I took these topics into Google’s In Quotes application to see what Obama or McCain had to say about these pressing issues. I have to say that I am dismayed at the results:

So I guess to get these “candidates” attention these days you must either be an impending global financial crisis which could threaten our very way of life. I for one stand with the male prostitutes, naked burglars and abdomible snowmen and say for shame gentlemen.

Watch it twice if you don’t catch it the first time…

This is what happens when I don’t have baseball to watch in the evening, I make a fake baby with Omarosa (from the first season of the Apprentice). Evie approved.:

Update: Someone from Domino’s has commented that the delivery drivers do not have access to my political response. Please look at the comments to see his message.

I have expressed my love of Domino’s pizza tracker before. Personally, I think it is the best web innovation since hot or not.com. They’ve taken an odd turn with this useful web gadget today. After my order a few minutes ago, I checked in:

I couldn’t help but notice Domino’s desire for me to state a political preference while I waited for my hot pizza:

Seriously? It’s not that I really even mind the question… It just feels like a danger to my efficent pizza delivery. What if the delivery guy is a real partisan, one way or the other. I fear for the safety & timely delivery of my pizza. The whole thing is really odd to me.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 will go down in the annals of corporate finance as a the beginning of the end for a once mighty global company. Mr. Riley Hall, who incidentally is an old friend – irrelevant to our purposes here, killed News Corp with one blog post. Well, perhaps that is dipping too much into hyperbole, but you will see that he did strike a mortal wound. Mr. Hall made this post on his blog:

Just a quick review of what’s happened since this post. News Corp (NYSE: NWS) took a major financial hit, perhaps shaking the foundations of our entire American economy (I’m not smart enough to understand all the ins and outs). My Space is one of the major holdings of News Corp (they also have some newspapers and maybe a kangaroo ranch or something)

All I know is that since Riley made this post NWS lost a value of $0.39 per share. That may not sound like much, but at NWS’s market cap of over $38 billion that amounts to a Riley-caused destruction of $9,750,000,000 of share holder value. Ouch.