Blue Armadillo weblog

Saturday, June 23, 2001

Gael at Pop Culture Junk Mail pointed me to The Chronicles of George, an absolutely hysterical collection of incoherent help desk tickets submitted by the most clueless help desk technician in the history of technical support.
posted by John Heaton 3:27 PM | link

When I was in college, our pizza of choice came from Pizza Palace. The pizza was good, and they also included Dum-Dum lollipops with each order. If it was a slow wvening, they would even take orders for specific flavors. I don't know if Pizza Palace still gives out Dum-Dums, but if they do I hope they have plenty on hand, because a fire at the Dum-Dum warehouse in Ohio in which 350 million Dum-Dums were destroyed may result in a serious Dum-Dum shortage. The president of Spangler Candies says there will not be a shortage, but I don't trust managers.
posted by John Heaton 3:24 PM | link

Thursday, June 21, 2001

This site is a lot of fun in a dumb sort of way. Places Named is a geographic encyclopaedia. Enter the name of your town and it will spit out useful geographical information about it and every other town in the US with that name. So now I know that Leesburg, VA is located at 39°6'N 77°33' and that the land area is 11.54 square miles, and that there are 14 other Leesburgs in the US. It can also tell you how common your last name is. Heaton, for example, the 2,592nd most popular last name in the United States.
posted by John Heaton 3:40 PM | link

$82 is too pricey for me, but if the price comes down I'm definitely going to buy a square watermelon. In the meantime, I will satisfy my watermelon jones by visiting the National Watermelon Promotion Board website. Not to be confused with the National Watermelon Association, which doesn't have a snazzy website but is responsible for naming the National Watermelon Queen.
posted by John Heaton 1:11 PM | link

I should start thinking about states to which I can move if Oliver North is elected to Congress. (You'll recall I pledged to move out of Virginia if that happens.) Illinois was always a possibility, since I am an Illinois native, but I see here that the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois has launched a campaign on her official website to boycott Abercrombie and Fitch until they make their catalogs less racy. Do I want to live in a state in which the second highest ranking elected official in the state is using official resources to pursue such a moroninc goal? Not an easy question to answer. (link via andrewsullivan.com)
posted by John Heaton 12:59 PM | link

It turns out that neo-lib policy wonk Mickey Kaus is also a car geek. His new car column at slate.com is very entertaining to this non-car geek because he leavens talk of gear ratios and manifolds with a generous handful of design aesthetics.
posted by John Heaton 12:41 PM | link

A few years ago I went to Sesame Place with my nephew. Fun place! There are Sesame Street characters wandering around the park and if you're lucky you can get your picture taken with them. We weren't able to get pictures with all the characters, but it never occured to me to beat up Cookie Monster or the other characters with whom we couldn't pose for pictures.
posted by John Heaton 11:46 AM | link

Wednesday, June 20, 2001

I love this. Just yesterday on my Featured Links page I mentioned James Berardinelli, an amateur film critic who reviews movies Just because he loves movies. And today the Post writes about Tyler Cowen, a George Mason University economics professor who reviews restaurants just because he loves ethnic food. Very comprehensive. Who knew there was a Yemeni restaurant in Falls Church?
posted by John Heaton 2:13 PM | link

Just yesterday, I told someone that many things that happen in Virginia are completely inexplicable until you realize that a huge percentage of people who live her are, as Mark Hines once said about Usenet, some combination of lowlife and mentally ill. As if to prove the point, the Washington Post reports today on the conviction of former Virginian Andrew Burnett who threw a bichon frise into trafiic in California.

Two quick thoughts on this story. One, the dog's owner, Sara McBurnett, is quoted as saying, ""It wasn't just a dog to me. For me, it was my child." Well, no. He was your dog. What Burnett did was horrible, no question about it, but he wasn't your baby. He was your dog, and it's terrible that your dog was killed, especially in such a violent way. But pretending your dog is your baby just makes me think less of you.

Two, at approximately the same time the dog was killed in California, a little boy named Kevin Shiflett was killed here in Virginia. A reward fund set up for tips leading to the dog killer quickly grew to $120,000. A reward fund for finding the human killer topped out at less than half that amount. I am disgusted. Look, I don't dislike dogs, and I don't want to minimize the terrible thing that happened to McBurnett and her dog, but it is wrong on every conceivable level to suggest that it's more important to catch a man who killed a dog than to catch a man you killed a human, or that the life of a dog is more valuable than the life of a human. All of you who contributed money to the dog reward fund without making a contribution to the human reward fund should be ashamed of yourselves.
posted by John Heaton 1:56 PM | link

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

The hottest trend in suburban home design: gravel driveways is festive designer colors. This is really one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Listen up, people: just because someone says something is trendy, that doesn't mean you have to do it! Trends are almost always dumb and expensive. It's bad enough to see teenagers wearing bell-bottoms and platform shoes, but they're teenagers and probably don't know any better. But anyone who can afford to spend $10,000 on a driveway is probably old enough to know better.
posted by John Heaton 12:25 PM | link

Monday, June 18, 2001

Woo hoo! I just got my new Montykins T-shirt! Now I'll be the coolest guy in the whole Commonwealth of Virginia.
posted by John Heaton 4:53 PM | link

File this one next to Dieppe in the Things I Didn't Know About World War II file. Believe it or not, this three-masted schooner, the U.S.S. Guinevere, was part of the US Navy's Atlantic fleet during World War II. The Guinevere escorted shipping convoys and patrolled for U-boats in the North Atlantic. The Washington Post profiles a veteran who served on the Guinevere. Very interesting article.
posted by John Heaton 3:24 PM | link

A beautiful and compelling story from the Kansas City Star about a young tenor with big dreams. (Thanks to fellow CCS member Margaret Shannon for the link.)
posted by John Heaton 2:59 PM | link

Read this Washington Post op-ed by a Post reporter about her opposition to people of another race moving into her neighborhood and ask yourself: would this piece have been published if the reporter was white? (link via andrewsullivan.com)
posted by John Heaton 11:52 AM | link

They had appeared on national TV and had a record contract. So whatever happened to the Cumberland Trio? An amazing story of a band that almost made it to the top but had the ladder kicked away at the last minute.
posted by John Heaton 9:55 AM | link

Sunday, June 17, 2001

Funny interview with John Cleese and Terry Jones at salon.com about the re-release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Is it even possible for either of these gentlemen to NOT be fuuny?
posted by John Heaton 4:08 PM | link

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