Funny Joke Anyone??

Anyone know a really funny (clean) joke??

Could I just not pay taxes??

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress - 1st Session

Question: On Passage of the Bill (S. 160 As Amended )
Vote Number: 73 Vote Date: February 26, 2009, 04:17 PM

Required For Majority: 3/5
Vote Result: Bill Passed

Measure Number: S. 160 (District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 )
Measure Title: A bill to provide the District of Columbia a voting seat and the State of Utah an additional seat in the House of Representatives.

Vote Counts:
YEAs 61
NAYs 37
NV 1

Vote Summary

Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Nay
Barrasso (R-WY), Nay
Baucus (D-MT), Nay
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Begich (D-AK), Yea
Bennet (D-CO), Yea
Bennett (R-UT), Nay
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Bond (R-MO), Nay
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brownback (R-KS), Nay
Bunning (R-KY), Nay
Burr (R-NC), Nay
Burris (D-IL), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Nay
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Nay
Coburn (R-OK), Nay
Cochran (R-MS), Nay
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Corker (R-TN), Nay
Cornyn (R-TX), Nay
Crapo (R-ID), Nay
DeMint (R-SC), Nay
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Ensign (R-NV), Nay
Enzi (R-WY), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Nay
Grassley (R-IA), Nay
Gregg (R-NH), Nay
Hagan (D-NC), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Nay
Inhofe (R-OK), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Nay
Johanns (R-NE), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kaufman (D-DE), Yea
Kennedy (D-MA), Not Voting
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Nay
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Martinez (R-FL), Nay
McCain (R-AZ), Nay
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Nay
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Merkley (D-OR), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Nay
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Risch (R-ID), Nay
Roberts (R-KS), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Nay
Shaheen (D-NH), Yea
Shelby (R-AL), Nay
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Thune (R-SD), Nay
Udall (D-CO), Yea
Udall (D-NM), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Nay
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (D-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wicker (R-MS), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Yea

Random, I know.

Just in case you're feeling crafty...3D Paper Star

1 2 3 Jump

More details, and pictures later, but I jumped out of a plane again.
This isn't me, but the guy in the video is the same guy who gave me my safety brief... right before I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.



I was in San Diego with the Navy SEALS to learn about how they train to jump. Notice all the equipment (including oxygen) on them as they go out of the plane and the fact that they land in water. These guys are the real deal.

The Holiday of St. Valentine

Valentine's Day: Hallmark holiday, or an opportunity to proclaim your undying love? I'm sort of on the fence. I think for people who are unattached, divorced, widowed, insert other single status here, this day is not so much fun. Probably just a reminder that they will not be getting flowers or lucky. (Sorry about that.)

However, I am now a HUGE fan of this holiday, because... I got the best Valentine's Day gift EVER.

I am now the proud owner of a RED STAPLER.

I think I shall call her Valentina.

If you don't know how totally awesome this is, please take a minute to educate yourself. Rio Red 747 Business Stapler

Objectionable Foreign Matter

February 13, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Maggots in Your Mushrooms
By E. J. LEVY

THE Georgia peanut company at the center of one of our nation’s worst food-contamination scares has officially reached a revolting new low: a recent inspection by the Food and Drug Administration discovered that the salmonella-tainted plant was also home to mold and roaches.

You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new. The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.

In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking action by the F.D.A.

The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.

Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one’s food, curry powder is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925 insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20 rodent hairs before being considered defective.

Peanut butter — that culinary cause célèbre — may contain approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.

In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may well be in the mustard.

The F.D.A. considers the significance of these defects to be “aesthetic” or “offensive to the senses,” which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the “mouth/tooth injury” one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

The most recent edition of the booklet (it has been revised and edited six times since first being issued in May 1995) states that “the defect levels do not represent an average of the defects that occur in any of the products — the averages are actually much lower.” Instead, it says, “The levels represent limits at which F.D.A. will regard the food product ‘adulterated’ and subject to enforcement action.”

Bugs in our food may not be so bad — many people in the world practice entomophagy — but these harmless hazards are a reminder of the less harmless risks we run with casual regulation of our food supply. For good reason, the F.D.A. is focused on peanut butter, which the agency is considering reclassifying as high risk, like seafood, and subjecting it to special safety regulations. But the unsettling reality is that despite food’s cheery packaging and nutritional labeling, we don’t really know what we’re putting into our mouths.

Soup merits little mention among the products listed in the F.D.A.’s booklet. But, given the acceptable levels for contaminants in other foods, one imagines that the disgruntled diner’s cri de coeur — “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” — would be, to the F.D.A., no cause for complaint.

E. J. Levy is a professor of creative writing at the University of Missouri.

Wildfires down unda'

Helping Hand
(AP photo by Mark Pardew / February 10, 2009)
Firefighter David Tree shares his water with an injured Australian Koala at Mirboo North after wildfires swept through the region. Suspicions that the worst wildfires ever to strike Australia were deliberately set led police to declare crime scenes Monday in towns incinerated by blazes, while investigators moving into the charred landscape discovered more bodies.

Sad Mac :(

My computer at work died today.

Really died.

There was No Ctrl Alt Delete = restart, no reboot, not even unplug the damn thing and start over.

And I didn't even touch the thing. It died a horrible death over the weekend and I had nothing to do with it! I came in this morning to work and there was a very disconcerting message, like something from the computer terrorists, "We're sorry for the inconvenience, Windows has had problems..." I'd say it has had problems. It asked me (or rather on the screen was written) if I wanted to reboot, reboot in safe mode, reboot blah, blah, blah more options. Nothing would work.

So I called the teckkie.

The teckkie took one look at the screen and said, in a most 'reassuring' voice, "You backed up everything on the network, right?"

Seriously?

Ok, so only by virtue that the computer is TWO WEEKS OLD, and I had already moved everything onto the network that I was at all calm through this entire process. I told the nice teckkie girl who finally came to help that honestly, I didn't remember what was ON my desktop, so I probably wouldn't miss it. eh, whatever.

I had flash backs to Sex and the City (because everything can be related back to a SATC episode) when Carrie's Mac dies and Aiden tries to Ctrl Alt Delete/hard reboot and it doesn't work. She takes the thing (wrapped in a pashmina no less) to the Mac store and the teckkie asks her if she 'backs up'. It's a pretty good episode if you are a SATC fan.

ANYWAY. It took the entire day to "image" my computer, which, from what I can tell pretty much means going WWIII on it and destroying everything that was on it and starting again from scratch.

So I have to start all over. It's only a computer, and my files were backed up, so other than trying to remember email addresses, (you know that handy thing that remembers who you have emailed in Outlook and it just fills in the name automatically? Well it's called the NP2 file and mine is GONE) I'm all good.

Nevertheless I think I will just have a little chat with my computer tomorrow and tell it that I realize everyone gets a case of "the Mondays" but if it ever does that again, I'll have my way with it with some gangster rap and a baseball bat.

Where there is a puddle, I shall drive through it.

So back on Monday I drove to Maryland for work. Specifically, I drove to an Army base for a briefing. There is a lot of construction going on at the base due to some big wins in the last BRAC round.

So the building where the meeting was could be accessed via two roads, the road which was finished, and the unfinished dirt road full of puddles of mud. Which one do you think I choose? Yep. I HAD to. You just don't get very many mud puddles in the city, eh.

I wasn't all that concerned about the mud (mud is a good thing) and the puddles unfortunately weren't that big. However, turns out there was more than mud in the puddles. I drove through some sort of mix of concrete and cement and who knows what else. So, for about a week, I've been driving around with a fair amount of concrete on my under carriage, tires, etc. (Pictures thusly.)

Deciding I should probably not leave concrete on my poor Jeep any longer, I took my baby to the car wash today. It took two times through the wash and some sweet talk to the attendants to scrub a little on my bumper to get all the crud off.

But really, it's a Jeep. My last jeep didn't have doors that locked.

My Kitty Alarm Clock.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has a cat for an alarm clock.

Orange Jello just killed Kenny

You know, South Park is a little raunchy at times, so I'm not always the biggest fan. This particular episode is just on the edge of being blasphemous.

But right at the end, Gary says what secretly I think all Mormons want to say at least once in their lives to people who say, "how in the world can you believe that Joe Smith guy".

You go Gary.

All About the Mormons

Impending Doom

Iran just launched it's own satellite. Can't be a good thing. Guess we'd better pull a 'North Korea' and make nice - stat.

Iran launches homegrown satellite. Thanks to our friends on the other side of the pond at the BBC. (Includes nifty video)

Back in the 'hood

I am back in D.C. and have to drive to Maryland tomorrow for work. It will be pretty much 2 hours of driving up 295/95 followed by a boring meeting for 4 hours and then another probably 2 1/2 hours (depending on traffic) down 95/295.

I was pretty grumpy about this until I remembered I purchased a book on tape over Christmas. I don't have very many books on tape/CD because honestly I can get to work staying in 2nd gear and in less time than it takes to get through Stairway to Heaven. But I saw Heart of Darkness and figured I'd buy it for an occasion such as this.

I read Conrad during undergrad and it was very poignant. Something about "we live as we dream, alone" just sort of sticks with you, eh. So it will be me alone in a Jeep tomorrow.

The horror.