For quite a while now, the always-excellent This Is True newsletter has been advertising writer Randy Cassingham’s latest (?) project: JumboJoke, a weblog-style daily joke post. I finally took a look at it, and thought I’d share the following pair of lists based on our political parties’ often contradictory platforms and rhetoric:
Category: Life
Speaking of Oxymorons
I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance earlier today. I was listening to a report on The World (PRI) about the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, and a reporter (Stephen McConnell) was explaining the Australian political situation for an American audience. (Why? They’ve got an election coming up in a month. Comparisons to the Madrid bombing should be obvious at this point.)
He explained, “It’s a two-horse race. You’ve got the conservatives, who in this country are called the Liberals, and then there’s the Labor Party, which would be much more aligned to something like the Democrats…”
It’s a lot more complicated, of course, but the idea of conservatives calling themselves liberals just seemed bizarre, considering that the terms are opposites here in the US. For all practical purposes, conservative and liberal are swear words when used by someone of the opposite ideology!
A bit morbid, but still funny
Noticed an ambulance parked out in front of Fry’s earlier today. On my way in, I passed two people who were talking about it:
“That’s kind of disturbing.”
“Sure, ‘Shop ’till you drop,’ but…”
One of those moments where you know you shouldn’t laugh, but it somehow manages to be funny anyway.
Shortcut from what?
Today’s recipe:
SHORT-CUT ZUCCHINI
1 lb zucchini, sliced
1/4 c butter
1/4 t garlic salt
salt and pepper to taste
2 T water
3 T Parmesan cheese, grated
Melt butter in a pan. Add zucchini, seasonings and water. Cover pan and simmer on low for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese and cook another 5 minutes. Serve immediately. Serves 3
********
I just looked up my last grocery receipt, and the two rather pathetic zucchini I bought were .89 pounds. So, a pound of zucchini is about two medium-large squash. The idea of needing half a stick of butter to adequately season two zucchini is sickening. That’s over a tablespoon of butter per serving as they’ve outlined it. Not to mention that 15 minutes of cooking time, even on low, is far from a shortcut in the age of the microwave, and will probably cause the zucchini to disintegrate if you’re not careful. No wonder it doesn’t say anywhere that you should stir it…..
Ducks… er, make that Geese
There’s a park just past the corner of Elrond and Ridge Route, and as I left that intersection I spotted a flock of about ten rather large ducks (Edit: it has been pointed out to me that most of these are actually Canada geese) walking across the park. I pulled over to start taking pictures, and realized that there were actually dozens of them, wandering around near the small (presumably artificial) lake that gives the park its name, Village Pond Park.
Trekking across the park. Continue reading
Checkerboard Dew
While leaving the apartment this morning, I noticed something strange: All the grass which had (presumably) grown from seed had dew on it. All the grass which had been installed as sod earlier this year did not. There were big squares and long rectangles of bright green mixed in with the shining greenish-white lawn.
(Sorry, no photos. Maybe if the same thing happens tomorrow.)
Government computers hijacked for spam.
Via The War on Spam and The Spam Weblog:
Hackers hijack federal computers. Apparently the DOJ discovered, during their crackdown on cybercrime, that hundreds of Department of Defense and Senate computers had been turned into zombies.
Nice.
Can we really be sure they were only used to send spam? After all, zombies are generally the result of viruses, worms or trojans that install backdoors, so that the attacker can run anything on the system. Setting up a distributed and disguised spam-sending network just happens to be the most profitable application right now, but you can bet there are a lot of people out there who would love to take over — or just look through — US military computers.
I don’t know about you, but I find this really disturbing.