MyATMPinIs1234

"That's hot."
"He's so hot right now."
"That is so cool."
"Icy to dull the pain, hot to relax it away."
"The party really heated up after you left."

Why are things that are stylish and fashionable often described in terms of temperature? And why is it that you don't necessarily get more "cool" as you travel further along in one direction on the temperature gradient? Nor is it better to be further toward the extremes, as cool better than frigid, but luke-warm is worse than hot.

And why are the temperature designations so imprecise? Wouldn't it be more useful if we could read Page 6 and know that Paris Hilton is 310 Kelvin right now, whereas last week she was 290 but when her sex video came out she was 400?

What does our usage of this temperature based nomenclature for specifying a level of trendiness tell us about a person's other variables? Well the Ideal Gas Law would imply that a person who increases in volume would be hotter (holding everything else constant), which is usually not the case. But hold on there one sec, you could also say that the increase in volume would make someone less cool, a phenomenon often seen among Hollywood actresses. I don't know if the contradiction is caused by the inadequacy of our measurements, or if celebrities are not modeled well by the ideal gases.

This post is tepid.

On a recent sojourn back to the old university, I had the opportunity to eat at the campus pizza establishment, Koronets Pizza. While eating the massive slice, I had some time for drunken reflection.

The plain slice used to cost $2. At the time, we considered the extra $1 for a topping so extravagant that our standard bet (a la Trading Places) was a slice with two, count 'em, two toppings. And one of the highlights of the week was when an old pedophilic (not that I blame him) alumnus of my co-ed frarority bought each of us a slice after meeting.

How things have changed. In a timespan short enough for some of my underwear to span it (albeit having aged markedly), we've gone from being happy with $2 pizza and free fraternity beer, to thinking nothing of dropping $200 on a steak dinner and a night of drinking. It's gotten so bad that I've had to have my pants retrofitted with Nomex pockets as a prophylactic in case my Amex bursts into flames.

Is that the sound of you not feeling sorry for me? Well sod off [or whatever is the cool British slang we're using these days].

And I fear things are just going to get worse. I can't anticipate having an attainable amount of money which would be "enough" when your lifestyle adjusts upward to the new equilibrium required by having that wealth. "The G4 needs a new what?" And you can't get off the treadmill, because everyone else will stay on it and you will be a loser. I guess that's really the appeal of Communism to the incompetent and to the lazy college professors. If the treadmill is broken, we won't have to run!

What is that sound? Is it you saying, "No shit Descartes. I don't think you're covering new ground here?" Bugger you, chap!

A stoner I once knew (still know, but don't know how to contact) posited that there is a leisure class on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. I thought this was wise at first, but now I realize that it is completely wrong. The poor have to spend their time figuring out how to fill out the forms for government cheese, and the rich have to spend their time meeting with lawyers and accountants to figure out how not to have to pay for government cheese. I'm thinking here that the full-time student might be the closest we can come to the leisure class. Also prisoners, but being forced to have anal sex is somewhat less appealing than being convinced by your boyfriend that you'd do it if you loved him.

This is getting weird so I'll stop. Also I have to go uptown and get a slice with 9 toppings.

By now you've probably all heard of the term MILF. I'd like to talk about a different term, MILP. It's a Mom I'd Like to Punch. There was one such mom sitting next to me on the subway this morning, reading her daughter a familiar children's book. At least I thought it was a familiar book, until I started paying attention and realized it was called, The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig.

I assume this MILP has the best intentions. Probably something like teaching her daughter that it's not the wolves or the pig that are inherently bad, but their actions which make them so. Therefore we shouldn't judge people based on who they are, but on what they do. I'm glad to hear she's so open minded, because a friend of mine has a ranch* with many wolves, and we could arrange for her little daughter to have a playdate with some of them. Hey, not all wolves are bad, so who is she to pre-judge that these ones will harm her daughter?

It's not that I want to roll back** all the strides we've made in political correctness, equality, and diversity, it's just that I think they should be infused with a healthy dose of reality. Sometimes things (like wolves) are actually inherently bad (in an anthropomorphic way, since we can't really call animals doing what they're supposed to do, bad).

Well you get the idea. Right before my stop I asked her*** if she's going to get the sequel of that book. It's called The Two Little Airliners and the Big Bad Trade Centers that Got In Their Way.

* I have no such friend.
** Actually I do.
*** I actually said nothing.

I wish I could tell exactly when I've finished killing off all of the weak and infirm brain cells, and started on the ones I really need. Also, where did I put my pants?

Why do I find this so funny?

Mr. Eisner was also in the habit of copying his wife, Jane Eisner, on board-level communications. "It was easier than going home and having her say 'what happened at the office today?' " he testified. A 1995 Eisner memo outlining the company's strategic vision was addressed to "Board Members, Bass Family and Jane."

This rant is about lawyers. All of the ones I know are nice people, but a good portion them are total scumbags. At this point you're thinking, no shit, what in particular is currently raising your ire? A matter of days after the drug Vioxx was pulled from the market, the NYC subway is plastered with legal advertisements telling people that they are going to die if they took the drug and need to contact a lawyer immediately. The lawyers see a deep pocketed defendant (Merck) and a huge pool of possible clients.

Now I don't have a problem with people who are actually injured getting compensated if the perpetrator was negligent, but far worse damage is being done to our society by the legal establishment than by any ill they purport to address. And of course there is some whistleblower asshole who is tripping over himself to tell the teacher that she forgot to assign homework. The whole thing is sickening. I also think it's worth noting that:

1) Those taking the drug (for 18 months, every day) had an increased risk of a cardiac event. The risk increased from .1% to .1% (rounded to the nearest .1%).
2) If you're taking Vioxx, you probably have arthritis, which means you are probably old, which means you will probably die soon anyway.
3) By at least an order of magnitude higher, is the risk of dying from stomach bleeding by using earlier medicines.
4) A lot of people who can't get Vioxx will switch to these earlier medicines.
5) Every legal imbroglio increases prices on the rest of us, and/or decreases the incentives for these companies to create new medicines. And we all know there's not much new stuff coming out of Canada to take their place.

Jeez, this post is boring even me. I think I'll stop here. Ok, one last thing. Doctors, you are not Jesus. You don't have to continue to treat lawyers while they repeatedly bend you over and pound you in the ass. Go on strike (from treating lawyers), and the good lawyers will tear John Edwards (with his dead baby channeling closing arguments) a new one.

Here's an example of leftist-enviro-dickheads.

The 57-year-old former Friends of the Earth activist now works for Rio Tinto and is fielding complaints about another massive project: a proposed mine in Madagascar. The mine would extract 750,000 tons a year of ilmenite, a whitening agent used in paint and toothpaste, for the next 60 years. Mr. Burke champions the economic growth the mine would bring, but his former allies say it could destroy the subsistence lifestyle of largely illiterate villagers who live off the forest and ocean (WSJ 11/17).

Destroy the lifestyle by giving them jobs and improving their lives? Who the hell are you to say that these people shouldn't work for a mine? The mine is not forcing them to work, they still have the option of trying to scavenge for food in the forest. Perhaps that is what the villagers want? Oh, I forgot, they are not able to make their own decisions. I wonder if Friends of Earth considers these people closer to children, or to animals, who need their patronizing protection. This is a glaring example of the poorly concealed racism coming from the left. In another context, some "dumb" guy called this "the soft bigotry of low expectations." I personally think he was being kind, but I guess I must be an idiot also. I'd like to force these environmentalists to forage for food in the forest for a couple of months, instead of hanging out in the coffee houses and salons drinking mocha lattes and debating which tribe of people to screw over next.

Well, that explains that. A new *study (PDF) links heavy computer usage with glaucomatous visual field abnormalities. Back in school, since I was usually late for class I normally sat in the back and therefore had to concentrate on a distant blackboard. Then I started working for da man, and spent many hours a day focusing on a screen 18" away from my head. It's about that time when I started to need glasses, which at 23 years old is very late for that kind of thing. Oh also, they said I had visual field abnormalities, despite lacking the high intraocular pressure associated with glaucoma. And as an added bonus, the computer usage wrecked my shoulders.

Yet another reason to go Office Space on them.

* The study was done on Japanese workers, so no word yet on how it applies to our additional eye roundness.

I just had lollypop that someone brought in to work from his kid's halloween candy stash. It was "Artificial Mystery Flavor." I kid you not. Ad Wizard, at it again.

I'm unclear about something. How are the phone companies still in business? Why would anyone in their right mind pay for plain old telephone service when you can get it for free calling using your computer (Skype), or for a fraction of the price using a regular phone (Vonage). I have Vonage, and except for the fact that I talk about it constantly, you would have no way of knowing that your call is not being sent the way Alex G. Bell devised. At the very least, everyone should have a VOIP phone for long distance and international. And please don't be one of those packet-haters who says, "What if I have to call 911 and the power is out?" Ok, the power goes out a few times a year, but do you have a cell phone? And how many times in your life have you called 911? Zero?

On a somewhat related note, I just learned the other day that a single strand of fiber optic cable can now transmit the equivalent of 33 million voice calls. Claude Shannon would be so proud.

(Attention all widows and orphans. Sell phone stocks.)

Today I washed my hair with this:

Water, Ammonium Laureth Sulfate, Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Dimethicone, Sodium Chloride, Glycol Distearate, Cetyl Alcohol, Cocamide MEA, Fragrance, Polyquaternium-10, Sodium Citrate, Hydrogenated Polydecene, Sodium Benzoate, Trimethylolpropane Tricaprylate/Tricaprate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Niacinamide, Citric Acid, Ammonium Xylene-Sulfonate, Ext D&C Violet 2, FD&C Blue 1, Benzyl Alcohol, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone

So this leads me to wonder, how does your typical gay hairdresser in Manhattan invent a shampoo so advanced, women are willing to pay half their paycheck for a small vial of the stuff, while other companies have a thousand PhD chemists toiling away in Cincinnati and the best they can come up with is Pert Plus?

Say your leader, a very rich man, needed urgent medical care that was unavailable where you live. Would you send him to France? Maybe if you did not like him very much. Or if you wanted to go to a place that had experience in dealing with dictators with discretion. In Yassir Arafat's case, it's probably a little from column A and a little from column B. The reported symptoms along with the intense secrecy regarding the whole matter lead me to one conclusion. Arafat got a shampoo bottle stuck in his ass. "Honest, doc...I slipped in the shower. It was a one in a million event." He could not bear having an Arab doctor see his x-ray with a bottle of Pert Plus lodged where the Israelis would never find it.

All of this election coverage is really starting to bother me. I don't like having to scroll down on the page to find out what is happening in the Scott Peterson trial.

It seems that the Boston Red Sox might not be the gayest team in history (or is it most gay)? It was cool when John Daly did it, and it's cool now.

HELP FROM JACK: So how did the Boston Red Sox really beat the New York Yankees?

According to first baseman Kevin Millar, the team had an ally named Jack Daniel.

On Friday's edition of Fox's Best Damn Sports Show Period, Millar noted it was about 35 degrees at Yankee Stadium before Game 6.

"I got a thing of Jack Daniel's and we all did shots for about 10 minutes before the game. And we won," Millar recalled.

"So Game 7 came and we had to do shots of Jack Daniel's. And we won the game."

Millar said he was thankful the Red Sox won the World Series in four games "because the Jack Daniel's shots were starting to kill me."

Through force of habit, even though I no longer believe anything they say, I watched 60 minutes on CBS last night. Lorne Michaels was on. He's the dude from Saturday Night Live. They showed a clip from the dark ages, called "News for the Hard of Hearing" where in a small box in the corner, another guy loudly yelled the news that had just been read by the main guy. Mr. Michaels correctly noted that they could never do this sketch today, because now that is a disability. We've made so much progress as a society, that something can go from funny to a disability in 20 years. I long for the day when all things are disabilities, so no one has to be made fun of anymore.

Dr. Danielle Laraque, a New York pediatrician, has come to the shocking conclusion that it is still possible, despite attempts by people like her, for kids to have fun. At issue is the fact that air rifles, despite their innocuous name, do not in fact shoot air. They shoot steel pellets that if aimed at a kid's eyeball might really hurt them. Instead of conducting this research, it would've been a lot more cost effective to simply ask, well, pretty much anyone. Ok, probably not the kid that shot another kid in the eyeball, but anyone else.

I assume the point of this study was to highlight the fact that as a country we do not have enough rules, laws, and warning labels. It's pretty amazing that anyone made it past youth back in the days when people had only their own common sense to rely on, without the government doing the thinking for us.