Hands Up! Drop The Tomatoes and No One Gets Hurt!

This is a continuation of a previous blog that I posted called Fine! Have it your way! Why can't I just have a burger or a fast food meal the way I want it? I'm sure you all remember Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina Hit in late August 2005. So during the end of 2005 and most of 2006 there was a tomato shortage. At first it wasn't that bad. But it steadily got worse. Wendy's was the first fast food restaurant to stop putting tomatoes on their sandwiches. They required you to ask for a tomato if you wanted it on your sandwich. Then they would only grant your request if they actually had tomatoes that day. Even when there isn't a tomato famine on, if the sandwich doesn't come with tomatoes you have to pay extra. So wouldn't it make sense that if you pay extra if it doesn't come with it, you should pay less if it is supposed to come with it and they aren't giving it to you? One would think so. Also when I go to JCW's I like to get the gyro. Well I don't like the cucumber sauce that comes on the gyro. So one time I asked for them to leave the cucumber sauce off and add ranch. They were more then willing to grant my request but little did I know they charged me for it. When I asked them about it they said that they have to charge for extra ranch. I said it's not extra it was in exchange for the other sauce. The price of the gyro includes the cucumber sauce if you don't give me that sauce you should give me the ranch for free. They said nope that isn't how it works. We have to charge for ranch. Well annoying as that is, it wasn't the thing that annoyed me the most that day. After I got my food, and went to sit at my table, I saw my brother in law had two cups of ranch on the side of his fries. I asked him how much they charged him for them. He said nothing. WHAT?? I was pissed. And apparently this wasn't a one time thing. He said yeah, if you ask for ranch when you order they will make you pay. Then he said if you wait till after you have already paid and then ask when you are picking up your food they will give them to you for free. They do it every time. I was Irate. I mean if they are going to be assholes and charge me for sauce that I have already paid for, the least they could do is be consistent. Why do they give in when my brother in law asks for extra sauce after the fact but not when I say please give me one sauce in exchange for another. I am so sick of having to pay for things that I don't use. Every fast food restaurant should operate like the following. Every item that is available on the menu or that comes on a burger should have an assigned value. So if I want a cheeseburger that comes with ketchup and mustard it would be $2.00. If I don't want cheese subtract 20 cents. Boom! $1.80. No Ketchup. Subtract 10 cents. No Mustard, Subtract 10 cents. Now we are sitting at $1.60. But wait! I want Mayonnaise on my burger. And anyone who has gone grocery shopping knows mayonnaise is more expensive then ketchup or mustard. So If I want mayonnaise add 20 cents. Back to $1.80. But I want pickle. Add 10 Cents. Onion. Add 10 Cents. Now we are back to $2.00 but it is a burger I want. But wait! I'm extremely fickle! I can't make up my mind. I want Bacon. Add 60 cents. Now I have a Delicious burger I want to eat and the grand total is $2.60. It's pretty simple. Compromise is a 2 way street. Add the tomatoes. Don't add the tomatoes. Either way no one gets screwed because you either pay for it or you don't. I get the sauce I want with out paying for 2 sauces. My brother in law would have to pay for his ranch but at least he wouldn't be screwing anyone. Then he could go right on ranch dipping with some peace of mind.

Of Lasers and Lame Asses

Lucasfilm has issued a cease-and-desist against Wicked Lasers - the manufacturer of theSpyder III Pro Arctic which has created quite a stir among wannabe Jedi worldwide.

The Star Wars firm is less than impressed with the "most dangerous laser ever created", and late last month informed Hong Kong-based Wicked Lasers: "It is apparent from the design of the Pro Arctic Laser that it was intended to resemble the hilts of our lightsaber swords, which are protected by copyright.

Court is now in session.

Oh Boy George you're at it again. Suing a Laser company for making a hand held laser that looks like a lightsaber. So lets define what a lightsaber is. "A sword having a blade made of a powerful beam of light, found in speculative fiction." Ok. Now what is the definition of a Laser? It is an acronym. "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"

Maybe it's just me but that sounds like a really fancy way to say powerful beam of light. A laser produces a thin beam of light that is monochromatic and coherent, meaning that the beam is one color and each wave of light travels in step. The laser process begins when energy enters and begins to strike the atoms in a system. The stimulated atoms give off energy in the form of light. This emitted light reflects back and forth between the ends of a cylinder, one end being a fully reflecting mirror and one end being a partially reflecting mirror. The light continues to excite more and more atoms, and finally the atoms contain enough energy to burst through the partially reflecting mirror in a beam of light.

Guess what George? You weren't the first one to imagine a laser. In 1916 Albert Einstein discovered a process called stimulated emission involving the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and atomic energy states. So guess what George? Einstein laid the groundwork for a laser 61 years before your beloved star wars came out in 1977.

What's that you say George? That isn't enough to get it thrown out of court? Oh. In that case. In 1960, 17 Years Before the first Star wars movie, Theodore Maiman made a working model which was considered to be the first optical or light laser.

George Could you please stop whimpering? The Jury can't understand what you are saying through your sobs.

Court will be adjourned until we can find someone who speaks "whiny little bitch" to translate for us.

(30 Minutes Later)

Court is now back in session.

Could you please translate what Mr. Lucas is saying? He says "their laser sure looks a lot like that imaginary device I thought up."

Well George maybe you missed the explanation of how a laser works. Light travels back and forth between 2 ends of a Cylinder. A laser has to be a cylinder. And the companies objective was to make a hand held laser. So guess what George? No matter what they make it's going to look like a hand held Cylinder. Just like your precious lightsaber.

And if people were to sue everyone that made things that looked like something else, Leo Gerstenzang would be suing hundreds of companies that put cotton on the end of a cardboard stick and make something that looks like a Q-tip. Levi Strauss would be suing hundreds of companies that make pants that look like theirs. Malt-o-Meal would be tied up in court for years for making cereals that look like every other cereal in america.

At least those examples are real things. You thought up a fictional little toy. Maybe Mike Myers should sue the first person that takes one of these frickin hand held lasers and straps it to a sharks head. Speaking of heads, Pull yours out of your ass. Wicked Lasers made A real hand held laser. And you want to punish them for it? Why doesn't Isaac Asimov sue half the world for making robots or a slew of other things that look like something he described in his science fiction Novels? Oh, let me tell you why. Because he isn't a whiny little Bitch. Or maybe, just maybe, Giancarlo Giannini should sue your parents for making you look just a little too much like him.

George you of all people should know that "Always two there are, a master and an apprentice" You are just afraid that Wicked Lasers Inc. is the apprentice that surpassed the master. Well, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." And since "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack" Maybe you should calm the F down and let these people do their jobs and Further science. Oh and if Yoda were here he would say "Shove your 3.5 Billion dollar empire up your ass you should."

Case Dismissed.

Among the Commoners

So the other day My dad and I went to a Restaurant called Golden Corral to strap on the feedbag. I have been to this restaurant many times before but I have never had this experience before. At first it was very pleasant and the hostess took us to our seat. We sat down and she took our drink order as usual. Then we got up, got some plates, and got ready to strap on the feedbag. We loaded up our plates and came back to the table. I didn't realize it before I left to get food but I noticed it now. There are a few different dining rooms in this particular golden corral. Our table was up against the wall the divided the different dining rooms. And for some reason someone decided that it would be a good idea to put windows in this dividing wall. Obviously, because I go there, not everyone that goes to the golden corral are white trash. Either that or I am oblivious to my white trash status. But when I want to have a white trash moment, and go stuff my face among the riffraff that so commonly frequent the Golden Corral, I don't want the commoners staring me in the face while they have half masticated cows rolling around in their mouths. Especially because there is only a half inch of glass separating me and the peasants. Next time I want to go out among the commoners I guess I will have to travel incognito.

Don't Look! I'm Fully clothed and doing nothing but sitting here playing Halo.

Don't Look! I'm fully clothed and doing nothing but sitting here playing Halo.  That is what my roommates and I could have yelled a few weeks ago when our extremely creepy and toothless neighbor was peeping into our window.  To tell you the honest truth we probably would have except we didn't know he was doing it.  

What is it that makes us like to watch other people.  All of us like to do it.  We all like to people watch and just see what people will do.  What I really don't understand is what pushes over the edge and takes us from people watcher to peeping tom/voyeur.  

I don't agree with but can understand if it is sexual and you like to see people of the opposite sex or the same sex if you swing that way.  But the person that was looking in the window has stated over and over how he likes to get chicks.  So unless he is lying, that excludes that. 

Although that is weird, here is what is even more weird.  As I said before  we didn't know he was doing it.  The only reason we know is because he told me.  So lets recap.

Peeping tom=Creepy

Not caring that someone sees you and telling them that you did it the next day=What the hell! Get some help.  

So I decided next time I would take my clothes off and give a thrill.  Either that or play soul caliber 4.  But until then I am taking donations for the freaks therapy fund.

B.C. Not P.C.

At my new job I am the newest employee there. So everyone has more of a say in what we listen to during our work than I do. Every once in a while I get to listen to what I want. Most of the time we listen to thrashing heavy metal or talk radio. Not a big fan of metal so I don't complain much when it is a talk radio day. Well while going about my work one day something caught my attention. It said that many departments of education, mostly in Europe but around the world and even in the united states, are pushing to change the term B.C. to B.C.E. in history books and on government documents. B.C. of course meaning Before Christ. B.C.E. Meaning Before Common Era. They also want to change A.D. to C.E. A.D. Meaning Anno Domini which is Latin for "In the year of our lord." And C.E. of course meaning Current Era. I found an article talking about the same thing. I am including it. I have bold the part which I thought made a great point.


In what's perceived as a case of political correctness trumping history and everyday usage, students in Australia are now seeing the calendar term B.C. – which stands for "Before Christ" – being replaced with BCE, meaning "Before Common Era."

"This is political correctness gone mad," Shadow Education Minister Jillian Skinner told the Sydney Daily Telegraph. "You ask the average mum and dad out there how they refer to time and calendars, they will use Before Christ [B.C.]."

The change by the Department of Education was first noticed during this week's English Language and Literacy Assessment test, as 157,000 students in New South Wales were presented with the new term.

A history portion of the test described an ancient flooding problem this way:

"A government surveyor stood beside the Nile River looking worried. Beside him stood his assistants, carrying his equipment. The year was 590 BCE."

A footnote was included to explain to students that BCE means "Before Common Era" (also known as B.C.).

"This is a case of history being rewritten and abandonment of the use of a calendar which has been around for centuries on the basis that the term might offend someone," Skinner told the paper.

She says she's spoken to parents and other educators who are extremely angry over the move.

The headline in the Telegraph declares: "'Mad' bureaucrats censor Jesus Christ."

"They probably replaced an imagined potential controversy – the use of the term B.C. – with a real one," Steven O'Doherty of Christian Schools Australia told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "The fact that they've taken it away has now generated the very controversy they may have been hoping to avoid."

While B.C. is used in normal language as a historical and scientific chronology guide, BCE is often footnoted in international academic, scientific and museum contexts.

New South Wales Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt admits her department changed B.C. to BCE, but says it was done without her consent.

"The point I've made to the department is that both terms are in usage," Tebbutt told ABC. "I'm completely comfortable with that. But if a text actually has B.C. in it, then we should be leaving it as B.C. We shouldn't be changing it to BCE."

The case is reminiscent of a December 2002 controversy in North America.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the Canadian museum displaying an ancient box purported to be the ossuary of Jesus' brother James was no longer using the Christian designations of B.C. and A.D. to mark the calendar, opting instead for more "modern and palatable" terms.

After a long internal debate, the Royal Ontario Museum decided to change "anno Domini" – Latin for "in the year of our Lord" – to C.E., referring to the "Common Era." It also shelved B.C. in favor of BCE.

Well I am going to take a purely historical standpoint on this one. Million s of people do not accept Jesus as Christ. But Most of those people accept him as a Historical Figure. Lets pretend that the bible isn't full of things that he did. He is a historical figure and obviously he must have done some pretty important or influential things in order for people to want to make a calender, in which the focal point was the birth of Jesus and extended forward and backward from that point. Not to mention that calender is called the Gregorian Calendar which is the most widely used calendar in the world. They didn't just one day decide to pick a random day and base a calendar around it. No we counting to an event and from and event and that event is the birth of Jesus Christ. It isn't 2007 years since we decided to call this the Current Era. It is 2007 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. So in turn any time before that would have to be.....um...um.... Before Christ. Yeah I think that's what it is. Let take some of the People that are important to the united states and look at them. Christopher Columbus. He is the historical figure credited with discovering America. Some people refer to the time before Columbus as Pre-Columbian and the time after Post-Columbian. Well you know what? I don't accept Chris Columbus as anything other than a historical figure. So lets not say Pre and Post Columbian. Lets say Pre- that guy who thought the earth was round and really wasn't even looking for America he was looking for a good trade route to India and Post- that guy who thought the earth was round and really wasn't even looking for America he was looking for a good trade route to India. Or we could just cut the BS and give us BC not PC.

5 to 10

I was sitting reading the MSN news page when an article caught my eye. The Name of the article was "Prison releases felon after getting phony fax." I had the read that, right? So I read it. And I couldn't believe how stupid these people were. So stupid, you have to read it for yourself.

HICKMAN, Ky. - Officials released a prisoner from a state facility after receiving a phony fax that ordered the man be freed, and didn’t catch the mistake for nearly two weeks.

Timothy Rouse, 19, is charged with beating an elderly western Kentucky man and was at the Kentucky Correctional & Psychiatric Center in La Grange for a mental evaluation. He was released from that facility on April 6 after officials received the fake court order.

It contained grammatical errors, was not typed on letterhead and was faxed from a local grocery store. The fax falsely claimed that the Kentucky Supreme Court “demanded” Rouse be released.

Lexington police arrested Rouse at his mother’s home Thursday evening.

“It’s outrageous that it happened,” Fulton County Attorney Rick Major said. “I’m just glad nobody got hurt because he’s dangerous.”

Police are still investigating who faxed it.

Attorney Carlos Moran, who is representing Rouse, declined to comment.

Prison officials did not notice that the fax came from the grocery store because policies in place did not require checking the source of a faxed order, said the LaGrange facility’s director, Greg Taylor.

“It’s not part of a routine check, but certainly, in hindsight, that would perhaps have caused somebody to ask a question,” he said. He added that misspellings on orders are common.

Holy Crap. Where do I Start?

1. They released him and didn't know anything was wrong for 2 weeks after they did it.
2. Contained Grammatical Errors.
3. It was not on any sort of letterhead.
4. It was faxed from a local Grocery store.

It had grammatical errors. "Hey Earl this fax is kinda funny looking. It has all sorts of funny looking words that just don't make sense." "Don't worry Roy, we're in Kentucky, it's supposed to look like that.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like the Paper the fax came on would have been official letterhead not to mention have a watermark of the state seal or something like that.

It said prison officials did not notice that the fax came from the grocery store because policies in place did not require checking the source of a faxed order. First of all, why isn't there a policy like that? Second, why do we need one? Shouldn't any intelligent person automatically look to see where it came from. "Alright Earl it looks like we got a fax here that says to execute prisoner #254." "Who it from Roy?" "Well Earl, it's from the local grocery store but the governor is probably just doing a bit of shopping on the may home." "Good thing we don't have some policy that says we have to look where the fax came from or we would never get this execution overwith with before our shift ends."

Well it seems to me that the Kentucky Prison system is full of retards. Maybe we should take the kids, or whoever was responsible for sending the fax and pulling this prank off, and give them a job in the Kentucky prison system. They are obviously smarter than the people currently in the position. At least it would be a step up.

"I sentence you to serve 5 to 10 years in the Kentucky State Pen. Or until someone pulls a fast one on the guards.

Church Vs State

Church vs State. That is how it always goes. Have you ever wondered why they can't play on the same team? I read this article in Time. I agree with the ruling about the gay scoutmasters and don't really have a stance on the Terri Schiavo case. But I think it makes a point about church vs state.

Imagine Olivia Turton, all grin and energy, bounding to the front of Erica Bruner's music room at Frenchtown Elementary School in New Jersey. "There's thunder in His footsteps and lightning in His fists," chirps the eight-year-old with fine brown hair. "And so you better be believing that our God is an awesome God." A few minutes later, the song is over, and Olivia is relieved. After weeks of rehearsal and a big disappointment — she initially wanted to sing "Part of Your World" from the movie The Little Mermaid, but she didn't have a karaoke version and Ms. Bruner's tape of the song was too fast and, well, don't ask — Olivia has finally perfected her performance for the annual after-school talent show, "Frenchtown Idol." And "Awesome God" sounds great. But not to everyone.

The lyrics, Bruner tells her, are a bit religious, and principal Joyce Brennan will have to approve them. The next day, word comes down from Brennan: find another tune, one without the God stuff. Olivia can't believe it. She is in tears when her mother, Mary Ann Turton, picks her up at school.

I can understand why Olivia would be upset. After her first choice of a song to perform at what is the most glamorous event of her school year doesn't pan out, she has to give up her second choice, a favorite since birth, thanks to the nonsense of grownups. Brutal. I can understand the tears, and I can understand her parents complaining to the principal and then the school board, each time without success. Your kid feels bad, you do what you can to make her feel better.

But go to federal court?

At the time, more than a year go, Olivia could not have dreamed that her sweet, unassuming performance would become the subject of a church/state lawsuit, one that brought together such strange bedfellows as the Alliance Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union, both fighting for her right to sing about God after school. But that's exactly what happened.

Claiming that the school board, its president and Brennan violated her First Amendment right to religious expression, Olivia now waits for U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler to decide this month whether a trial is necessary before he rules on her demand that kids be allowed to sing religious songs at the annual talent contest. It's not really her demand, of course, because Olivia's parents filed the lawsuit on her behalf. But with three of the nation's most ideologically driven legal organizations — the conservative ADF, the ACLU and the Bush Justice Department — all arguing Olivia's side, you wonder whether it is even the Turtons' lawsuit.

When public institutions like schools do anything, one of the basic rules is this: It must be for a secular reason, it must have primarily a secular effect and it can't entangle them with religion. That's why the U.S. Supreme Court struck down prayer and Bible reading in class. But Olivia's case raises unusual issues on the entanglement point. Her song was religious, but the talent show was open to the public and held after school, no students were required to attend, and no rule prohibited acts with religious themes. Yet school officials worried that someone, especially a child, might still think they endorsed the message of "Awesome God" because they sponsored the show, so they pulled the plug on the song. Olivia's supporters said this was nonsense — as well as illegal: She has the free-speech right to sing any song within the rules, and no one could possibly believe that her speech was also Frenchtown Elementary's.

Few school districts are nimble enough to navigate between religion and speech without tumbling into a lawsuit, so I can't blame the Frenchtown officials for trying to play it safe. But despite their conflicting politics and agendas, the ADF, ACLU and Justice Department all seem to find the district's position ridiculous, a reaction that suggests they have more than the law on their minds.

For the Alliance Defense Fund, whose lawyers represent the Turtons, it's pretty clearly the promotion of Christian causes. The organization was created in 1994 largely to counterbalance the ACLU in court, and it has since successfully defended the Boy Scout ban on gay scoutmasters, helped stop San Francisco from instituting gay marriage, and backed efforts to keep Terri Schiavo alive. Now it's on the same side as the ACLU, which makes local ADF counsel in the Turton case very uncomfortable. "I almost see it as a conflict," said Demetrios Stratis of the ACLU's role in the case. "They're just throwing a bone to Christians, if you will, so they can say they support everyone."

For the ACLU, though, it's the chance to change that irksome perception, to show that the organization is as much a defender of religious speech as it is of the political kind. The ACLU of New Jersey filed a brief supporting the Turtons because "we have a dedication to ensuring the right to religious expression," said legal director Edward Barocas, who stressed, a little defensively, that his office has supported "numerous such cases in recent years."

For the Justice Department, it's the need to burnish the Bush Administration's image among its political base, the Christian right. In recent years, the department has rarely participated in civil rights cases, except when pro-life and other conservative causes were at issue. Its position that the school district's "censorship was unconstitutional" squares with that record.

Not that Olivia's case is weak. In fact, constitutional law expert Michael Dorf at Columbia University Law School says her free-speech argument should make a decision in her favor "a no brainer" for the court. But lost in the legal posturing is what the Turtons, and particularly Olivia, get out of all this.

Her father, Robert, said he went to the ADF because the suggestion that religious songs are unacceptable "was the wrong message to relay to our daughter." But the case is in its second year, Olivia is entering the fourth grade, and it is all beginning to wear on the family. "She feels it's a lot of trouble over something that seems so simple to her," said Robert. "She doesn't really understand it. She just wanted to sing a song."

So why can't they play on the same team? Maybe it's just me but the history books told me at one time they did. And they trusted in god so much they didn't try to hide it. They wanted to tell everyone. So they put it on our
money that we use everyday.

I was watching A TV show called The Colbert Report. A Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream flavor has been named after the host Stephen Colbert. The Flavor is called "Americone Dream" In his words that ice cream flavor was the American Dream. He took a Bite of the Ice cream and said "oh that is a bite of heaven. That's right, no separation of church and state on this tongue." He actually teaches bible study for his church. He trusts in god.

So if I had to make a stand on this, it would be
1. Trust in God
2. Trust in Stephen Colbert
3 Americone Dream is better then Cherry Garcia