Category Archives: Word Play

Odd words, phrases and jargon from about the world and web

Security in Light of Comedy

Posted on by

I have a friend who went through security holding onto a Mountain Dew soda beverage.  Security at the airport.  The airport where congress in the United States has made that illegal.  So my friend was told by security, “You cannot take that drink through security, sir.”  His curt reply was, “What?  Am I going to make a bomb out of Mountain Dew?”

They really made the rest of his stay at the airport exciting and irritating.  Security, whose purpose is to make sure we’re all safe, was not a joke.  While traveling through the security checkpoint at the Denver International Airport, around the same time, I discovered I had accidentally left my pocket knife in my pocket (where it belongs).  I quickly slipped it into my computer bag with my keys and wallet and let it go through x-ray.  If they find it, I want them to find it and remove it from my bag and I’ll blush for having forgotten to put it on my night stand.  Security didn’t catch my knife on the x-ray screen.  I got to keep it, hidden, and then when I arrived in Grapevine, TX, I put it in my luggage that was checked so as to not get it confiscated by the DFW screeners who are effective at finding knives in bags… I’ve lost two to them.

Last night I watched Spaceballs at the movie theater with my brother-in-law.  In that movie there are a few really, really good bits on security holes that often exist in real-life security situations.  The combination number for the planet Druidia’s security system was 1-2-3-4-5 [as was the president’s luggage combination]. The security guards protecting the self-destruct mechanism inside of Spaceball One (the extra-long battleship) help foil the security.  Mel Brookes, the genius behind Spaceballs, saw the idiotic nature of much of our security in the world and cried foul, and nearly made me cry because it was so funny.

This morning I watched Pinky & the Brain with my daughters.  Again, they bring to light the comedy of lax security in what should be important situations.  Comedy makes us laugh about what is really important.  What is so often funny in the comedy is that we all know that the human error involved in the scenarios is quite probable.  Worse, we can laugh because we see the horrible catastrophe playing out before our eyes.  Even more we see in books like Dave Barry’s Big Trouble has a great section at the end of the book where terrorists jump through security with guns as if its no problem simply because they can time the system and game it.  The writing is hilarious (as is most of Dave’s work) but the problem is real.

Does the staff at the TSA, FBI, CIA, BMW or AT&T [that was a little comedy right there.  Very little.] ever watch comedy movies or television shows?  Because when they make choices about security it isn’t always obvious?  Bruce Schneier, a respected security expert and security blogger, has written on many occasions about the bumbling choices that get made in the name of security.  I would laugh if it wasn’t so irritating to have so many good examples.  I hear you loud and clear from here, Bruce, there’s very little that we won’t try in the name of security, except for the stuff that works, because that’s just ridiculous.

My Children are Insane with a Capital N

Posted on by

Warning: this post contains lots of non sequiturs, I’m tired, and non sequiturs make me chuckle when I’m tired.  I’d ask if you follow what I”m saying except that that’s what a non sequitur is.  Elephants wander through the African planes and such.

Both girls have been in a mild to extreme melt-down mode since coming home from Indiana. I’m pretty sure this is due to the fact that Jessica and I have also been in punt mode. We’ve had a lot going on and when that happens we end up punting a lot. If you’re not familiar with the punt analogy it ties in with the popular American sport called American Football. Its called American Football because the rest of the world calls it American Football because they had a sport called football long before the Americans who took Rugby, Football, Sumo Wrestling and the Civil War and combined them together so that only very fast, large men (and now, apparently fast, large women) can mash into one another like two over-loaded sports cars while one smaller, but still huge man attempts to throw the ball to another smaller, not as huge man who runs even faster than the other fast runners in an attempt to not be killed by oncoming fast, large men. This is, in short, American Football.

In American Football there’s a really nice thing that happens: the teams share the ball and take turns having ‘possession’ of the ball. Possession is a loose term because each team could find themselves running with the ball, in fear of being creamed by the other team, lose the ball and then do what’s called fumbling the ball and then recovering the dropped ball, which means that they might still have possession even though they temporarily did not have possession. After enough time lapses where the team who had possession didn’t do anything useful with the ball, they might have what’s called a fourth down. The fourth down follows the first through third down. The number of downs you have depends on the number of severely injured fowl you have as well as fouls that may have been committed by players added together with the number of yards the football has traveled in a subjectively positive direction. Upon the fourth down, if the team who has possession of the ball decides that they’re too close to the scoring end-zone of the opposing team they can do what’s called punting. Punting is to kick the ball to the other end of the field but not into the scoring end-zone, just up close to it. The returning, opposing team then catches the ball and the player who catches the ball hopefully runs a long, long way so that they get back closer to the original end-zone so that they can get a touchdown. A touchdown has nothing to do with the downs mentioned earlier. So the punt is a scrambled maneuver that is only done to prevent the other team from scoring and is generally looked at as a last resort maneuver.

Since Jessica and I have been resorting to the punt for the last couple weeks due to some unforeseen circumstances, work, and a general sense of being whelmed (not over or under, but relatively pegged) the girls have probably felt like the football being kicked from one end of the field as we play American Football with each day.  This is why Evelyn threw a screaming temper tantrum as we were entering the fine Costco store this evening to collect small, specific bits of food for Father’s Day this weekend. Food that will keep us going in our punting, punting that will keep us from scoring, but keep the other team from scoring. Scoring which makes us like John Williams, who does not play American Football.

A Kids Song In the Making

Posted on by

Tonight, to relieve some stress and to do something I haven’t done in far too long I began working on a song. A kids song. An alphabet oriented kids song. I wanted to post what I’ve recorded so far and wanted to get some feedback.

Lyrics:
W I Need U
I had to ask O Y
R U coming back
I think I’m gonna die

Xs are the hardest N
This life which is OK
You flew away
Like some distant blue J

W I need U
I had to ask O Y
R U coming back
I think I’m gonna die

MP3

Indiana Jones and the Abandonment of Everything Before It

Posted on by

I just got back from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Cathedral.  Great googly-moogly this was a complete re-hack of the previous movies just look at all of the similarities:

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade or Temple of Doom Crystal Meth Sameness
Older Harrison Ford Younger Harrison Ford 60%
Witty lines Witty limes Fruity
Nazis Reds 100% same, only different
Wrath of God Wrath of trans-dimensional aliens 0% sameness
Double Crossing Double Crossing much sameness
Sean Connery Picture of Sean Connery 10%
Indy as Junior “Mutt” as Junior -9000%

I could go on with the similarities, but as you can see by the above chart there’s so much in common between the past Indiana Jones movies and this one that if you’ve seen the first three, this one’s a re-run.

Actually, its totally different, which was either refreshing, or not. Either way, we enjoyed the movie on an entertainment level, but were let down because we wanted to have that nostalgia come back, but instead found the difference too great to just feel like we’d come back to see another story in the same series.

Kudos to Steven Spielberg for not casting ET as one of the aliens – or having reese’s peanut butter product placements within the film.

Also Kudos for magnetic materials being attracted to the highly magnetic aliens only some of the time. It made for more suspense wondering when something would be attracted and when something would be artificially non-metal.

Also, Also Kudos for having the noise of a small class rival that of a full auditorium sound effects people, it was awesome.

That’s The Fork Calling the Knife Cutlery

Posted on by

In what is an ironic twist of science meets computers meets religion a “scientist” used a “computer program” to determine the origins of “religion” in “Michigan”. You can read an article about it here if you want to. I’ll pick some excerpts to poke holes in or poke fun of below in case out of context quotes are your thing:

The model assumes, in other words, that a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to communicate unverifiable information to others.

I got confused when I read this line because I was pretty sure this was the definition of journalism. Clearly the journalist who wrote this has the intellect to determine that because no time machine has been invented and mass produced and marketed yet that one of the clear issues this concept faces is that a computer program does not equal verifiable information. It also indicates that when you use the word assume, and the author does, that you’re not using facts, you’re using assumptions. I’m going to assume the author is a chimpanzee, though this is not a fact, it is merely an assumption. Or the author has a religious gene, but its being portrayed in the temple of the media.

The model looks at the reproductive success of the two sorts of people – those who pass on real information, and those who pass on unreal information.

Here the author is clearly implying things about people with marketing degrees and those who blog. Marketing bunks and bloggers debunk, right?! Don’t sell them what they need, sell them what they want. Or maybe this is a typo and he meant ‘reel information’ and ‘unreal information’ as a euphemism to fishing stories involving fish that get bigger and bigger. I can’t tell.

“[Now] you can be a Lutheran one week and decide the following week you are going to become a Buddhist.”

Ah, the classic argument about the issue of ‘being’. Philosophy at its finest. If you’re being a doctor and then the next week you are being a mechanic you better not force your co-workers to call you doctor when you’re tinkering with transmissions. And if you get sweaty on your brow asking bubba to come over and wipe your forehead like you might request a nurse to do is just out of the question 😉 But seriously, being a Lutheran and then being a Buddhist the next week is improbable if you’re truly being something. The change will more than likely be gradual and involve a disinterest rather than be this quick. A quote of generalization about religious attitudes from a less religious professional does not a good article make. Unless of course you want to pass along unverifiable information to people because of a genetic disposition. In which case those pants make you look fat, Mr. Callaway. I can’t prove it, but I’m willing to publish it on the internet for religious reasons – its in your jeans.

More Web Developers Choose Crack Over Any Other Browser!

Posted on by

I have spent far too much time on ‘fixing’ a bug that only happens in Internet Explorer (AKA Internet Exploder).  Here’s a run-down on the problem:

1) Use math to figure out where something should show up on the screen

2) Test in Firefox – works!

3) Test in IE7 – Fail!

4) Remove rational math that appears to make sense and replace it with nonsense – works in IE7, fails in Firefox because Firefox isn’t as buggy

What I don’t get is that more people use Internet Explorer and its older.  Why does the new browser have to work better, smarter, faster and cleaner?  Thanks for reading my whine.

IE7 hack  post mortem: in Firefox, use math.  In IE6 & IE7 use meth.

The Sickness: Part II

Posted on by

Tonight I got a new keyboard.  Its a new Apple Wireless thingy.  You see, I had to get a new one because the old one received the puke of a two year old.  I’m feeling sick, Jessica is feeling sick, Abby is feeling sick, and Evie is most definitely sick.  Even Kurt & Becky are under the weather.  The sickness is annoying to say the least.  We missed church, we missed being with some friends whom we wanted to see… but we didn’t miss going out to the grocery store to buy things that will hype us up so that we can feel half-awake instead of mostly dead.

I have to fly tomorrow morning (Monday) so I’m super-excited to spread germs, receive germs, and generally make those around me miserable or question the safety of my company.  The good thing is that this new keyboard should cause me great discomfort for a few days in the hands department so that at least most of me is funky instead of just one part.*

By the way, too much vitamin C is actually diarhea inducing.  I know this because in Jr. High I fed my friend too much vitamin C because he liked the ‘cherry’ flavor of the C I had.  Little did he know that his immune system would kill most anything with that boost, but the explosive gastro-intestinal boost would kill his chances of getting a girlfriend.  Sorry, Matt 🙂

*I’m used to an ergonomic keyboard and this is not, but since my laptop is also not ergo, its good to get used to the ‘old’ style as needed.

The Conclusion of This Year’s New Years Resolution: FAIL

Posted on by

I did not record an album this year.  I did not even record it after my birthday, but still in 2007.  This year saw lots of other things take priority.  However, there are lots of things left to do in 2007 before 2008 kicks off and I have to declare another resolution which I will probably fail at.

This year I did lose 30 pounds.  That’s a good place to start.

This year I did make my family a higher priority.

This year I kissed Jessica approximately five bazillion times… which is still far short of my lifetime achievement goal of infinity.

This year I watched Abby and Evie do some firsts like school, potty training (which is going well for the most part), and of course taking them both sledding together for the first time.  I have no proof of the sledding, but cameras and water are often enemies.  Or at least my camera doesn’t like water.  I know, because I asked it.

This year has been a good year – but its time for me to go to bed for the last time in 2007 so that I can work the last day of 2007 tomorrow and then kick of new years by sleeping in or something.

i-wanna-be-green-in-UR-checkout-line

Posted on by

So I saw a granola boy try to pick up on the checker at the granola store today as I was buying supplements for my wife.  Only he was a wannabe granola boy.  He was wannabe once he started to flap his jaw and reveal his ignorance of environmental things.  Here’s how the story played out (with my colored commentary because this is my blog):

Granola boy (GB): Hey, I like your hat!

Checker (C): Thanks.

GB: Did someone make it?

C: No, I got it at [some store with a name like ‘Twisters’, but I don’t recall exactly]

COMMENTARY: Someone had to make it.  The last time I heard mushroom caps were not being produced as headware.  It may have been an under-privileged child in a third world country – but someone made it.

C: Do you want paper or plastic?

GB: /leaning over counter/ Um, its going to be heavy, huh?

C: I guess.

GB: Plastic.  We need to figure out what we’re going to do with all of the plastic bags we already have.  When are we going to start caring?

COMMENTARY: Doh!  Stupidest dumb self-defeating thing GB could have said at the end is about his lack of caring to know that there are bag recycling programs at most major supermarkets – and they don’t care what stores names are on the bags.  Furthermore, two paper bags would have held what he had and he could also have recycled those.  Or put them in a worm compost pit.  The worms mix the paper with the soil and turn it into rich, good for your plants, soil.

C: Yeah.

GB:  God bless. /walks away/

I slid into my position in front of the register

GB: /comes back/ maybe we can find some worm or something that could eat the bags /walks away/

I figured that C was smart enough to know this guy was talking out of his bum so I didn’t continue on the discussion – she didn’t need me to tell her that the guy was dumber than the dirt he seemed to care about so much.  It is good to be living in Colorado and be able to see that the people are not as granola as the nation thinks.  Maybe we could find some worms to eat people like that?