That was the joke question asked in a commercial break during the broadcast of Last Comic Standing the other night on NBC. If you wanted to hear the punchline all you had to do was send a text message to NBC on your cell phone to get it. The cost for this amazing and convenient service? Only 99 cents! Have you ever heard anything so utterly lame? Actually holding the punchline of an elementary school level joke for ransom over the airwaves. It irritated me so much that I changed the channel and watched something else instead. Hey, NBC, here’s an idea for you that would be far more entertaining. Why don’t you air a clip of the genius that conceived this brilliant marketing idea actually being fired on national tv. Now that would be funny!

In case you’re wondering, and I won’t charge you a buck for the punchline… What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot. Yeah, I told you it was LAME. And, no, I didn’t pay for it, I got the punchline by doing a web search.

Remember a while back I wrote a post about Stumble Upon? I still like to use it to surf for fun websites sometimes, but unfortunately it’s been sold out to eBay. And eBay is selling spots in the page rotations. Guess what that means kiddies? They sold your eyeballs to the highest bidders, meaning more and more of the webpages they send you to actually paid for the priveledge of having you surf in. Instead of being sites that Joe User submitted as being cool or interesting, you get to see who paid the most money for your attention.

I think this may actually be good in a backhanded way because you get to vote thumbs up or down on every site. If I get even the slightest suspicion that the site submission was paid for, it gets an automatic thumbs down. Hell yeah, just like that! And if the site has pop up ads of any kind on it or if it’s running a script that resizes or takes control over my browser window in any way, it gets an automatic thumbs down too, I don’t care how awesome the website is. If it has pop ups, it sucks!

Check out this billboard photo, notice anything odd about the two ads?

That’s right, it’s the same woman in both ads! LOL

Well, that’s all I got, have a great weekend kids!

I took my car in for some repair work on my A/C system the other day and I went to a place I found in the phone book. Yeah, it’s hotter than Hades here in N.O. and a working air conditioner is always on the top of my list. As an ex-mechanic I’m very picky about who I will trust. I can always tell when someone is bullshitting me or trying to jack me for unneccessary work. The shop was nice and clean and the owner seemed intelligent and straightforward.

Turned out he was someone I knew from high school or at least he remembered me, I couldn’t recall him or his name. I decided to trust him and leave it there for the day for the repair work. As I was leaving though, I started noticing that the walls in the office and waiting area was covered with religious quotes and icons and various other religious paraphenalia. I thought it was just a bit overdone, being proud of your religion is one thing and that’s fine, but this was going way overboard.

Later that day, I went back to pick it up and that’s when it hit me. Well actually he hit me, he clobbered me with Jesus. He asked me point blank if I had the Lord in my heart and if I had found Jesus. Seriously, I am not kidding. And he went on and on telling me all about the goodness of the Lord and asking if I’ve confessed my sins and made my peace, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Then he invited me to his “church”, which turns out to be one that I recognized as a borderline “cult”. You know, one of those independent churches that don’t have an actual denomination. The whole time he was talking, he stared intently into my eyes, like he was trying to mesmerize me or something. I definitely felt like I was being recruited into a future of selling Bibles door to door or wearing Hare Krishna robes at the airport, begging for donations LOL Charles Manson probably recruited his followers the same way!

I wasn’t having any of it though, I lied like a dog, I told him that I had indeed found Jesus and God was in my heart and that I was in regular attendance at a nearby church, etc, etc. just to get him to shut the fuck up. I felt like I was having to chew my frikkin’ leg off to escape his insidious Spanish Inquisition line of questioning. I’m so going to hell…

I’m not against religion in any way shape or form, and I respect your right to worship or not worship, just please, keep it to yourself. Whatever chance he had of ever seeing me at his shop again for future auto repairs was just blown all to hell, so to speak. I never want to encounter that creepy freak again. LOL

I was telling Lisa this story, her response is now my new prayer. “God save me from those who want to save me”. hehe

Hope you guys are having a great weekend!

Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe cutting grass or doing yard work? I’ve always been that way. When I was a kid I was very allergic to fresh mown grass and it made me extremely miserable with swollen eyes, runny nose, burning, itchy skin and short of breath for hours. Did I ever get a break from cutting it? Hell no, my old man probably thought it built character or someshit and I was forced to cut it anyway. It wasn’t like I needed the exercise, I was always very active. And it didn’t matter that I felt like I was freakin’ dying because I could barely breathe, I had to cut it anyway. For some reason, the allergies have slowly diminished as I got older and older, but I hate it now more than ever. I remember dreaming of the day when I would become an adult and would never have to do yard work again.

That never happened! I became an adult, yes (sort of), but did I ever get a break from cutting it? Well, only when I lived in apartments, then some other schmuck had to cut it for me. Yay! And now I find it’s come full circle, my old man is too old and feeble to cut his own lawn so now I’ve had to take over the miserable ritual. Woe is me. If I had a time machine, I would go back and kill the bastard that came up with the idea that lawns needed trimming. I like to think it’s just a sick fad, why can’t it be fashionable to have a small jungle growing around your home? Think of how much more fun that would be!

When you think about the ecological impact, tall, natural grass makes much more sense. We pour fertilizer and insecticides all over it to nourish and protect it then we have to buy fuel and machines to maintain it. We waste fresh drinking water on it to keep it from dying! The poisons end up in our water supplies and the burnt fuel pollutes the air. Then just think of the impact the manufacturing of the billions of dollars worth of lawn equipment we buy every year has on the planets resources. Throw in thousands of serious injuries and medical emergencies that occur while cutting grass and it’s easy to see why it’s a really bad, bad idea. I believe that keeping a well manicured lawn is one of the most wasteful things that a homeowner can do. If you like cutting grass, then I think you’re one sick fuck.

Notice that I have nothing against veggie gardens or growing flowers, just don’t ask me to help you tend one, LOL And of course growing food crops or garden vegetables is a necessity, to me that’s not a waste of time, energy or resources. It’s a positive impact.

You’re probably wondering what brings up this rant. I was cutting grass at my folks house the other day and ended up with a HUGE gash in my arm from brushing past a freshly trimmed bush in the front yard. It sliced me open like a knife and I was barely able to stop the bleeding, two days later it still hurts like hell. It’s going to leave a massive, ugly scar and I’m PISSED. Now, I look like I was just in a bar brawl and right in the middle of job hunting. Just what I needed!

So, happy frikkin’ birthday to me, which just happens to be tomorrow by the way. So I ask you, in honor of my birthday and for the sake of our planet, I want you all to boycott cutting grass for one day. That’s not hard is it? Please, give the poor grass a break, let it grow dammit! The grass just wants to be free, grass has rights too!! LOL

What does the photo below have to do with this post? Not a thing!

I decided it was time to “repaint” the old FEMA trailer that’s been sitting out in the front yard. It’s been there well over a year now, unused, while we wait on FEMA’s engineering reports on what’s to finally be done about the house repairs. The worst part is that once they actually do something we may have to “live” in the piece of crap. Hard to believe but it has room for 8 people to sleep inside, talk about cramped. Sardines have more space to move around. LOL

I came across this cool quote from Ronald Reagan that sums up the governments laggardly response to Katrina.

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Doesn’t that just say it all? hehe

And speaking of Ronald Reagan, I came across this old cigarette advertisement. Gotta love the “Christamas Card” cartons. Hey Ron, I’ll take a dozen!

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I got a brand new toy a couple of weeks ago and I just can’t stop playing with the damn thing. No it’s not a sex toy, minds out of the gutter please! Although it is almost as fun as sex.

It’s a new LG cu500 cellphone that’s also a music player and a video camera. My old Motorola was getting pretty tired and since I was eligible for an upgrade I decided to go for something really nice. It has a removable 1 gigabyte memory card that can hold up to 250 mp3 or wma songs or 3,000 photos or 300 minutes of video! The memory card even fits in my regular digital camera, so it’s very versatile. Granted, the video quality is pretty low, but the photo quality is pretty damn good, I’m really quite impressed.

And the data is all transferable back and forth to my PC thru a USB cable. It runs on At&T’s new high speed data 3G network and it has quad band so it can be used anywhere in the world. The music player is basically identical to an iPod with song shuffle and repeat and you can create custom playlists. I never imagined a cellphone could be so much fun to play with. Now if it just vibrated a little stronger…

Not a week goes by without a roofing contractor stopping in and asking if we need a new roof put on the old place. They always make it sound like they’re the very first ones to notice too… I can’t imagine why they would think we need a new roof, do you? Just because the tarps are so old they constantly flap in the breeze and there’s a huge hole in the back where the oak tree fell on it, naaa, we don’t need a new roof. We like that it leaks in about 5 different places.

Yes, I took this photo today, it will be 2 years this coming August since Katrina blew thru here and we’re still waiting on FEMA to decide whether or not the house will be repaired or demolished. Don’t you just love governmental bureaucracy at it’s finest?

Bastards…

This has been amusing me for a week now, a small green lizard has moved into my SUV grill and seems to think it’s a great place to hang out and catch bugs. He crawls all over the bumper, the hood, in and out of the grill but mostly hangs off the lower edge waiting for tasty insects to pass by.

When he spots his prey he leaps down onto the pavement below, snatches it up and scurries back, where he jumps up onto one of the tires then leaps across to the bumper. Sometimes I’ve seen it do it from the upper grill which is about a 3 foot drop! And it only takes him a few moments to return to his station. It does this all day long and it’s been going on for a solid week now.

Occasionally it will climb onto the hood and lay there in the sun because they like that warmth. It seems to be most active when it’s really warm in the middle of the day. Here’s a closeup of him ready to pounce. LOL

I haven’t been driving that much all week so I know he hasn’t been disturbed very much, but earlier today I took a 60 mile drive and I feared he would be gone. Not so! Shortly after I returned home, there he was, poking his head out and hungry! He went right to work. These guys are extremely plentiful in this neighborhood, you can’t step outside without seeing one and they eat tons of bugs. They’re actually pretty good to have around.

So now that I seem to have a permanent resident pet, that also fills the roles of bug catcher, security attack lizard and a cool looking hood ornament, I think it’s time I gave it a name but I can’t think of any good ones. I’m taking suggestions, anyone want to name my lizard? I might even let the winner pet him! Hmm, pet my lizard, that sounds kinda naughty actually… Name my lizard!

If you’re ever purchased fresh sliced meat from a grocery counter, I’m sure you’ve run into one of these people. Their grumpiness factor is in direct proportion to how thin you want that ham sliced. If you don’t specify a thickness, you’ll probably be greeted with a pleasant attitude.

Ask them to slice it very thin and they quickly turn from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. The thinner you want it sliced, the more work for them because thinly sliced can require twice as many strokes on the machine. The particularly heinous ones will beligerently show you the first slice from 10 feet away by waving it at you so fast that there’s no way you can really tell if it’s what you wanted. “Is this thin enough”, they’ll ask with a scowl.

You’re lucky if they don’t throw it at you and curse you before you leave the counter. Of course they’re not all like that but I seem to run into more than my fair share. I also hate when they attach the sticker label over the baggie opening in such a way that you have to rip the damn thing to shreds when you get it home.

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I ran into this interesting comparison the other day, now I’m thankful our cars don’t run on printer ink! Holy Crap, Batman! If you thought the price of gasoline was expensive, take a look at this price comparison of various liquids! Apparently we’ve been had, printer ink manufacturers have finally figured out how to turn something ordinary into pure gold.

And you thought alchemy was a lost art, remember all those nutjobs that worked for centuries trying to figure out how to turn ordinary metals into gold? Apparently something very similar is possible. Forget crude oil, forget the middle east, let the ink wars begin, LOL! I think I’m going to become a wildcatter and start drilling for printer ink! That’s obviously where the money’s at!

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I was in a really creative mood yesterday and doctored up a bunch of old archive images of Hitler, I think they came out really quite good. In this politically correct social climate there aren’t many subjects left that you can safely make fun of without offending anyone. I doubt if anyone will have an issue with me taking a big swing at Hitler, LOL

I think my Photoshop skills have come a long way, what do you think? Here’s one sample in reduced size. If you want to see the 8 picture series, I posted them over at Evil Six.

Those are my contributions to “fuck off and die Thursdays”.

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On a VERY positive note, I’ve been feeling quite good! Actually this is the best I’ve felt in nearly 5 years. Pretty damn amazing considering how close I came to death. My miserable health odyssey began with liver failure, progressed into double pneumonia, being in a coma for a month, nearly 2 years of hospitilization, a complete liver transplant and top it off with 7 months of chemotherapy. You can’t say that I don’t know how to have fun! LOL

My latest blood test results have come back very positive with only a slight bit of anemia and I feel like the last traces of the chemo drugs have finally left my system. In a word, KICKASS!! hehe I’m ready to take on the world again! Hell yeah! What a change huh? Going from feeling like every day that passed would likely be your last one to feeling like you might live forever. We can dream can’t we? hehe

Love you guys and I hope you have a great weekend!!

Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time about the work I used to do in the diving business. Although I worked for several different companies during those years the images below are from one company in particular. It’s name was Santa Fe Engineering and Construction and I worked in the Diving Division as a Systems Engineer and a Dive Controller. The company is no longer in business under that name as far as I know because it was bought out and absorbed by some huge offshore company in Dubai in the middle east. That put me out of a job but it was no big deal at the time because I had been offered a better job with another company.

The first picture is a view of one side of the diving complex with the diver’s living quarters (steel pressure chambers) underneath and the diving bell being hoisted over the side into the water in the Gulf of Mexico. The arrow in the photo is pointing to me watching the hull clearance as it’s lowered down. The divers lived in the system for up to 30 days at a time where they stayed under constant pressure equal to the water depth we were working in. This allowed them to save all of their decompression to prevent the bends until the end of the job. This also allowed them to stay underwater using the diving bell for up to 8 hours at a time where they worked in shifts. Notice the 20,000 pound anchor on the vessels deck in the foreground, there were eight of these used to stabilize and hold the position of the ship we were on.

Two divers could ride to the sea floor in the diving bell at one time where one would go outside and work for 4 hours and the other one would stay inside to tend the hose and the diving bell controls, then they would swap out for 4 more hours before returning to the surface. Then, 2 more divers would transfer into the bell and they would go to the seafloor to continue the work. This type of diving was called “total saturation” and allowed underwater work to be done around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Up to 8 divers could live inside the system at one time. The quarters were extremely cramped, but the divers pay was extremely high.

Total saturation meant that the divers body tissues could absorb no more gases no matter how much longer they stayed down, allowing a fixed amount of decompression at the completion of the job. Sometimes it took to up 3 days of slowly releasing the pressure in the chambers before the divers could safely emerge from the system. It was not very much unlike going into outer space actually, if the diving system were to become quickly depressurized the end result would be deadly, sort of like losing cabin pressure in a space capsule.

This next photo shows the back side of the system and most of it’s auxiliary equipment, including hydraulic power units, air compressors, an emergency chamber, breathing gas bottles and much more and also the control room sitting on top. That’s the small white building with the 2 rear access hatches open. Again the arrow in the photo is pointing at me. That’s an offshore oil drilling platform off in the distance

It took a shitload of equipment and personnel to put men on the bottom to do this type of work where only one man could work at a time. Although the vessel we were on was capable of doing many different roles, when diving was going on the entire crew of up to 300 men did nothing but support for that one task including technicians, mechanics, cooks, clerks, welders and riggers.

Below is a photo of the inside of the control room where 2 dive controllers would sit and converse with the divers on the bottom and in the living quarters. They had a lot of responsibilty because they had to monitor the divers environment pressure and control the mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and other gases in the divers breathing air. They also had closed circuit tv monitors and specialized radio equipment. You can see part of the diving bell thru the window.

The job that these photos were taken from was actually the trial runs for this particular diving system as it had just been completed construction. Everything had to be thoroughly tested on the job site before it could be certified safe to use as life support capable. At this point in my career I didn’t normally work offshore very much, not like I had used to. I was now only going out for initial trial runs because I was in charge of construction of the control rooms and the final asembly of all the major components. That was all done inshore at the companies main base where we completed 5 of these multi-million dollar systems. They were capable of being broken down into it’s smaller components and then reassembled and used at almost any location around the world.

Most often they were used in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and in the middle east but I was always on call to go wherever they were to trouble shoot or help with technical problems that may come up. I loved doing this type of work, it was actually a lot of fun and the pay was damn good too. Not to mention traveling to lots of cool places. One job I was on I spent over a year in Europe. Eventually, after 12 years I did get sick of it and after missing dozens of family holidays and spending time at home with friends I gave it up.

Hope you guys are having a good weekend! The N.O. Jazz Fest started yesterday and I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to go or not. If I do, I’ll certainly get some photos and video to post!

My grandmothers house is just about to be sold, my mom put it up for sale several months ago and soon a new family will be moving in. It’s an old “shotgun” style house built in the old New Orleans tradition, raised on short blocks just 2 or 3 blocks from the Mississippi River in old Algiers and near the old Naval Support base. It’s just across the river from the old French Quarter area. I have a lot of fond memories of the place as a child, playing in the yard, Easter egg hunts given by my french speaking Grandfather with pocket change given out as rewards and wonderful cajun style cooking from my Grandmother’s kitchen. Chasing the seemingly millions of dragonflies that fluttered about, getting bathed in a galvanized steel tub out in the backyard on balmy summer nights, and my Grandma’s delicious, sweet tea poured over ice with an unlimited amount of love and affection. Those were some good days and I miss them.

My grandfather was a strong, handsome man, a fighter and a lover and a gambler. He worked for years in the offshore oil industry and had quite a reputation as a ladies man. My grandmother was a home maker that knew how to cook and sew and had a strong sense of self. She was well loved and respected and always gave, always sacrificed, never asking anything in return. I was pretty lucky as a child, I guess I knew it then and I know it now. Those days will never return, but at least I have most of the memories and old photos to remind me. I hope the new family moving in will appreciate and enjoy their new home.

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Curse the Children, Make Them Cry

I’ve been awfully busy lately and I have a new project up that I’ve been working on in my spare time, it’s a new website and it’s called Evil Six if you want to check it out. Yes, I decided I wasn’t spreading enough evil goodness so I dropped down a number and started a new site for fun. It’s intended to be a sort of tongue in cheek, “poke evil in the eye” look at news, movies, videos, people and events, past and current.

This fake movie poster I made up is part of my latest article about none other than Alec Baldwin and his recent embarrasment, and the site also features polls to vote on various articles and subject matter. Check it out!

I’ve got tons of new sites and blogs that I’ve done in recent months listed over at BGW! Way more than I want to list here, but here’s a link to my updated portfolio. Here are a couple of links to a some of the latest ones though. Mahlers on Safari who is an American mother living in Tanzania, Africa with her 2 children, another new one for Afro Nerd featuring Steve Urkel, a very nice recipe blog for Janet is Hungry, her beautiful food photos always make me so hungry! And a very well written political commentary blog called The Dishpan Chronicles written by The Kitchen Window Woman.

And, how about this? Gary’s Condors has collected over $2,000 toward the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life fund drive and event. That’s pretty impressive and kudo’s go out to Sara for setting it up.

Hey, hope you guys have a nice weekend! The weather here looks to be pretty nice, I know I’m going to enjoy it!

I’ve been listening to all the talk (who hasn’t?) about Imus’ racist remark and it’s true, his sorry ass should be run off the radio. He is a racist prick and his feeble apology isn’t good enough to excuse what he said. I’m sure he can get a job as a radio jock for some neo-nazi, white supremacist hate group because that’s right where he belongs.

I’ve noticed though, that no one seems to have been offended by the fact that he called a group of young female college students ho’s! Black or white, this is just wrong on so many levels all by itself. Where does this bastard get off using such a derogatory term to describe young, hard working, college age athletes. These are peoples daughters, not Vegas hookers for craps sake. I can tell you this much, if I had a college aged daughter and she happened to be on the Rutgers basketball team, I would want to kick his sorry fuckin’ ass. I would like to see his reaction if his daughter had been called a “ho” by some loud mouthed racist lout on national talk radio. Bastard! Eat shit and die!

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Ok, now for something fun! You guys just have to try out this hilarious Flash game, see how many tries it takes you to catch the worm. Post your scores in the comments, it only took me 5 tries. Lets see you beat that! Bet you can’t! Make sure your sound is on too!Catch a Worm Game