Tijuana, Hard Rock Cafe on Avenida Revolucion.
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With Eyes Wide Open... ...I could not confirm Erin's observation . You'll recall that Erin noticed that restaurant wait staff often compliments the man on his dinner choices (e.g. "excellent choice, sir"). I did not observe this Sunday night when I was with my wife and two teenage girls; my order was not praised any more than the orders placed by the females in the party. However, there may be several reasons for this: This was not "fine dining"; this was an On the Border in Mira Mesa. The "wait staff" was female. I wonder if this praise is only lavished by male waiters. I ordered a taco salad. How do you praise a taco salad? Incidentally, this dinner visit was after a quick trip to Tijuana on Sunday. Pictures later.
Fortune Cookie Monday He h. After my last rant (I was in Colorado a couple of summers ago, so I'm allowed) on horoscopes and fortunes and junk, I laughed when I read this fortune over the weekend: You have a natural grace and great consideration for others. If you were to choose two words to describe me, "natural grace" would not come to mind. Dancing is, to put it mildly, NOT my forte in the theatre productions in which I have participated. Last Friday (sick day) I tripped in my own bedroom, exciting the dog. (Then again, flies excite the dog.) And "great consideration"? Let's just say that last Thursday night, I had a conversation with my daughter that was strangely reminiscient of the conversations that I occasionally have with my wife. In short, there are times when I don't empathize with others. There's Chinese on the back of the fortune, but I have no idea what it says. Anyone have a guess?
The Cuban Film Industry, and Thai Breast Cream From Yahoo's News of the Weird. Here's the first item: "Good Morning, we've come to install your microphones," an agent says at the door in the opening line of an underground video making the rounds in Cuba. "In what part of the house do you usually talk bad about the government?" he asks the nervous resident, a driver who pilfers gasoline and coffee from the state. The spoof of Cuba's feared security police is in hot demand among Cubans, for whom black jokes and complaints about communist bureaucracy is a major pastime. Made privately by well-known figures of Cuba's film industry, the 15-minute video is being passed around as a DVD. While many Cubans are talking about the video, not all have seen it because few Cubans have computers and even fewer DVD players. Films satirizing the state's inefficiency have been tolerated in Cuba since the early days of President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)...
Trenchfights How Now Brown Pau reports : Not strictly referrer spam just yet, but someone with an IP in China just clicked through to my site from the location H:/2005 key words/hat/hatimports.htm. Sounds like someone's getting his linkfarm ready. ("Linkfarms" are those huge sites full of lists of links, usually auto-generated from search results, there to attract search engine bots and give the illusion of legitimate content.)... Preemptive strike against referrer spammer. I noticed this spammer in my logs yesterday, but the domain was still unregistered -- an occasional strategy among spammers wishing to confuse reverse-DNS lookups. Well, it looks like someone else bought jagk.com before the spammer could, and turned it into an antispam resource. Domain "stolen?" Well, I wouldn't call it stealing, really; the guy bought it fair and square. I wonder how much a domain like that would fetch on eBay! ; Also see here . Here's what http://jagk.com/ says tod...
Yeah, Nostradamus really wrote that From Henry Rollins : If youll give me one more chance I swear that I will never lie to you again Because now I see the destructive power of a lie Theyre stronger than truth I cant believe I ever hurt you I swear I will never to you lie again, please Just give me one more chance I will never lie to you again I swear That I will never tell a lie I will never tell a lie No, no Ha ha ha ha ha hah haa haa haa haaa Sucker Sucker! Oh, sucker I am a liar Yeah, I am a liar Yeah I like it I feel good Ohh I am a liar Yeah I lie I lie I lie Oh, I lie Oh I lie I lie Yeah Ohhh Im a liar I lie Yeah I like it I feel good Ill lie again And again Ill lie again and again And Ill keep lying I promise
Nostradamus Predicts Michael Jackson OK, I admit that I'm usually a skeptic, but when I read this Nostradamus prophecy from 1702, I was completely shocked. In the town of the Mother of our Lord A man with one gloved hand Will stand before an accuser much younger And answer to depravity Under the Juice of our Lord Amazing. Explicit references to Santa Maria, Jackson's wearing of a single glove, child molestation, and even Jesus juice. It's so close to the truth I'd swear I made it up myself.
Fortune - more (and less) than a UNIX command Horoscopes and psychic predictions and fortunes are the same thing to me, and have the same amount of relevance to reality. For example, J recently ruminated on the significance of this horoscope entry: Whatever self-imposed rules have been preventing you from taking action, now it's time to move. You might seem like you're acting impulsively, but you've thought about this long and hard. Others could be surprised -- even shocked -- but this isn't your concern. You need only to pay attention to breaking away from negativity and moving toward your own destiny. She read that, and immediately got to thinking. I know- insane huh? How does that work? How do folks just come up with horoscopes? I've read mine pretty much everyday since I was 12. Not that I go by them all the time, but I keep it in the back of my mind, so that when something quirky happens, I can go "oooooh, I get it now!" Of course, some baby seal clu...
Don't Mess With a Popular Blogger No, not me, silly. Joelle (a/k/a Tenth Muse). Here are excerpts from something that she posted on Wednesday. I encourage you to read the entire post , but here's the Reader's Digest version: And, around 10:30am, I...hit the 24 Hr Fitness in Santee — the same gym I've been working out at since we moved out to this area.... [W]hen the girl at the counter scanned my card, she informed me that I would need to upgrade in order to workout there. I didn't realize it was a "Sport" gym, which is apparently one step above the ghetto membership I have — the "Active". I apologized for the misunderstanding and asked if I could just workout that day....She told me I'd have to talk to someone about an upgrade, but that they would more than likely just write me a pass. I agreed and she called someone to help me. I stood there for 15 minutes before this gigantic bald muscley man who looked like a caricature of himself catch...
The Appeal of Audioblogging And the Southern girls, with the way they talk, They knock me out when I'm down there. Go here and listen to this audio post. First, listen to the voice. Then, listen to the content. Incidentally, I was mistaken in the comment that I posted. Mini-Me had actually gone to a corner : After Verne [Troyer, a/k/a "Mini-me"] seems to be able to sleep without moaning, everyone turns in for the night. Going back to bed, Da Brat finds the enormous Chyna Doll sleeping half on the bed, half off, snoring louder than anyone I have ever heard. Including louder than last season’s Flavor Flav. The biatch can SNORE. Unable to deal with the horrendous noise, Da Brat grabs her bedding and heads for the couch. But on her way to the sofa, Da Brat encounters a most disturbing sight – Mini-me has climbed aboard his scooter – BUCK ASS NAKED - and is driving down the hall to what appears to be the work out room. Verne heads to the corner of the room, saddles up to the ...
You Can Feel Better By Criticizing Someone Else Remember the common belief that American kids are so danged stupid that Europe and Japan will take over the world. Not quite. North Korea has menaced Japan with missiles, kidnapped its citizens and stands between it and a place in the soccer World Cup finals, but one in four Japanese high-school students can't place the country on a map. And the country is right next door (well, on the other side of the Sea of Japan ). Then again, perhaps North Koreans are unable to find South Korea on a map. Knowledge about South Korea may not fit into the curriculum : As in other communist countries, politics come first in the education system. In his 1977 "Theses on Socialist Education," Kim Il Sung wrote that "political and ideological education is the most important part of socialist education. Only through a proper political and ideological education is it possible to rear students as revolutionaries, equipped with a revolutionary...
More information on craniopagus parasiticus See here for my original post on this. You'll recall that there was a debate as to whether removal of the second head constituted murder. Here's another issue to consider ( emphasis mine; note that this was written before the Egyptian case): craniopagus parasiticus / epicome : craniopagus in which a parasitic head is attached to the head of the larger, more nearly normal twin. It results from compromise of the blood supply to one of a pair of craniopagus conjoined twins. It differs from craniopagus conjoined twins in that the body and limbs of the parasitic twin are underdeveloped, leaving in some cases only a parasitic head, inserted on the crown of the autositic twin. The infant is otherwise healthy but her brain cannot develop normally unless the undeveloped head is removed. There have only been 8 documented cases in the worldref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, and 1 only case where surgery has been attempted to correct itref5. The first ca...
Dr. Gene Scott is Dead Jimmy Akin links to a Netscape/CNN story. Gene Scott, the shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist whose eccentric religious broadcasts were beamed around the world, has died, a family spokesman said. He was 75.... The longtime pastor of Los Angeles University Cathedral began hosting a nightly television broadcast of Bible teaching in the mid-1970s. His University Network eventually aired a nightly talk show and Sunday morning church services on radio and television stations in about 180 countries. Scott's church, a Protestant congregation of more than 15,000 members, raised millions of dollars through round-the-clock Internet and satellite TV broadcasts, where he would demand of viewers: ``Get on the telephone!'' to donate. In some of his speeches, Scott would deliver complex lectures on Biblical languages to make points about the meaning of faith. But he also spoke on current events, sometimes lacing his sermons with profanity.... Scott, the son...
Go Grandaddy OK, so I'm looking at an old story, but it may become new again. Bob Parsons posted the following in his blog, dated February 17: Transfers to GoDaddy.com from other registrars are up significantly. We also saw a large surge in customers from other domain name registrars transferring their domain names to GoDaddy.com. Transfers to GoDaddy.com from other domain name registrars, during Super Bowl week, were up 36%. Many customers transferring domain names to us said that until they watched the commercial and checked out GoDaddy.com, they had no idea they could pay only $8.95 a year for their domain name, and get things like domain forwarding (with or without masking) for free. Others said they simply could not believe that our beginning Web site hosting plan provides 500MB of storage with 25GB of bandwidth, and many other extras and costs only $3.95 a month with no setup fee or commitment. (Note: Sorry for the shameless self promotion, but this is what people were telli...
Ontario, the Name In response to a search request (actually, a mistyped search request ), I present the following : ONTARIO The name was first applied to the lake (1641) and is traceable to Amerindian sources. It may be a corruption of Onitariio, meaning "beautiful lake", or Kanadario, variously translated as "sparkling" or "beautiful" water. Later European settlers gave the name to the land along the lakeshore and then to an ever extending area. "Old Ontario" was a term sometimes loosely applied to the southern portion of the province. Entered Confederation as the province of Ontario, 1867. Source: Hamilton, William B. (1978): The Macmillan book of Canadian place names, Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, p. 155. In other search news, there appears to be renewed interest in Angi Taylor , but I don't know why. Someone is searching for a Krystal Fernandez blog, and someone else wanted a picture of Krystal Fernandez naked. (Sorry, no have.) Only on...
Double Coverage It isn't often that Dear Buster and Jimmy Akin discuss the same topic . (For the record, Buster objected to MSNBC's use of the term "parasitic," whereas Akin considered the whole thing murder.) Here's MSNBC's take (for pre-separation pictures, click on the MSNBC link or the Buster link): Baby stable after second head removed 10-month-old girl suffered from 'parasitic' twin birth defect An Egyptian baby born with two heads was in stable condition on Sunday after doctors at a provincial hospital removed one of the heads in a 13-hour operation, the doctors said.... Manar was born with a rare condition known as craniopagus parasiticus, which occurs when an embryo begins to split into identical twins but fails to complete the process. One of the conjoined twins fails to develop fully in the womb. As in the case of a girl who died after similar surgery in the Dominican Republic a year ago, the second twin had developed no body. The head tha...
It's the government, stupid A few days ago I blogged about a beauty pageant earlier this month that used employees of Russia's Ministry of the Interior as the contestants. Little did I realize that the Russian Ministry of the Interior is apparently a hotbed of beauty ( emphasis mine): CBS SLAM DUNKS THE NBA PLAYOFFS WITH MISS UNIVERSE 2002 New York, New York, May 31, 2002 - In a rare Wednesday win, the Miss Universe competition had the advantage over the heavily promoted NBA playoffs winning the Wednesday night with an eight percent advantage over NBC. The pageant's overnight ratings reached an 8.5 out of a 13 share in the battle of beauty vs. basketball. Multi-Platinum, Grammy Award winning Latin super-star Marc Anthony performed at the 51ST ANNUAL MISS UNIVERSE® 2002 competition live from San Juan, Puerto Rico and the show was hosted by actress and model Daisy Fuentes and NFL great Phil Simms. Oxana Fedorva, Miss Russia, was crowned at the conclusion of the two-hour pri...
Why the Planes Are Full Argh. Argh . OBERSTDORF, Germany....Teenager Rok Benkovic stunned a host of favourites to hand Slovenia their first ever medal from the world nordic skiing championships when he won the normal hill ski jump crown.... Rok, an 18-year-old student from Ljubljana who has never been on a World Cup podium, took the lead of the competition after a first jump of 101 metres.... It was Slovenia's first ever medal from a world nordic ski championships since the country secured independence from Yugoslavia.... Double argh . OBERSTDORF, Germany....Belarus cross-country skier Denis Vorobiev was suspended for two years Saturday after world ski officials said a bag belonging to him was found with the banned substance HGH. FIS said in a press release that Vorobiev left the bag with human growth hormone behind at a doping control station on Dec. 10 during the World Cup held in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Vorobiev's results will be nullified from the date the bag was found, and ...
Empoblog is a State of Mind One of the reasons that I chose the word "Empoblog" as part of the name for this blog was because of its uniqueness. At the time I chose the word, no one else was using it (nor would they care to). Because of this, it's amazing how many occurrences of the word "Empoblog" can be Googled. In addition to places where you or I have purposely used the term (as part of a reference to the Ontario Empoblog), certain search-suckers have found it fit to somehow incorporate the term into text at their website. For example, if you want "up to date information on Empoblog, Empoblog reviews, top Empoblog suppliers,and related Empoblog subjects," you can go to the website empoblog.ctr.co.uk . One of the funnier references can be found in the Wedding Vows and Prayer Directory - Texas . It's not funny because I never talk about weddings, prayer, or Texas - I talk about all three - but I ended up on this website because of my reference to...
Is the fake SEC still after me? I haven't checked out Blogshares in a while . No press releases, but a lot of incoming and outgoing links (scroll to the bottom). Top 100 Incoming Links This is a list of the most valuable incoming links at the time OTHER blogs are indexed. It is indicative of FUTURE value not CURRENT value. Simple Ramblings of a Complex Life (B$1,403.81) Oppose Traffic Calming Obstructions (B$1,144.37) KOER Synthetica Radio Transcripts (B$1,144.37) musings of a genetic mishap (B$996.02) Dear Buster (B$704.81) The Hot Librarian (B$435.95) I15 Property News (B$349.24) shrinkette (B$327.51) Inland Empress (B$310.12) Vadergrrrl's Rant Page (B$270.27) isn't she lovely? (B$266.34) German For Beginners (B$239.82) The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century (B$237.66) All Things Jen. (B$228.61) eclecticism (B$198.24) Serial Blogonomy (B$116.78) erin-go-blog! (B$113.44) Anomalous Noodge (B$99.49) Potomac Ponderings (B$56.93) Your Philosophy Sucks (B$51.44) A...
The Story So Far, Said Ernest Tubb Lovely Rita , meter maid Empty head for lemonade Black, white, graying in the shade One big game already played Eastern cowboy , radio trade Estephania blew my mind Yes, I don't that doesn't rhyme Mindy , Mindy, do your time In the atic , pop star slime... Four days. That's enough for me.
Don't worry, be happy Urban Dictionary : gouranga A word that appears on moterway bridges in north west UK. It's only purpose to annoy drivers who are left with a nagging curiosity for the rest of their day until the next day when it ceases to become important ever again. And then there's a Grand Theft Auto news and resource site . I don't know why. [Read on.] Actually, I do know why . Because WebWench at Resplendently Pedestrain said so. Reading through my Gmail box today, I randomly check my Spam folder, just in case someone gets accidently stuck there (I once saw a butterfly get stuck to flypaper - getting stuck in the spam folder is kinda like that). Today, this is what I found. I'm not PRECISELY sure it's spam, but I'm not precisely sure it's not. Call out Gouranga be happy!!! Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga .... That which brings the highest happiness!! (Neateye: NitaiGouranga@aol.com) So WebWench found a German explanation . Who is Gouranga? In 2004 an...
King Crimson, I Can Understand Andrew Keeling has published an analysis of "In the Court of the Crimson King." Actually, he analyzed (analysed) the entire album, but I'm going to concentrate on his analysis of the title track. The title piece of ITCOTCK was, according to Peter Sinfield (E-mail to Andrew Keeling, April 9, 2000), already written: 'a complete Dylanesque song that I had written both words and music for.' However Sinfield goes on to say that Ian McDonald rewrote the music to the words. The words of 'Court' give us a glimpse into an ancient past. Not only do these words seem to touch on the mythical dimension - i.e. they contain references to archetypes such as the King, the Black Queen, the Witch and the Jester relating, perhaps, to the cover-painting of 'In the Wake of Poseidon' which also includes a music quotation from 'Court' itself in 'The Devil's Triangle' - but also project backwards to 'Moonchild' (t...
Pieces of Me This Ashlee Simpson (not to be confused with Ashley Olsen ) song has been going through my head all morning. My latest torture. I watched the Ashlee Simpson show for the first time a couple of nights ago. The episode that I saw was taped after the Saturday Night Live incident. In one public appearance in the show, the song "Pieces of Me" started playing as she walked out, and she immediately (and laughlingly) complained that the wrong song was being played. At least she's trying to turn a negative into a positive. However, she spent much of the episode obsessing about her hair. She had just gotten a shorter haircut, which her mother didn't like. As mothers do, she told Ashlee that she could do what she wanted, but Mom made it clear that she didn't like the haircut. However, Ashlee believed that the haircut expressed who she was. Whether this is a triumph of style over substance I'll leave for you to judge, but you have to remember that people wi...
It's that fresh mountain water (or, why do Colorado bloggers rant?) I just happened to notice this a minute ago. If you scroll down and look at the left side of my blog, you'll see after after a variety of advertisements, personal links, and other stuff, you start to see a list of other blogs, mostly sorted by state. (This is followed by non-blog links, sorted by category.) As of today, I link to three Colorado-associated blogs (one of which moved from the state of Washington.) The names of these three blogs are: A Mama's Rant Vadergrrrl's Rant Page World Wide Rant I swear that I just noticed that all three Colorado blogs include the word "rant" in their title. So why are the bloggers in Colorado ranting so much? Or am I just pre-disposed to link to Colorado bloggers who rant? And who can help these poor bloggers? I don't think their conditions warrant intervention by Colorado's Division of Mental Health . They don't appear to be ranting at delusi...
It's All Around You [1] Continuing in the Valentine's Day-inspired vein of sex and jobs , salary.com has published the results of a survey listing the sexiest jobs. Survey says [2] that these are the sexiest jobs: Firefighter 16% . One word: "9/11." Incidentally, perhaps my fellow New York bloggers could answer a question; after 9/11, how many guys went into singles bars claiming to be firemen when they really weren't firemen? Flight Attendant 13% . Huh? CEO 11% . The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees.... [3] Reporter 10% . Salary.com believes that this job ranked high because of Sarah Jessica Parker's role as a reporter in "Sex in the City." Unfortunately, when I think of a reporter, I think of Bob Woodward, who I don't consider sexy at all. Interior Designer 10% . Again, salary.com attributes the popularity of this profession to TV; specifically, "the popularity of TV's Debra Messing, who play...