Mental Hygiene the best thing you've done for your brain all day

All hail the Hypnotoad!

no, really.

hail.

God said, “let there be LIGHT!”, and looked tentatively to Stephen Hawking, who plugged a few numbers into the critical calculations, and gave a quick thumbs-up to the Big Guy.

And there was, and it was good, and it travelled at a precise speed in a vacuum, was composed of quanta to be called ‘photons’ that behaved as wave and particle, was acted upon by gravity (which Stephen had created the day before, while God was napping), and wasn’t the slightest bit odd or inexplicable.

Stephen Hawking presented his calculations to God on the second day, who scratched His head and said, “Um, good job, Stephen… I’ll take it from here”

Irrevelations 14:42

ah, Uday…. Qusay… we hardly knew ye.

seriously – according to the New York Times (and really, who trusts those guys these days?) in a shootout with four men in a house…

“A senior defense official said Apache helicopters, A-10 Warthogs and fighter aircraft were called in to lend support.”

and apparently the “ferocious shootout […] gradually shredded the walls providing them cover.”

sounds like appropriate use of force to me.

something i noticed out at a show the other night… it’s hard to pull off the hard core punk rock look if you have a cel phone dangling from your belt along with your wallet-on-a-chain.

it’s hard to express just how satisfying it is to me to see that MTV is, by doing segments of “M2 on MTV” promoting M2 as “where the music is”, in essence telling us just how little actual music there is on Music Telvision these days. “We’re such tools,” they’re saying, “that we had to come up with a whole new channel to build up your hopes and then ruin like everything else we touch.”

god bless you, MTV

it seems that a spammer, one of those detestable vermin, just one step below a monkeypox infested, rabid prairie dog, has been spoofing one of my email addresses while sending out his drivel.

i only know this because i’m the one that gets the bounced messages when they fail.

thank you Go Daddy Software. thank you for sending out urls like http-www-swmaxxdel-com-il1oololo-0o0olo0os-0os0l5o5-0o50s0o-o1o.us and oll02198283l4672lo39102-42l3917y7u123-lo97687o876o58l-olol27373.us with my name on them.

thank you secureserver.net for sending this mail for godaddy. thank you verio for hosting them.

and thank you to all the postmasters and admins at (in no particular order) amsuper.com, fvg.it, cspadsl.com, ayala.com.ph, baylinens.com, berea.edu, postnet.se, newsouth.net, foxtel.com.au, AO fucking L, cms.edu.do, compmktg.com, spray.net, csc.com, csuohio.edu, personainternet.com, deq.state.ms.us, nacamar.de, esaote.com, and Fleishman.com for either having poorly configured or nonexistent antispam procedures, or for relaying this spam that so clearly does not originate where it seems to.

this is what the internet is supposed to be about, after all. right?

sigh. it’s only now that joey ramone is good and truly dead that a Ramones song can be used in a TV commercial for cel phones.

i wonder how you say “tell your fucking kids to stop screaming so damned loud, and to get the hell out of my yard” in vietnamese?

i love my new neighbors.

(oh yeah “and tell them to quit climbing on my car before i cut their feet off at the ankles”)

i’m so disappointed in the human race.

(“so, what’s new?” i know you’re thinking. but this time, i’ll keep it brief)

i just got home from a point in viginia that should, by all reasonable assumptions, be two hours drive away. it took me four. i know because i went through 4 full-length CDs in the cd player.

the last 2 hours of the trip (pink floyd – dark side of the moon and momentary lapse of reason) were spent moving an average of 10 miles per hour.

construction? on sunday? no. of course not. not in Nahth Cahlina.

an accident, blocking traffic? well, yes and no.

yes an accident, but no, it wasn’t blocking traffic. in fact, it was on the westbound side of a divided highway, but was stopping traffic going eastbound for 20 miles.

you heard me right: 20 miles.

this accident had happened long enough ago that it was already partially cleared by the time i passed it, both the fire engine and ambulance still on the scene were idle, and not flashing any lights – nobody, apparently, had been hurt. it had also taken long enough to clear that sunday afternoon traffic had time to accumulate 20 miles in one direction and at least 5 in the other by the time I rolled past it at a leisurely 10mph.

there were no eastbound lanes blocked. there was no need to stop traffic for the emergency vehicles – much betteraccess from the other side of the road – and no eastbound cars were involved in the accident. the entire delay, which will still be there long after the 3 cars are cleared away and the emergency vehicles moved on to somewhere they are more needed, was caused by rubberneckers; so-called “onlooker delay” in the traffic report.

i’ve run into it a lot in my travels, onlooker delay. usually when there’s something significant or unusual to see. a car by the side of the road billowing smoke and flame while the owner is restrained by firefighters trying to prevent it from spreading to the woods nearby. one car, mysteriously inverted on the top of another, broken glass and scurrying paramedics liberally sprinkled throughout. those are scenes that I’ve been caught next to, and the kind of thing for which I expect there to be some kind of delay, even if there’s no actual lane blockage. but a fender bender? on the other side of the highway?

of course, there was nothing to see – it was 50 yards away across the scrubby terrain of the I 40 median – but that didn’t stop the miata in front of me slowing down further, even as the cars in front of him sped off. presumably, he was taking a moment to ogle a pair of teenage girls standing amidst the gaggle of onlookers on the other side of the road. or maybe it was the frumpy hausfrau looking distraught while she gabbed on her cel phone, probably explaining to someone why she was 3 hours late, even though it was just a routine 3-car fender-bender.

as you can see, i had enough time to take in the scene for myself, wonder just what in the hell mr. miata was slowing down for, before reaching for my horn. for all i know, it could have been something worth stopping traffic for two hours, and i’d feel insensitive if i honked my horn before i took a look for myself.

thank you, adulthood.

thank you, adulthood, for bringing independence.

for independence brings self-reliance.

self-reliance brings responsibilities.

responsibilities bring liabilities.

liabilities bring concern.

concern brings worry.

worry brings paranoia.

paranoia, inevitably, brings neurosis.

yes. thank you, adulthood.