TEN JACK TEN

The solemn duty of all weather broadcasters is to cause widespread public panic whenever possible.

Failure to treat others with respect is a sign of immaturity or insecurity, or both.

Do not mix negative emotions with vodka. Just don’t.

Government’s preferred response to a slow economy is to spend more money. Government’s preferred response to a booming economy is to spend more money.

Non-gamers view videogames and the people who enjoy them with equal parts condescension and suspicion.

Nothing focuses my attention like a deadline. No deadline, no discipline.

When you show up at the ER in an ambulance, you get to go to the front of the line.

The lower the stakes, the more vicious the fight.

The media thrives on conflict. That’s why if an election or some other public competition is not competitive, the media will do its best to make it at least appear competitive.

Katherine Heigl is getting the movie roles that Ashley Judd was getting five years ago.

One December day last year, I was picking the kids up at the daycare. As I was going back to their rooms, this woman asks me to move my car from the front drive. I was not feeling particularly cooperative that day, especially since the parents park their cars all over the place and getting blocked in goes with the territory. Plus, I was aware of the issue when I parked, and I made sure to leave enough space for other cars when I parked.

I told her that, and she said there wasn’t enough space and I should move my car. I told her I’d be out there as soon as I had my kids. I rounded up my three kids in a hurry, rushed them up front, and was out to the drive in less than a minute.

I saw the woman pulling out of the drive in her silver sedan. Guess I was right after all. As I was seating the kids, I saw a double five-inch key scratch on my driver’s side door. A thin trail of clear coat was still hanging off the scratch.

That silly bitch keyed my car.

My wife tells me I scared the hell out of the daycare staff when I walked back in there and demanded to know who this person was. I called the police and reported the vandalism that night.

Over a week later, I get a call from a detective. Let’s just say he didn’t seem very worked up about cracking the case. I gave him the name and he asked if I’d actually seen her do it. Of course I hadn’t, or she wouldn’t have made it back to her car (I didn’t say that last part to the detective). Later, he calls back and says he can’t find this person, and maybe I could get a license plate number or something?

I drive home pretty disgusted with the whole system. Apparently, unless there’s a witness, law enforcement thinks its job is over once the report is filed.

And then when I pull up to the daycare, guess who’s in the parking lot. Yup, the Keymaster herself. I get out of the car and write down the license plate number. Her husband walks up to me and asks if he can help me.

“Nope.” Then he asks me what I’m doing. I thought that was obvious, but I tell him I’m not talking to him unless he tells me who he is. We go around for a while and he finally gives up his name. Turns out the last name I told the police was one letter off. Then the Keymaster shows up and pretends she doesn’t know what my big problem is. I tell her I could give a damn what she says, she can talk to the detective about it.

I sincerely hope I pissed all over her Christmas, but she didn’t strike me as the sort of person who has a conscience, or who can even make the connection to her own behavior and negative consequences.

In the meantime, I spent about $450 having the door repainted and renting a car for a couple of days. Now the sight of my car does not remind me of silly bitches, and that has a certain value. Unsurprisingly, the detective hasn’t called back. Now I have to decide whether to spend the money on the filing fee to sue her in small claims court. At least the burden of proof would be lower than “did you see her do it?”

Letting the system work ends up being fairly unsatisfying.

- Boom — in one week, we lose Giuliani, Edwards, and Thompson. Since Ron Paul is no more than a statistical curiosity and Huckabee was an Iowa one-shot, it’s now down to Clinton-Obama and McCain-Romney.

- McCain has won it on the Republican side, of course. The Republicans are well known to fall in line behind a clear favorite and there’s the added plus of it being “his turn.” That’s what got the respectable (but clearly an awful candidate) Bob Dole the nomination back in 1996. Expect the talk to turn to who McCain’s running mate will be. Since Giuliani’s endorsing McCain within 24 hours of dropping out, let’s assume he’d like to be considered.

- How interesting that white old-school Democrats are endorsing Obama, but most of the black ones are sticking with Clinton. Loyalty to the machine above all . . .

I use a wireless mouse at the office.  As much as I harangue Microsoft, I think their optical mice are some of the best you can buy.  So, when we moved offices, I set up my Intellimouse Explorer up in the new space with the wireless reciever on my newly-relocated PC under the desk.  All seemed well for a while.

Then, the mouse would be slow to repond, or button clicks wouldn’t register.  I changed the batteries, with no improvement.  I noticed that the missed clicks often occurred when I was also moving the mouse.  I developed the theory that my mouse pad had become too slick for the laser to read properly.  Somehow, the mouse was getting confused by the tracking and was too busy to transmit the clicks.  To test this, I got a legal pad, set it next to the mouse pad, and moused on it for a while.  It worked perfectly.

This was not an ideal solution, though.  I missed the wrist rest built into the mouse pad.  I tried rearranging things, but I couldn’t find anything satisfactory.  I finally rummaged around in the storage room and found a nice big desk pad.  The wrapper said it worked for writing, mousing, whatever.  And it was a pleasant deep red color.  So, on the assumption that anything in the storeroom is OK to use, I brought it into my office.  Removing the wrist rest from the pad, I placed it right where the old mouse pad was, ready for action.

And it didn’t work.

My complicated theory about the mouse pad going bad was completely wrong.  I just needed to move the receiever and the mouse closer together, just like I had unwittingly done when I was using the legal pad as a mousing surface on the center of my desk.  Three feet and a desktop is apparently too much to ask for MS’s wireless mouse.  A day or two of feeling dumb serves me right for ignoring the simplest solution for the problem.

I’ve wondered for a long time what kind of idiot would buy pills and put them into his own body based on an unsolicited email from some shady spammer. Or buy a replica watch, which seems to have overtaken mortgage re-fi’s and near-instant weight loss as the major secondary spam topic.

But I sift through them, because sometimes the spam filter snags something I care about. So, I get to see at least the sender and subject lines of dozens of spam mailings a week. Sometimes the sender is a person, sometimes the sender is some other noun, activity, or part of speech. Such as “Colon Cleanse,” which has been sending me mail from the year 2037, where apparently everyone has clean colons and the only marketing opportunities left are in the past. If you’ll buy something from a spammer to stick up your own ass, then you probably do need all the cleansing you can get.

I got an email from “Ejaculation” the other day. Which surprised me, since you would think that’s one distracted sender. Then, later, I got an email from “Penis.” But you know, so soon after Ejaculation, I just couldn’t work up much interest.

Last Monday, my sister called me to ask how to use the new Sansa MP3 player she just bought for one of her kids.  She was frustrated that it wasn’t really doing anything when she plugged it into her PC and she wanted put some songs onto the player.  The CD that came with the Sansa player only had the Sansa Media Converter program, which is only useful for moving movies or pictures to the player.  I own a few Sansa players, and Sandisk doesn’t provide any software to transfer music to the player.

Because I thought we had a connection problem, I had her updating the player’s driver in Windows Device Manager and trying to register the player as a standard USB device rather than the DRM-hobbled mode that will only allow copying with the most recent version of Windows Media Player.  (By the way, hisses to Sandisk for stating in the manual that there’s a USB and then taking it out of the player.)  We go around and around with these issues and she eventually gets frustrated and puts it aside for a while.

She calls back and we try again.  I ask her to try to copy a small sample MP3 file that I’ve emailed to her. 

“Can’t I just use iTunes?”  She’s got an iPod Nano that she enjoys, but (completely understandably) didn’t want to spend the money on something for a child to use.

I explain that no, you can’t.  There’s no reason for Apple to support players from any other manufacturer.  Or to let the songs you’ve bought from Apple play on anyone else’s player.  This was not welcome news.

I ask her where her music files are.  She doesn’t know, iTunes takes care of all that for her.  I’m now understanding that we don’t have a connection problem as much as a user experience problem.  Sandisk can market the Sansas to people all day and night, but they don’t provide an integrated solution like iTunes, which saves your purchases, rips your CD’s, copies your music, and doesn’t make you “pop the hood” on your PC.  The same features that make me dislike iTunes are the ones that make it an easy, one-stop solution for someone who is not a nerd and has no desire to be one. 

Sadly, an integrated user experience probably is never going to be a feature on a sub-$50 MP3 player.  Either you’re already ripping your CD’s and managing your metatag data (or just knowing it exists), or you’re innocently picking one up at the store and figuring it will “just work” with your computer.

She took the player back to the store.

Nobody’s winning the race yet because nobody deserves to yet. Eventually, someone will have to get picked, so a valid strategy is to be the one not losing the most at the end of the selection process. As they say, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the other guy.

- Mike Huckabee

I’ve finally figured out who Huckabee reminds me of: 24’s President Logan. I’m not saying he’s out to get Agent Bauer, but he strikes me as dumb enough to find himself in a situation where he’s got no choice but to eliminate him.

For all his personal charm and TV presence, the guy’s a buffet of things to dislike, just pick a few. Tax raiser, illegal immigrant sympathizer, paroler of violent criminals, or government Christianizer, take your pick. I don’t think he’s going all the way, but then I picked the Packers over the Giants.

- John McCain

McCain has ridden the “don’t question me, I was a prisoner of war” wave all the way to the shore, paddled back out, and rode it back a few more times. Maybe it works again, maybe it doesn’t.

The trouble with McCain is that he’s a prick. Worse, he’s a prick to the people who are supposed to be on his side. That makes him the darling of the press, who share his belief that conservatives are shitheads. But, they’re shitheads with long memories, and he’s carrying a lot of baggage into the big primaries: support for amnesty for illegal aliens, hostility for the first amendment as it relates to criticizing politicians, enthusiasm for changing the economy to suit the cult of global warming, and backroom deals on judges. His years of self-serving political angling are a classic example of why senators are bad presidential candidates.

- Mitt Romney

He doesn’t look like a candidate as much as a CEO. He’s obviously a privileged rich guy and he speaks in focus-group-tested buzzwords. Which would be great if CEOs were the universally beloved group they think they are. He’s slick, professional, and polished. Good for him, but he offers absolutely no reason for anyone to emotionally bond with him.

And then there’s the Mormon thing. I think everyone’s underestimating the visceral mistrust southern Christians have for Mormons. The press seems to think they’re out of line for disliking the Mormons’ claim that they too are Christians. If you have a hard time understanding why the Baptists, etc, have a problem, let me give you this completely non-religious example.

Let’s say you have an imaginary friend. This is a friend you’ve spent a lot of time with, and you know a lot of very specific things about him. You love him, and he loves you. And then I come along and say I can talk to him, too, and your imaginary friend has told me a lot of Very Important Things he hasn’t told you. Oh, and your imaginary friend likes me better than you. He told me. What the hell are you upset about?

- Rudy Giuliani

Because I’ve described various candidates as having baggage, let me be clear that Rudy’s dwarfs them all. An extramarital affair IN OFFICE followed be a messy, ugly divorce and remarriage to the mistress. His own kids won’t support him.

So why even consider him? Like McCain, he’s a prick, but he’s a prick to the right people. You can expect Giuliani to be completely unsentimental about identifying, questioning, surveilling, and if necessary, killing the nation’s enemies. I would expect nothing less from a former mob prosecutor. However, social conservatives should be wary because it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t care at all about moral issues.

- Fred Thompson

I think Fred’s been pretty honest about not operating with a burning desire to be president. Which is odd, since he really went to a lot of effort to disengage from his acting career to be able to get into the election. He’s been so damn nice to his competitors in the primaries I’m wondering if he’s really running for vice-president.

He’s probably the most conservative of the bunch, and the candidate that seems the least interested in “fixing” everything in sight. If you think the biggest favor the government can do for you is leave you alone, that has a certain amount of appeal. But that’s hardly a campaign slogan, is it?

I suppose it’s time to pay attention to these guys, as much as I’d like to hit the political fast forward button. At the request of absolutely no one, here’s my take on the candidates. Republicans next.

- John Edwards

The amazingly rich trial lawyer has decided to keep running as a populist, eternally concerned about the little guy. Unless of course the little guys want to live next door to his mansion.

This strategy might work if Edwards wasn’t one of the biggest phonies politics has ever seen. This is a guy who couldn’t even deliver the state where he served as a senator as Kerry’s running mate in 2004. He’s still technically a serious candidate, but that’s just because the kooks and VP hopefuls have decided to stop wasting their money and time. He’s getting almost no discussion time anymore. And he’s sent his wife out to do battle for him too many times for it to work anymore.

- Hillary Clinton

It’s hard to think that anyone so widely and deeply disliked could actually have a chance at the presidency. She seems to remind everyone of a bad experience with someone they had no choice but to deal with, like an ex-wife or an ex-boss.

She’s running on her years and years of experience. But those years and years were spent exploiting political connections for money, rather than helping anyone other then herself. But she’s also trying to ride an undercurrent of victimhood, what with the shamelessly cheating husband and the crying about how frustrating it is that we aren’t all obeying her will yet. Good luck with that.

- Barack Obama

He was Barry back when he wasn’t trying to be exotic. He reminds me of that guy who worked down the hall from you, never talked much, but always managed to give you the impression he regarded himself as occupying a higher level than you. Then he quit for (presumably) a better job. Or maybe to take some time to write yet another autobiography.

The strategy right now is to keep pumping out the platitudes and stay vague. As long as he’s a cipher, he can be the screen that everyone can project their desires onto. Once he gets specific, he’ll be exposed as just another guy who wants the government to get bigger. He’ll win if he can stall everyone through Election Day.

The London Times has a fascinating “where are they now” article on some of the supporting cast from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which hit the fan ten years ago this month.

I look at the woman who calls herself Karen and she looks back, her mouth twitching. She bears an uncanny resemblance to the pictures I have seen of Tripp, postplastic surgery. Could this be Linda’s sister? But her sister isn’t called Karen.

I explain who I am and that I had heard Linda owns the shop. “She does actually – with her husband,” says the woman who calls herself Karen. That must have been the husband I had glimpsed going into the back of the store earlier wearing lederhosen, just as he is pictured in the leaflet advertising the store.

But no, it cannot be him because, as Karen tells me when I ask if I can speak to them: “They are not here right now. They won’t be back until tomorrow.”

Sent 1/14/08 in response to this column:

It’s called “Mass Effect” and it allows its players - universally male no doubt - to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to “engage” and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game “persons” hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.

I am a 41-year old conservative.  I am in the middle of a playthrough of Mass Effect.  There is no “humping.”  There is no copulation.  There is no group sex activity.  There is no realistic depiction of sex acts.

What there is:  a scene that occurs in one of the assignments in which a character named “the asari consort” is grateful for the character’s service and provides a physical reward.  Because the character can select to be male or female, the scene will either appear to be either heterosexual or homosexual.  It is not an explicit scene; I’ve seen worse on television many times. 

I expect that if I pursue a romantic subplot with one of the female members of my “team,” something similar might occur.  I’m not expecting anything explicit there, either. 

This issue is discussed many places on the net, including here: 

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/16/singapore-un-bans-mass-effect/

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/12/mass-effect-love-scene-now-less-safe-for-work/

http://kotaku.com/gaming/game-on/singapore-lifts-mass-effect-lesbian-ban-323638.php

I’ve been reading your stuff on Townhall for a while, and it’s disappointing to see you didn’t do your homework on this before hitting the panic button.  Please educate yourself and revisit the issue.

–Rick H.

The last great weekend of football is over. Only three games are left. I don’t even think picks are necessary, but I think it’s Green Bay and the Patriots in the big game in Arizona. Personally, I’m rooting for the old guy.

- Green Bay over Seattle.

Correct. I love watching other people play in the show while I’m indoors and warm.

- Patriots over Jaguars.

- Colts over Chargers.

- Giants over Cowboys.

Now that some nasty work-related stuff is over, I can kick back and reflect on the past year. The defining characteristic appeared to be that it was the year of broken stuff. Off the top of my head, I’ve had to replace or repair:

- the Sony HDTV
- two Xbox 360’s
- the transmission on my Xterra
- the backyard fence
- the WiFi adapter for the Xbox 360
- the rear bumper on my Xterra
- my cell phone
- the microwave oven over the stove (twice)
- the kids’ Gamecube
- my Xterra
- a dead-on-arrival set of wireless JVC headphones (always check the stuff you buy on the net right away, folks)
- the paint on the driver’s side door of my new Pathfinder (more on this later)
- the dryer
- RJH’s Christmas gift of an MP3 player
- the right front surround speaker

Here’s hoping the coming year is more stable.

Actually, the microwave over the stove was broken at the beginning of the year, but Smeers (misspelled to foil search engines, you’ll see why) called up and asked me if I wanted to buy a service contract for it last February. Since they didn’t ask me whether the appliance in question was currently operational, I figured they didn’t care. Since they also didn’t care that the $300 microwave they sold me a while back died just about as soon as it left warranty, I figured we were even.

We didn’t stay even, though. The first time I had them scheduled to come fix it, I plugged it in and it worked fine. At least it was fine long enough to get me to cancel the service call to avoid looking like an idiot. That was a vain hope, because the microwave stopped working within a few hours. Turns out electronics do not spontaneously heal themselves when you leave them unplugged.

The next service call, the technician came in, tinkered with it, and ordered a new circuit board, to the tune of about $280. They shipped it and he installed it the next week. I learned his name was Larry.

The fix didn’t work, though. The microwave still would intermittently turn itself off, sometimes while it was being used, sometimes not. You could tell because it would display “PF” (for power failure, Larry told me) after it would wake up again. Meanwhile, the cheap little $40 microwave I bought at Best Buy was still going strong.

So, another technician visit, and now he’s going to replace the magno-something and the power supply. These bits cost over $600. I heard Larry calling his supervisor and mentioning that this was considerably more than the cost of buying me a new one, but he was told to order the parts anyway. What the hell, sometimes all that matters is whose budget it comes out of, not how much it costs. I learned that Larry had a son.

They ship the parts and they get installed on the fifth technician visit. This time, he had to take the thing down from the cabinet, completely disassemble it, and put it back together with the new parts. It’s now obvious that this is a cursed appliance, since it didn’t work the first time. This forced Larry to take it apart and retrace his steps to find the wire that wasn’t quite attached. I learned that Larry used to be in the Navy and that his son was getting an Xbox 360 for Christmas.

After a year of effort, the microwave now works. As far as I can tell, the only parts that haven’t been replaced are the turntable and the power cord. Smeers is out more than $10 for every one they charged me for the service contract.

I don’t have the heart to have them send Larry back to make the side of the case fit back together properly. It can wait for the next failure. Which hopefully will skip 2008.

My left shoe becomes untied far more often than my right.

TNT and its sister networks think that HD programming is just SD programming blown up, stretched, and cut off on the top and bottom.

Oversized whole wheat hot dog buns make excellent hoagie rolls.

Nobody ever finishes watching a move and says: “You know, I liked it, but they really didn’t say ‘fuck’ enough times.”

Rachel Ray has gained a little weight. And I like it.

Any time a business has “USA” in its name, consider it a warning sign.

The best seat for me to watch an NFL game is the one in my living room. College games, on the other hand, are worth the money to be physically present.

If they weren’t narcisisstic, arrogant jackasses they wouldn’t have run for the Senate in the first place.

About 10% of the time, the drive-through fast food worker will give me a sugared soda instead of the diet one I ordered.

R-rated movies from Netflix tend to sit around until I wise up and send them back to get something I can watch with the kids in the room.

The brain keeps track of things you aren’t aware of on the surface. Yesterday, I went into a restroom in a building I wasn’t familiar with. And I knew something was wrong. I stopped until I could figure it out.

There were no urinals. Oh crap.

I had to go back out the door and verify that it was in fact a Men’s Room before I could relieve myself. Who makes a men’s room without urinals?

- The NFL must be getting really aggressive with the “Super Bowl” trademark. I’ve heard three ads today that involved a contest to win tickets, but they would only refer to it as the “big game” in Glendale, Arizona. I guess you need their blessing to even utter the phrase if you’re trying to make a buck from it. I think I’m safe.

- Pick #1, Skins over Seahawks.

WRONG. The Skins played 5 minutes of amazing football and 55 minutes of mediocre to bad football. The missed field goal marked the end of the amazingness, but it was just a symptom of the greater problem: they were out of emotional gas. I thought it would carry over another week.

- Pick #2, Jags over Steelers.

Right, but just barely. The best game of the weekend, full of comebacks, turnovers, lead changes, sacks, and last-minute do-or-die drives. Garrard is clearly the best quarterback I’ve been paying absolutely no attention to so far.

- Pick #3, Giants over Bucs.

Correct. A 1-3 December haunted the Bucs right out of the playoffs. The Giants are a competitive team, and honestly, I think they’re going to beat the Cowboys, who had a similarly bad December.

- Pick #4, Chargers over Titans.

Yup, for a not too bad 75%. The Chargers didn’t bother scoring until the second half, and I still never thought the Titans would win. They were overachieving just to be there. Now that I think about it, only having 2 wild card slots is probably a good thing.

- Since I didn’t embarrass myself, next week’s picks:

Green Bay over Seattle, who have to play against a hot team at their cold home.

Patriots over Jaguars, who won’t get the chance to rescue their game like last week.

Colts over Chargers, who couldn’t score in the first half against the Titans.

Giants over Cowboys, who have way too much end-of-season baggage.