Comic for Wednesday, February 1st, 2006

Posted: 7:45 am, Wednesday, February 1st

The Onion AV Club did a little article on kid's books in which they kill of the animal in a heartbreaking fashion. I haven't read most of these books, but I can't imagine anything sadder than Where the Red Fern Grows. I finished reading that book on the way to Mass when I was in third grade and just started *sobbing.* I was distraught all through Mass and grocery shopping and the interminable drive home (when I was a kid, because my parents were friends with the priest at a church in the South End of Albany, we drove about fifty minutes each way to Mass), and then spent the rest of the afternoon hugging my mutt, Daisy. I had to read it again in seventh grade for some reason, and it killed me yet again. Ugh, what a tough book.

These pics of Big Ben partying down made the rounds pretty thoroughly yesterday, as it was featured on the must-read Deadspin, but everyone out there may want to consider putting some money on the Seahawks this weekend. I could not be more psyched that the dude is wearing a Drink Like a Champion Today t-shirt. That is awesome.

Wow, I feel dumb. I was going to make a trout recipe tonight, except trout evidently doesn't exist in New York City. Well, it does, but my fish monger only sells it by the whole fish, which seemed like a bit much fish to me. So I returned home, defeated, sans fish. Only to learn that you can evidently sub in salmon for trout. I had no idea.

Today's national signing day for kids going to play collitch football - Notre Dame seems locked in at number three despite largely ignoring the gaping deficencies we have at pass rush (they could fall if USC or someone makes a late rush, and they didn't actually ignore the d-line, just struck out on a few kids), but Marco seems optimistic all the same.

Anyway, that's all I got right now. I'll probably throw up some reviews of the speech from last night once I get to work and do a little news perusin'.

bullfrog

One really stupid question - how do we know those Big Ben pics are from this week & not from 2 weeks ago or something?

So Cindy Sheehan was escorted out of the audiance before Bush arrived? That's brilliant.

Woo hoo! My first mention in the blog yesterday - very exciting.

I just wanted to mention a few things about that Pandora website (not that I'm a spokesperson or anything, but I feel responsible). Anyway, I've been listening to it for a little over a week now - and I've never had to pay for anything. I did register, though, so I could set up favorites and so it would remember my "radio stations".

They still appear to be working out the kinks: the bands that you get that are "similar" to the artist you start with are sometimes surprising/nonsensical. For instance, my friend was listening to his "Arcade Fire station" and got a Sugar Ray song. Also, as 2.0 mentions, they tend to play a lot of the artist that you start with.

I think the idea is that they're still working on it and building a bigger database from which to draw.

Shout out to all the Romans out there!

I guess those photos were from after the Colts game. I doubt it matters at any rate - the kid's only 23, your bounce-back time at 23 is imperceptible.

KT, yeah, I guess I just happened upon a register thing and didn't read it too closely. Sorry to mislead anyone about that.

Actually, in trying simply "Wilco" rather than 'The Late Greats" I got a wider range of music. I think this may actually be the way to go. I'm all for it.

I heard one of the networks was doing something like an interactive State o' the Union last night with an e-mail crawl or something on the bottom of the screen - did this happen? I've always thought (and I think I said this during the 2004 debates) that a Pop-Up speech would be the way to go, so that whenever Shitwith lies, a little bubble would pop up with the actual fact. Sort of like this article, but in realtime:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/a rticle/2006/02/01/AR2006020100029.html

More or less even-handed review of the whole speech here, saying it all sounded pretty but most of it ain't gonna happen. My favorite pie-in-the-sky moment, the mention of Shitwit building a presidential library - I really doubt that's going to happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/politics/01a ssess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Meh, those Roethlisberger pics are undated, and he basically spent the entire off-season drinking at Jack's on the South Side, so I'm not surprised. In fact, it makes me like the guy more!

Here we go, Steelers!

you can also try tilapia or mahi mahi instead of trout also- plus trout, while yummy, is annoyingly full of bones...

For the environmentalists out there, here's a nice & easy listing ocean friendly vs. not friendly seafood, check out http://www.blueocean.org/Seafood/

Great! All the fish I eat is killing the environment. Sweet.

Trying to catch up on national events, I browse to the transcript of dub's address... shortly thereafter I'm distracted to dictionary.com.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rostr um

I like definition 3. Either way, Mr. or Ms. speech-writer was one up on me for that one.

Spent yesterday battling a garage door. The stretched spring / steel wire combo is the perfect maiming instrument.

Hey, everyone - TimeWarner and their awesome policy of randomly not providing the service we pay for has seen to it that I can't make the update from home today... Gimme an hour or so and we'll take care of it from the office. Freaking TimeWarner.