Note to Self:

As an image hosting service, tinypic sucks.

I don't care if it is free. Suck is as suck does.

OK, enough with the whining. I logged in this morning to find that tinypic screwed up my new layout (which, now that I've seen it on a decent monitor, is a little more "tomato soup" and a little less "curry spicy hot" than I was looking for. I believe tweaks are in order...) I spent the morning fixing broken stuff, breaking unbroken stuff, and adding technorati to my sidebar, which is as far down the blogwhore road as I am willing to go at this point.

I may have real content later, but I have to coach this evening, so I may be preparing for our game instead of blogging. In lieu of actual entertainment, I offer up this not-entirely hypothetical question:

Say you're from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and you somehow stumble across this blog. What the hell do you make of it?

Because I'm an accomodating guy, here is a little Belo Horizonte content for my unknown chum from Brazil, just in case he comes back. Better late than never...

Did you know that when the United States beat England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte during the 1950 World Cup, many newspapers in England assumed the scoreline was a mistake? Many papers reported it as a 1-0 win for England, while others (assuming a typo in the wire feed), reported it as United States-1, England-10. Ha! Silly British persons! Joe Gaetjens owns Stanley Matthews.

Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais. It turns out that Minas Gerais is neither that guy from The Office nor the capital of Gondor, but is actually a state in Brazil.

Now you know... and Knowledge is Power!

Family Swap, Next on Fox

Hey, everyone, meet my new Uncle Fafo. I got him from Tanya Espana for a third-round draft pick and a relative to be named later. It turns out Tanya is my identical cousin from Canadia. Who knew?

For a limited time only, you too can become a member of my family by sharing one of your relatives, or you can simply foist off one of your relatives on me. The ideal relative will be low-maintenance, have entertaining stories (either stories to tell me or for me to tell about them, I'm not picky), and be far enough away that we won't actually be expected to drop in on each other. Hop over to the comments section and start negotiating now!

I still have my former brother-in-law Jimmy the Terrible up for grabs. He's actually much ...um... quite a bit ...err... slightly more tolerable now that we've housebroken him and he's stopped peeing in the garage. For some reason, Tanya didn't want him... but I'm sure someone will. Every family needs a good black sheep.

I have a nephew in a punk band, but I'm keeping him unless a really good offer comes along. Teenagers who are influenced by the Dead Kennedys and the Ramones are hard to come by.

Alakazam!

I was busy fiddling with my layout, but I promise I'll have some actual content later.

In the meantime, what do you think? Better? Worse?

Once I fix this, I might even get around to updating other things too. Go me!

Sharing

Ha. It turns out I had something to share on Monday after all. Witness the glory that is the Monkey Chant:



I found this over at Megan's blog while blog hopping the other day. I'd been planning to post it on Monday and then completely forgot about it. I'm posting it now to distract you from my substandard Vonnegut post cheer everyone up.

Hey, look! A monkey!

Breakfast of Champions

The Bush Administration are assholes. Assholes look like this.



Goodbye, Kurt. We'll miss you.

Theater! Theater!

Johnny Cash's old house, now owned by one of the Bee Gees (You'll have to figure out which one. I can't tell them apart.), burned down yesterday. I'll leave the Ring of Fire jokes to less sophisticated media outlets.

Apparently, it burned really quickly because they had applied a flammable wood preservative. Now, I'm no expert in home renovation, but I do know this much about wood: it's made of wood. Making it more flammable is probably not your best preservation option.

Heresy

I'm not wild about our presidential candidates' chances.

Don't hate me.

Have you seen the Republicans' numbers? Wow, those assholes are screwed. They have drunk deep from the River Suck. We'd have to do something monumentally boneheaded to blow this next election. So why am I already getting depressed, aside from the real possibility that they might just steal yet another election?

Because what we really need to do this election is to kick their ass hard. I mean, really, really crush them; get their faces down in the dirt and just grind it in. We need to put our foot on their neck and keep those fuckers out of power for at least the next twenty or thirty years, because it is going to take a long time for those right-wing assholes on the Supreme Court to die, and it would be just spiffing if we could hold onto the other branches in government to keep them on a short leash while we wait. I don't know about you, but I'd like my kids to still have a few civil liberties left when they're my age. I'd feel good about that.

If we want to hold onto power for twenty or thirty years instead of four or eight, we're going to have to convert some middle-of-the-road Republicans into middle-of-the-road Democrats. There are a lot of disillusioned Republicans right now. If we can get them to vote Democrat and not have it all turn to shit, then there is a good chance that they'll re-elect the person they voted for. And then, well, they've been voting Democratic for almost a decade... if they still like the person they elected twice, they might vote for another Democrat. That's how you stay in power.

So who are the Democratic front-runners? Oh... right. Shit.

What do all of the past presidents have in common? Can you spot it? They're all white. And they're all dudes. At this point, the record of political parties running white dudes can be called, without fear of contradiction, "fairly solid".

Unless I missed a conference call on the eradication of racism and gender-bias, this probably isn't going to help our chances. Why is it that Democrats are so much better at actually running the country, but don't know the first thing about running an election campaign? Do we really have to start by handing them a wedge issue?

Candidates, meet me over at camera three...

I know I said in the past that you should run, Hillary, and I was serious then. It's not like the Republicans can find any new dirt on you at this point, right? But the American people, they're not so into you. Some of us are, baby, don't look at me like that, but those other guys just don't like you "that way". You know, the voting way. Any other election, and I'm behind you, babe. But the stakes are high, and we just can't afford to take a chance on this one. We couldn't get Geraldine Ferraro elected vice-president, and people didn't hate her nearly as much as they hate you.

And Barak, dude... Seriously? You're still a freshman congressman. Freshmen don't get to be homecoming queen. I know all your advisors are telling you to capitalize on your popularity. But you know what? If you've already peaked in your first term, I'm not so sure I want you to run the country. If you even think that you've peaked, you're probably not the right guy for the job. When you're going toe-to-toe with Putin, you don't want to be wondering if your best years are already over. You have no idea how angry it makes me that you are pissing away a great political career by running for president now.

Just think about what I said... and Hillary, hon, if you ever dump that skirt-chasing doofus, call me.

OK, I'm back.

Look, I'm what one of my old poli-sci professors described as a Yellow Dog Democrat: I'd vote Democrat even if they ran an old yellow dog. I'll vote for them. That was never a question. I like both of them. They'd probably both be good presidents, but they're lousy candidates. If one of them wins, I'll be happy as a clam. ...probably because I'll also be counting my lottery winnings with my supermodel trophy mistress at my villa on Mars.

Just promise me this. When they lose, nobody on either campaign ever gets to work in politics again, OK?

Let something good come out of this.