Whoa... Friday!

Yay! It's Friday!

So, for wont of a tradition, I suppose I have to ask, what are everyone's plans for this weekend? Is anyone doing anything fun and exciting?

As for me, I'll be heading out of town this weekend, so I imagine things here will be somewhat quiet. Also, you'll probably notice the odd little "word verification" box in the comment form while I'm out. The reason for this is that the last thing I want is to have this blog assaulted by whatever spambots are lurking out there and not be around to delete the trash they slap into the comments.

Sure. I could probably get away with not using it since this blog is still relatively shiny and new, and I've only had a handful of spam annoyances so far, but I don't want to chance it. And, I really don't want to spend my Sunday picking through cleaning things up. So, I'll add the extra step in commenting, an apologize ahead of time if it presents any sort of hassle. It'll most likely be gone by Sunday.

Anyway, who's doing what this weekend?

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/10/2007 10:42:00 AM

That Explains Why the Light's

Yes. Those are bees (wasps, I think) moving into the motion sensor for the backyard floodlights. I don't think this will end well for them. There's a lot of juice running around there, and as far as I know, bees are pretty good conductors of electricity.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/09/2007 12:54:00 PM

How Do You Like Them Apples?

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/09/2007 12:46:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] No. I'm Not Ranting.

I'm laughing... Madly... (either click the picture to see a larger version, or click here to see the original.)


Hilarious! Someone owns the copyright to a version of the Bible (The Revised Standard Version).

It's almost as though it was a --I don't know-- a work of fiction, perhaps?

Thanks go to Phil Plait.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/09/2007 11:21:00 AM

The Bad Monkey!

There are simply so many things wrong with this short article that I don't even know where to begin. So, I'm just going to let you all read and digest the saucy bits all on your own.

Diapered monkey bites woman outside downtown bar Steven Elbow — 8/08/2007 12:22 pm
A diapered monkey allegedly bit a young woman on the thumb early today outside a State Street bar.

The small black and white monkey, 12 to 18 inches tall with a long tail, bit the woman around 1 a.m. in front of State Street Brats, then ran off, police said. At noon today, police spokesman Joel DeSpain said the monkey was still on the lam.

"This guy was in the beer garden at State Street Brats letting women pet his monkey," DeSpain said, adding that when the 20-year-old victim attempted to do so, it bit her.

She suffered four puncture marks to her thumb, two on the top and two on the bottom.

Police today were able to contact the monkey's owner, who lives in a second-story State Street apartment. DeSpain said animal control officers were being called in to quarantine the monkey for observation to make sure it is not diseased.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/09/2007 11:02:00 AM

South Carolina: 2 Texas: 3

Well, in the race to become the "Dumbest State in the Union," I should tell you that Texas has pulled ahead of South Carolina (don't worry, South Carolinians. I'm sure you'll catch up by the weekend).

It didn't take much, really. In fact, all it took was Texas' Minister of Biblical Indoctrination Dentist cum Chairman of the State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, to open his rather uneducated mouth.

The analogy of evolution as the matrix [sic], it’s, it’s really amazing that we do live, seems to me, in a matrix-type world. I mean, we have been programmed, our society has been programmed, in the way we look at things outside. It's very interesting. But what do the Scriptures say? I love Psalm 100, I memorized it when I was a little kid, and it says “Make a joyful noise onto the Lord, all ye lambs. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with singing, know ye that the Lord, he is God. It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”

In that bold bit above, McLeroy here is accusing humanists and evolutionists of being "programmed."

Yeah. A religious person who believes in Biblical literalism, and the importance of teaching Biblical literalism under the "big tent" of Intelligent Design in public schools, has the unmitigated gall of asserting that those who do not believe as he, are somehow programmed to believe otherwise as in the movie The Matrix.

Mind-boggling, huh?

And this poor, dumb dentist carries on like this for quite some time.

Well, pretty soon we are going to be entering back into our Matrix-type world. We'll be watching the Super Bowl, we'll be going back to where naturalism has blinded all ye lambs from the truth. You'€™ll be back in a world where people don'€™t care about the Lord. He is God, and to effectively get this truth out to a world that has been blinded from the truth, we must prepare ourselves and we must train our minds.

You put this moron in charge of education?

Here's my favorite bit:

My summary is, uh, here are mypoints. We are not opposing un-intelligent people. They're very smart, highly intellectual and very fine people. But they've been blinded from the truth. They're living in this Matrix world. They do not claim Yahweh is God. They basically think they have made themselves. So we need to be prepared. We need to be smart. We need to train our minds.

Good luck, Texas.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/09/2007 09:44:00 AM

It's No Fun for a Cat in a Wet

It's raining here today. And, fortunately, it's a nice, steady drizzle as opposed to a deluge to flood the neighborhood.

On the other hand, it's raining just hard enough to dissuade DogCat from going outside; however, he's been making many trips to both the front and back door to check the weather beyond each. It's how his kitty brain works. He seems to think that there are several distinct and entirely different worlds beyond each door. So, earlier, he came in from the rain, ate, and started running back and forth between the two doors as though he was searching for a suitable climate. "This one's too rainy. So is this one. And this one. God damnit! Is there a door in this house that doesn't have rain on the other side? Why isn't there a third option?"

Eventually, he abandoned his quest and threw himself onto the dead-center of the kitchen floor with a heavy thud and proceeded to pout. And now, he is a hazard --a big, fluffy hazard for me to walk around since, if I try to step over him, there's a chance I could wind up walking with a limp for the rest of the day.

I know what is going on in his mind. As I type this, I know it's only a matter of time before he blames both the water dish and the large bowl of dry cat food for this dreadful weather. Soon I will hear the clunk of his food bowl as he overturns it to send his kibble chattering across the floor. Then, there will be a light "clink" as he takes out the oppressive water dish.

Fortunately, I've dumped most of the kibble into a different bowl but kept enough in the original bowl so as not to incite a wailing tantrum and stored the rest in a safe place on top of the fridge. And, the water bowl was completely emptied because he prefers to drink out of the toilet, and I have no problems if he wants to pass his time batting around an empty bowl. My other cat, DeafCat, will just have to go thirsty for a little while until this episode is over.

The thing is, I'll know the exact time when the rain stops. DogCat will come running into my office, he will wail and smack my arm with his paw to get my attention, and then he will run to the nearest door and begin his weird series of barking and whimpering and tail wagging madness.

Until that happens, however, unlike my weird pet, I'm just going to enjoy the morning rain.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 8/09/2007 08:53:00 AM