Human beings actually seem to seek out a certain level of risk. If you make the roads smoother and straighter and wider, they will drive faster. If you build a railing around the Grand Canyon they will lean on it. Hannah Montana and her Achy Brakey Dad are being criticized for being in a movie scene without any seatbelts. Disney made Lindsay Lohan wear her seatbelt all through the filming of Herbie Fully Loaded and we all know how things have been going ever since.

I’ll get the beards

Lincoln was the guy who ended slavery, even though he would have been okay with not doing so. He was America’s first Post-Gay President.

Dick Cheney had a personal interaction with a citizen in Colorado way back in 2006. The fallout from that interaction has been intermittently newsworthy ever since. The man was arrested. The charges were dropped. He filed a wrongful arrest suit. The secret servicemen told conflicting stories when deposed. One of them, the officer that is at odds with Cheney’s personal detail, has been transfered to Guam.

Yesterday, the news was that Cheney’s lawyers are seeking to block the public release of deposition videos on the unspoken grounds that they will go viral in remixed form on YouTube (watch for them). It’s quite a tangled mess and it is all the result of what some people say was just an insincere pat on the back. Oh, and a verbal indictment of the administration’s Iraq policy.

Steven Howards is like a much older and MUCH smarter version of that guy that got tasered. And in case Cheney or his security detail has any ideas, it is TOO LATE to taser Steven now. Actually, my comparison might be a little bit of a stretch. I don’t think he intended to make a scene. I can remember a moment in my own life where I was face to face with a politician with whom I strongly disagreed. I didn’t seize on the opportunity to speak my mind. I was still young and I probably didn’t have any nuanced criticism to voice. It was at the airport where I was working summers in my college days. Actually, I was doing my daily 2 hours of picking up garbage and I had a pointy tool and a bucket in my hands. The political leader of my Canadian province was standing outside the terminal having a smoke. Our personal interaction involved eye contact and nodding.

I was awoken this morning by the sound of rushing water. The pipe leading from the roof to the reservoir had so much water surging through it that the elbow fitting on the bottom had been knocked loose. We were worried that the water might be too much for the courtyard drain. We were also in need of some water in the reservoir. I had to put on a pair of jeans and go put the elbow back on.

When I was crouched there with water up to my ankles and water dropping onto my back I noticed that some of the water was kinda grainy and frozen-like. I am not that good with physics. Can anyone tell me if rain mixed with hail flows with more force than the same volume of water? I had a difficult time getting the elbow to stay on that pipe and it had stayed put through some pretty hard rain in the autumn. This picture is from back in the fall.

I have several unpublished drafts that will probably never see the light of day because they have been deemed inappropriate. I am not arguing that they are that good. I am not arguing that they say anything that important. Some of them are kinda funny and some of them are somewhat insightful. I put some work into them and I don’t want them to go to waste.

Here are some of the titles that are languishing on my backend…

Top 10 Novel Titles Stolen from Wikipedia, Post # 2650, A Doable New Years Resolution, Bloggers are Disproportionately Mentally Ill, Why Isn’t it Called Adventure Capital?, When in Rome…

Here’s a really old image from a post that I deleted ages ago…

First off, I want to say that I like Barrack Obama and he would be my choice if I had any choice in the matter. I have expressed that sentiment on a few occasions and sometimes I hear or read people saying that he is full of hot air or all style and no substance. There are dozens of ways for people to say the same thing. I was reminded of the situation today when I ended up listening to The Cult of Personality on YouTube. I like to think of the criticism as a fall back position by stubbornly partisan people who would prefer to be able to pick apart what he says and instead have to be content with spouting off the mantra that he is all talk.

I am flabbergasted by the arguments that some people make about how he would not be able to DO various things. I have gotten to the point where I think that they imagine an elected President should go around increasing the GDP, improving health care and education and winning wars with his or her bare hands. In actuality, Presidents are supposed to make speeches and make policy decisions. This might be beside the point, but Obama has the biggest hands of all the candidates.

I am being pretty random with my choice for Best YouTube Video Ever of the Day. I do like it, but I actually found it after enjoying another video that was uploaded by the same guy. That video was an acoustic performance of a new song called Come on Forest Fire, Burn The Disco Down.

I think the genres are too incompatible, but I might try to make a mashup with Disco Inferno. That is going to be on the to do list right below my mashup and LOL Cat video entitled I’ve Got Big Hairballs. If anyone who reads this post wants to beat me to the punch with the realization of either of these bold concepts, just do it well.

I am a Canadian, so naturally I am endlessly fascinated by and obsessed with American politics.

We are a pro Obama household. There is no debate about that. We do ruminate a bit with the question of Hillary Clinton’s still massive popularity among the voting Democrats. A friend of my wife, who is a Canadian living in the US, told her that he was a Hillary fan. He didn’t expound on his reasoning and we didn’t, at first, make any connection between Hillary’s official stance on some gay rights issues and our gay friend’s approval.

Ironically, Bill Clinton enacted one of the laws that Hillary is criticizing. For the record, Obama and Edwards also favor repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Again, for the record, they do not share a bed with the man who enacted it (of course they wouldn’t tell you if they did).

Should the US remain marred in a war that they should never have started, a future President may have to enact a LA LA LA, I Can’t Hear You!!! policy if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is not repealed.

Karl Rove will be working for Fox News. His first big assignment will be contributing commentary to coverage of Super Tuesday.

The Daily Show writers are on strike and I can’t think of anything funny to say about this news. He will fit in. I think it may be part of a political tactic, not just a career move. Please, please comment on this story.

Edit: Rove was recently scheduled to give a commencement speech at a high school and there was enough vehement and creative opposition to cause him to reconsider. This is a good sign for the future of America.

She didn’t know she’d been in bed with Ruff McGruff until she turned on the light…