Total Dismay

Karl Rove is somebody who has been derisive and dismissive of the blogosphere on occasion. That notwithstanding, I am 99.9999999999% certain that he has at least one blog written under a pseudonym. Suspecting Karl Rove of stuff is not a very productive activity. A lot of people suspect that he is a closeted homosexual.

I think the only way to figure out which blogger is Karl is by process of elimination. I am pretty sure PerezHilton.com isn’t written by Karl Rove. He’s not the fake Steve Jobs either. If you are a blogger and you are NOT Karl Rove, please leave a comment.

Oh, while you’re at it, please comment on my theory that the political genius has chosen to do a stint as a regular citizen at the end of this cycle because he has crunched the numbers and he KNOWS that McCain is going to lose. If he can find the magic bullet to take Obama down and he hands it to the official McCain team, maybe he can be the Golden Boy of Evil politics again. If not, he doesn’t get any loss cooties on him.

Here are some kind words for the President of the United States of America…

“I think President Bush is in a line of very thoughtful, proactive conservative presidents who include John Adams, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan. We have the first president with an MBA degree, and he is an impressive manager. He’s very interested in measuring results, and there is no lack of clarity, which I think makes it easier for those of us who work here. We know what the expectations are. They are always high, and we know exactly what they are.”

-Tim Goeglein, who recently resigned from his position at the White House after being exposed as a chronic plagiarist

Plagiarism is typically thought to be a form of stealing. The Internet and search engines have simultaneously made it easier to plagiarize and easier to get caught. I think that in some way, plagiarism is just as much a form of lying as it is stealing. Tim was a volunteer columnist for the conservative newspaper in his hometown. He had no deadlines or obligations in relation to this endeavor and the subject matter was generally not stridently political. He was found out by a blogging journalist from the same area. She Googled an obscure name that was in one of Tim Goeglein’s columns and found that he had lifted several paragraphs from another author without attribution. The newspaper investigated and found that the majority of the 38 columns that had been published since 2000 contained plagiarized text.

Here are the attribution for my sources…

FindArticles.com- an interview with Tim Goeglein by Stephen Goode

The New York Times report on Tim’s disgrace and resignation.

It is interesting to note that some people credit Tim with bringing out the evangelical vote in 2004, thus giving Americans four more years of George W. Bush. NYT reports that GWB was saddened to hear that Tim was found out as a thief and a liar and that he has left the White House. Tim had a close working relationship with Karl Rove.

Alien Versus Predator, AVP for short, made some money at the box office. $171,181,096 to be exact. I predict that the sequel will not do quite as well. I’m guessing that the budget might have been a little smaller for the ‘requiem’ of the original matchup to ensure a profit. AVP cost $70 Million to make.

There is actually not much that you can do to cut corners on these kind of movies. The leading roles do not require big name actors with big salaries, and lighting is cheap since they are filmed almost entirely in the dark. I have one suggestion, they can cut the CGI bill in half by using a two dimensional animated character as one of the battling creatures…

Rotating torso displays are awesome. I have to wonder if anybody noticed me patiently waiting for the butts to come around the second time. The display was turning rather slowly.

I am in a city that attracts tourists. This morning I noticed a situation where a guy had asked his girlfriend to take a picture of him standing in front of some important building. She was looking through the viewfinder and he was making frantic gestures meant to tell her that pedestrians were about to walk in front of him. I thought it would be cool to make a video montage of several people doing this in several different historic sites. It would be like the Where the Hell is Matt thing except not.

I saw this promotion on a celebrity gossip page and I thought it was a pretty interesting idea. They want people to make a spoof base on a Hollywood movie that includes over the top product placement of their noodle product. I think a Rainman/Ramen type thing could have potential…nope the YouTube generation doesn’t remember that movie. Maybe a Blair Witch Project thing with a chin dripping with delicious noodles instead of the drippy nose thing. Since MSG loaded noodles are a comfort food and a great camping food, maybe the terror could subside a little bit during the flashlight video journal entry. I’m…not…so…scared…

The BP Solar Decathlon is a competition between several university teams. Each team designs, builds and lives in a solar home. The competition is taking place on the National Mall in Washington DC. I am routing for the University of Cincinnati with their entry called “A Series of Tubes.”

I had a shower last evening, and like most of my showers over the last two years, the water had been heated by the sun. The water heater on my roof uses the same basic vacuum tube technology that these guys are using an a larger scale. I had an idea recently that involved piping solar heated water into an in-floor heating system. This wouldn’t be a good system in areas with frost. I am very curious about how this team plans to COOL the home using solar energy. I will be checking back to get the details.

There is also an internet voting component to the competition, which starts in just a few days. All the teams contribute blog posts to the blog section of www.bpsolardecathlon.com.

Solar energy is free. We underwent most of our evolution depending on it as our only external source of heat. We could have used dogs to keep us warm at night, but I don’t think they wanted to hang around our sorry asses until after we got the whole fire thing figured out.

If it’s mid morning as you read this, look around to see where your cat is. Is it on a sunny window sill? One low tech way to get solar energy is already in most homes, it’s called a window. Installing energy efficient windows are an advanced technology that any homeowner can take advantage of right now. High tech widows appear to be part of the strategy for some of the University teams at the Solar Decathlon.

Using solar energy to replace nonrenewable energy sources is going to take a lot of ingenuity. BP is happy to support this effort.

Creating a blog competition is a bit pointless in my opinion. Many of the statistics that I and my fellow bloggers use to measure our self-worth have the word Rank in them.

Nevertheless, I am part of a competition. Feel free to check out all the competing posts…

1. ask.com: new and improved!

2. Search Engine Showdown
3. From AskJeeves.com to Ask.com
4. Answer Me a Question
5. Who do I ask?

6. Ask.com: We’re on TV!

7. Ask About The Best Online Search Engine
8. Ask Yourself?
9. ASK.com
10. As Good As Google

11. Apostolos Gerasoulis and Ask.com

12. Ask?and you shall receive
13. Where has Jeeves Gone?

Special thanks to contestant number two for building the list of links and saving me lots of time

Nobody has entered my contest yet. I figured that I better make a sample entry just to show how easy it can be. My apologies if anyone was already working on an entry related to this patent application picture.

“At this point in her life, the old woman who lives in a shoe is dealing with empty nest syndrome. Sure, it was great that she was able to splurge on a queen size ‘Magic Fingers’ bed. But she was terribly lonely.

She was shocked and surprised to discover that her older boys had been secretly running a hydroponic marijuana business right under her nose. She thought she had brought them up better than that the rotten little buggers. Well, they are going to get a nasty surprise when they sneak in the basement door to find that their crop has been tossed in the dumpster and their mom is entertaining guests in a dominatrix outfit.”

Just in case there are some doubts, the contest that I announced earlier this month is indeed very real. I think I need to make a point of saying that the cash prize is an option and that, if the winner were to choose the mystery prize instead, I guarantee that it will have a value that exceeds the cash prize.

With the news that is being hinted at in some sectors and avoided carefully in others, I am wondering what $6 USD will buy this coming October.

There is a fantastic Online Halloween Costume Contest going on right now. Unfortunately, I have sworn to myself that I would never, ever enter another Halloween Costume Contest for as long as I am alive. After I am dead, I might have an unfair advantage. Why did I get fed up with these contests? It’s a story of moderate length…

It was a dark and stormy night, We had finally finished the laborious preparations for the Halloween dance. When we arrived we were pleased to see that we had the most elaborate costumes in the place. We had spent days hand crafting our grotesque masks.

Like many small town Halloween dances, the band were designated to be the judges of the Halloween costumes. Like 99.9% of the contests that are judged by 24 year old male cover band members, the slut in the refrigerator box was given first place.

The Star Costumes contest taking place over at BrickFish.com is not being judged by 24 year old small town rock stars (to the best of my knowledge). I think imagination and originality could really triumph in this contest and the winner gets a trip to the 2007 VME event in New Orleans on Halloween.

A spider man costume may not be original, but if you have the right body, it makes a great impression on the ladies. If you have a body that is just very, very wrong for a spider man costume, well that’s just funny.