“Honey, can you come help me? I have a piece of chicken in my eye.”

When we showed her this video of a Randy Johnson pitch hitting a bird, her immediate question was “Well, what did they rule it?”

As it happens, it was called a “no pitch,” in case you’re scoring at home.

“What, you mean you gave away all the other shitty cars already?”

May it be known that our stored profile mandates midsize and NeverLost, and that therefore the Lincoln is a total accident presumably based on local inventory issues. We once got a Volvo station wagon under similar circumstances.

How we can tell Detroit is doomed, pt 1.

Even working on a platform designed to be a Jaguar initially, they still manage to make it feel cheap, half-assed, and plastic. The mealy-mushy button feel we associate with American cars — and have heretofore assumed was due to lack of attention to detail — is present in enough quantity in the LS to make us think it’s deliberate.

We assume this is because most Lincoln drivers are fat old men, but still

The seats, covered in cheap leather, are like bench seats on the bottom and crappy buckets on the top, thereby creating a wholly new category of uncomfortable seating.

How we can tell Detroit is doomed, pt 2.

While this is clearly an attempt to compete with, say, the 5-series BMW, the overall fit and finish is a joke. The car has 10,000 miles on it, but some buttons are already falling off. Only so much of that can really be attributed to “it’s a rental.”

Love that American car transmission!

Despite having a beefy V-8, the automatic tranny in the LS provides virtually no way to exploit the power and torque available in a hurry. You end up with just as much transmission lag and jerk as you would in a mid-80s Buick.

How we explained the LS to Mrs. Heathen

“It’s like a BMW as designed and built by retarded Detroit schoolchildren. For their grandfather.”

How we can tell Detroit is doomed, pt 3.

Our boss showed up with a rental car this week, too, having started the trip in Orlando. His car was apparently created by some lameass division at GM that thinks people might accidentally come to a Chevy dealer and be confused enough to buy their knock-off of a PT Cruiser instead of the real thing.

Dept. of Dubious Achievements in Ergonomics

Despite being about the same size as any 4-door sedan, somehow the Lincoln folks managed to make visibility in the LS as bad as it was in our grandmother’s yacht-sized Mark V.

The LS: Safe for the BeGutted

Whenever we turn the LS off, the driver’s seat moves back and the steering wheel retracts and tilts up. This is all well and good, but there’s PLENTY of room to get in and out without this little bit of fat-man-accommodation theater; frankly, it just makes the LS look even more ridiculous.

So: squishy ride, sloppy transmission, uncomfortable seats, and a nameplate that makes people want to ask about your grandchildren…

All this for forty grand. Right.

Master manages to stand on one finger, which is no less badass because his feet lean against the wall. Also, he’s like 70.

Things Introduced Into Heathen World HQ As A Result Of Errands Completed Moments Ago:

1. 1 inflatable neck pillow;
2. 1 replacement briefcase strap for rollaboard suitcase;
3. 1 colored handlewrap to increase identifiability of said suitcase;
4. 1 new shaving kit;
5. 2 Alien ALR-9800 RFID readers;
6. 2 Alien linear antennae;
7. 2 Alien circular antennae;
8. 1 case Halal-certified MREs

This guy has posted a huge list of YouTube links to Sesame Street clips, including some fine celebrity appearances (Robert DeNiro, Norah Jones, Johnny Cash) as well just plain sweet bits that make even Heathen smile or, maybe, feel a little sad.

Do NOT miss the funktastic song by Stevie Wonder in a bit that can’t be from much later than 72 or 73.

Oh, and in a related development, it looks like the commercials Gladwell mentioned that we blogged about a few days ago are also on YouTube, and elsewhere we turned up an MP3 and transcript of the long-lost “Lower Case N” segment.

However, we’ve seen no evidence of this. Have any Heathen any idea where we might go in this might-as-well-be-south-Georgia burg to get a decent meal? The hotel (see prior entry) has suggested both Ruby Tuesday’s and an execrable Texas-themed steak chain called Longhorn, so we’re not starting off well.

Things have not changed in 20 years. Holiday Inns still suck like an Electrolux. Avoid at all costs.

TODAY we finally received the New Yorker with the Sy Hersh Iran story in it.

There’s a stellar slam of the religious right over at Kos called If I Were Christian. Here’s a bit:

If I was a Christian, I’d guess Christ wouldn’t really give a hoot about gays or abortion, and would in fact minister healing and grace to those people in God’s name, and shower them with His love. There’s only one or two verses in the entire Bible even mentioning homosexuals or abortion, as opposed to so many telling us to help the poor and sick and even those we might not approve of if we want to honor His Name. So if I was a Christian, I’d also shower anyone persecuted by religious opportunists with all the love they could stand, and tell them God loved them deeply and forever, no matter what they do or did. I would tell them that nothing they can do will ever stop God from loving them dearly. If I were Christian, I’d have to guess that Christ, who was after all beaten to a bloody pulp and then nailed to a cross to die a horrible, lingering, death, for our sins, wouldn’t think very highly of a party, a faction, a group, a pharaoh, a Caesar, or a President, that thinks they should be able to legally whisk people off to torture chambers to foreign shit-holes run by despots, with no trial or charges ever held for them! And were I a Christian, I’d have to guess that any beliver would and absolutely should be very nervous about being associated with torture in any way, shape, or form.

No word of it a lie.

No, seriously, check it out. The whole blog’s fun to read, too.

Fred notes that Nye made some commentary about how the “lights” mentioned in Genesis are actually (a) the sun, one of billions of stars and (b) the moon, which isn’t actually a light source on its own at all. Predictably, some literalist idiots left. Fred:

This sad, angry woman has somehow been convinced that it is impossible to believe in God without also believing in an illiterately literal reading of Genesis 1:16. She’s painted herself into a corner in which she must reject not only evolution, but the existence of the dark side of the moon. She is forced to regard Neil Armstrong as the pawn of Satan.

Awesome. Read the whole thing.

The Money article published today listing the Best Jobs in America resulted in the following exchange with one of our far-flung correspondents:

Telescope: you see that money magazine rated software developer the #1 job?
Heathen: yes. they were not thinking of the part where you fuck with ant.
Telescope: obviously they didn't consider "bait shop owner" either

Word.

In re: “fuck with ant:” Ant cannot be bothered to check for normal environment variables, since cell phones don’t have them (fuck cell phones; just sniff for the goddamn things and use ’em if they’re there, and fail back to a config file or command line args if not). Ergo, if you need to do your http lookups through a proxy, just setting the http_proxy environment variable gets you precisely nowhere.

Ant has a setproxy task you can use, but it apparently isn’t honored by some things, like javadoc and saxon. Nor are -D parameters sent on the ant command line honored by said miscreants, nor are .build.properties settings followed. To get the javadoc/saxon standard to use the cocksucking proxy, you have to actually insert the parameters in the target stanza.

Not, of course, that this is documented anywhere. Fucking cargo-cult Java bullshit.

The Gosperats: a Japanese gospel group that performs in blackface.

We’re just very busy. More to come.

In this piece at Salon, someone else beats us to the punch. It’s about “Alice, Off the Page”, from last week’s New Yorker. It’s not online, but it’s worth seeking out. It’s beautiful and wonderful and (yes) heartbreaking. Find it and read it.

(Found here, by Mike.)

We are profoundly uncomfortable with invertebrates eating vertebrates under any circumstances. It’s just wrong.

Even if they suspect they can’t give you anything to actually fix the probably-viral chest cold that’s been making you miserable and keeping you from sleeping, they CAN give you stuff to ensure you won’t care. All hail narcotic cough syrup.

That is all.

Not that I expect you to be able to tell, mind you. The top cat is Hudson. The bottom cat is Bob.

I can tell because the desk in the top picture was in a duplex I rented (1114 15th Ct., Tuscaloosa) from 1991 to 1992; that cat was the issue of a friend’s girlfriend’s cat. Said friend’s girlfriend was too irresponsible to (a) spay her cat or (b) vaccinate mama or the kittens, so unfortunately that little cat — Hudson — was born with feline leukemia and had to be put down in fall, 1992.

Hudson most truly belonged to a Former Heathen Companion, who visited the duplex often and fell hard for the not-so-bright-yet-very-cute cat; Hudson decided she hung the moon, and that was that. Before we knew she was ill, F.H.C. had managed to adopt her. We all moved to two apartments in Northport in summer 1992, but it wasn’t long before we realized Hudson’s condition.

Hudson had a little while, we were told, before she’d be really ill, but she couldn’t be around other cats. We set her up in F.H.C.’s apartment and kept her happy, but we knew it was a matter of time. Crafty bastard that I am, it was also during this time that I started trying to find another cat, which was oddly harder than it sounds. Tuscaloosa County Human Society had no kittens at all for several weeks. Finally, they called me back. They had one. I left my office immediately and drove out to TCHS, where I met a very scraggley, rat-looking, frankly ugly little kitten who was nevertheless VERY VERY VERY VERY HAPPY to be touched, held, etc. She came home with me, and for a little while we had a cat in each apartment (and a rigorous hand-and-clothes-washing plan). Eventually, Hudson had to be gently promoted to the Choir Invisible, and we consolidated Cat Operations in my apartment. We missed Hudson, but Bob’s healthy-kitten antics made it easier.

The bottom picture is Bob, asleep under the sheets on my old waterbed in that Northport apartment, sometime between summer 1992 and summer 1993; since the shots are from the same roll of film (film! What the hell is that?), I’m inclined to say earlier rather than later. I can tell by the bed placement, F.H.C.’s laundry basket in the background, the closet door, and the dresser thing on the right.

It was just a happy coincidence that Bob ended up being a dead ringer for Hudson once she put on a few pounds, but I’ve never minded. It certainly made F.H.C. happy, especially since Bob was quickly just as much her cat as Hudson had been. Amusingly, the only other H.C. that Bob has truly liked is, of course, Mrs. Heathen, whose lap she is loathe to leave even for cheese. The cat’s got taste.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Slashdot alerts us that scientists have discovered that capsaicin, the chemical that makes chilis hot, kills prostate cancer cells.

“The good news is that we can cure your cancer. The bad news is that you’re going to have to put this habanero up your ass.”

So our Razr went tits-up on Monday, but with an inventive and new failure, not, apparently, the one that’s going around. (Go figure.) We called Cingular, explained the situation, and they agreed to send us out a new phone. The options were “wait a week” or “wait 1-2 days,” but the latter costs $7. Whatever; we needed a phone. It’s just another example of the pure unadulterated suck provided by wireless companies.

Anyway, as part of the conversation, they needed to know what color Razr was involved. “It’s black,” we said, “but at long as you don’t send us a pink one, we don’t really care.”

Imagine our surprise when the phone arrived the next day. It’s a silver one, which was fine. We found in the box nothing but the main phone body itself wrapped in plastic in a no-frills inner box. There was no battery or SIM card, just as we expected — but also missing was the back panel of the phone. Fifteen minutes later, when we got a human on the phone, we were told “oh, yes, we only send out the phone, not the accessories.” The back is an accessory? “Yes, sir.” Whatever (once again). Please send us a black one, then, so we don’t have Houston’s only two-tone Razr. This time, at least, they waived the $7 fee.

So the black phone just arrived. In the box was a more or less complete Razr kit, including (a) a black Razr; (b) a battery; (c) a black back panel; (d) a charger; and (e) a new manual. So much for not sending out “accessories.”

Now we’re going out, so we can send these goons their other two phones.

From one of our far-flung correspondents:

So, [a coworker] bought a little Toyota three years ago for about 5m pesos ($7500 at the time) and the going price used is now about 4m pesos ($8000 now). So the dollar has sunk faster than the depreciation on the car, and he’s going to make money (in dollar terms) by selling his car after driving it every day for three years. I think it says something about the quality of your currency if you can make money by going to South American and investing in cars.

Go read this; the following excerpt sets the scene:

These [tanks] are usually equipped with pressure relief fittings, since nitrogen does tend to want to be a gas, and gases do tend to want to expand quite a bit. This tank, though, which seems to have been kicking around since 1980, had been retrofitted by a real buckaroo. Both the pressure relief and rupture disks had failed for some reason in the past, so they’d been removed and sealed off with metal plugs. You may commence shivering now.

Today is my birthday. Celebrate accordingly.

The story of Elmer McCurdy.

There have been a couple here lately…

• Last week saw the birth anniversary of certain ScotsHeathen; and
• This very day, we believe, is the birthday of certain former Heights-area restauranteur-heathen, now engaged full-time in (probably futile) attempts to keep the Heathen Attorney and his Progeny from all forms of mischief.

Happies to all!

A young man, alone with his lady love, manages to request some intimate attention. As they are so very young, she knows not what to do, so he explains. Madcap hilarity ensues.

(No nudity and subtitled. About a minute long.)

Yipyipyipyipyip! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring!

You can’t tell me these people weren’t stoned as rats. Don’t believe me? Watch this.

Domino’s baron Tom Monaghan wants to build an all-Catholic town in Florida where birth control, abortion, and pornography (among other things) will be illegal. (Mrs Heathen, noting the proximity to a certain other Florida community, refers to this development as “another in the long line of reasons why Naples should be swallowed by the sea.”)

Hey, Mrs Heathen, why didn’t we go here?

People stop being polite.

Mike Tyson famously once said something about “fading into Bolivia,” which we like a lot. In the same vein, we dreamed the other night about someone being ineptly described as vicious by saying they “go straight for the juggler.” Awesome.

Check out this little comment on Da Mohney and his courting of Mr Denton’s Wild Ride.

We totally forgot that there was some big to-do in Houston this weekend, so we were taken by surprise by the degree to which the airport was taken over by rank amateurs. We damn near missed our flight partly due to gawking tourists wholly unaccustomed to airports, cities, security, etc.

Look: if you don’t fly much, at least take the time to check out what the regulations are before you get to the security checkpoint. Wearing metal-accented clothes in an airport is just plain dumb in 2006, people. Ditto on boots that take 10 minutes to take off while the line grows behind you. Know what you have to take off and what you don’t, and plan accordingly. You did just spend 30 minutes in line, didn’t you?

May 5th is No Pants Day. We’re not celebrating early.

As far as you know.

Whereas the prior example was satirical in nature, this one’s subversive.

First, we point you to perhaps the only source for hardcore slash Harry Potter Valentines.

Second, we simply point out the most inappropriate valentine EVER.

Der Speigel on TFSM: “Mein Gott, ein Nudelmonster!“

January 28, 1986. (Via Mefi, who reminded us.)

From my CEO, on the phenomenon of large, corporate IT departments:

As long as you can show you’re moving and busy, it doesn’t matter if you accomplish anything.

Via Mefi, we find this revisited childhood treasure.

Now, if anybody knows where we can get a copy of “Bravest of All,” we’ll be complete.

Our RFID work area is 269 paces from the bathroom.

There’s a new live Miles Davis box set out that would make an excellent birthday gift.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

My niece, Caroline Maria Ceaser. Quoth Mrs Heathen: “Evidently my niece is on the blurry side.”

DeadProgrammer (a fine blog) has a post up about coin-counting machines wherein he mentions some of the datapoints we wondered about previously. (Of course, he seems to have just gotten his figures at the Mint, which is something we’re ashamed we didn’t do.)

(We note with amusement that his coin distribution is wildly different than ours; we suspect he cherry-picks the more usable change out before resorting to automated counts. We, on the other hand, just dump all our change into the jar every night, which should produce a more typical distribution. Or so we assume, anyway.)

Please welcome Caroline Maria Ceaser, the newest resident of Albany, New York, and my first niece. Pictures and statistics forthcoming.

Update: Ol’ Maria showed up at about 10:20 central. She has lots of hair, presumably in the appropriate regions, and eyes that may or may not stay blue. She weighted 7 lbs, 2 oz. Her mother damn near slept through the labor, which will of course earn her the enmity of every new mother she meets in the park. We also hear that Chief Heathen Educational Wunderkind has already asked after his Heathen Shout-Out, and it pleases us a great deal to point out that it was already here.

Send pix, guys.

… the Lawyer Coloring Book.