Rants

Yesterday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day and it totally slipped right on by. Had I known I probably wouldn’t have talked like one much. Mainly because I pretty much used up all my known pirate talk in the title of this post. But I might have watched the Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD.

Captain Barbossa, I am here to negotiate the cessation of hostilities against Port Royal.
There be a lot of long words in there, miss. We’re naught but humble pirates. What is it that you want?
I want you to leave and never come back.
[crew laughs]
I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means “no.”

Thanks Barry Bonds. While trying to watch my favorite losers, the Red Sox, on ESPN tonight I had the game interrupted 5 times to watch you attempt to hit a home run. I’m sure 700 is a milestone for you, but the rest of us really don’t give a damn. At 715 and then again at 756, if you get there, maybe, but until then leave the nations airways alone.

Vanilla Ice comes to Augusta, GA to play a concert this Saturday. The assault weapons ban has expired. And as if that wasn’t enough to convince me, he is playing at a place called “Last Call.” Coincidence? I think not. Some one or thing is trying to tell me something.

If he is not stopped here, he is off to Germany and we don’t need a repeat of the David Hasselhoff incident now do we?

Whilst away this weekend at Miata Nirvana^TM we stayed at the Microtel Inn in Robinsville, NC. We stay there because it is new and compared to the other 40s and 50s vintage motels, it is the Plaza Hotel. Microtels are supposed to be cheap and while the web page price quote is $54 a night, by the time they get through tacking on the various accommodations taxes we are right up there at $68. Of course this does include a continental breakfast in its appropriately micro sized dining room. The room consists of three 2 person tables shoehorned in with two drink machines, the noisiest ice machine I’ve ever heard and a short counter that holds the breakfast. That counter holds, for your dining pleasure, coffee, micro muffins (2″ in diameter and about the same high), micro doughnuts (2-1/2″ in diameter and 1″ high), micro bagels (a whopping 3-1/2″ in diameter and 2″ high) and some packs of instant oatmeal. Which is why we usually make the 1 block walking trip to the Wendy’s in the morning.

As a favor for a friend I sell his Brake Lite Blinker to out of the country buyers. He doesn’t want to make a trip to the Post Office and fill out the customs forms, etc.

Tonight he forwarded me a request from some one in Canada. He had a few questions about size and power, etc. His last question was would I list the value of the item as $10 so he wouldn’t have to pay as much customs duty on them. Come on, the things are $15 to begin with. How much can he be saving on duty? I wrote him back:

I’m sure there is a very miniscule chance of anything bad happening to me if I did that, but for all I know you actually work for the U.S. Customs and are trolling the internet looking for violators of federal law, so, no I won’t do that. They are valued at $15 US each. Sorry.

We’ll see if he still wants them after that…

Totally did nothing today. In honor of Labor Day I celebrated by enjoying the fruits of the fine folks in the union called the Screen Actors Guild. There were three different TV show marathons on cable today, two of which I recently told Will were my favorites and I had to choose between them. There was a Monk Marathon on USA, a West Wing marathon on Bravo and a Law & Order marathon on TNT. I caught the tail end of a very good L&O, then watched a WW. After that I watched Mr. Monk and the Game Show, then for the next 5 hours I watched all WWs.