That Blog Frank Used to Have.

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Ok, Totally un-fact-checked by me, this is a story that I told a friend of the family which I keep having to relocate on the web every time I want to refer to it. I am copying it to my blog for safe keeping.

Enjoy...

The British actor Anthony Hopkins, who shot to fame as Hannibal Lecter of the film ‘The Silence of The Lambs’ was delighted to hear that he had landed a leading role in a film based on the book The Girl From Petrovka by George Feifer.A few days after signing the contract, Hopkins traveled to London to buy a copy of the book. He tried several bookshops, but there wasn’t one to be had. Waiting at Leicester Square underground for his train home, he noticed a book apparently discarded on a bench. Incredibly, it was The Girl From Petrovka. That in itself would have been coincidence enough but in fact it was merely the beginning of an extraordinary chain of events.

Two years later, in the middle of filming in Vienna, Hopkins was visited by George Feifer, the author. Feifer mentioned that he did not have a copy of his own book. He had lent the last one - containing his own annotations - to a friend who had lost it somewhere in London. With mounting astonishment, Hopkins handed Feifer the book he had found. ‘Is this the one?’ he asked, ‘with the notes scribbled in the margins?’ It was the same book.

Test post

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:01:00 +0000

The Daily Blog of the Day has been inactive for a long, long time.

I am experimenting with posting to my blog with my Mobile Device. If you are still signed up to receive my blog as a e-mail newsletter, you might get a few seemingly random test messages in the next couple of days as I experiment with this new, 20th-century technology! (Yes, I know what century this is...)

If this works, then I may be able to chronicle my own life AS IT HAPPENS, in REAL TIME!

If not, then not much will change, and this blog will continue to broadcast "dead air", or the digital equivalent thereof.

Peace out,
Frankygee.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

A Puzzling Development!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:38:00 +0000

So the other day, I did something I hadn't done for quite a while. I watched a TV show.

I don't have cable, but back when I did, I enjoyed watching "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill". Both of those shows are still on the air, but nowadays, if I want to watch them, or any other network TV show, I log in to hulu.com. I don't do this often, for much the same reason that I don't pay for cable, but last Tuesday, I fired up the laptop, and my wife and I lounged around watching the best hour of animated evening programming the FOX network has to offer.

The episode of "The Simpsons" we watched was one of the most recent, entitled "Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words". If you want to watch it without spoilers, just click below:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/44526/the-simpsons-homer-and-lisa-exchange-cross-words

The episode centered on Lisa's love for, and obsession with, crossword puzzles, specifically the New York Times crossword, and it had Lisa qualifying for the finals in the national crossword championship. Homer accompanied her to the tournament and won a lot of money betting on her until betting against her, and benefitting from her loss, in the last round.

One specific puzzle was featured in the episode, a complicated bit of enigmatology (yes, that's a word) commissioned by a fictional character with a message (or two) concealed within it. Several days after watching the episode I found my mind going back to the puzzle used within the episode, which featured fleeting close ups of actual puzzle grid and clues, and it occurred to me... They actually created a puzzle specifically for this episode of "The Simpsons"!

I wondered idly, "what if I went back and watched that episode and paused it on the puzzle close ups? What crazy inside jokes would be contained in the clues and answers? Leave it to the Simpsons staff to concoct an entire 140-clue crossword puzzle only to flash it partially on the screen for a few brief seconds. I have attempted to build a crossword or two, and it is really freaking hard, but then again... so is writing and animating a hugely successful prime-time sitcom, and I can't do that either.

Anyway, less than a week after watching the episode, the fabulous folks at Netflix and the U.S. Postal Service brought me "Wordplay", the (2006?) Documentary about.... The New York Times Crossword Puzzle, and its associated annual tournament! I had added "Wordplay" to my Netflix "queue" about a year ago, along with over a hundred others, and it coincidentally showed up just after I watched this puzzle-centric "Simpsons" episode. It was a good movie, highlighting both the hardcore puzzle-solvers, with whom you and I can not possibly relate, as well as casual puzzle devotees like Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, and The Indigo Girls. I learned from the movie that "intercoastal" is an anagram for "altercations", a fact which I promptly forgot, and which bugged me until I had to re-work it out for myself.

After watching that movie, you really want to pick up a Times crossword and hop to it. At least, you do if you are Me, and thus a Giant Nerd. I had a less-than-half-solved Sunday puzzle lying on my dining room table, and as the wife and I were getting ready for bed, I picked it up and figured I would re-attack it with my newly energized brain. I got a bit done, and then I came to the clue "Loses on Purpose". Ordinarily my mind would have skipped to "Folds", "Dives", or "Flops", but I knew that the answer was "Diets" ("loses on purpose", geddit?), because I had recently seen that clue used in another puzzle. Or Had I? I idly mused about where I had seen that clue before, and I realized I hadn't seen it in print; I had HEARD it. Heard it in the voice of Lisa Simpson, less than a week ago! Which meant that Lisa had been doing .... Waitaminute! Could it be?

I checked the upper-left-to-lower-right diagonal and found, sure enough, the "secret message" encoded in the supposedly fictional puzzle featured in one of the two TV shows I had happened to watch in the last several months. Then, as my wife and I reeled at the improbability of that (we had both watched the episode together in exactly the same spot where we were now solving the puzzle together), I remembered the other secret message. The one spelled out in the inital letters of each clue. Sure enough, there it was. Threaded throughout every single clue in the puzzle, and helping to explain why some of them were so oddly worded, was a message from one fictional character to another with NO REFERENCE MADE TO IT ANYWHERE IN THE PUZZLE. The only way any solver could have noticed this message (without being autistic or severely OCD) was to watch the episode of "The Simpsons" in which a yellow-skinned Will Shortz explains where it is. This is the ultimate example of an "easter egg" within a puzzle, and I just happened to have found it.

I still haven't finished the puzzle, though, and likely won't. It is an incredibly difficult one, even for a Sunday Times puzzle, and I believe this is due, in large part, to the crazy clues Mr. Reagle (The puzzle's constructor) had to find which started with the right letters for the hidden message.

Now if you will excuse me, I must go grab this week's Sunday Times, and get started. Happy Holiday Weekend to all, just in case I don't post again before then.

Peter Schiff for Treasury Secretary!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:45:00 +0000

President-Elect Obama, put this man in charge of our money! He is either a genius, or he has got his hands on a palantir.

Experience.

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:40:00 +0000

How Many Countries Has Senator McCain been president of?

By My Count, Exactly None.

By This Argument, No one alive today except Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Both George Bushes is qualified to be president.

And they were NOT qualified for the job when they took it. Neither were George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Millard Fillmore, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, or anyone else who ever took the job.

Would I go under with a surgeon who had never performed a surgery before? Well, Yeah.... if he graduated with honors from the most prestigious medical school in the country and brought dozens of letters of recommendation from medical experts from all different walks of life, and taught surgery and anatomy to students at the university level for years, then I probably would. I might still want to interview him for about TWO YEARS while I made up my mind, but, yeah, I think after all that, I would be fairly confident as they applied the anesthesia.

Would I want a surgeon who would point out that his competition had never performed surgery, while blatantly ignoring the fact that HE HADN'T EITHER! whose main qualification seemed to be constantly harping on how untrustworthy the other, incredibly well-educated and competent guy was? A Surgeon who chose as his head nurse a woman who graduated from cosmetology school on her fifth try, and then worked as a dental hygienist for a little while? (And she's never even SEEN surgery performed before,and can't even define "surgery" when asked what it is, exactly!) A surgeon whose main point of pride is that he is a medical "maverick", who doesn't agree with his own hospital, OR the hospital where his competitor works, and, come to think of it, doesn't even agree with his own head nurse about where to make incisions? No, I don't think I would. It sounds like this guy would be making it up as he went along.

Tuesday, Hurry Up!!

Inauguration day, hurry up even more!

Spreading the Wealth Around

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:03:00 +0000

WAY before Joe the Plumber arrived on the scene, I got this e-mail (it was back in February, to be exact. I thought that now, with the words "socialist" and "redistribution" floating around the inter-tubes ,I would give it a public rebuttal.

This is the text of the email, stripped of its excessive and distracting use of very large bold font!!.

Father/Daughter Talk

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, 'How is your friend Audrey doing?' She replied, 'Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.'
Her wise father asked his daughter,

'Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.'

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, 'That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!'
The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, 'Welcome to the Republican party.'

If anyone has a better explanation of the difference between Republican and Democrat I'm all ears.

This was my carefully crafted response. I am rather proud of it, and would love it very much, if you ever get sent this same email forward, if you would drop this response in your outbox, and hit "reply to all".

Ok, since you asked....

First off, the more fitting analogy would be taking 8 points from someone with an 18.0 GPA, and "re-distributing" it by giving a .02 increase to 400 students who all had a 1.98 GPA.

400 students at risk of being kicked out of school would be given a second chance, and the one student with the insanely high GPA (which might have been the result of hard work, but might also have been the result of an inherited high IQ, and a natural aptitude toward test-taking) would still have a GPA well in excess of what is necessary to Graduate with Highest Honors at the top of her class.

That Valedictorian Student might then go on to run a sporting goods company, which will need educated employees to work for it. Some of those 400 students who would otherwise have been kicked out of school will now be working for her, and she benefits from the fact that they were given that second chance.

Some of the students, of course, were deadbeats like "Audrey", who squandered that chance and were expelled from school and now live under bridges and make money by panhandling and robbing sporting goods stores. So our Valedictorian also benefits from there being fewer of these deadbeats around, thanks to those GPA points that she gave up back in college.

Is it fair that we give people who need it a helping hand up with money that is "taken" from people with more substantial means? Of course not. Is it merciful and humane? Yes, I believe it is. Is it smart for society in general? I think so. Should we look at the injustices, inefficiencies, and flaws in the system, and make corrections? Of Course! Should we vote out deadbeat politicians who use the tax code as a way to reward their political contributors and cronies? Absolutely. But what we should not do is look at taxes as inherently evil, and oversimplify complex issues with pithy email anecdotes.

After all, there is a perfectly simple way to stop paying federal taxes. Stop living in America! If our system is so terrible for the rich, why haven't they moved away? They certainly have the means to! I think it is because they know what I know. That our government, though certainly flawed, is the greatest in the world for anyone of any income level.

The election is in a week, people. If you live in a large city, the best thing you can do for Democracy is vote early. This shortens the lines at the polling places on election day, and encourages greater participation in our government by people who actually work for a living, and can't miss work on a Tuesday just to vote.

P.S. My uncle's response was very nice, and he even promised to pass my reply back "Up the Chain" to the people who had gotten his original mail. I thought it was very classy of him.

Crunching The Numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 09:51:00 +0000

Want to really make some money? How much money would you like? How about 700 billion dollars? That's a figure that has been in the news a lot lately. We all know it's a big number, but how big is it?

You probably can't make 700 billion dollars waiting tables. That's way too slow. A good server, on a good night, in a good restaurant, feels pretty lucky to walk home with 100 bucks at the end of a night. At that rate, it would take you 7 billion nights to make that amount. Working 7 nights a week, for 19 million years, you still wouldn't quite get there.

We need something faster. Something WAY faster. The fastest possible way I can think of to make money is to just print your own! It's not legal, of course, but imagine with me if you could make money literally as fast as you could print it. I figure you could fit about five $100 bills on a standard page of 8.5” X 11” printer paper, and if you've got a new, state-of the art inkjet printer, which can spit out about 40 pages per minute, then that's $20,000.00 per minute! Now that's really making money, FAST.

Let's say you start making your money at 9:00 am on Monday morning, September 29, 2008. After only an hour, you would have 1.2 Million dollars! By 9:00 pm, after reloading your paper tray a few dozen times and using up a few ink cartridges, you would have about 14.4 Million bucks to show for your efforts. Not shabby at all for a single day's work! That's enough money to buy every senior citizen in America a new hearing aid battery, but you still aren't even close to your goal of 700 Billion.

At this rate, you won't make 700 billion before your grandchildren are retired. You need something faster, you decide. So the next morning, bright and early, you go to the Office Supply Megastore and buy 5 more fast printers, each capable of 40 pages-per-minute. Hey, you can afford it, you're a multimillionaire now! Go ahead and pick up a new leather office chair, a fancy ball-point pen, and some beef jerky while you're there!

You get your new printers home, plug them all up, and set them all loose at 9 o'clock sharp. Working through the day, not stopping for lunch (Aren't you glad I told you to get the beef jerky?), you jump from printer to printer to printer, replacing paper and ink, until, at 9 pm, exhausted, you shut off the power strip, and stumble toward your bedroom. You made 86.4 million dollars today, bringing your total to $100.8 Million in two days! Now you have enough money to buy every child in America a candy bar (and throw in a new toothbrush, too), but you are still not to 700 billion. So, I guess it's nose back to the ol' grindstone tomorrow.

After repeating the process on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, with all 6 printers shooting out $20,000-a-minute each, for 12 hours a day, you would have 360 million dollars to show for your 60-hour workweek.

You can now afford to do the old “pull a coin out of your ear” trick on every man, woman, and child in the country with those nifty golden $1 coins, but you are still not to 700 billion. Guess you're gonna' have to work Saturdays, too! On Saturday, you decide that, if you are going to have to keep doing this, then skipping lunch is for the birds, so you only work 11 hours, instead of the twelve you've been doing. This brings in another 79.2 million, bringing your total up to 439.2 million.

Well, the next week, you really get into your groove. Taking a lunch break each day, and taking Sunday off (to let the paper cuts heal) you get in a 66-hour workweek, netting $475.2 Million. With your haul from last week, you are now up to 914.4 million dollars. You now have enough money to buy each senior citizen in the country a 2-year subscription to Reader's Digest and a lighted magnifying glass, but you still haven't made your first billion, much less your 700th. You make 7.2 million dollars an hour and it's still taking too long!

Fast forward to Christmas morning. Sleigh Bells are ringing, Jack Frost is nipping, Chestnuts are roasting, and you are still printing $100 bills, at a rate of 1200 per minute, for 77 hours each week. Your total so far? 5.904 billion dollars. You are not even one one-hundredth of the way to your goal. You have enough money to buy every kid in America a gift-wrapped bicycle, but not nearly enough to bail out the American investment banking industry. The good news is, new technology has made home inkjet printers even faster, and they can now print one page per second, a 50% improvement! You buy yourself 10 of these new beauties, recycle the old ones, and start off the New Year printing faster than ever!

So, in 2009, with your new high-tech printers, you are now making the unbelievable amount of 5,000 dollars per second! You keep that rate up for an entire year, still working Saturdays, and loading ink and paper faster than ever, and by the following Christmas, you have made.... 61.776 billion dollars for the year, for a grand total of $67.68 Billion. Almost one tenth of the way. You now have enough money to buy every adult in the country a brand new iPod Touch, but still not nearly 700 Billion.

As a matter of fact, at this rate, you will need to keep this rate of printing up for another 10 years and 12 weeks, printing your last few million somewhere around March 20, 2020. The President of the United states by then might be a 56 year old Sarah Palin, or a 73 year old Joseph Biden by then, in the third year of his/her first or second term. Barack Obama would be 58, and John McCain would be 84. We might be in the 8th year of our War against Russia and Iran, or we might be driving American-made electric cars powered entirely by wind and solar energy, or both!

Most of us make money at a rate significantly less than 18 Million dollars per hour, so it would take even more time than that. Most of us are closer to the waitress end of the spectrum, looking at 19 million years to make that kind of dough. Hopefully, before the Sun explodes in a supernova, destroying our planet.

I may have been a little off, here or there, on my math. I have done far more research than anyone should, but I may have messed up somewhere in there. These numbers are so big that rounding errors cost millions of dollars. If you took the 700 Billion dollars proposed for the Bank Bailout, and gave every man, woman and child in America their “cut”, they would each receive a check for $2,293.67, but that's rounded down to the nearest penny. Add up all the fractional pennies saved by not giving everyone those last 85 thousandths of a dollar, and they add up to 2.621 million dollars!

I hope this helped you wrap your brain around a number that big. I know it's helped me. I'm Frank Gibson, and I approve this message.

One More Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:51:00 +0000

Slightly related to the previous post, here is a cartoon that has been very appropriate for my life lately.

http://www.xkcd.com/386/

Having internet connectivity at home is half blessing, half curse.

As with all of the xkcd cartoons, let your mouse cursor linger over the cartoon for an additional punch line. They are usually twice as funny as what is actually printed.

I'm Kinda' Sorta' Famous!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Remember way back in my last post when I said, that Language Log was my new favorite blog, and I steered you all to the site to go enjoy the wonders of word-geekery that abide there?

Well, I commented on one of their posts recently, and had a whole subsequent post devoted to my comment!

The Article I originally commented on is here, and the follow up, entitled "May Contain Nuts" is here.

Go read them!

The last time something like this happened was when no less a luminary that Peter Sagal re-wrote his post to address my opinion of the movie "Unbreakable"

My New Favorite Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Wow. For a word nerd like me, this post is a treasure-trove of peeveblogging. (I just learned the word "peeveblogging" from there, and wanted to use it.)

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=368

Go check it out, and make sure to follow the links to "Lowercase l", "Apostrophe Abuse", and "Unnecessary Quotation Marks".

...To a DEEE- Luxe apartment in the Sky-y-y!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:29:00 +0000

It has been a good week for mammon worship here at the Gibson house.

First- I got internet at my home. Internet at my home is one of those things I was going to get one day, when I had a little more money. It was something I would get "One of these days", when thing were a little easier and the car was all paid off, when my Ship had come in, and my Prince had come (or at least the artist formerly known as my Prince.)

Well, now, thanks to the creeping universality of wi-fi "hotspots", there is a wireless high-speed internet connection close enough to my house that I can plug my wireless adapter in to my long unused desktop computer and Voila! I now no longer have to put on pants to go online! (It's still a good idea, though, cause I don't have curtains on all my windows, and my neighbors are already complaining about my lawn.) The connection is not perfectly reliable, but it is totally FREE, so I will try not to complain about occasionally spotty reception.

It Gets Better! I recently lost my Altoids Tin of Goodness. It was lost sometime just after Father's Day, and I had been recently thinking about replacing some of the items lost along with it. Like the 2 Gigabyte Flash Drive that I used to carry around.

Well, I got an e-mail from my wife (which I could receive at home, thanks to my newfound connectivity) saying "Don't buy a Flash Drive - we might be getting one for free!" As it turns out, one of her students works for a big company in such a position as to frequently be given brib- *ahem* -complimentary gift items by people who want their people to be able to talk to his people. His office is apparently overwhelmed with "goodies" obtained in this way. So he decided to show his appreciation for his wonderful instructor by "regifting" her a Flash Drive with a whopping 32 Gigabyte capacity! That is 16 times bigger than the one I used to have, for those of you keeping score at home.
But wait... There's More!

Along with internet at my house, on the same list of things I have really, really wanted -slash- sorta kinda needed for years, is a decent digital camera. I have been armed with only the camera in my cellphone for the last year, and before that, I had no camera at all.

Well guess what came with the Flash Drive? If you guessed "An 8 Megapixel Canon ELPH digital camera, with a 2 Gig Secure Digital Memory card, adjustable wrist strap and rechargeable Lithium-ion battery", then give yourself a pat on the back, and hope that the government never discovers your paranormal psychic abilities.

All of these things were expenses that I just haven't been able to justify, because my wife's job, despite being very personally satisfying, and having wonderful perks (see preceding 3 paragraphs), doesn't actually pay much. So imagine my surprise when, in addition to all the above wonderful surprises, I found out today that My wonderful wife GOT A RAISE!

So what are we going to do now? We're goin' to Disneylan- what? We're not? Oh. We're goin' to Rock City! or maybe Ruby Falls. Or maybe Both! And we will be armed with a new 8-Megapixel Camera when we go!

Reboot (to the Head)

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:26:00 +0000

Well, Blogfans....

It was a year ago Yesterday that this Adventure in Bloggetry began. Since then the only thing that has been consistent has been my inconsistency.

In the last year my blog has featured a Daily-Haiku-a-Day, Weekly Movie Reviews, The ill-fated "Toonament", Introspective naval-gazing, Obsession with my own statistics, Not-quite-political commentary, Polls, Late-night Monologue-style jokes, Charity news, a diary of my personal conversion to Ubuntu Linux and loads of Nerdy Superhero stuff that most of you don't care about. All of these features, like a toddler's new Birthday Presents, were interesting for a little while, then discarded. (I did, however, enjoy playing with the box they came in. And the wrapping paper was prett... Oooh, Ribbons!!)

I am tempted to call it quits, say it's been a mostly good year, and just wrap it up, but I just saw The Incredible Hulk, and it was really good, so I won't.

Let Me Explain...

"The Incredible Hulk" was what they are calling nowadays a "Reboot". A not-quite-sequel that uses the same characters in a non-sequential story, often played by different actors. These stories can be one-offs, or the start of a new series. The latest James Bond movie, "Casino Royale", and Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" are good examples of this concept. Those two are also both Prequels, going back to the characters' origin stories, unlike "The Incredible Hulk".

Anyway, Ol' Mean-and-Green's latest cinematic adventure got me thinking about "Reboots", and I figure if anything needs a Reboot-to-the-head, it is my stale, unused and unloved blog.

I am enjoying Cartooning. I might one day be good at it. Over at FG Cartoons, I am committed to A Cartoon Every Sunday Morning.

Here, though... From This Point On... I hereby solemnly promise... Not to make any promises.

You, my readers, are my friends and family. (Those terms not being mutually exclusive.) If I am thinking about something interesting (while able to access the Internet) that I want to share, this is where I will share it. If I don't have anything to say, I will not beat myself up over not posting. I am still interested in environmental issues, fun computer stuff, superhero-y goodness, charities, movies, books, and whatnot, so I will probably keep posting on those sorts of things, but I make no promises. If I want to start blogging exclusively about Barbershop Quartet Singing, Then By Golly That's What I'll Do.

So If I am making no promises, then what about the name? "Daily" is kind of a promise, ain't it? Well, you got me there. So I am renaming it. To what? I don't know yet. Any suggestions?

New Cartoon!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:45:00 +0000

New Cartoon over at FG Cartoons. Thanks to them that have commented. I would post more here about funny things in the news, but I'm too tired.

Gotta go to bed now. Enjoy the cartoon. I should have one this Sunday, and one every Sunday thereafter. Hopefully with some weekday mini-strips thrown in now and again.

Any way, I hope yo....... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

A Few Thousand Words

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:56:00 +0000

At the prevailing exchange rate these pictures should be worth a few Thousand!

Another picture should also be available today at FG Cartoons.

The Reason for the Red Carpet (and the Traffic)

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:59:00 +0000

Gotta Love the web...

This is why the streets were closed in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre when we were there. The Asian architecture of the place was, of course perfect for the premiere of "Kung-Fu Panda" If we had been real stalker-y, we could have seen Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, and Lucy Liu in person, as well as in wax.

(if this post makes no sense to you, click here)

Also - The MTV Movie awards were in town, too!

A Great Day in L.A.

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:48:00 +0000

My wife and I spent yesterday afternoon with my brother and his girlfriend in Hollywood. The main event, the Hollywood Wax Museum, was a bit of a letdown, with models ranging from eerily realistic (Samuel Jackson, Anthony Hopkins as "Hannibal" Keanu Reeves as "Neo") to - Well... to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My big question on that one echoed so many other figures in the museum. How can you tell if a "Lifelike" model of a fictional creature is "Realistic"?

We did too much too encapsulate everything here, but here is the "Cliff's Notes" outline.

Things that were awesome:

L.A.'s visibility and weather. In Smogtown USA, we could see the city's skyline perfectly from Hollywood Blvd. Even with Universal Studios on fire at the time.
Standing around 3 stories up lookin at view; see above) eating awesome Ice Cream from one of those places where they mix ingredients into your ice cream on a refrigerated stone countertop. Banana Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberries and Graham Cracker Crumbs.. $6.07, and worth every dime!
Getting to re-experience with my wife the things that I had seen last time I came to Hollywood without her.
Brunch/lunch/dinner or whatever-the-heck meal it was (we woke up early, 2 timezones away), at the Mel's Diner on the corner of Ventura and Kester. Our waiter was such a stereotypically polite young Japanese woman, we expected her to perform a Tea Ceremony right there at our table. She said "thank you " about 100 times during our short meal, and I swear I could tell she was fighting the urge to bow deeply each time.
Getting to finally give my brother a present that he hadn't already gotten himself. I got him an action figure of Walter, from "The Big Lebowski". (John Goodman's Character For those of you not in the know) To say it was well-received might be an understatement. I felt like Santa Claus. I felt bad for not bringing Valorie a "half-birthday present", though. (It's an old family tradition, and is exactly what it sounds like.)

Things that kinda' stunk:

Not being able to go to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre to show Becca all the handprints/footprints of the stars, due to some opening, or premiere, or other red-carpet spectacle that they were either setting up for or breaking down from. We think it may have been the premiere of Hancock, but that's not for sure.
The road closure from the aforementioned event forced my brother onto a circuitous, road-rage inducing route to the parking garage where we could finally get out and go enjoy ourselves
see opening paragraph re: wax museum

Things that really stunk

Having a persistent and worsening sore throat through the whole thing.

There's lots more, but I am not gonna spend my whole vacation blogging.
I'll have more blog (and pictures) soon. And twitters until then.
Swimming pool is calling to me...

Back To California!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Sat, 31 May 2008 11:50:00 +0000

My 4th ever California Vacation Begins Today! I am headed to see the In-laws in Nashville tonight, and on Sunday morning we depart for the San Luis Obispo by way of Los Angeles. We will get to spend 4 or 5 hours with my brother there before beginning the "Road Trip" portion of our journey North to San Luis Obispo.

I will be blogging through the whole thing, BUT I will be even more frequently mini-blogging the adventure 140 characters at a time, in real time, via twitter. If you have been on the fence about Twitter, Now is a good time to get an account (it's free) so you can live vicariously through me, as I singlehandedly Stimulate the U.S. Economy, braving Airline Security and High Fuel Prices so you don't have to. (or because you can't afford to.)

If you already have twitter, now is a good time to start following me. Just send "follow phrankygee", and you're ready to track me.

For those of you who are not Twitterers (it really isn't for everyone), you can follow along from this site, up there in the mini-blog near the top of the page.

New Cartoon Blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:12:00 +0000

OK Blogfans - if there are any of you left... I have a new blog set up just for my Cartoons. Rather than go back through a year's worth of blog and remove all references to non-partisanship, I decided to ask my more decidedly political stuff - Cartoons and accompanying Editorials - to please take it outside!

The new blog is simply titled FG Cartoons, and is at http://fgcartoons.blogspot.com , with no reference in the name to dailiness or weekliness or any other schedule commitment. The plan is to do one a week, but I already have another one halfway finished, so we COULD possibly get to more than one a week. After all some very topical and timely jokes won't be funny in two weeks!

The plan is to release them on Sundays, but the first one is out today, and it is entitled "Remodelpublicans". Go enjoy it, or hate it, or whatever... But drop me a comment either way.

And if you have agreed to disagree with me , or would just rather remain ignorant of my more controversial opinions, feel free to leave your computer tuned to this site, where I will resume my previous tone of inclusivity and civility and general non-offensiveness wherever possible.

Weekly Cartoon Of The Week!!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:51:00 +0000

I am super-duper happy to announce the release of TDBotD's first ever Comic Strip! This is a feature I will try to post weekly, but I think we all know how that goes by now.

Anyway the cartoon is called Ralphie And Friends, and it Features Ralphie, a character I created for the "Smiley Boy" comic strip which ran in my High School Newspaper back in 1996, my Senior Year, back when the internet was called "America Online", and it made whistly-staticky sounds every time your computer dialed in, and people still read things written with actual ink on actual newsprint. (Yes, Old People, I am that young, and Yes, Young People, I am that old!)

Ralphie (just plain Ralph back then) was simply a "straight man" sidekick for the strip's titular character, Smiley Boy. But Smiley just didn't fit in with the tone of the new strip, so Ralphie has been propelled into the age of Webcomics as the star of his own strip. Smiley may show up too sometime, but I won't hold my breath.

The new comic IS political in nature, and the other character in this weeks strip is Ralph's political sparring partner, Talking Point. I expect he will be a rich vein of humor to be mined for years to come. Right-wingers don't despair, Point has a Lefty counterpart (counterpoint?) named Ms. Point, and I am sure she will have her turn in the spotlight often enough.

Without Further Ado, I bring you The Very First Installment of Ralphie And Friends! (click it to get it bigger.)

Food News You CAN Use!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Hey, Nature and/or Food Lovers!

Got A Bottle of White Vinegar around? You know, the stuff that smells really, well... vinegary, and is useful for all sorts of things, from flavorizing your potato chips, to cleaning your sink, to creating life-like science-fair volcano models? (with the help of its partner-in-fizz, Baking Soda)

Well, before you douse your next bag of Ruffles in the stuff (and its partner-in-flavor, Salt)*, you might want to think about this...

Your bottle of White Vinegar might be made from PETROLEUM! (A-Bubbling Crude - Black Gold, Texas Tea!) That's right, the same stuff your plastic sunglasses, new sweatshirt, and Hefty bags are made out of. The same stuff powering your lawnmower, your friend's new pickup truck, and your next-door-neighbor's Lear Jet. (Or maybe your neighbor's pickup, and your friend's jet, I don't know your particular situation.)

Heck, your vinegar may be made from the same stuff your vinegar BOTTLE is made of. Run out of vinegar? Just melt down the bottle, and use that! (OK, the TDBotD fleet-o'-lawyers made me add DO NOT actually attempt to consume a melted plastic bottle; that part was a joke)

But the petroleum based vinegar thing may not be a joke. My Bestest Blog-friends over at Tiny Choices came upon this freakish news, and being the upstanding citizens they are, instantly shared it with the world, or at least the portion of the world that reads Tiny Choices. (Judging from their comments section, it's quite a few more people than read this stuff that I post here!)

Here's the Thing: I don't eat, nor have I ever eaten, Vinegar, and what's more, I dislike the taste and smell of vinegar so much that I stay away from foods made with vinegar. That means I don't eat any salad dressings (unless you count Cheese and Bacon!),and I don't eat pickles or ketchup, either. It's like a part of me knew all along that this stuff was made from petrochemicals. The fumey, wafty smell was my first clue, I think.

Not all vinegars are this way. Heinz brand White Vinegar explicitly states on the label that it is from all-natural (vegetable) sources. But that's the expensive name-brand stuff; You can bet that the stuff they are using at the ConglomoCorp food factory, the stuff that comes in 55-gallon drums, is probably the cheapest stuff they can get, which, up to this point has been the stuff derived from dead T-rexes.
But - Dead T-rexes, as you may have heard, are getting a lot harder to come by these days, and subsequently a lot more expensive ($130/barrel already?). So the bright side of this is: As oil prices continue to soar, It makes food more expensive, BUT it also may force big Food Manufacturers to start making more of our food out of actual food!

* Yeah, Anna, I'm talkin' to you!

photo by JillDoughtie

News You Can't Use

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:15:00 +0000

**Nashville, Tennessee** 34 year old Gretchen Wilson, the singer/songwriter behind the country hit "Redneck Woman", will be donning a cap and gown on May 15th, and receiving her GED.

As of this writing, Jeff Foxworthy was unavailable for hilarious comment.

Now if the whole "Country Music Superstar" thing doesn't work out, she is qualified for the job of "Shift Supervisor" at any Waffle House in the nation. It doesn't pay much, but it will keep food on the table, tires on the trailer, and Christmas lights on the front porch all year long.

**Riverdale, Utah** 54 year old Chief of Police, Dave Hansen, a 23 year veteran of the Riverdale police force, shot himself in the foot while demonstrating how to clear a jammed handgun in the conference room of the police headquarters.

Local resident Floyd Lawson agreed that things were a lot better back when the Sheriff allowed then-deputy Hansen only a single bullet, to be kept in his pocket until needed.

This is believed to be the worst accident of its kind since the Don Knotts Police Training Academy opened its doors seven years ago.

**Baghdad, Iraq** Iraqi First Lady, Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, escaped unhurt from a roadside bombing which killed 4 others in her entourage. It is believed that the attack was not targeted, but one of the many random disruptive attacks aimed at the war-torn nation's capitol.

"We don't see how this attack could have been targeted at the First Lady," said a member of the security detail named Faoud Saruch, who agreed to speak with TDBotD on the condition that his name not be used. "The terrorist cowards could have had no idea what route we would be taking to the awards."

The attack kept the First Lady from attending the Grunhilde Awards Ceremony, hosted this year in Dubai. This year's ceremony was intended to showcase Dubai's opulent new auditorium, the Carlos R. Norris Roundhouse Theater. The Grunhilde awards, or "Hildys", are given by the Grunhilde K. McGillicutty Foundation, to "The World's Sexiest People with the Least Sexy Names".

The First Lady, Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, was considered to be a contender for the Female Muslim Leader category, which was considered "in play" this year, since the unfortunate passing of Benazir Bhutto, who had won the award for 9 of the last 10 years, a record surpassed only by Tennessee's famous sheriff, Buford Pusser, the inspiration for the "Walking Tall" movies, who received 11 "Hildys" throughout his lifetime.

**Neosho, Missouri** A man identified as a self-proclaimed pastor in Newton County has been charged with sexually molesting a member of his church when she was a minor four to five years ago. 49 year old Randall Danny Russell, pastor of the Acts II Church, was arrested last Tuesday. He was charged Wednesday with second-degree statutory rape, second-degree statutory sodomy and child abuse.

Upon hearing the news, Neosho's small Catholic population was quoted as saying "See!? See? it's not just our guys!", to which the Protestant population shot back, "Yeah, well at least OUR pedophiles are heterosexual!"

In related news, Barack Obama is expected to launch his "At Least My Preacher Isn't A Pedophile" tour this week.

The Space-Time Continuum Is Feeling Kinda' Fragile Lately...

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Sun, 04 May 2008 19:07:00 +0000

Wanna Hear A Weird Story? No? Oh, Well, I'm gonna' write it anyway...

Years Ago, Sometime when I was in college, I think, or possibly just afterward, I got a call from someone, out of the Blue, who had contacted me in a fit of excitement to tell me (and perhaps everyone else he could reach) that he was standing in a parking lot, right next to a De Lorean, the Gull-winged sportscar from the 1980's most widely known as the time-travel vehicle of choice for one Marty McFly in Back to the Future. The De Lorean Motor Company (DMC) also inspired the name of the Rap group known as "Run DMC".

The DMC-12 was the only model ever produced by the Ireland-based company, and only about 6,500 of them are believed to still exist. So running into one of these in a restaurant parking lot is pretty unlikely.

Here's The Thing; I can't remember who it was that called me to tell me this. It was a male, around the same age as me, and was most likely either my Friend Corey, or Glenn, or maybe Jarrod.

Here's The Other Thing; This kind-of-slightly-interesting thing happened at least 5 or 6 years ago, and I hadn't given it a second thought for half a decade or more, but just recently, in the past 9 days or so, I have told this story TWICE.

My wife and I were talking about something-or-other while driving home, and somehow the conversation came around to this half-remembered story about getting an excited phone call from.. Who? My brother? or Corey, maybe? Might have been my brother, but I think it was Corey or Glenn or somebody. Then, just a couple of days after that, (Thursday, May 1st, to be exact) one of my co-workers mentioned the band Run DMC, and this led to me again recount this story of the time a guy I knew called me, out of nowhere, to let me know he was spitting-distance from this very rare and cinematically significant automobile. I didn't have to mention who it was that made the call, because my co-workers wouldn't have known them anyway, but again the thought nagged at me; I couldn't remember if it might have been my brother that called me.

3 days later, my cellphone beeply-beeped at me in the middle of the night as I lay in bed. I groped for it on the bedside table, and flipped it open to reveal a camera-phone picture of a De Lorean DMC-12, sent to me by my brother, completely out of the Blue! Underneath the picture was the brief, but evocative caption, "A Friggin Delorean!" (I only found out that that's not how "De Lorean" was spelled about halfway through writing this post.)

Now to make this even creepier, the message came after I watched a marathon of "Heroes" episodes from season 1, in which people are time-traveling, and predicting, painting, and altering the future all over the place. Was I "remembering" someone (maybe my brother?) calling me about seeing a De Lorean, or was I having a pre-cognitive vision of the future? After you watch 6 episodes of Heroes in 2 days, you start to think this way. Factor in the time-travel associations of the Back to the Future vehicle itself, and it really starts messing with your mind! I know I did get that call, and I am now relatively sure it wasn't my brother (What're the odds of seeing 2 of these things?), but it is nonetheless a really freaky coincidence!

Either that, or I am such a huge geek that the standard reaction upon anyone who knows me seeing a De Lorean is to instantly inform me of it.

Gotta go see Iron Man now, so... I'll see you in the future!

Censored!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:19:00 +0000

My previous post regarding Miley Cyrus's Non-Nude Photo was composed primarily at the Airport, where I do most of my internetting, but after leaving the airport I realized I couldn't remember which part of which version of the post I had used. Yes, I actually edit this garbage; you should see how bad it is beforehand!

Anyway, as I cruised homeward, I realized that I wasn't positive that the final draft didn't still have chunks of previous drafts left in it when I clicked the "publish" button, which could cause the post to not make any grammatical sense, and not be funny. Well, I couldn't have that, so, before going home, I swung by the public library and pulled up the page to make sure that I hadn't ruined a good idea by posting it half-finished.

As it turns out, I hadn't. The post was cohesively written, and made perfect sense, I looked forward to it drawing approving chuckles from the world. *BUT* - There were a couple of tiny Capitalization and punc.tuation errors that I decided to take care of anyway. I corrected those little problems, and went home to bed, happy in the knowledge that my post was perfect, and I needed only to wait for the approving comments to come rolling in, along with job offers from The Onion and Comedy Central.

But little did I know that forces beyond my control had manipulated my post, rendering it meaningless and unfunny while I slept.

That night, while at work, I checked up on the world's goings-on via my handy-dandy Mobile-Web-2.0-enabled cellphone, and there, in my RSS inbox was my post. I read it, and was astonished to find that there were words, and parts of words, missing! After all the double checking, I had still managed to publish an uncorrected version.

Then I realized that the only thing removed from my post was the word "naked", all three times I had used it. "She is obviously naked in that picture" became "She is obviously in that picture". "Covering up your nakedness" became "Covering up your ness" Your ness? Ness, is not funny, nakedness is! Darnit, Naked-censors, you ruined my funny! My lovingly crafted funny.

At first I blamed Google, because the blogspot.com domain where TDBotD is hosted is run by Google, and because, well, why not! Thoughts of defecting to WordPress or some smaller host flamed through my mind. I don't need your free hosting, Google, if you are going to ruin my funny while my back is turned!, I thought. I'll dump you like I dumped Flickr, see if I won't!

But then I thought, Waitta-dadgum-minutt! I posted the final version of that post from the Monteagle Public Library! From one of the most protected,censored, monitored and locked-down computers outside of the Pentagon!

To even use the computer at the Library you have to get a passcode from the circulation desk, which grants you a 59-minute and 59-second, and counting... session at the PC, which, like most library computers, was donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation around 2001, pre-loaded with Microsoft-approved software that may not be removed, manipulated, or tampered with in any way, ever! I am actually surprised the Library didn't pull a page from the Scummy Gas Station playbook, and make you ask for a key, which is attached to a tire iron, or a baseball bat, or a cinder block, so you don't run off with it.

After getting your passcode and taking your seat In the children's section, next to The Bearenstein Bears Eat Judy Blume And Some Fried Worms, you may then use the computer, provided you don't need to access any information on a CD, DVD, FlashDrive, or anything else other than a 1.44 MB Floppy Disk. (It was good enough for your Old Man back in 1996, and it'll dang well be good enough for you!)

You also have to click on an agreement page when you first sign on that says "Even though we make every attempt to block any information about nakedness, guns, drugs, liberals, communism, unicorns or other inappropriate material from this computer, the information available on the internets is very, very naughty, and if you are the sort of person that doesn't want to see naked pictures of Miley Cyrus's right shouder, then you should probably turn back now, and if you are scarred for life by a Paris Hilton Hardee's Commercial or a Rap Video, then you can't say we didn't try to warn you."

...Or something like that; I didn't read the stupid thing, I just clicked the "OK" button under something about "a claim on your immortal soul".

Besides, I didn't have to worry about any of that legal mumbo-jumbo, I just needed to borrow the computer so I could zip off a quick story about Naked Pictures of a 15-year-old. From the Children's section of the Public Library. What could be wrong with that?

When I put it like that, I guess I should just be glad that I wasn't tackled to the ground by FBI agents in the parking lot, and forcibly sterilized with a Tazer before being put in a squad car with a special flashing "Kiddie Perv on Board" sign, and shown "what they do to your kind in lockup".

Anyway, I have now re-inserted all the not-really-dirty words that the library computer removed, and if you were wondering why that post seemed a little disjointed, well, now you know... The Rest Of The Story.

Good Day!

photo by TimmyGUNZ

Irony Is...

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:31:00 +0000

Irony is watching a guy, wearing THIS HAT, count out enough quarters, nickels and dimes to buy a $2 bag of Fritos, and then wait around for his 2 cents change.

And Yes, I did ask him afterward if I could photograph his hat. Hopefully he does not have internet access.

Miley Cyrus Shows Some Ankle; May Have Gone In Public Without Veil!

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Gibson) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:11:00 +0000

Miley Cyrus, 15 year old Super-mega-star of stage, screen, and song, was recently photgraphed by Annie Leibowitz for Vanity Fair magazine. One of the photographs featured the young actress/singer/mullet-heiress dressed in only a satin bedsheet, which has skinophobic Modesty Advocates across the country up in arms. Or, up in sleeves, anyway. Long, modesty-preserving sleeves.

For comment, The Daily Blog of the Day turned to an outraged parent named Bob Meyers, who asked that his name not be used in publication.

"Yeah, I was pretty disgusted", said Bob Meyers. "I mean she is very obviously naked in that picture, except for, you know.. the fabric covering up the entire front of her body. But aside from that, she is totally naked! If you kind of squint a little, and hold the magazine at the right angle, you can pretty much see the outline of one of her.. um.. you-know-whats.. quite clearly, unless maybe that's just a wrinkle in the fabric there.

"I would have thought [father, and former Chippendale's dancer] Billy-Ray [Cyrus] would have raised her better than that! I mean you can see her whole shoulder, and back, and everything! Except for that sheet, I mean. But if you think that wrapping up your nakedness in a couple of yards of fabric makes it somehow OK to be photographed like that, then you've got another thing coming!"

One Blog, mediabistro's FishbowlNY, turned to blogger and professional photo editor Rob Haggart for comment. His thoughts on the photo shoot were, "You point a camera at anybody and they start to take their clothes off".

We here at TDBotD are pretty sure he is wrong on this point. However, look for Nikon to begin using this as their new slogan in their Summer marketing campaign, aimed at selling cameras to males between the ages of 12 and 89.