Would You Believe 3 Boys Scouts and a Wagon?

This is an amazingly exciting piece of movie history. They are remaking Get Smart with Steve Carell playing Maxwell Smart! AWESOME!

Here is the official Get Smart website.

(Thanks DAD for the heads up!)

This is Amazing! Absolutely Amazing!

StreetWars is a 3 week long, 24/7, watergun assassination tournament that has already taken place in New York City, Vancouver, Vienna, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, and is now coming to Paris in September 2007.

At the start of the game you will receive a manila envelope containing the following:

• A picture of your intended target(s)
• The home address of your intended target(s)
• The work address of your intended target(s)
• The name of your intended target(s)
• Contact information of your intended target(s)

Upon receipt of these items, your (or your team's) mission is to find and kill (by way of water gun, water balloon or super soaker) your target(s).

You can hunt your target down any way you see fit; you can pose as a delivery person and jack them when they open the door, disguise yourself and take them out on the street, etc.

If you are successful in your assassination attempt, the person you killed will give you their envelope and the person they were supposed to kill becomes your new target. This continues until you work yourself through all the players and retrieve the envelope with your (or your team's) picture(s) and name(s). Then you win. Cash…but first live in fear.

Letter From A Museum

I StumbledUpon this.

Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20078

Dear Mr. Williams,

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled "93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post...Hominid skill." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that is represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.

Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be "Malibu Barbie." It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-homonids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Pliecene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.

The latter finding is certainly is one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

1. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
2. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to product wildly inaccurate results.

Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name Austraopithecus Spiff-Arino.

Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your propsed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your Newport backyard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your first letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating fillifitation of ferrious ions in a structural matrix that makes the excellenct juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the decpetive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,
Harvey Rowe
Chief Curator - Antiquities

The Best Burrito . . .

is a FREE BURRITO!

In case you aren't aware Chipotle is the ONLY way to go!

Today they gave away free burritos in exchange for canned goods. Amazing! Guess what I am having for lunch AND dinner? . . . this . . .

Friday Night - Poker with Strike

This Friday night the Strikethurman crew threw Josh Mick a going-away party. (Yes, we know he is only going away for 6 weeks, but that is a long time without the Mancub, plus we will take pretty much any excuse to get together, play cards and drink good beer.)

Here are some pics. Seanster dominated for a while, but Mark eventually won. Overall, great night.

Just for Chey

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

"I'd like to see a nature film where an eagle swoops down and pulls a fish out of a lake, and then maybe he's flying along, low to the ground, and the fish pulls a worm out of the ground. Now that's a documentary!"

"It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was going to fight in another fight, away from the first fight."

"For mad scientists who keep brains in jars, here's a tip: Why not add a slice of lemon to each jar, for freshness."

"I think there should be something in science called the "reindeer effect." I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say, "Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect."

"Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing."

Those Sad Little Koopas

Missed My Plane By 1 Minute

Me and this dude found out that we were on the same flight. We fought through hour long security lines, began sprinting for our plane. We were intense. He was hollering for people to move, I was knocking babies out of the way we both ran breathless up to the gate counter. I could see that the plane was still attached to the gate. The man at the counter told us that we were 6 seconds away from him releasing the plane. So he begins to type away and then he smiles to himself and looks up to the two of us and declares, "I have one seat available."

Yep. The other guy got the seat. If I had ditched the old man, I would have made my flight. Dang it. But it all worked out. I sat and enjoyed a Sam Adams.

Hey, I Found This

Yeah, that is right. I found this on my good friend Allyssa's myspace page. Awesome pic from my third year in St. Joe. That is Cheyenne, Brandon and myself. I don't remember what we were doing or about to do, but I have a feeling that it was loud. (Again, look at the skinniness.)

Singles Nationwide

This is from National Geographic. The blue dots are places where Single Men outnumber the Single Women and the orange dots are the opposite. Interesting the farther West you go, the fewer women there are. Good thing I am trying to head East!

So True . . .

Nuff Said

Pearls Before Breakfast

Interesting article from the Washington Post.

He emerged from the Metro at the L'Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The violinist was world-renowed Joshua Bell. He was playing a violin worth over $3.5 million. He made a total of $32.17 over the course of an hour.

Interesting article. Would you recognize beauty? Would you stop?

A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand.

"I had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement."

Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.

You can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.

"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."

So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs.

"Evan is very smart!"

I Knew It

TODAY: OPENING DAY!

This afternoon at 2:05 PM, Mountain Standard Time, I will be enjoying the gorgeous Coors Field Stadium and rooting loudly for MY COLORADO ROCKIES!

This is How My Boys Will Be Raised

Pee Wee Hockey Brawl - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Star Wars Stamps

AWESOME - USPSJEDIMASTER.COM

Day to Remember

How Would You Spend $85M?

This is from cnnmoney.com:

(Fortune Magazine) -- Brad Duke, 34, a manager for five Gold's Gym franchises in Idaho, pocketed a lump sum of $85 million after winning a $220 million Powerball jackpot in 2005. He spent the first month of his new life assembling a team of financial advisors. His goal: to use his winnings to become a billionaire. Here's what Duke has done with his money so far.

• $45 million: Safe, low-risk investments such as municipal bonds




• $35 million: Aggressive investments like oil and gas and real estate
• $1.3 million: A family foundation
• $63,000: A trip to Tahiti with 17 friends
• $125,000: Mortgage retired on his 1,400-square-foot house
• $18,000: Student-loan repayment
• $65,000: New bicycles, including a $12,000 BMC road bike
• $14,500: A used black VW Jetta
• $12,000: Annual gift to each family member

Four Day Weekend!

I have been granted today off in celebration of George Washington's Birthday, which I will celebrate by finishing a biography on his life called His Excellency. Also, tomorrow you will not find me at my desk at Humanscale. 4 days! All to myself! I have some work to do, some bills to pay, some budgets to do, some work for GraceGun, some downloading to do, some sleeping to do, but overall - I don't have anything to do! Oh, and the high today is 60 degrees! These are my celebratory pics! (I am going to shave today too, I look like a fool.)