I'm all paid up for another year. Eighty-eight dollars gets me a sticker I can put on my car so that the "enforcers" will know I've paid my extortion money so that they won't drive me off the side of the road and take my car away.

Yikes. That metaphor works so well, it's scary.

I got a haircut last week.  That's not usually a big deal, but this was an especially bad haircut.

Let me back up.  I usually keep my hair pretty long.  Five or six inches is normal, and combed back.  It's all most of my co-workers and many of my friends have ever seen.  A couple weeks ago, I came down with an impressively bad case of dermatitis ( Read more... )

Every time I start to have hope for the future of the human race, I need to look no further than our public school system for some really clutch idiocy.  This time it happened right here in the greater Seattle area.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/316618_youtube22.html
( Read more... )

Student arrested and expelled for making an Counter-Strike map of his school.

I... I don't have any words to describe how stupid this is. Of everybody involved in this story, the one who does not need to be smacked is the FPS-playing student.

( Read more... )

Each time the price at the pump goes up a nickel, I know about it. It's always in the news around here because Western WA and OR have some of the most expensive gasoline in the U.S (as I write this, premium is in the $3.55/gallon range at the Chevron station near work). But there's a hidden downside to high prices that never hits the media ( Read more... )

A new article from the U.S. top automobile insurers lists the top ten cities for automobile theft, and Washington holds the number 6 (Seattle) and number 9 (Yakima) spots on the list ( Read more... )

Said this morning in a press conference at the White House:

"I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their job" -- President G.W. Bush

Yeah, I have trouble following my beliefs sometimes too.

Sandie Olosky was fired in 2005 from her job as a King County Metro bus driver for what is just about the only possible firing offense for a bus driver: unsafe driving. But everybody deserves a second chance, right? And what do Metro investigators know anyway ( Read more... )

I've got to give the Washington Legislature credit. Sometimes, in their blundering around, they manage to not completely screw things up.

I refer, of course, to the act of not giving away $300M of taxpayer money to a private company with no strings attached.

( Read more... )

I got a postcard in my mailbox the other day from USPS advertising some service or other. The card has a commissioned Cathy comic on it, and has the line "Get more convenience out of your Post Office" printed on it. Cathy hasn't been interesting to me since, oh, when was it first syndicated? But still, points for trying ( Read more... )