Okay, well, I didn’t post yesterday because I was coming to New York City. I’m here, but that’s not what I’m writing about. I’m writing about this comment:

Instead of movable type, try finding a licensed mover that knows how to type!

This was on a blog entry about Movable Type, the blogging software. The commenter included their business URL, a moving company.

Unbelievable. Anyway, more about New York later!

I’m pretty sure Sheboygan, WI is a fairly normal town. You’d never know it though, because sheboyganscan is full of zany reports from the local police channel.

• 26th & pershing – male won’t pay, won’t get out of taxi; driver left b/c he’s scared of the black man
• bovine? on the roadway. sheriff asked whether it was just 1 cow or a herd; dispatcher said 5; he’s not sure if that constitutes a herd
• [8:14] 7th & erie – small boy may have been locked in car trunk for misbehaving [8:23] officer reports that it’s a halloween witch doll
• kwik trip, 1618 calumet dr – 6yo stole pack of gum; mom insists on having officer respond
• fleet farm – man pumped $20.02 worth of gas, was asked for id to buy cigarettes, became indignant & wants gas siphoned back out
• 10xx erie ave – domestic disturbance; drunk woman wants to go to sleep, drunk man keeps kicking bedroom door
• walmart south – town of sheboygan 1st responder found guy w/ official jacket; guy says he bought it @ goodwill & won’t give it back
• 8xx n water st – woman has foreign object stuck in hoo-ha

…and that’s just the past month!

Remember, each of those is an actual 911 call.

I just heard of Jonathan Lee Riches. This man cracks me up. I heard about him from his lawsuit against the Gosselins and Octomom, but I also discovered a partial (?) listing of his lawsuits which include the following gems:

• Against Starbucks: “Plaintiff also alleges that Defendant Schultz is friends with Michael Vick, and that Defendants want to burn him with hot coffee.”
• Against the IOC: “Plaintiff further alleges that he ran 26.2 miles in 1 hour 58 minutes , but the defendants won’t allow him to join the Olympics because he is White. Plaintiff also alleges that defendants forbade him from racing at Churchill Downs and sent Tonya Harding to break his knee caps.”
• Against Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber: “Plaintiff also alleges that defendant is rounding up all the Teds in the world to hurt him, including Ted Kennedy, Ted Bundy, Ted Turner, Bill and Ted, Ted Nugent, Teddy Bears, and Teddy Rumpskin.”
• Against Barry Bonds: “Plaintiff also claims that Barry Bonds sold steroids to nuns and gave mustard gas to Saddam Hussein as part of the oil-for-food scandal.”

That’s just a sampling. The guy seems to really have it in for OJ Simpson, BTW.

FEMS reports a suspicious package in front of 1600 PA Ave NW (White House). The Secret Service are handling the situation (a Camera bag). The road closure is 1500 and 1600 Pa Ave NW at this time.

This just made me laugh. Really? 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the White House? It’s only the most famous address in the country. It’s a camera bag, some tourist left their shit around! And, erm, nobody is surprised by the road closure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, right? Because it’s kinda been closed a while now!

So, earlier today, Brent Spiner was talking about auctioning off his 400th Tweet. Instead, he posted a Groucho Marx quote. Then:
“You can never go wrong with a good Groucho line. But, I will be auctioning the 500th. Best offer I got-$10. Not nearly enough.”

When I saw this, I posted:
@brentspiner I’ll give you $100 if you’ll tweet me and say hi…but you’ll have to give me your address to send you the money

Literally one minute later, he said:
@etoile Very generous…for an opening bid. Let me think about the parameters. I’ll let everyone know what you’re bidding on soon.

So…I think I might owe Brent Spiner $100. Ha!

Also, one friend immediately said:
@etoile You are a fucking genius.

And a moment later, another friend:
@etoile omg you win!

So that was kinda awesome.

OH. MY. GOD.

I have never been so humiliated in my LIFE. By MYSELF.

For three weeks I’ve been without my debit card. This means no cash, of course, it’s an ATM card too. I looked everywhere. Every purse, my bedroom, my car, every pair of pants, even my lunchbox. I borrowed cash from friends. Every couple of days I’d search everything again. Even my wallet, in case I was really stupid. Still, nothing.

I was reluctant to call and get a new one because they would have to block the old one. All of my automatic payments come from that card, and I had the entire number/expiration/CVV2 memorized, and it came with a great PIN – 2048, the number of bytes in 2kb.

I can tell you the PIN now because the card is blocked. This morning I gave up and called the bank. They said it would take 7-10 business days to get a new card; if any automatic payments went to the old card, they would fail because it was blocked. I hung up, disappointed but resigned to my fate.

15 minutes ago, I stood up to take a break. Suddenly, an image popped into my mind. Of my wallet, and the pocket on the back of it. And how I never EVER use that pocket. I pulled the wallet from my rear pocket and put my fingers inside…and they touched cool, hard plastic.

My debit card was in my rear pants pocket for three weeks. Three weeks of tearing the house apart, asking people to help me look, putting everything on my credit card, borrowing cash…all that time, it was with me.

I could die right now.

Of course, I called the bank right away, but it was too late. I was hoping they might do a batch process at the end of the day, but no – it’s immediate. You call, they block, it’s a dead piece of plastic. Which is what I now have, in the pocket of my wallet where I never look.

I couldn’t blush more red if I tried.

Got another comment on my I Hate Hollister post, from someone with the username “girlygirljen94″:

welll i think that u just dont have enough money to get the clothes. I LOVE ABERCROMBIE & FITCH all my friends shop there. 9i mean like its a must. i think that u are totally wrong and i dont like it.i think that just because you can get it u dont like it.

My reply:

Gee, you know what? You’re totally right. It’s all about money. Life is about shopping. Why didn’t anybody tell me this before I started studying world peace?!

You’re 14, honey. Come back and talk to me in 10 years.

Her comeback:

thats right

*headdesk*

I have to say though, that post is a never-ending source of amusement. I should get a better stats package so I know what search terms people use to find that post.

So :A: and I are talking about the cat, and how she’s playing with a little catnip mouse, who we call Mickey the Insult Mouse. Mickey has a very dirty mouth, and Yum Yum has to smack him around from time to time. So she was poking at him, and then she sat on him. I’m on the bed, the cat is a couple of feet away, and :A: is in the ensuite bathroom.

Me – Blah blah she’s playing with Mickey
:A: – Yeah blah blah she likes him
*pause*
Me – Yeah now she’s sitting on him
:A: – She’s cleaning him

And then there was a pause while I tried to figure out what she had said. I was surprised that she would have said that…how is she cleaning him? And then a nano-second later, I realized what she said. (Perverts will know where I’m going with this…others should click the period here.)

Today I went to Disneyland by myself. I was going to take today off and go tomorrow, but I read that MLK Day is coming up and it will be getting busy, so I figured I’d go sooner rather than later. It was fun, and I will write more about it tomorrow. Right now I am just writing to share a funny thing that just happened to me.

I decided I wanted to have a drink, so I went over to the 7-11 two doors down and bought a bottle of wine. I checked to make sure it had the twist-off top. I paid for it and brought it back to the room. After peeling back the outer wrapping, I discovered…it was not a twist-off top after all, but a regular cork, buried in the bottle! Remember, I’m on vacation…of course I have corkscrews at home but nothing here. I tried feebly poking at it a little bit but of course the cork didn’t budge. My wife suggested I take it down to the restaurant in the lobby, which has a poorly-stocked bar but was sure to at least have a corkscrew. So I took off my pajamas, got dressed again, and brought down the bottle; there was a corkscrew right there on the bar but I didn’t want to use it without permission. The host asked from halfway across the room if he could help me, and I beckoned him over. “I bought this at the store, and I thought it had a twist-off top, but it doesn’t! Can I borrow your corkscrew?” He handed it to me, and I proceeded to fumble with it…because I don’t actually know how to use one! He saw the trouble I was having and kindly did it for me, even removing the cork from the screw and giving it back to me.

So I now have 1.5L of 18 proof wine from some local winery…hey, I said I bought it at 7-11, right? It was only $7.50! Now I can actually enjoy it, because it’s OPEN. Thank goodness.