u235

Little green muffin
Pistachio and walnut
Sweet nutty goodness

So I eat Clif Bar's. Let me qualify that, I used to eat Clif Bars. There's only two flavors I buy: Crunchy Peanutbutter and Lemon Poppy. The reason I only buy those two flavors is because:

1. I can't eat anything with chocolate in it, so that means Chocolate Almond Fudge, Chocolate Brownie, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch, Cookies n Cream (chocolate cookie), and Cool Mint Chocolate are all out. For that matter Peanut Toffee Buzz is out because I can't have stimulants (Green Tea) neither.

2. Some of the other flavors are just gross. You could choke them down if you had to, but no one buys them. The fact that I see dust on them in the stores affirms this fact. Apricot is one example, Cranberry Apple Cherry, Black Cherry Almond, Blueberry Crisp are others. I've tried to like them, but when I get to the end of the bar I'm forced to toss the last few bites because I just can't stand it any more.

3. I've been fooled into buying Banana Nut Bread but... it has chocolate in it too.

Now my favorite, the one I could always eat happily, was Lemon Poppy. Great flavor. I know I'm not the only one who enjoyed it because it was always the first flavor to sell out in the supermarket. In fact (at least in my area) you could almost never lay your hands on more than two or three at a time. So it came as a huge surprise when they discontinued it. I mean what's the marketing strategy here? That if the vast majority of their customers are buying a particular flavor they need to eliminate it to force them to eat other flavors? Because there's a backlog of Apricot or Blueberry Crisp rotting in the warehouses perhaps?

I emailed Clif, not all that politely either, basically asking them why they decided to punt my favorite flavor. I also mentioned that if they didn't bring it back I'd be forced to become a full-time Larabar customer. I didn't get a reply.

A friend of mine emailed them nicely and got a reply - although the information value of the response was essentially worthless:

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to contact us here at Clifbar&Co. Lemon Poppyseed Clif Bars have been discontinued and we no longer have any in stock. I will gladly log your vote to bring it back. In the meantime is there another flavor that you are interested in trying? If so please reply to this email with your mailing address.

Take care,
Jeff - Consumer Service
800-884-5254 ext.105

www.clifbar.com

Well Jeff, since no one replied to my email input here's my answer. No - there aren't any other damn flavors I'm interested in. And I'm pretty tired of eating only crunchy peanutbutter so yeah, I'm moving to Larabars now.

Glhf.

AT&T Statement on NSA Issue

San Antonio, Texas, June 27, 2006

At AT&T, we vigorously protect our customers' privacy and only share information as specifically authorized by the law.

The news media have carried reports alleging that AT&T is participating in an unlawful NSA terrorist surveillance program. Unfortunately, the law does not permit AT&T to respond to those allegations.

The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause "exceptionally grave harm to national security" and would violate both civil and criminal statutes. Under these circumstances, AT&T is not able to respond to such allegations.

What we can say is AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers' privacy and would not provide customer information to any government agency except as specifically authorized under the law.

Yes there's nothing like getting your conservative sanctioned viewpoint from home-schooled kids. Clearly they're my favorite source for expert opinions.

Bored? Have several hours to kill reading witticisms from the Flat-Earth Einsteins? Go here:

http://www.conservapedia.com/

Warning: the stupidity factor is near biblical proportions.

There have always been "dirty" coaches. These are the types that encourage their players to do more than just mentally intimidate the other team, but actually go so far as to injure them. For the most part it's accepted, especially in full contact sports like lacrosse and football. The soccer-fairies notwithstanding, you expect a lot less deliberate injuries in other sports like basketball and baseball. They happen, yes, but it's generally not anything like hockey where blood is part of the institution.

Kiddie leagues are also not without their dastardly types, although it's not too often you hear news about a teammate being asked to take out one of their own. The case in point is one little league coach that offered to pay one of his team $25 for beaning the autistic boy on the team, ostensibly to keep him off the field.

Before I continue with my opinion on this topic, I'd like to remind the reader where they are - consider it a public service announcement or "station identification". This is World of Suck, where our opinions are, usually, slightly off color.

But back to the story: Coach offers kid money to bean teammate, kid gets thwacked with a few balls but nothing serious, people find out, case goes to court and the coach is slapped with 1 to 6 years in jail.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering $25 to an 8-year-old boy to hit his mildly autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified at trial that, on Downs' instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another that hit him in the ear.

Of all the things I have an issue with it's offering the teammate money. To be honest I have a problem with the whole "everyone needs to be equal" bullshit. Realistically the parents of the autistic kid should have had the common sense not to force their child onto other people. Following that, I'm sorry, sidelining ineffective members so the team can win isn't really all that bad in my book. It's happened for years and fifty years ago, the autistic kid never would have been let on the team to begin with.

The better way to handle the situation would have been for the parents to keep their kid out for the high-pressure game, and if not, the coach should have asked them to. If that wasn't an option he should have talked to the kid and asked him to sit out for the good of the team, and then in the last resort talk to the team about minimizing the weak link by having the rest of them play harder.

I don't outright condone his asking a teammate to take him out with a ball, but then again in the grand scheme of things he was only trying to do what was best for the whole team after being saddled with an ineffective player. And yes, money should never have entered into it.

But one to six years? I don't think so.

"We will not surrender. We will be martyred, but we will not surrender," cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi told GEO television, a private channel. "We are more determined now."

[...]

[Government spokesman Tariq] Azim told Dawn News Television that Ghazi's talk about martyrdom was a bluff, noting that his brother, chief cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, had said the same thing and then was arrested trying to sneak out of the complex disguised as a woman in a full-length burqa and high heels.

It's nothing less than amusing that an uber-masculine religion, one that feels their women need ambulatory, full-body tents, can be reduced to this. So where's the macho posturing? I guess it's pretty difficult to manage when you're trying to sneak away from your own embarrassing arrest in high heels and a burqa.

One would think that to be caught dressing as a woman (heels included) for any muslim man should result in instant excommunication (or the approximate for that religion). I can't recall any Japanese officials trying to flee the country in a Kimono, any southern generals in a full bell skirt with hoops, or ... well I guess there isn't much camouflage to be offered by the majority of African tribes.

So what exactly gives here? Do they still get their virgins in heaven if they're shot while trying to escape in this "disguise"? Do they have to give the burqa back to the woman they forced it on to begin with? Do they have to be directly related to borrow it in the first place? Or are there special "manly" versions used just for these occasions?

It's pretty fucking weak that any man would dress up as a woman to escape capture. Especially from ultra-zelots who regard women as sub-human.

The just desserts would be instant castration after capture... then heck, let him go - he could use the burqa full time after that.

MsWord. It's the veritable document standard for most of the world. Well, for material that needs to retain its flexibility and editibility for content (otherwise the unreserved emperor is Acrobat). Over the years this app has become the King Kitchen Sink of features. Spell checkers were de rigueur in the early 80's. Grammar in the late 80's. Thesaurus? Check. Fonts? Out the kazoo. Tables and bullets, templates and clip art, macro's and embedded links Word has so much... junk.

Most of these features aren't used. A sane user never would, much less someone who wants to hand off responsibility for the document and never see it again. But my coworker came up with a gem of an idea for a feature that would skyrocket Word to unfathomable popularity. Indeed this is a feature that would hardly take any work whatsoever. This feature is the "Bullshit Meter".

Utilizing Word's already useless grammar checker and some smorgasbord of the statistics and other fabulous (rarely used) features like the summary generator, Word would estimate the percentage of bullshit in the document and produce a true/false value as to whether the document was actually worth reading.

Think of the value! Already Word can summarize the document for you... but if it were to tell you, with a single mouse click, if it was worth the next hour or two of your life? Now that's priceless.

Actual quote overheard amongst coders:

"And this is what we'll call polymorphism at the complier level"

Brother, I feel your pain.

There's so much discussion lately about germ spreading and contamination that sanitizing products have proliferated faster than nukes during the Cold War. However the top of the heap for 'personal grottiness' these days has nothing to do with bathrooms or even flu epidemics. It's cell phone schmutz.

It's bad enough when you have to rub the display of your cell on your clothes to make it visible enough to read, but the overall nastiness of having to borrow someone else's phone is enough to make the ordinary person break out in hives. Even passably clean cells have a build-up of biological detritus in the corners that inclines the borrower to want to grab a pair of latex gloves before utilizing the device. ...And then you get to put it next to your face.

Yummy.

Of course, I suppose, there's the solution of the pleather (yes *pleather*) and vinyl phone condoms. This cell-sac is usually donated during the purchase of the expensive tidbit of electronics by an overly grateful vendor as a token of gratitude to the buyer. But it's far from ideal. Given the shallowness of the buttons the plastic inhibits ease of use, encourages mis-dials and registers long term users as either 'anal' or 'nerdy' (generally both).

One imagines that, given the invention of stainless steel, perhaps science one day will provide us with the miracle of grot-free plastics. Perhaps even a mutation on the organisms that eat oil slick off the waves during spills (hands-fee anyone?).

Until then however? Keep your phone recharged, and scrub well between uses on the denim. And remember to wash your pants.

There is an as-of-yet-unrecognized force in the universe that trumps virtually all of the "basic forces". As a refresher here are the four basic forces:

- Gravity
- Radioactive Decay (weak atomic)
- Nuclear (within the nucleus or strong atomic)
- Electromagnetism

I will now introduce a force, against which all others (well perhaps not Nuclear) pale. It is a common force, and one that many of us have seen in practice and yet failed to identify.

This force is the attraction between pet hair and an LCD screen.

I defy anyone, anyone at all, to be able to trump the attraction between a strand of squiggly fur and an active display. You might be able to move it around on the screen, but it is beyond human capacity to actually *remove* the hair.

Like many great scientific discoveries there may be little practical application. However I take great solace in the fact that I have brought this phenomena out into the light where others may recognize that, when faced with cat fur on the screen, you might as well just live with it because there's no fucking way you're getting it off.

Thank you.

... apparently some people can give better head than Paris. Well ok, most anyone can, but it's not all the time that the someone is a balding old asshole.

WASHINGTON, July 2 — President Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. was the act of a liberated man — a leader who knows that, with 18 months left in the Oval Office and only a dwindling band of conservatives still behind him, he might as well do what he wants.

Actually the press is wrong. He *always* did what he wanted to, and fuck the rest of us.

Indeed, to administration critics, the commutation was a subversion of justice, an act of hypocrisy by a president who once vowed that anyone in his administration who broke the law would “be taken care of.”

Wrong again, the president never said *how* they'd be taken care of. They just didn't get the drift. He always takes care of his buddies.

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” he said. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.”

Respect means you don't overrule the will and laws of our country. Of course if you don't feel that you're above the law then all bets are off.

Fuck you, you fat fuck.

What does it take and whom do I have to pay (or alternatively murder) to get a spray bottle that will actually *spray* when it is pointed at the target? I mean gods, this transcends all activities, be it killing weeds or cleaning a carpet, one needs to point the damn thing at what you're using it for right? And when pointed, and hand-crampingly pumped it needs to function, correct?

I'm of the mind that it's some Machiavellian plot, wherein the chemical manufacturers deliberately create a system that ensure you can no longer use the product with any dexterity once the contents are down by 50%. This, in turn, leads to the massive proliferation of half-empty cleaners, solvents, killers and other skin-dissolving gunk piled into a Mount Fuji of toxic liquids under the sink (remember to child lock those cabinets parents!).

Admittedly the bottles are cheap and don't pollute the environment (other than with the chemicals they contain). And likely, any improvement in the design may raise the price for the consumer. But then again the consumer will actually be able to use *all* of the product, and not just half.

So then, how hard is it to create a system that would permit spraying when the bottle is tipped at a slight angle... you know, to actually *aim* at the offending source? Some sort of shrinking bladder within the bottle, somewhat less expensive than what they use for fuel tanks on fighter jets, might be an idea. Or a spring-loaded diaphragm that kept the contents under pressure?

Are you idiot manufactures out there listening? I'm giving out these ideas for free here.

Lets say that those ideas are too costly to manufacture. A ~very cheap alternative would be to put one of those little plastic ball-n-tube widgets on the outside of the bottle, the type you see on shipping containers that need to be kept upright. The manufacturer could put marks on the tube to let the user know when the bottle was tipped too far to be effective. Cheap, simple, fairly foolproof, yes?

Regardless, there is nothing more damn annoying than using a bottle of crap which you have to pump by hand and not having it perform. Like a limp boyfriend, you either need to get him an aid to assist his performance, or dump him for some new guy altogether....