Although it is a cute one.
Let’s try again.
Having read Into the Drowning Deep last week, I was primed to accept this image as a canonical and accurate representation of the Little Mermaid.
I wonder if Copenhagen would be interested in patching up their famous statue?
I think I used to be that guy. I just want to slap him now.
In more cheerful news, Milo Yiannopoulos has fired his lawyer and will represent himself in his suit against Simon & Schuster. It’s gonna be great!
He was an indefatigable kind of guy, always reliable and calm and disciplined in his criticisms of creationism. Now this long-time contributor to the Panda’s Thumb has died. He’s going to be missed.
In case you’ve only known him through his writings, his last name was pronounced like “Hoppy”.
My brother Jim just had to remind me of a fishing trip we took in our youth, when my father took all of us out on a charter boat out of Westport, and my sister Caryn got seasick and puked in her hat, and my dad caught a big ol’ 40 pound king salmon, it was a marvelous outing, many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!
Anyway, he only wrote to tell me that the boat we were on, the Nyoda, is in the news.
Bold said the port will pay Global Diving and Salvage $80,000 to remove them, 90% of that will be reimbursed by the state’s Derelict vessel removal program. “The owners of both vessels have abandoned them and the port has ceased both. The vessels were offered for bid at [a] public auction, however, no bids were received.”
Once they are removed it’s not likely that either boat will see the water again. Bold continued, “Both have deteriorated hulls and are leaking. The port, as the marina operator, is responsible for removal and disposal.”
Dang. That boat could be a metaphor for me.
Oregon just made it legal to have self-service gas stations. Much of the rest of the country is probably simply surprised that there was anywhere where you had to have a service station attendant pump gas for you. A few Oregonians are freaking out at the change.
“I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62, native Oregonian…..I say NO THANKS! I don’t want to smell like gasoline!” one woman wrote in a comment on a survey the new station posted Dec. 29.
You put the nozzle in the hole and you squeeze the handle. You’re welcome!
Of course, I have some special expertise here. When I was a kid, my dad worked at a gas station — just a gas station, no mini-mart, just a bay where you could get your oil changed or tires rotated, with a row of pumps out front, and I’d help out on weekends. You’d pull up, roll your window down, and I’d come running out with a chipper smile, and you’d tell me what you’d want — “fill ‘er up with $5 worth of premium!”, which, actually, would be enough to fill up a big tank — and I’d ask “Check your oil? Wash your windshield?”. I guess it was convenient for drivers to have someone tend to your iron chariot for you, but it was kind of soul-deadening for the attendant. Also, it was just required that we do that stuff, it’s not as if anyone ever tipped you for great window-washing or oil-checking.
I don’t think anyone should mourn the loss of jobs, or the rise of old people dousing themselves with gasoline. The former: those are lousy jobs. The latter: what kind of klutz are you? Also, everyone in Oregon who has driven out of state is totally familiar with self-service.
Although, I have to say, here in Minnesota in January I wouldn’t mind if could sit in the car and have someone else stand out there in the bitter cold and fierce winds and fumble with cold metal. But then that would be an even crappier job for someone than what I experienced in temperate Washington state.
Woke up to find our car battery was dead, which required fumbling about with a jumpstarter in -30°C conditions. If you find some shattered, brittle shards of frozen fingers lying about, those are mine.
BoingBoing has a good summary of yesterday’s lethal swatting incident. It’s a messy and really stupid story, so I’ll give my even more abbreviated summary:
Party 1 (going by some dumbass pseudonym) gets into a dumbass argument about a video game with Party 2 (another dumbass pseudonym). Party 1 dares Party 2 to swat him, and sends him an address of another, innocent party. Party 2 then asks Party 3 (dumbass pseudonym, you get the drill) to phone in a kidnapping/murder story to the police, because he has a history of pulling dumbass stunts like that. Cops roll up to innocent house, innocent, unarmed man answers, dumbass cop murders him on the spot.
Parties 1, 2, and 3 are all accomplices in murder, and deserve lots of jail time. Trigger happy cop is an incompetent who must at least be fired, but also deserves jail time, as does the entire police force that fosters this kind of hyper-violent form of ‘peace-keeping’.
Actual predictions: Party 3 is such a flagrant ass that he’s going to get a long sentence. Parties 1 and 2 will get slapped, but probably not as much as they deserve. Trigger-happy cop will get a paid vacation and the respect and honor of his fellow thugs. Players of violent video games will continue to be dumbasses, and violent video game publishers will make more profits selling games to dumbasses. And the world will continue to spin about its axis.
Innocent man will still be dead.