evidence of a recession

you know that the recession is in full swing when female college students have to install a dancing pole in their room to help pay for some of their tuition:

considering the income levels, i would think college guys would be a bad target audience but i’m not in marketing so i can’t say for sure.

nipply monday linkage

im sure northeasterners mock us for feeling cold with 45 degree temperatures, but it was a little chilly this morning only because it had been in the mid-60’s last week. here’s a couple links to help warm your computer up this morning to reach the manufacturer SOT* (suggested operating temperature):

-> vallejo native cc sabathia signed a $23,000,000/yr contract to pitch for the ny yankees this off-season. the median us salary in 2008 was $61,500/yr. at that income, you have to work 373 years to earn what cc makes in one year. here’s the espn calculator to help make sense of it all [espn.com]

-> amidst all the inauguration hubbub last week, george bush issued a farewell letter to the american public [the onion]

-> i’m going to make this ‘bacon loaf’ at the next potluck-style gathering that i go to [holy taco]

-> a whistleblower said that the nsa pretty much spies on everyone, especially reporters. the eff has started a ssd (surveillance self-defense project) to help educate the public on how to prevent being a victim of the nsa’s tactics [eff]

*SOT is a made-up term. lame…i know.

album covers done up in legos

once marcos can be trusted to not eat the legos or hide them in weird places around the house, then i will be busting out the lego sets I used to have and instruct him in proper building techniques. hopefully this catapult him to the highest reaches of intellectual stardom, much like myself.

a group has recreated some album covers with lego figures here [flickr]

here’s a good one:

here’s the real one:

president obama says ‘six’ in chinese

i’d much rather trust someone as chill as him than someone who gives the shocker on camera. Although, after further research, it turns out that the ‘shaka’ has different interpretations than just ‘hang loose’:

  • in britain and northern europe, the symbol is used as a signal for owners of older model volkswagen vans when passing on roads
  • in new zealand, it signifies smoking meth in a glass pipe
  • in india and venezuela, it symbolizes sexual intercourse

be careful who you give hang loose hand sign to because you might unwittingly be inviting six vw-owning chinese people to hit the meth pipe with you. i mean, just theoretically.

taken from [wikipedia]

welcome president obama!

you’re job is going to be pretty easy because the only way is up. it can only get better from what it has been the last 8 years. don’t let the door hit you on the way out georgie.

here’s obama talking to his buddy about what he would do to bill o’reilly if he saw him in a dark alley:

[look how long that index finger is. after his terms as president are over, he’ll be able to easily find work in the san fernando valley.]

filipinobama

i would have never guessed that a filipino man could resemble obama as much as this:

if his cohorts dressed up in black suits and earpieces, he could probably play that off at the local bar to get some free drinks and brown tail for him and his buddies.

confirmation that your farts stink

i guess if you were ever wondering if your farts stink or not, you can always look for the massive collection of flies that are gathering around your hole. you might need to carry a mirror with you unless you feel like asking someone else to check.

PRECIOUS

cranky back to work links

im still having trouble with the right shoulder. i can do just about everything but swing that golf club well. at least that’s my excuse. for those of you who chose to honor dr martin luther king today by not working, enjoy these ed-filtered web snippets:

-> here’s some pictures of unsold car inventories from around the world. now is probably the time to buy a car if you’ve been waiting for one. that is, if you have cash to do so and not rely on getting a car loan [guardian]

-> my work needs to hire durex’s ad agency to come up with some better graphics and campaigns [gunaxin]

-> some researchers got a monkey to actually communicate with them using real english words and conjugating verbs [hubpages]

-> a real, step-by-step guide on how to launder money…and not like the dollar bills you find in the dryer after doing a load [straight dope]

chesley sullenberger is from danville

if you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, or are a teenager that is tweaking all night long and sleeping all day and completely unaware of the world around them, then you probably already heard of the us airways plane landing in the hudson river last week.

for those of you unaware of the terminology, you can see it here [urban dictionary] and was in that great movie glengarry glen ross.

he’s from danville too, which i heard was going to arrange a tickertape parade downtown to honor his work in keeping that plane safe.

..and since sully made sure no one died on his plane, it’s time to find the humor in the whole thing. natural selection works most of the time but in the case below, it’s a big fail:

also, a gentle reminder that no matter what the situation, class systems exist:

remember this when deciding to save some dough on that coach seat.

concert-deprived!

where has the time gone? this was almost 7 years ago!

can we go to a concert sometime before they don’t let me in because i’m too old…or they mistake me for a parent picking up their kid from the concert, “…sir…the parent waiting area is over here. there is some water and coffee for you.” wah.

the paperboy always delivers

it’s a shame that there are no more paperboys – it’s now old chinese men driving around a station wagon with their wives in the back seat tossing the papers out the window. it was fun to have the whole pines as my route and go around collecting money every month. there was also jason gibbons’ family at the other end of lonetree that would never pay me. i would go to the house to collect and after ringing the bell, i could hear footsteps and people ssh’ing inside and never answer the door. of course, i would still deliver to the house because jason gibbons ran the pines for a few years and i didn’t want to get stuffed in a garbage can at school.

man sold his daughter for beer, cash, meat

GREENFIELD, Calif. (AP) – Police have arrested a Greenfield man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat.

Police said they only learned of the deal after the 36-year-old man went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn’t made as promised. The man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.

Officers also arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of statutory rape. Investigators believe the girl went willingly with the man, but she’s under California‘s legal age of consent and can’t legally marry.

Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.

i saw this last night on the ten o’clock news…this is not far from the bay area. the best part is how the dad thought he was getting shafted because the guy didn’t pay him so he WENT TO THE POLICE. how do you even start the story? although, i suppose if the payment consisted of higher-quality cuts of meat and/or bacon, then he might face a more sympathetic jury if it mostly consisted of men. if it was ground beef and miller lite, then maybe not as much.

kill the last 2 hours of work links

even though i wish it was the weekend already, i am still doing some work from home. i don’t feel all that great doing work from the bathroom (thank you wireless networking), so i’m pushing these links out while i push out some other stuff.

-> excellent article on the complete story of how america lost the war on drugs. i think the solution is treatment and not trying to stop at the source because there will always be new drugs in new regions of the world [rolling stone]

-> walmart is selling iphones for $2 cheaper than regular retail and sales are booming now that the economy sucks. here’s a map of how fast they have grown [flowingdata]

-> mustachios are coming back from the dead. i think it’s brad pitt growing one out giving people ideas like myself. i was getting a little bored of mine but i think i’m going to give it another try [handlebar club]

-> each year google reports on the search trends from the prior year, which is called zeitgeist. interesting search terms indeed [google zeitgeist]

and…

-> there’s an iphone app to add toilet location information around the world to a public database. using the iphone’s gps, you can then know how close the nearest publicly-reachable toilet is and even rank them by cleanliness. for example, you can know the nearest one is maybe a crack-hole place but you can walk a block and use a nice one at a hotel [sit or squat]

happy weekend lamerz.