rangelife

South Carolina, Raise Up

"Seamus, why can't one out of five Americans today find the USA on a map?"

I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as South Africa and The Iraq everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help The Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.

I know, you're like, no way! But this is the truth. Don't just take my word for it...

Yay, South Carolina! You are truly Floridesqe. We U.S. Americans are beyond pleased that you're so influential in helping us pick our presidential nominees.

LOL CEO, Jew Gets Kicked, and Watch Out for the Omni-Dakota

Semel out, Yang back in.

If the USA operated anything like Silicon Valley, Dubya would have been replaced by Bill Clinton some time in 2005. Also, the Dakotas would have merged to be more competitive with Nebraska.

To the left is another high-larius riff on the whole LOL-Catz/I Can Has Cheezburger meme that is taking the Innernets by storm. This one is apparently making the rounds inside Yahoo!

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Even funnier have been the LOL Ed Jew riffs. For those unfamiliar, Ed Jew is a family man from Burlingame -- a suburb many miles from San Francisco -- who claimed he lived in the Sunset, ran for the SF Board of Supervisors, won, and immediately shook down a local business for $40k. But the $40k was supplied by the FBI, who promptly raided his office.

How Floridesque! And just to assure maximum Floridesqueness, he lied and lied and lied (Actual claims: "The money was for a public playground!" "That house in Burlingame is an extra house I keep for my in-laws to have parties in!" "I take all my showers at the Chinatown flower shop!"). And then, after his indictment, he rallied his allies to play the race card.

Ed Jew is going to jail.

Ed Jew is also Chinese-American, but his last name has caused some interesting issues. The Chron has struggled with writing headlines that don't appear ripped from an Islamist pamphlet. Here are some recent headlines with his first name removed:

"City attorney moves to remove Jew from office"

"Jew in hot water. Again"

"Supporters say Jew is victim of racism"

"FBI's cash paid Jew, source said"

"Jew tries to give $10,000 to playground, but it's given right back"

Six thousand years of persecution, and no way out of the desert.

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France we come from France.

If you'd like to appreciate fully the disproportionate size and prosperity of these United States compared with the rest of the known universe, peep this map of states renamed after countries with similar GDPs. And you thought Alabama and Iran only had their penchants for theocracy in common...

And yes, North Dakota (Ecuador) + South Dakota (Croatia) = Omni-Dakota = Bangladesh, but with holsteins instead of monsoons. Watch out, Czech Cornhuskers!

Word to the indispensible AdamRiff for the discovery.

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Finally, is Web 2.0 making us dumber? Are the Deal or No Deal crowds really wiser than people with fancy diplomas and expertise? Andrew Keen says, nyet, user-generated content is making us dumber.

Can we all agree that open systems are full of chaos and risk? Last Friday, I deleted the following paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for Bea Arthur (don't ask): "Arthur died in a plane crash on June 15th, 2007. Trace amounts of LSD, cocaine, and PCP were found in her system. She likes dildos and her favorite color is yellow."

I can has wizdum?

Floridesqe, Part 3

"Men threatened with gun while working on one of them's car"

(source)

These here is last Tuesday's The Daily Tribune News of Cartersville, Georgia. Sadly, they've fixed the online version of the article, but you can still read how the DTN is literally redefining journalism by apologizing for the headline.

No word on what happened to the man who exercised foolish beer-sharing judgment.

Concubining

Back in January, this here blog coined the term Floridesqe: "The condition of a location in which something occurs that more appropriately should have occurred in Florida."

Cincinnati, Ohio, is Floridesqe, people. Ricky Lackey, a "music producer" allegedly on the cusp of a $300k payday was in court for the classy crime of depositing empty envelopes into ATMs and then trying to withdraw the funds. But here's the good stuff:

When Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Melba Marsh asked Lackey during sentencing Friday on a charge of attempted theft how many children he had, the 25-year-old said, "None, but I have six on the way."

A stunned Marsh tried to clarify. "Are you marrying a woman with six children?" she asked.

"No, I be concubining," he said.

Prosecutors said Lackey is the expectant father of six children with six different women. The women all are expected to deliver in August, September and October.

Lackey's lawyer, Stephen Wenke, stopped his client from saying more.

Dammit, Wenke! Boo, Wenke, boooooo!

As Lackey left the courtroom, a group of teenage girls there for another case appeared to know Lackey.

"Oh, there's Ricky Lackey!" one swooned.

Lackey shrugged the attention off with one word and a wave of his hand.

"Fans," he said.

Sounds like Cincy's gonna get a few more Lackeys before the year's done.

(Word to Mags for the tip.)

Since We Last Spoke...

When I was in Vegas last July, I took a look at the odds of winning the 2007 Super Bowl at two of the major sports books. Both had the same two favorites, by a wide margin: the Colts and the Bears.

I cannot ever remember this happening before.

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I found a Collier's World Atlas from 1955 at a relative's house. That was worth a good 30 minutes of smelly page-turnin'.

So, what's happened in 50 years? Well, besides Africa no longer being under colonial domination by second-tier European powers, and all of Eurasia from the Baltic to the Pacific being one color, the US population changes are striking.

Por ejemplo: Phoenix, now America's 6th largest city and 14th largest metroplex, ranked 48th in 1955, behind such megalopolises as Syracuse, Albany, and Toledo.

The San Jose metro area, now known by insiders as "Silicon Valley," ranked 68th. Integrated circuits? Search engines? More like grapefruit and a mere 240,000 human beings, behind such surging boomtowns as Mobile (Ala.), Wilmington (Del.), and Canton (Oh.), all cities I felt compelled to further define by their states.

Also, Florida had like 41 people back then. And they were all sick, sick monsters.

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Speaking of which, I'd like to coin a new term:

Floridesqe (adj.): The condition of a location in which something occurs that more appropriately should have occurred in Florida.

Example: 29-year-old pervert tries to enroll in middle school as 12-year-old. Unlike Maxwell Hauser, Neil Havens Rodreick II was not hiding out from the mob; he was looking for some illicit Hide the Salami. Interestingly and non-tragically, he successfully pulled his little ruse on some adult roommates, age 61 and 43, and even convinced them to "molest" him. Apparently they "were very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy." Sex with a grown man? Feh! Feh! (Crying while showering vigorously.)

Chino Valley, Arizona is Floridesqe.

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Yes, I did indeed pass through MIA last Wednesday, the very day and place that Ron Mexico was busted trying to carry through security one of those fake water bottles they sell at pipe shops in the Haight. To quote an awful, awful recurring SNL sketch from the '90s, "you put your weed in it."

Of course, even stoner NFL dipshits know that you can't bring water through security because of mythical "liquid explosives." Mike Vick should have done the smart thing, and stuffed his ganj into the clip of a 9mm handgun. Apparently TSA is completely incapable of finding those.

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On Family Feud last week (now hosted by J. Peterman), the question was: "Something a woman would tell her husband to put on."

First guess by the dumb brother: "I'll have to go with 'make-up.'" Stunned silence. Dumb brother explains: "It could be Halloween or something." Pause. Chorus of "Good answer! Good answer!"

Question: If you were going on the Feud, could you think of four family members who wouldn't screw it up for the rest?

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Finally, say hello to our new hero, Patrick Agin, who successfully forced his Rhode Island high school to defy its zero tolerance policy on weapons, and permit him to appear in his yearbook ready to slay Grinbull the Necromancer. You keep rockin' that 18 Charisma, Patrick!