Via MSNBC:

"...when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."

Bill O'Reilly High ?

The MPT SmogBuster Fuel Disc (aka, a 1-inch plastic sticker): " improves milage and reduces pollution by sending "holographic frequencies into the gas tank and changes the molecular structure of the gasoline."

While I enjoy Mr Sun, and I'm glad to have discovered it (via Defective Yeti), I enjoy this particular post with much unease.

We got a Time Warner HD DVR a few weeks ago - a Scientific Atlanta 8000, to be exact. If it worked, it'd be the best thing to happen to TV.

But recently, it seems like there's a 50/50 chance that touching any of the DVR buttons will generate a hard drive error that will require a full reboot - turn it off, unplug it, wait a minute, plug it back in, wait through the full boot process, etc.. We haven't lost any shows yet (as other people have reported), but it's pretty fucking sad when a cable box requires more attention and rebooting than a PC. For $80/month, you think they could supply me with a box that had at least seen a QA department ? Yeah, me too.

I'm not alone.

Via Yahoo! News:

This undated image released by Anheuser-Busch Cos., shows its a new 'brew' to go head-to-head with classic mixed drinks _ traditional suds spiked with caffeine, fruit flavoring, herbal guarana and ginseng.

What a combination : Improved memory! Greater physical stamina! Boundless energy! Inability to walk a straight line!

He won't fight back! Wahh!

The Straight Dope talks about What is supposed to happen when you land on "Free Parking" in Monopoly?. Well, I play by the offical rules, where nothing happens if you land on FP.

But years ago I played a Monopoly variation with my uncle that used two boards; the first board followed the typical Monopoly rules, except that if you landed on 'Go', you had the option of jumping to the second board, which we called "Las Vegas". Once there, you could buy and build hotels on any property without first owning all the other properties of that color; and, all the rents were doubled.

Anyone else ever heard of that variation ?

Movie City Indie has a brief note about Crispin Hellion Glover's upcoming film, "What Is It?". What it is, according to Mr Glover, is "...the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home, as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche." Most of the actors have Down's Syndrome, but the film isn't about Down's Syndrome. Sounds, emr, interesting ?

More at crispinglover.com.

Who's Crispin Glover ? He was George McFly from Back To The Future.

Somehow, for the past year, I've neglected to put any Unrest on my iPod - a terrible mistake. Before they ceased to exist as a band, Unrest could write perfect pop songs - simple, blissful, and irresistably catchy. That they didn't dominate, or even reach, the singles charts (and change the sound of pop music forever), proves just how perverse the world is.

So, I dropped a few Unrest albums onto the iPod over the weekend; and now, Monday morning, the magic of the iPod shuffle presents me with their super-sweet Six Layer Cake.

i'm up and
you're with me this time
you're up and
still in the shine
pull over
you're getting dressed
all touching
all the right

chrous:
6 5 5 4 3 2 2 1
6 5 4 3 2 2 layer
6 5 4 4 3 3 2 1
6 5 4 3 2 1 layer cake

i've called you
with my head
my fingers
your lips to my hand
Front Royale
big kitchen day
my fingers
all over

6 5 5 6 3 2 layer
16 fingers 8 feet high
10 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
6 5 4 4 2 2 layer cake

one layer on halloween
no hands where
they ought to be
in pockets
keeping this in
in pants and
i'm so so

10 6 10 6 7 6 layer
10 6 7 6 10 6 high
10 6 5 4 4 3 2 1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 cake

fingertips show the way
relax on
USMA
pull over
you're getting dressed
all touching
all the right

6 6 6 6 6 6 layer cake

with my
i'll give you a slice
of mine

Lyrics rarely hold up without the music, and these are no exception. Without the music, it's probably impossible to appreciate just how fun a song can be when the chorus seems to be just a random stream of numbers; but when you hear it, the blissed-out exuberance of Mark Robinson's delivery makes even "6 5 5 4 3 2 2 1" catchy and fun to sing along with. And if it's hard to remember when he sings "6 5 5 4 3 2 2 1" vs. "6 5 4 4 3 3 2 1", then singing along becomes more like a game of follow the leader. And nobody cares if you get it wrong because it's just a nonsense sequence anyway.

I couldn't find these lyrics anywhere on the net. So I'll post them here in case anyone else needs them - or in case anyone knows what he's saying in the places I missed. A couple of those lines are definitely wrong, but I just couldn't decipher what he as saying. Maybe they're in the liner notes, I'll check when I get home. Corrected from the liner notes. The things I missed were things that don't make a lot of sense in this context: USMA, Front Royale ?