There are more things wrong with this headline than I can comfortably quip about.

You can tell this photo is from my backlog by the way that the photo clearly shows a Moscow winter.

Insert Obligatory George Allen Joke Here

I hear that happened to Moses once.

This news from Sony, already famous for creating the Camcorder NightShot feature, best known for the fact that under the right lighting conditions, it can show you your subject's nipples.

Pervs.

[1 point]

Because this one is so cheap, I'll give you a double-dose.

First, I just really like how it appears in this news snippet that Bush's reaction to Congress growing some ethics is the pouty-face look.

I think Google News must have some sort of clever algorithm for deciding which President Bush Expression to assocate with each article, because this one threw up the same image:

Actually, I don't think her sad expression is the fault of finding out that the middle east doesn't enjoy endless and senseless war. I think it's something simpler:

I think she went momentarily dyslexic and thinks the headline was "Peace: Whole of mideast wants Rice"

This is one of three things the Democrats are skeptical of: Secondly, they're skeptical that he had an old Iraq plan. And thirdly, they are skeptical that President Bush's "pouty face" routine is really sincere.

Once again, the US Border Patrol proves itself invaluable in the fight against the zombie apocalypse.

Today's IT will be a fairly lame South Park Reference. Sorry. Been busy

Their first tragedy was, of course, the tragic death of Chef.

Police are still seeking the alleged culprit in the case, described as wearing a black cape and top hat, twirling a handlebar moustache

A PEN that's made out of SOLID METAL? And instead of ink, it leaves a trail of metal residue? AMAZING! No. Wait. Isn't that what us old-timers used to call a "pencil"?

Seems like every few months, we discover a way to accidentally let rodents take over the world. Hm.

1: We can rebuild this mouse. We have the technology. We can make it stronger; faster; better.
2: I for one welcome our new mouse overlords.
3: (For the image)Hiya skipper! Looks like you're trying to do some genetic augmentation! Would you like me to open the Microsoft Gene Splicing Wizard?

Okay, so I just noticed that what with my blog crashing all around me, I skipped ahead a number last week. Bending the space-time continuum, I now bring you the missing episode. IT71 will appear as expected next week, and IT72, as a result of my skilled manipulation, will appear on March 30, 1942.

And now we see the root cause of the New York City ban on using a certain racial epithet.

YHWH, if you've got something to say, why don't you share it with the whole class?

Is it just me, or is salvo possibly the most unfortunate word choice evar?

Next week, ABBA stares down Hummus.

Today's IT comes to you from the "Internet Adverising Leads To Funny Juxtapositions" department.

If this medium was ammenable to my doing my GWB impression, I'd say "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. *snicker* *snicker*" in my Bush voice. Frankly, the punch lines for this one are endless, but the funniest ones are all sound-gags, based on associating your choice of politically important entity with characters from Lord of the Rings (Dick Cheney referring to Haliburton as "My precious" might make a good one) But since I can't, here's your punch-line instead.

Even Bush could not have anticpated Mordor joining the axis of evil

Am I the only one who finds the word "spat" to be incredibly inappropriate in this context?

You might think this is a funny juxtaposition of an article and a not-very-accurate keyword-based image search generated image. In fact, it's apropos. It's the last thing a Toyota sees before it's Found On Road, Dead. Have you driven a Ford lately?

As you may have guessed, I had fun with Google News a few months back and built me up a little stockpile.

But he will be rushed into choosing hot, delicious apple pie. Mmmm.... Pie....

A couple of weeks ago, the IAEA and ISO put forward a brand new symbol to makr areas where the danger of ionizing radiation is present. The new symbol is to supplement the classic black-on-yellow trefoil you so associate with radiation hazards.

Basically, it was felt that the classic symbol on its own did not really carry any semantic meaning: it wasn't clear from looking at it what it meant. The new design has been extensively tested on various groups to ensure that, at just a glance, its meaning is absolutely clear:

If your ceiling fan starts dropping tapeworms on pirates, run like hell.

I believe "Summon Seattle Office" is a level 9 spell.

Today's IT is brought to you by the fact that BBC News is reporting that "A Chinese company chairman has been sentenced to death for running a scam involving giant ants." Seems he rooked investors into sinking lots of money (About 3 billion Yuan, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million US) into a company on the claims that they were breeding medicinal ants.

I think the BBC has this a bit wrong. Compare their lead with that of Spain's EiTB: Chinese man sentenced to death for giant scam to breed ants. It wasn't the ants that were gigantic, it was the scam.

All the same, here's the thing that popped into my head:

I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords.

Senator Ted Stevens (R- Alaska): The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Nathanial Mayweather: These pipes are clean!

That page: the one that says "This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual places, events, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental."

So, I looked at the previous Inappropriate Thoughts on a computer with a bigger screen, and it turns out that the alligator in question is typing on a keyboard, and not savagely rogering an umpire after all. My bad.

As a result, I feel I ought to offer a free replacement:

That is a refreshingly honest and direct headline. I just wish I could work the phrase "savagely rogering" into your replacement comment.

I've actually got several friends in the insurance industry. Not that it's germane or anything. But I saw this a while ago:

I'm not going to tell you what an alligator savagely rogering an umpire has to do with insurance reform. You're just going to have to read the article for yourself.

Seen outside a Circuit City...

<Comic_Store_Guy_Voice>Worst. Mozilla. Clone. Ever.</Comic_Store_Guy_Voice>

From google news...

They're Pro-Bush and Pro-Kerry at the same time? He's also accused of BLOWING MY MIND

And in this corner, weighing in at 2.2 tons, Colossus "The Forbin" Project!

Tallest-Man / Tallest-Man / Goes where only a -- Hey! Get your arm out of there!

This Christmas season, I've decided to offer you a holiday twofer. And since I'm going to be out of town on Sunday, you're going to get it today.

I tried to come up with a good Komodo Dragon Virgin Birth joke, but they all seemed a little two obvious (except for "It's a Woodland Critter Christmas/Hail satan," but that's been done). So instead, here's something different.

(Via Google News)

Man, that isa downer.

And now, I unveil my new Christmas Carol:

Rudy, the blind old hunter,
Had a very shiny gun,
And since he lives in Texas,
He's allowed to have some fun.
All of the other hunters,
Quickly ducked behind a tree,
They thought that Rudy's laser,
Was going to cause a killing spree.
Then one snowy Christmas eve,
Santa came to say:
"Rudy, with your laser here,
Won't you lead my hunt for deer?"
But when the police found him,
They had to let Rudy go free:
Because the late ol' Santa,
Had also invited Dick Cheney

Happy Holidays. God Bless Us, Everyone.

Yadda google news yadda.

Man. I knew they'd pad the plot arc out, but am I really going to have to wait 23 years for the season finale of Heroes?

No, you perverts. It's Shakespeare. Henry V, II.i

This one's early, because I've stockpiled a bunch of stuff that I want to use while it's still timely. This is not one of those things, but I think it's really funny and want to share it.

Anyway, snapped a picture of this magazine ad, and, despite the fact that it's sure to attract referrer spam like I wouldn't believe, I'm posting it:

In the event that, as I grow older, I ever find myself suffering from erectile dysfunction, I do not think I will buy one of these. Because whatever it adds to the performance will be totally negated by the fact that I won't be able to open it without saying, "The secret compartment of my ring I fill with an Underdog Super Energy Pill!"

From Google News. Juxtaposition mine.

And the savage video game wars claim another victim.

This is a clip from a commercial for Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive.

Now that we've got the hybrid synergy drive, our only energy crisis will be if Megatron steals all our Energon.

Seen on the wall in a bar during Trivia Bowl XIII...

They used to be contracted to the Harding Cream Company before they became a nut-free environment

Now, I don't usually go in for turning innocent phrases into jokes about the penis and testicles, but...

Must remember to make sure to check that it's not a nut-free environment next time I enter an ice cream shoppe.

Also, can't you just imagine an alergy sufferer being wheeled into the hospital as a fleet of doctors shouts, "We need to get this man into a nut-free environment, STAT!"

Spotted at the Arundel Mills Mall...

I am in favor of any problem which has a panty-based solution.

Seen at a haunted house in Hanover, MD. Incredibly fun time, my only complaint is the way they rush you through so you don't get to look at all the scariness.

I guess that's why they call them "scare quotes".

Another find from the bargain bin at Target:

Now that's what I call a "Party Pack".

Okay, so I know I have been sucking in the update department. Well, this is hard. I will have a go at posting something from time to time.

Seen in the bargain bin at Target:

You bet your ass I looked at the bottom to see if it was made in Korea.

Someone just turned me on to this, a compilation of complaints against vanity license plates. The license plates being identified as obscene range from the cleverly obscene (3M W0J8), to the probably obscene (EFF EWE), to the easily mistaken for obscene (BIG PNS for the Big Pen Company), to the clearly not obscene unless you're going way out of your way to take offense (UPTOUS, which is "obviously" a bilingual obscenity), to the-letter-writer-is-insane (Tell me, please, why POTVINSUX is obscene). But it got me thinking.

Probably the funniest vanity plate I ever saw was "HIHOAG". But on the trip I took last month down to Ocean City, I came across this one, which my girlfirend and her family speculated on the meaning of. I like my interpretation best.

(This license plate is recreated courtesy of the fine folks at the ACME License Maker)

I think the owner is a dyslexic barbecue enthusiast.

T-Shirt print seen in a (well, actually, every) T-Shirt shop in Ocean City, Maryland....

It is, you know.

At the edge of a parking lot in Columbia:

Remember folks, friends don't let friends abuse hills.

You know how a lot of restaurants like to hang old signs on the walls to make the place look, um... uh... something?

Well, here's a sign I caught a picture of at a Longhorn Steakhouse in Columbia....

No punch line this week. I just keep snickering when I try to think of one.

Like most good-hearted Americans, I shop at Wal-Mart, then feel really guilty over my contribution to the destruction of society.

Not long ago, I was in such a Mart, where I snapped this picture of one of the helpful overhead signs

Shower Curtin is my porn star name.

Sorry I've been so inconsistent about my postings. You know how it is.

I've been fighting with a flood of spam of biblical proportions. Seriously, I feel like I should build an ark and get two of everything. And what the hell is 'Forex trading' anyway? (No, wait. I don't want to know. And if you try to tell me in a comment, the junk filters will flag you as a spammer and launch an ICBM at your ISP, so it's probably better that you don't).

In any case, today's IT comes again from photos taken on my recent road trip with my best beloved up to her home town. There's a lot of neat things I saw on this trip (Someday, I'll tell you the story of the Premisis Maid), but most of them I was too slow on the uptake to get a picture of. This one, I was not.

Is this racist? I'm not sure. Maybe. I don't like to be too quick to accuse someone of racism:

I've heard of the Queen's English. I had not heard of "Bill's English" before.

So, aside from me being lazy and unimaginative, one of the reasons you got no update last week was that I was out of town. And on my trip to New Jersey, I saw some neat stuff. Unfortunately, I am not quick with the camera, so some of them will be presented to you readers as reconstructions.

This first one, though, is an actual photograph. And unlike IT27, this image has not been doctored.

Found something yesterday while grocery shopping and I thought I'd share it with you:

It's made with real nut.

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend introduced me to Avenue Q. Avenue Q is a broadway musical based on a sort of thought experiment: what if Sesame Street was a real place, but you couldn't afford to live there? Basically, it's like Rent, but with muppets instead of AIDS.

But as I listened to the soundtrack from this play, a thought occurred to me:

I just wonder, sometime around the first time a muppet says "Fuck", How many children are rushed out of the theatre by scandalized parents who didn't bother to read the whole playbill?

Today's IT is courtesy a buddy of mine who recently sent me a compilation of what were, purportedly, actual answers given on standardized tests. The others were merely funny. This one was outstanding.

In mathematics, we call this the "Waldo" method of calculation.

Recently, I read this, about how a drunk driver avoided jail by claiming he was under the influence of Shania Twain. No, really.

Ladies and Gentlement, this is Shania Twain. If Shania Twain does not make sense, you must acquit.

Okay, so I'm way behind. Here's one.

Look very closely at what Amazon recommended for me.

You get no comment this time. My mind just won't go all the way around it.

Below, on the left, is a picture I took while driving home from my sweetheart's place a couple of weeks ago. Firstly, I'd like to point out how well composed this picture is given that I took it with my crappy fixed-focus digital camera while, y'know, driving at highway speeds.

The second thing I want to point out is the photoshopped image to the right. This is here to demonstrate what my mind -- which was, of course, more focused on the driving than on the content of signs I knew were not relevant to me -- told me the sign said.

Man. Those backwoods Pennsylvania towns have weird names.

Is it just me, or did the Superbowl commercials this year kinda suck? About the only thing I particularly noted was the commercial for the upcomming Mission Impossible 3. But not for the reason they wanted.

To help you understand what went through my head, I have photoshopped this image of what I gather is the film's Bad Guy.

That's... No. It can't be. That's... Nah. Wait. Yes. It is. TV's Frank is the new Mission Impossible Villain!

So, today is Superbowl Sunday, and I'd be inclined to do something football-related, but according to the copyright notice, I'm not allowed to give an unlicensed image, account, or description of the game. In fact, I may not even be allowed to tell you this. So here's something completely different.

As some of you might know, a few weeks ago, Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui, two residents of Chiang Mai zoo in Thailand, first consumated their love. This is a big deal since Giant Pandas are endangered, and have notoriously little interest in doing the thing you need to do a lot of to get off the endangered species list. Someone got this footage of the two pandas doing their part for the survival of their species:

In celebration of this, I move that the position formerly known as "Reverse Cowgirl" now be refered to as "Panda-Style".

Over New Year's, my gf and I caught a couple of the post-Xmas sales, and one of the things we picked up was a cute little toiletries gift basket. As a man, I justified my purchase of this by the fact that my having some nice-smelling bath products in my home might make said home more appealing to my girlfriend.

But what really put it over the top was that it came with a little handy neck massager. As I suffer from really painfully stiff necks on a pretty regular basis, this seemed like a godsend (I mean, so did the electric shiatzu massager, the heating pad, naproxin sodium, the sleeping mask (to keep me from contorting away from the light in my sleep), and the memory-foam pillow, but at some point, something's got to work). And indeed, it has served its function well.

The reason this ends up here, though, is that the other night, I had just run the little critter, a sort of less-severe dough-docker, over my neck, and I was, well, turning it over in my hand. Looking down unexpectedly, I noticed that I had inadvertantly reproduced a pretty well-known internet meme, which I won't stoop to mentioning by name here.

And if you don't know what this looks like, you haven't been on the internet long enough.

So it hasn't even been a day since my last post in this category, and I discover that, had I done a little more looking, there's this:
[gizmodo], which looks even more like a color-coded transforming robot team than the last one.

Go go Power Rangers.

Inspired by This gaming mouse...

The silver one forms the Blazing Sword.

Taken in a Macy's in a mall in New Jersey.

Isn't it strange how jeans look so much better when they're worn out and discolored? My parents got me two very new looking pairs of very unfaded blue jeans, and they frankly look just ridiculous. But, then there's the other extreme:

Faded is cool and all, but me, I can't really see the attraction of the crotch-whisker look.

So, here it is, on time and everything, the first IT of 2006.

This nutcracker was a gift from my girlfriend's grandparents. I really like it. It's fancy and displayable, but still functional (unlike your traditional ballet style nutcrackers. But did you notice what I noticed?

I expected him to be playing with his nuts, but this is going a little too far.

Courtesy of Boing Boing:

Somewhere in Hawaii, a child is not having a merry Christmas. KHON reports this on a boy who received an iPod video for the holiday, only to find the box full not of iPod, but of beef.

No, really.

I would save this for Sunday and make a picture, but I'm going to be out of town on Sunday. So, here's not one but several punchlines that occurred to me:

• KHOOOOOON!
• My God, it's full of rotting flesh!
• They're made out of MEAT!
• Soylent white is PEOPLE!
• Dude. You're sad because you didn't get an iPod? You live in Hawaii.

Do you have a funny punchline for this article? Send it in.

Oh, if your Photoshop skills are better than mine, you can also send in your pictures of a mystery meat iPod, which I will call a "Meatpod". Good images will be posted.

Sorry for the lateness; technical issues at Globat you know.

Today's IT is a little morose. I happened to be in a graveyard the other day, and I saw a very large and very impressive and touching monument. So I took a picture of the inscription:

This is a very touching inscription and all, but I find there to be something fundamentally creepy about the fact that they're so eloquently eulogizing someone someone who isn't dead yet.

Today's IT is on time, and thanks to this article at World O'Crap.

Quick Precis: It's about a clever gimmick to ensure that your daughter remains "pure" by convincing her to trade in exclusive control of her sexual identity for, well, pretty shiny jewelery.

The idea is that dear old dad gives her a locket, and keeps the key. On her wedding day, he gives the son-in-law to be the key, and he gives dad three goats and a bale of wheat, thus completing the sale of his daughter into sexual slavery. Y'know, like in the good old days.

Anyway, today's inspiration is this line from the "Heart2Heart" website:

Since God has placed her in your care as a parent, you and only you can hold the “key to her heart.”

And by "heart", we mean, "vagina".

Today's IT isn't really my own thought, just one I was fortunate enough to be a witness to.

This is a map of Crofton, MD, where my girlfriend and I went last weekend on a visit to her cousin. That star is just the center of the map, the intersection of Hyman Lane and Duke of Kent Drive.

And the blue square? That's where the road sign for Duke of Kent Drive is, on which someone's replaced the "e" with a "u".

My sister rescued Sassy when she found her half-frozen in a puddle of water by the side of the road. Every once in a while, I've had to cat-sit Sassy. We have lots of fun, teaching her not to hide in the coal chute, teaching her that the knobs on the gas range do not want to play with her. Cats are cute.

Sassy, do not play with the nuclear reactor.

Tonight, the second IT based on the theme of "My friends wearing bras on their heads". Here's hoping they don't object.

Who's the leader of the club
That's made for you and me?
A-L-C O-H-O-L B-O-O-Z-E

You know, this week I was all set up to finally be on time with a post. But life intervened, and I've had some issues with my Movable Type installation. Fortunately, the fine folks at Globat managed to get it resolved, so here it is: IT15.

This week, as a reward for your patience, I nave not one, but two thoughts to go along with an image I pulled off of MSNBC:

1. When replacing Justice O'Connor, it was important to choose a candidate with comparable cleavage.
2. Didn't they teach you? It's not polite to point at someone's cleavage?

(Insert glib excuse for being a few days late again here)

The maker's mark on an Outdoor Refuse Recepticle ("Dumpster" is a trademarked name, so misusing it would just be wrong):

Yes. Yes you are.

Look, I don't need to justify myself to you. I HURT MY BACK. And yet, it doesn't stop me.

Tonight's IT is from the archives of "Pictures taken at parties with my cell phone camera that my friends probably won't kill me for posting on the internet."

Brassiere-Man's powers may be pretty great, but, um... Worst. Superhero. Costume. Ever.

I know, I know. It's late. But the woman I love was in town this weekend, so I had better things to do than feed you jackals. So, here's your thought of the week.

This week's thought is courtesy of Hal Lindsey's There's a New World Coming, a 1974 graphic novel (though back then, they still called them "comic books") adaptation of a bit of heresy prophesy proving conclusively that the rapture is absolutely certain to happen some time during the 1970s.

Premillennial Dispensation would gat a lot more supporters if they'd all take to calling it "The Great Snatch"

My girlfriend sent me a couple of e-cards a week or so ago. They were very cute and sweet, and not unlike my girlfriend in these respects. I tried to find one to send back to her, but could not find one quite good enough to reflect the depth of my feelings. What I did find was compelling proof that the greeting card industry has gotten too damned big. From Hallmark's e-cards site:

Happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And God bless us, everyone.

Photographed from the rust stains in my shower. (Contrast has been enchanced. My shower isn't really that rust-stained.)

Some people get Jesus. Some get Elvis. I get Easter Island Head Playing Tennis.

Okay, so I used up this week's reserve of funny entertaining my girlfriend with what a clever and witty guy I am. (First person to add "in bed" to that sentence faces something really unpleasant.) So this week, you're getting a secondhand observation of wittiness.

I've said it before, I will say it again: Punctuation is yor friend.

From http://www.sixapart.com, the home page of Movable Type, which powers this blog.

When I first read this, I thought, "Wow, what an amazing coincidence!" And I bet you did too. But on closer inspection, This is not a coincidence at all. Any two people are born some exact number of days apart.

We live in a dangerous world during dangerous times. But when you find yourself worrying about the state that the world is in, just remember, things could be worse. At least this hasn't happened:

Because No, I am not a sufficiently Bad Dude. I only wish I were so Bad a Dude.