"Some tweets should live forever. We'll convert it to a cuneiform tablet and send it to you in the mail."How do you make them?
By hand! We take real ceramicist-grade clay and create nice-sized tablets. We carefully translate your message, inscribe the cuneiform characters, and wait for them to dry. Then we fire the tablets to make the clay harden, and last longer.
Do you want headcrabs? Because that's how you get headcrabs.
Pentagon Paid Up To $6.8 Million Of Taxpayer Money To Pro Sports Teams For Military TributesArizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake began looking into the Defense Department's spending of taxpayer dollars on military tributes in June after they discovered the New Jersey Army National Guard paid the New York Jets $115,000 to recognize soldiers at home games.
The 145-page report released Wednesday dives deeper, revealing that 72 of the 122 professional sports contracts analyzed contained items deemed "paid patriotism" -- the payment of taxpayer or Defense funds to teams in exchange for tributes like NFL's "Salute to Service." Honors paid for by the DOD were found not only in the NFL, but also the NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS. They included on-field color guard ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, and ceremonial first pitches and puck drops. [...]
The senators note in the report that while the DOD and NFL said the purpose is to boost recruiting, the Pentagon has no measurement on whether the activities paid for are in fact contributing to recruiting.
"Even if we accept the DOD's assurances that the young men and women watching these games may be sufficiently inspired to military service by a half-time reenlistment ceremony, some of the displays funded in these contracts defy explanation as a legitimate recruiting purpose and may be little more than a taxpayer-funded boondoggle," the report states.
"Don't buy a barrel of oil," the broker said. "It'll kill you."Oil may be king of the commodities, but its physical form is tough to come by for a retail investor. Mom and pop can buy gold and silver. They can gather aluminum cans, grow soybeans, and strip copper wiring, if they choose, but oil remains elusive -- and for very good reason. Oil, as I would soon discover, is practically useless in its unrefined form. It is also highly toxic, very difficult to store, and it smells bad. [...]
"Could a barrel of crude really kill me?" I asked a petrochemical engineer captive to my persistent, doubtlessly annoying questions. It absolutely can, he said. Hydrogen sulfide gas -- H2S, for short -- has a terrible propensity to evaporate from crude, knock out your olfactory capabilities, and slowly suffocate you to death. [...] "If you inhale ethyl alcohol vapors in a concentration of 1,000 ppm (0.1 percent by volume) for eight hours, you may get drunk. If you inhale hydrogen sulfide in a concentration of 1,000 ppm (0.1 percent by volume) for only a few seconds, you will be dead." [...]
"That [is] all good and well until you learn it's not Bakken but Kurdish oil, under strict embargo. Well done [for] supporting ISIS," the consultant replied by e-mail. Adding insult, the consultant informed me that the glass bottle was worth more than the oil inside it, anyway.
A new driving app voiced by Henry Rollins is quickly becoming the go-to navigation choice for punk and hardcore kids on the go.The new app, RatsEyes, gives driving directions to your destination while also shouting knowledge gained from the relentless work ethic of Rollins' legendary hardcore group, Black Flag. The band's groundbreaking and hard touring schedule often took them on very nontraditional routes across the country, as the app will frequently remind you.
While trying to drive from Los Angeles to Tucson, one user was directed to "Drive five miles to 7-11. Locate the nearest payphone and call Steve. Hopefully he'll pick up and let you know where you need to be. Otherwise it's just another overnight with Watt arguing about whatever bullshit he's got up his ass this time."
Noticeably absent from the app is a mute feature; any attempt to silence the app only makes the Rollins narration more irritated. Also, RatsEyes features long-winded talks from the former Black Flag frontman that can extend up to 20 minutes after you arrive at your destination. Some users with Wifi-enabled cars have reported a glitch where the car locks until the stories are over.
"I initially downloaded the app because I am a Rollins fan and the price was right," said Amy Fuller. "But I ended up almost running out of gas because the app just told a 30-minute story about fighting skinheads at a nearby all ages venue that closed down in 1993."
In other news, water remains wet:In what is becoming a tragic pattern, SFPD has once again blamed a cyclist for his own death. Simultaneously, the city has refused to release video that may shine light on the circumstances that resulted in the October 11th crash and death of 47-year-old Mark Heryer.
Police have determined that Heryer was riding westbound on Market Street when, allegedly attempting to pass a bus, he lost control of his bicycle after his wheel got caught in a Muni track. Heryer then is said to have fallen under the passing 38-Geary bus to the right. He died at the scene.
KQED News reports that police have now officially blamed Heryer for his own death, saying that vehicle code states he should have been riding in the bike lane. There's just one problem: That area of Market Street does not have bike lanes.
Video from the Muni bus that ran over Heryer does exist, but the city will not release it -- even to a lawyer representing Heryer's family.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
We had a couple of inspections today that went ok, and our contractor had to spend two days running back and forth to various city offices filling out paperwork -- the kind of thing that we could have done weeks ago had they not sprung this information on us at the last minute, like they always do. The pattern is always, we say, "Ok, we're done!" and only at that point does the bureaucrat wake up and finally tell you all the crap they actually require.
So, tomorrow, Friday, we (hopefully) have our (hopefully) final inspection, but -- to the surprise of absolutely nobody -- ABC is screwing us. See, our liquor license has to be signed by three different people, and then sent off to Sacramento for the final sacrament of a stamp, and while those three people sit in the same office -- literally within spitting distance of each other -- one of them was on vacation for two weeks, so absolutely nothing happened in the meantime. But they assure us that the second or third signature "ought" to all be affixed by Friday, which means that Sacramento "ought" to have it by Monday, and they "should" be able to take care of that on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or, you know, some time soon.
I mean, we only started the process on this license eight months ago. What kind of break-neck speed do I expect?
Maybe as a last resort, we'll open and be dry on Tuesday, but uggggghhh how stupid is that?
I am really tired of paying rent on an empty room.
Anyway, it's really looking like a kitchen in there now! And the second photo is first light on our new pizza oven.
Back over at DNA Lounge, there have been a few minor bar adjustments. We just replaced the bar under the stairs (as it was kind of falling apart) with a new one with a snazzy custom steel top that matches our other bars. The downside to this is that the old bar had a section of the bar top with a groove worn into it that I'm pretty sure I personally wore into it with my forearm, since that's where I always used to lean before Jared abandoned us for Sunny Portland. And now that's gone.
Old and busted 
New hotness 
I've been standing here a while 
And finally, some recently-added photo galleries:
