Monday, June 13, 2011

Wisdom From a Lufthansa Lounge Lizard


This just in: Drug lords got tanks...
In other news, Dallas won the NBA championship.  This news is actually third, behind "tanks" and the fact that the NBA season actually came to an end.  You see, this is what happens when the season is played simply to eliminate the worst team so that everyone else can "advance" to the finals.
Back to tanks...
What I don't understand is why the anti-drug people - you know, cops and the military - why these people don't just sit in their offices until a traffic cop spots one of these things.  They are hard to miss.  Imagine one of these giant things being parked in front of a building.  Since only the drug lords have them, I'd say this is a pretty good case of probable cause.  They are little more than big signs saying "drug lord coming through, everyone step aside."  We should actually give them tanks so we know where they are.
The fact that these tanks are not being used as a "Find a drug lord here" sign tells me there may be a bit of money changing hands.
Onward...
The Book of Mormon kicked some butt at the Tony's.  This is a musical written by the guys that created South Park.  I've heard the sound track (thanks to Jim Hill) and it's really good.  So far the only negative thing I've heard about it is that the tickets are hard to come by.  I once called for tickets to Phantom of the Opera.  When I said, "I'll take two for this Saturday night," the operator came back with, "How about two for late next summer."
I did get some culture this time in Europe; my wife insists on it.  We went to see the Hungarian Ballet.  They did about 5 different bits, all unique stuff.  The last one was so captivating that I would have sat through it again and again given the chance.  We had front row seats at the Hungarian Opera House (click on this link to see this place)
Elsewhere...
Hawaii just fired a bunch of TSA agents for not doing their job.  I don't find this hard to believe.  This is a group of people who re-scanned a banana I had in my briefcase because it was a "sharp" object.  The people in charge their say they weren't doing their job because they were overworked and thus, we should put more agents there.  This sounds like the work of the infamous Hawaiian Donut Cartel.  I can't imagine them fitting even 1 more agent around a donut box than they already do.
I saw the Pirates of the Caribbean last week; in Hungarian.  I could follow the plot just finewithout understanding any of the words.  While the movie was worth watching, the guy that played Black Beard was by far, the best cast pirate of all time.
I was at a mall the other day.  They have these escalators that only move when people pass by a light sensor at the start.  It's an energy-saving thing.  Anyway, I watch as this woman (blonde) starts to go "up" the escalator clearly marked "down".  She thinks it's either broken or maybe just some metallic stairs.  Anyway, it does not move until she is halfway up it.  Someone entered from the top and started it moving down.  The blonde continues to try to climb up, in spite of this; only giving up when the other people coming down get in her way.  Funny.
You know what else is funny?  That the GOP is trying to make political hay by bashing the Democrats over this Weiner thing.  I wonder what God was thinking as his party of choice cast the first stone, in spite of their own abundance of transgressions.
Did you know Budapest is actually two cities, divided by the Danube river?  Buda is to the west, and Pest to the east.  I went hiking in the Buda Hills a couple of days ago.  This is a forested area that feels like an isolated jungle with beautiful plants.  Seen from the sky, it's a patch of green inside a large city.  We walked for five miles and never saw a car or a building.  It was great.
I came across this site that had all kinds of "invisible" cat pictures.  The cats were there, but the other stuff was missing.  Like "toothbrush" cat showed a cat that looked like he was brushing his teeth but the toothbrush was "invisible."  Here was my favorite.
In Bahrain, a poet was given a 1-year jail term for writing a poem critical of the government.  These are out allies, at least until it looks politically more correct to cheer for the other side.
Apple is being sued for its use of the term "icloud"  by a company called "icloud communications."  This company has been doing, since 2005, what Apple is pretending that they just invented.  So, Apple is taking something that already exists and adding their own little twist - a price tag.  This feels a lot like the AOL model of "Let's charge people for stuff they can do for free because they don't know they can do it for free."  I have one last word on this - dropbox.
A quote for the day: “Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today” Mahatma Gandhi
I'm in Frankfurt, on my way to the California Bounce.  I end up in Kansas City sometime Tuesday.
I can't help but notice that most of you are asleep as I write this.  There is no rest for this superhero....
Up, up and away...
jim
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