The gang from Battery F 1/202 are about ready to ship out down to Texas in preparation to go to Iraq early next spring. In case you all don’t know, that includes my brother Tom and a few of his high school buds as well as a lot of fathers and such from my old hometown in Galva. Keep them all in your thoughts and send a prayer out, even if you don’t believe in that. I’d appreciate it.

In case you are in need of a quick Halloween mask, Forbes has provided for your needs with Billionaire masks.

Fox News almost sued its television component, namely The Simpsons, for satire. They officially have no humor or irony over at the news desk.

Tired of those Nigerian email scam artists? Australia is providing a service to mankind by nabbing one of those punks.

My hard drive crashed the other day and that leaves me in a little bind as far as updates and the like. I have some copies of the webpage but it is old, so I’m probably going to be losing some data. Also, I am aware the menu isn’t working and I’m going to try to get that up in the next few days.

Okay, I’ve held my tongue for awhile but seriously, what is up with California? They give a standing ovation to a child molestor (Roman Polanski earlier this year at the Oscars), elect some serial woman molestor (Schwarzenegger of course), and then stand up and applaud a suspected rapist (Kobe Bryant) like he’s a victim or something. Now to be quite fair, maybe he isn’t a rapist, but he still cheated on his wife and that shouldn’t be applauded.

In happier news, bubble gum is now 75 years old. The alternate World Series ended on a strange note. The results of the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championships are in (yes, there is such a thing and they have a website).

On the strange end of things: why are we trying to sell money through TV ads?

On the “yeah, I want one, but only if no one else does” category, a story about a gadget you can get that changes streetlights.

Most of you already know my feelings about AOL, so it comes as no surprise to me that the low-lifes are now hacking their customer’s computers.

Apparently now its illegal to share certain tools or sell them to other people.

Speaking of monopolistic jerks, the Motion Picture Association of America is trying to bribe schools to let them come in and indoctrinate and scare the hell out of kids. Nice guys, huh?

An article about poor historical references and our White House. I was thinking the same thing when I first read parts of that speech.

Interesting articles about getting rid of our oil dependence and on Microsoft’s inability to face up to its problems. Interesting, that is, if you actually care about that stuff.

Maybe you’d like to see GM screw up again or British kids popping Viagra?

At ESPN, Jim Caple continues his delusions with the Series heading back to Boston with the Cubs up 3-2.

“Evil” Ned Bronson will age you with linking us this story about modern day kids playing, and shredding, our beloved childhood memories.

George Washington was known for a lot of things. Making whiskey is one of those more obscure accolades. Some recreational distillers are working on changing that.

In sad news, Fred “Rerun” Berry from What’s Happening! passed away Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but I used to watch the heck out of that show.

To close, you’ve probably been hearding about how all these people and cities are buying drugs overseas to save money. At the New York Times, there is a story about students finding that their textbooks cost 50% or more in their bookstores than online. (Use Member ID wallenfeldt and password guest to access the story.)

Having lived there, I know Oklahoma can be short-sighted at times when it comes to cultural issues, but this throws them in to Texas League ridiculousness (is that a word?).

The BBC has an article about computer mishaps that is really surreal and good for a laugh or two.

Slate is running a series about a guy in Japan addressing some of the cliches we have about them. WARNING: the Tuesday article is a very frank assessment of manga.

And there’s also an article about how presidents get trapped in their own job, enough to where they believe their own press. Scary.

To close, there’s bad news for short people and their paychecks. Sorry.

Incidentally, the website is over on the new server and I think things are shaking themselves out as far as getting that all up and running. Content changes to come. Really.

UPDATE: Well, the Red Sox lost, absolving me of any reason whatsoever to watch the World Series. Season’s over kids…unless you are some kind of sicko.

Well, other than striking out without even trying to hit that last pitch, you can’t put the blame on him solely. Or even Kerry Wood. Or that fan in Game 6. But damn, how depressing. Maybe next year?

On more thing, is it just me or is that smug, pompous twit Miguel Cabrera absolutely scream “Future Yankee”?

Okay, on to happier – or at least different – topics.

In case you haven’t heard, vodka is 500 years old. Raise a toast.

Bad idea. Absolutely horrid idea.

Here’s an article comparing those RIAA nitwits to Edison’s power grab with the movie industry way back when. Here’s hoping they fall on their face just the same.

This weekend, Leslie finally gets away from work long enough for us to hit some haunted houses and the local Oktoberfest celebration.

Well, the Cubs are in the Division series (too bad they dropped that first game) and so are the Red Sox. So yeah, I’m still interested enough to keep watching baseball.

In the current events type of thing, I’m going to totally ignore that whole mess in California and hope it goes away now that those imbeciles have turned a serious situation over to an even worse actor than Ronald Reagan…and that’s saying something. No that’s not a political assessment, I mean it for what I said, so hold your email.

Tomorrow you should not be surprised to start seeing colorful $20 bills. You can read some more about them here, as well as past attempts of playing with our money.

I would put this on the support page but a) no one goes there, and b) its more human interest anyway. This first story is an explanation of the Scroll Lock on your keyboard, the second about the guy who brought you Control-Alt-Delete. Thanks for Robert Robinson for the heads-up on the first story.

FYI: The site may be misbehaving in a few days. I am just about out of space on this particular service and they have been spamming me about giving them money for more space. Personally, I’d rather not do it. So I found another hosting company that should work out a lot better (I hope so anyway). So between now and early next week you should notice a temporary outage as I move the site and then adjust the domain registry to the new server.