StephanKinsella.com

Sent to me by a friend:

My girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year when we decided to get married. My parents helped us in every way, and my friends encouraged me. My girlfriend? She was a dream! There was only one thing bothering me. My prospective sister-in-law was 20 years of age, wore tight miniskirts, and low cut blouses. She would routinely bend down when near me, and I got many a pleasant view of her underwear. It just had to be deliberate. She never did this when anyone else was near.

One day little sister calls and asks me if I could come over to the house to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived. She whispered to me that soon I would be married and that she had feelings and desires for me that she could not overcome and really did not care to overcome. She told me that she wanted to make love to me just once before I married her sister. Needless to say I was in shock and was rendered speechless. She said “come upstairs to my bedroom and if you want to go ahead with it, just do it.”

I was stunned and frozen in shock as I watched her walk up the stairs to her bedroom. When she reached the top, she pulled down her panties and tossed them to me. I stood there for a moment, turned , and went straight to the front door. I opened the door, stepped out of the house and walked straight to my car.

My future father-in-law was standing outside. With tears in his eyes, he reached for me and gave me a hug that nearly took all my breath away. When his emotions subsided he said ” we are very happy that you passed our little test. We could not ask for a better man for our daughter to marry. Welcome to the family.”

Every story has a moral. And this one is:

ALWAYS KEEP YOUR CONDOMS IN YOUR CAR

Recently found this oldie but goodie: my Economic Calculation Under Socialism, Appendix I to Protecting Foreign Investment Under International Law: Legal Aspects of Political Risk (1997).

I hate cold callers and people who waste my time. My employer’s web site does not list my phone number. That’s on purpose. People whom I have not given my direct dial number have to call the main number and ask the receptionist for me. So when the receptionist wants to patch a call through, I know it’s almost always a cold caller.

Today she says a guy named “Mo” is calling for me. Red flag#1. I know no Mo, so red flag #2. Usually I tell her to put them to my voicemail, but the name “Mo” intrigued me and I was feeling in a mood to mess with a cold coller. I tell her to patch him through.

Mo–he does not give his last name, red flag #3–is some broker for some “patent technology acquisition” group (I forget the name). He wants to know if we have an interest in buying a patent on photonic integrated circuits. Now we make lasers, not PICs. Another red flag.

Curious, I ask him how much they are selling the patent for. He says it has 61 claims and that there is an offer on it already–setting me up for a high number–then says probably only $120K or so, which is not really that high.

I say, well, what’s the patent number? He says he does not have it and I can hear him flipping papers looking for it. He asks me if that’s public information. I.e., if he can find the number is it okay to give it to me. This loser i s asking me for legal advice. So I’m already getting irritated. Why would you call someone to offer to sell a patent but not know the patent number. So it’s clear to me that Arab-accented Mo (probably Mohammed) is just trying to put a deal together. Some stupid broker. Probably unknown to the seller as well as me.

My time already wasted, I decide to eff with him. I ask him why he thinks this would be useful for us. He says he knows we bought an external-cavity laser patent recently, so thought we might want this. This makes no sense. I ask, is there an existing infringer? Do we infringe? Does it cover some practical invention?

He says yes, it covers a practical application and can “help us.” I say, “help us how? We make lasers.” He says, “yeah, it does that.”

“Does what?” I ask. “Makes lasers,” he replies.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “How does an integrated circuit make a laser?”

“Well, the laser goes in it,” he tries to clarify. I say, “I don’t think you understand this technology. That’s okay if you don’t, but just say so.” He gets pissed saying, his Arab accent getting thicker, “You are being rude sir. I have an engineering degree from CalTech and have been in this field for 25 years!” I say, “Well, a photonic integrated circuit does not make lasers, I know that,” and he says, “I went to CalTech” and I reply, “Well, that’s certainly very impressive, but you don’t know the patent number, you don’t know how this applies to our business, you seem to think PICs ‘make’ lasers, which they don’t–all you seem to know is we make lasers and recently bought a laser patent.” He finally loses his patience, and proclaims, “You are rude sir! Rude rude rude! You are a f***ing a**hole!”

Well, at least I didn’t call him to waste his time.

Two unrelated thoughts:

First, re Protestants–my family has a mix of full Christians (i.e., Catholics) and semi-Christians (i.e., separated brethren, i.e. Protestants). So at Thanksgiving, Christmas, you never know who’s going to say the blessing. Usually’s it’s a Protestant. It occurs to me that Catholic blessings are to Protestant blessings, as old-style dance is to modern dance. In the old days, you would learn the steps to the waltz, rumba, foxtrot, etc. I don’t like to dance, but did learn some of these for my wedding, and they are not too painful, at least. At least you know when you are dancing well or not. But I have always hated the sort of free-style, unplanned, uncooridated, jerk-your-arms and legs around type of dancing youngsters do in dance clubs. It’s horrible. I feel idiotic when I do it.

When Catholics say a blessing, it’s usually the standard, “Bless us Oh Lord, and these thy gifts…” But when Protestants say a blessing before a meal, they just ramble on and make it up as they go along: “Dear Lord, Thank you for … letting Steph and Cindy arrive safely yesterday, and for letting the family be together this holiday, except for Ronnie who is out deer hunting–and please Lord let him have a successful, safe hunt–and … please let us keep … ummm … meeting here like this in the future to have family … get-togethers, … and bless this food which is our sustenance, … and … nourishment. Of our souls. In-jaysus-name-we-pray.”

Re vitamins: why are vitamins given boring letters, like C, K, B-12, whereas elements get cool names, like Helium, Einsteinium, etc.? If I were a vitamin I’d be upset at the disparate treatment, though I would console myself that I am made up of elements.

• Breakin’ the Law (how I avoided a speeding ticket)
• Ben-Gay (the things we do to get IT support)
• Things not to say to a first-time mom
  
  
• Poodle stories: Poodles Bite and Anna Belle (da poodle) ‘n Me

• I called Jeff Tucker today and he told me he’d “ping” me back, meaning he’d call (or IM) me back. So now “ping” is used by technogeeks way beyond its original technical meaning. This is similar to engineers and geeks who during a conference will say, “well, let’s just discuss this later, offline”. How about this one: “Well, let’s copter down to take a closer look at this issue.”
  
• God I hate Outlook. And spam. I spent a while today redirecting (forwarding) several email accounts to a couple of gmail address(es). I want to piggyback on its spam filtering. If you auto-forward gmail to another email address, it forwards the spam too; no help. So you have to instead download email via pop from gmail. The problem? If you hit “reply” then it tries to reply from your gmail address, not from your main, non-gmail address, even if you make the latter your “default'”. Therefore, everytime you reply to someone you either have to send it to them on a gmail address, OR you have to change your sending-account to the one you want. There apparently is no fricking way to set Outlook to automatically send from a given email account on any reply, no matter what the “to” address was. God I hate Outlook.
  

Jeff Tucker disagrees with my rant about the annoying use of dots instead of dashes in phone numbers by those trying to appear all tech-savvy or somethign. He claims it’s a convention to use dots for cell phone numbers for dashes for “analog” numbers. I think he is nuts. This is just a loony theory. In my view, not only is this not a convention, but no one even thinks it is or should be a convention.

So, help us settle the bet. Email me your views.

Someone sent me this email. I want to say that I am posting these jokes as a public service simply to show how insensitive some people are. These jokes are completely tasteless and I object!

Here are some jokes from that crazy Muslim standup comic….. ladies and gentlemen please give it up for…. Goffaq Yussef!

• Good evening gentlemen, and get out, ladies. You have no right to be having a good time.
• On my flight to New York there must have been a Jew in the bathroom the entire time. There was a sign on the door that said “occupied.”
• What do you say to a Muslim woman with two black eyes? Nothing! You told her twice already!
• How many Muslims does it take to change a light bulb. None! They sit in the dark forever and blame the Jews for it!
• Did you hear about the Broadway play, ‘The Palestinians’? It bombed!
• What do you call a first-time offender in Saudi Arabia? Lefty!
• Did you hear about the Muslim strip club? It features full facial nudity!
• Why do Palestinians find it convenient to live on the West Bank? Because it’s just a stone’s throw from Israel!
• Why are Palestinian boys luckier than American boys? Because every Palestinian boy will get to join a rock group
• A small plane carrying Yassir Arafat and all his top lieutenants crashes and all aboard are killed. Who is saved? The Palestinian people!
• Two Israelis are in an elevator when the doors open and a Palestinian gets on. After the doors close, the Palestinian lets out a huge, noisy fart. The doors open again and the Palestinian gets off. One Jew looks at the other, wipes his brow and says, “Thank God! Must have been a dud!”
• What does the sign say above the nursery in a Palestinian maternity ward? “Live ammunition.”
• A Palestinian girl says to her mommy, “After Abdul blows up, can I have his room?”

God I hate it when people–especially those trying to show how tech-savvy and “with it” they are–use periods instead of dashes in their phone numbers. E.g., their business card will say “214.555.1234” instead of “214-555-1234”.

Also very annoying is when a website or someone gives only a stupid letter-version of their phone number, like 1-800-GE-CARES. I have to figure the stupid numbers out each time I want to call.

Finally, I hate European phone numbers. Half the time they forget to tell you their stupid country code; often they insert a ridiculous (0) after the country code that you have to omit if you are calling from outside. Almost as bad are the strange, always non-standard European snail mail addresses. Jesus.

Laurence Vance, in his article Fundamentalist Foolishness, links to Bob Jones University’s position on Catholicism. These idiots, not only repudiating Catholicism’s doctries, state: “At Bob Jones University we believe the Bible. We desire that every person outside of Christ, be he Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Islamic, Jewish, Mormon, or whatever, should come to put his faith in Christ alone through the revelation of Himself that He has given in the Scriptures, His Holy Word, the Bible.”

In other words, Catholics, like Muslims and Jews, are “outside of Christ”? These morons are totally clueless. It is all non-Catholic Christians who are separated brethren. They believe in “the Bible”? What Bible? Oh, the one determined by the Catholic Church? So, let me get this straight: Protestants cannot help but admit that the Catholic Church was guided by the Holy Spirit in selecting the canon of the Bible (although Luther chucked out several books he didn’t like), centuries after Christ and the apostles? Yet they hold that the Church’s claim to still be guided by the Holy Spirit is ridiculous? Talk about ridiculous.

I’ve often wondered why Cardinals have their title between the first and last name, as in John Cardinal O’Connor. I find it annoying. Well, this Wikipedia explanation makes sense (though it’s still a little annoying):

For cardinals, use “{name if known} Cardinal {surname}]]”. For example, Giuseppe Cardinal Siri not Cardinal Guiseppe Siri This format avoids problems associated with historical cardinals whose first names have long since been forgotten; they can be entered as “Cardinal {surname}” and adapted later if and when their first name has been unearthed. It also has the benefit of keeping the cardinal surname together for search purposes. This is the format officially used by the Roman Catholic Church to refer to its cardinals. Since Vatican II, an alternative version, placing the word ‘Cardinal’ before the first name has grown in popularity. However as the great majority of cardinals predate this change, that format would require a complete change in all cardinal titles before 1965 and is impractical.