so i had a good christmas and stuff and i was about to leave, but the plane i was in was waiting to take off. we had been waiting on the runway for a pretty long time, 20 minutes or something, and once we got in the air the pilot said something to the effect of "sorry we took so long on the ground, i will try to see if the air traffic controllers can give us a shortcut to make up some time." now i thought this was kind of weird: how can a plane make a shortcut? i mean i assume that pilots fly in a straight line from place to place, rather than flying in circles or trying to give passengers the scenic route or something. i mean, what did the pilot expect the air traffic controller to say? "flight 5104, to make up some time why don't you just fly through that mountain peak rather than over it? that should save a few minutes." i guess the pilot meant he wanted to speed up, but why not just say that? weird. also, the flight was cold as hell, which sucks. i think there was a damn hole in the plane where my feet were, because this freezing jet of air was blowing over them the entire flight. i told the stewardess, and she said she was sorry but that always happened, but then my bag got sucked out through the hole and i guess they got mad that i tried to stop up the hole with my carry-on so we had to land early and i had to talk to the security people. ok, that didn't happen, but it was cold and that sucked. i mean, you'd think plane designers would figure out that people don't wear snow boots on planes, so maybe they would prefer that cold air is not blown on their feet for the entire flight. why not blow it outside the plane?? man, that would be crazy. and furthermore, i think it's funny to watch the stewardesses (and stewards) do those arm motions during the beginning of the flight spiel, "there are two rear exits, two over the wings" etc, and they all do the same pointing motion with two fingers. looks like synchronized swimming.

well, since there were no real jokes in this one, here's a yo mama joke:

yo mama so ugly, she looks like she got hit with two bags of "what the fuck."

so i think Paris Hilton should start a spam email company. Probably half of the spam i get is either from "Paris Hilton" or about her. I mean, if she started a company and licensed her name to spammers and let them say "Paris Hilton wants you to get herbal viagra" or whatever, she could get a lot of dough. and if she sued the spam companies that were using her name without permission, she could get a ton more. You'd think the Hilton thing would have worn off by now, I mean it's been a couple of months since that tape made news. And her show is pretty boring, too. Oh well. If you're reading this, Paris, I'll be your agent. I know some HTML, I can write the spam for you. Let's talk.

so they captured saddam, which is pretty cool. I first saw it last night because i was at work all day, and when i saw the front page of Yahoo with the picture of saddam with a beard i thought it was some kind of banner ad for the Onion or some joke, and then there'd be an animation of the headline tearing and something crazy would happen, like an SUV would drive out. But anyway, something struck me as odd with this: the operation to get him was called Operation Red Dawn. I immediately thought, "wow, Red Dawn is that stupid World War 3 movie with Patrick Swayze." The movie is pretty hilarious, the Russians and the Cubans (oh no, not the Cubans!) invade the US and conquer lots of stuff, up into Wyoming or something, and Patrick Swayze and some kids make a guerilla group and fight the Russians and the uh, Cubans. Or maybe they are from Nicaragua. It's kind of entertaining and it has lots of funny patriotic stuff about the Russians and Cubans being bad. They are like "Ha-ha Yankee prisoner, smoke this cigar until you get sick!!!" No, they do stuff like parachute into a high school and kill all the kids, since they are so bad. That's probably one of the most bizarre beginnings of a movie ever, actually. There was a really hilarious article in Maxim awhile back that showed how Swayze quotes from the movie reflected Zen philosophy or something, but I can't find it now. Plus it was apparently the first movie to be rated PG-13, interesting. Here's a link about the movie: from IMDB.

So anyway, I thought that was a weird coincidence, "Red Dawn" is kind of a random title for anything, and then I read on Yahoo that the two houses the troops searched to find Saddam were code-named "Wolverine 1" and "Wolverine 2". "The Wolverines" was the name of the guerilla group from the movie. So some Pentagon planner obviously likes cheesy ass war movies. Kind of amazing it wasn't called like "Operation Complete Justice" or "Final Victory" or something corny like that. But no, now Patrick Swayze killing damn dirty commies with his teenage army will be forever remembered.

so i think disclaimers at the end of TV commercials are getting ridiculous. I remember the first one I ever saw was on a commercial for "Guess Who," that board game from the late 80s or early 90s where you had all these cards with drawings of faces on them and you had to guess which card the other player had. Well, during the commercial the cards were animated and they’d say stuff when kids asked questions, like the kid would ask “Does your person have a beard?” and one of the cards would say “Nope, see you later!” and the card would fall over. “Does your person have blonde hair?” “I sure do!”, et cetera, and then the victorious kid would say “Hey, you’re Darrell!!” Then at the end of the commercial there was a voiceover saying “game pieces do not actually talk.” I thought that was pretty hilarious, what kind of dummy would think they did? “Mommy!! This toy doesn’t work!! I asked who wore glasses and nobody said anything!!” And another disclaimer I remember vividly was for some SUV. it seems like car commercials always have the most and the stupidest disclaimers. so this car was driving through a horse racing course, the kind with the stuff the horses jump over, like brick walls and hedges, with some energetic type music playing, probably Led Zeppelin, since they're all Led Zeppelin now. anyway, it was splashing through puddles and crashing through hedges and the only disclaimer was "not a regulation horse race course." what the hell??? who cares? does that have any effect on this car whatsoever? unless they were saying it's ok to crash your car through regulation horse racing courses, but not through non-regulations ones? why not have the usual "professional driver, do not attempt" thing they usually have? that commercial boggled my mind. but the most recent one i saw was also for some truck, it was pulling a boat which morphed into a camper, then another car, then a flatbed thing with lots of wood on it, i guess showing that the truck was powerful or had a lot of "torque" or whatever that shit is. that's all well and good, but then there was a disclaimer that said "picture simulated". so wait, this truck doesn't come with a boat that transforms into a camper and then into a car!? that is false advertising! I want this truck to pull optimus prime, not a damn boat. i can't believe how stupid advertisers think we are and what inane shit they think they need to include in ads. but now i think i'm going to go have a conversation with my memory game for kids while crashing my SUV through some regulation hedges.

so I think those “Drug Free Zone” signs are stupid. Aren’t drugs already illegal? “Well, you aren’t allowed to have drugs anywhere, but if you have them here on this block, look out mister, they are extra-illegal.” I guess the drug free zones are supposed to be around churches and schools and stuff, but if something’s illegal, it’s illegal. You can’t be more illegal. Kind of dumb. And are other areas not drug-free? And what about other crimes? “Well, you killed somebody, and you’re in a Murder Free Zone, so we’ll probably arrest you or something.” Why not just make the whole country an “Illegal Activity Free Zone”? If it’s illegal and you do it in this zone here between Canada and Mexico, you will get in trouble. Or just make the signs say “Increased penalties for drugs here” rather than “Drug Free Zone.” But I guess that’s not as catchy.

so on the main page of yahoo, the first news article's headline is "Schwarzenegger won't hold groping probe". Read that again. I think they maybe should have thought about how that might be construed. I can hear Arnold saying "Hallo, woult you lahk to holt my groping probe?"

so is the unibrow the new cool thing for hipsters? i've seen two hipster type guys recently, one of whom i know, with unibrows . it was weird, i couldn't stop staring at it. like, "what the hell is that doing there?" and they weren't lazy scraggly unibrows, where the person forgot to trim or whatever, but full, obviously on purpose manicured and plucked unibrows. i don't get it. are these guys trying to be ironic? does it mean something? or do they just want to repel members of the opposite sex? or possibly of the same sex, who knows. if looking like a doofus is the new way to get chicks, then man, i guess i am never getting any chicks. ho ho.

also, i think if i were a plumber, i'd call my operation "Mario and Luigi Plumbing." that'd be cool.

so i think the spring forward - fall back thing is dumb. (I was going to say I think daylight savings time is dumb, but i learned it's actually the coming off of daylight savings time that sucks.) So anyway, I think we should be on daylight savings time all the time, it's stupid to suddenly make it get darker earlier. I hate coming home when it's pitch dark, it's cold and weird. and it probably raises heating bills nationwide. Just look, after October the heat bills in the U.S. skyrocket! Only because of coming off daylight savings time! Ok, that's because of winter, but I bet if it didn't get darker earlier, people would still pay a little less. If everybody in the country used less electricity (or burned less wood or whatever), that'd be a big savings, and it'd reduce pollution. Supposedly it's "for the farmers" so they can get more work done, but I have a suggestion for farmers: wake up earlier. Seriously, farmers don't need a set schedule as much as the ret of us. The cows don't know what time it is. The farming day starts when the cows need milking and chickens are ready to lay eggs or eat seeds or whatever they do. Since the rest of the U.S. needs a set schedule, I don't see why we change it for somem farmers who could just set their alarms an hour earlier and get the same amount of stuff done. And the timing is stupid too. "Ok, I've got this great idea, let's make it really dark right before every normal kid in the U.S. walks around their towns in costumes collecting candy! That will be really safe." Of course, kids go out trick-or-treating now at like 4 pm, which is ridiculous. But that's another story.