06:14 - Wednesday, Jul. 06, 2005
stuff to chew on over coffee!
Today has to be the worst day of the entire summer. There you are, sitting in your windowless cubicle, sunburned from a weekend of outdoor fun and constipated from all the hot dogs you ate at various cookouts. It's sunny and beautiful outside, and all you want to do is take the summer off like you used to when you were a kid. So, to escape your depression you sit back, close your eyes and think of the beach.

Of course, if you're a heterosexual male, thinking of the beach means you're imagining one and only one thing: hot chicks in bikinis. For that pleasant memory, you can thank the French. Yeah, you heard me. French engineer Louis Reard, who introduced the bikini on this day in 1946, was seeking to create "the world's smallest bathing suit," essentially in an effort to beat out a competitor's design (the "Atome") that was created earlier in the year. He succeeded, giving males everywhere something to ogle at on the beach besides a woman's knees, and women stress and eating disorders that would continue for decades to come. Reard named the garment after the Bikini Atoll, an A-bomb test site, thinking excitement around his invention would be similar to an atomic bomb blast. So his bathing suit engineering skills didn't extend to knowledge of apocalyptic explosions. Can you blame the guy? He was too horny to think straight.

Anyway, the first bikini, modeled here by a French showgirl looks like a muumuu compared to the thongs and barely-there string bikinis seen today. But, hey, everybody has to start somewhere. And if it weren't for sexually frustrated engineers, where would we be in this world? Sitting in the dark and masturbating to images of women in hoop skirts, that's where.

Speaking of sexually frustrating professions, cartoonist Bill Watterson celebrates his 48th birthday today. To fill in all those who actually went on dates during high school in the Eighties and Nineties, Watterson was the man behind "Calvin and Hobbes," arguably the best comic strip of this generation. What makes Watterson admirable is that he never merchandised his creation, he took time off to recharge, and he ended his strip while he was still at the top of his game. Think about that when you see Sarge beat Beetle Bailey into a pulp for the 14,523rd time.

Also on this day in 1971, President Nixon formally certified the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18, a provision of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified four days earlier. This was being done to force all states to lower their voting age, as some refused to do after the provision was put in to an extension of the Voting Rights Act. Apparently, the 18-to-21 set was a little pissed that they couldn't vote but could be yanked out of their pot circles and dropped into a rice paddy with a gun in their hands, not having any idea why their being asked to shoot at people and burn down villages. Sheeh. Fucking ingrates.

In other news, George W. Bush celebrates his 59th birthday today by visiting Denmark, land of pickled herring and hot dogs with mayonnaise. There, he will speak to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen about Iraq, the Middle East and the European Union. Perhaps he'll go visit the Little Mermaid statue on Copenhagen's waterfront. I'm pretty sure President Bush is going to be disappointed, though; after all, it looks nothing like Ariel, and Sebastian is nowhere to be found.

From there, the president will be going to Glengales, Scotland, to attend the Group of Eight (G8) Summit, which starts today. At this meeting, the leaders of the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada, France and the European Union will join Bush in long walks along the beach, photographers in tow, just like at last year's conference in Georgia. Oh yeah, and they'll talk about stuff like canceling the debts of the poorest countries in Africa and how to deal with the AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics there and in other poor countries. But not before the pig roast and some storytelling around the campfire.

On the local front, Jason yesterday went down to Comp usa all by hisself yesterday to buy a network card for his upcoming computer, along with a floppy disk drive. He done all right, when he came home, he came straight to my room here to show me his purchases. The puter is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. this aughta be fun. stay tuned!

Yesterday, i went to radio shack(shudders) for speaker wires; i had bought some nifty ancient bose speakers off of onewetleg's goodwill ebay store! also, i got a indoor/outdoor temp gauge so i know exactly how crispy its getting outside!

So, anyhoo, i get the wires home and hook em up, and the volume is so low, then Jason came in to show me his Comp usa stuff, and i tole him about this, and he sez that i need an amplifier! O well! Dont get me wrong, these are really nice speakers, but it just never occurred to me that i need an amplifier!

I'm working today from noon to 5, its payday today, and doyle the manager wants to go out and spend money at wal-mart! The moocher has done real good these past two weeks he has only bummed ONE pack of smokes from me!! I guess since i yelled at him about what the fuck do ya do with ya money?! he has been getting off his lazy fat ass and buying his own smokes! i KNEW he had the money for them, for fucks sake, he pulls in 80 hours a pay period, and makes 9 bux an hour, whereas, i work 20-50 hrs a pay period, and get 8.24 an hour!! YOU do the math! when ya do keep in mind rent is 265 here, and the fone is 40 bux a month. go figure.

well, thats all the stuff i got from here; i gotta go out back and feed whitey the stray cat! have a fun day folks, and dont get too crispy!!

CAT OF THE DAY

WELL, ITS GONNA GET WORSE! rut ro!

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