Jeff the proprietor of Side Salad has jumped from BlogSpot to a new address. Stop by to say hello.

Pretty soon, we BlogSpotters will be able to hold a convention in a phone booth!

I meant to link to this yesterday, but better late than never. Sgt. Hook as created another photo essay based on Buffalo Springfield’s song “For What it’s Worth.” Go look.

Get the gott-damned lead out. Let’s go. Let’s go. Double time!!!

We often hear, read, and speak of building a democracy-style government in Iraq, and yet I suspect that many of us really don’t know how that might best be done (I know that I don’t). I, therefore, urge to you to take a look at what Super G. has to say about the subject, because he is currently in Iraq working on the nuts and bolts of actually making government happen there.

His almost-daily posts provide the reader with a look at things in Iraq, unfiltered by news editors. For example, he reports on just how comfortably Iraqis are embracing capitalism. It seems that a local pizzeria has opened and is making deliveries.

Where is the only place on a divided highwa that a solid yellow line appears by itself?

(a) Left Side
(b) Center
(c) Right Side

That is just one of the questions on the Road Challenge Test. I took it, and did,…well,…fair.

Thanks to my friend, Rich, a former Coastie.

TJ relates a hilarious story about her interesting encounter with electricity today. I particularly liked the part where she called the doctor saying that she believed she had “electrocuted” herself. That statement was undoubtedly the product of an electricity-induced brain fart.

Robert Palmer, best known for songs such “Addicted to Love,” and “Simply Irresistible,” and their respective mondo-sexy videos, died in Paris of heart attack. He was 54.

“Addicted to Love” earned Palmer a Grammy in 1986 for best male vocal. I always thought that the full-bore crunch guitar hook in that song was terrific, although at the moment I cannot recall (nor can I find) who played guitar on the record (Hispanic name, methinks). Of course, the women in the video pretending to play instruments were comical, but I doubt that many men focused on their hands.

George Plimpton died unexpectedly in his Manhattan apartment last night. He was 76. He was best known for his 1963 book “Paper Lion,” in which he chronicled his participation in the Detroit Lions football pre-season training camp. I am not much of a sports fan, but I recall laughing out loud at that book. As I recall, he described the linemen as “having hands like cabbages.”

Plimpton was a prolific and talented writer, but he also did many other things.

He boxed with Archie Moore, pitched to Willie Mays and performed as a trapeze artist for the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. He acted in numerous films, including “Reds” and “Good Will Hunting.” He even appeared in an episode of “The Simpsons,” playing a professor who runs a spelling bee.

He was good guy.

Blogging time will be limited tonight, so I thought I would leave you with these two things:

File this One Under “What the Hell??”
Here is a site dedicated to those adults who, for some reason, like to dress up as infants. Huh?

via The Ultimate Insult

Auto Nostalgia.

For you car buffs out there, here is a nice tour through automotive history, complete with sound. (Note: This may be too long of a download for dial-up users, unless you really, really like cars.)

Thanks to my friend Brian, the Air Force Vet

It’s up at Pathetic Earthlings. Go read.

Within the last week, the mail included these catalogs:

Shannon (selling crystal and china stuff)

Lenox (more china stuff), and
The Paragon (selling general gifties)

What do these three gems have in common? Their covers all tout CHRISTMAS Stuff!!!

It’s September, dammit. Kids have just returned to school. There are still some tomatoes outside on the plants. The leaves are still ON the trees. Halloween is still more than a month a way, and Thanksgiving is still more than TWO months away.

Gimme a farookin’ break already.

There are few things more frustrating than dealing with a pro se litigant (a person who represents himself in court). It often turns into a situation where all the procedural rules and rules of evidence apply to the state and the prosecutor, but the pro se defendant is cut enormous amounts of slack by the judge. And, the prosecutor often comes off looking like the bad-guy bully trying to beat up on the sorry ass who has decided to defend himself, thereby evoking sympathy for the defendant from the jury.

This sounds like a classic example.

Between June and August, high school dropout Jonathan Harris, 34, acted as his own lawyer in three Philadelphia felony cases and won them all, including a murder trial that could have sent him to death row. At press time, he had scheduled two more for himself, on a 2001 gun charge and at a new trial on several lesser charges related to the murder (although he had taunted a prosecutor in court about taking him on again). The prosecutor blamed the murder verdict on unreliable and no-show witnesses.

Then again, maybe this guy ought to be applying to (or teaching at) Harvard Law School.

Note: The story was published in the August 18, 2003 edition of Newsday. The link is no longer available.

Thanks to my friend Russ, a Navy vet and a Harley guy.