Jokes My Mother Sends Me – (1) Ol’ Blue

A young cowboy from Wyoming goes off to college. Half way through the semester, he has foolishly squandered all his money.

He calls home. "Dad," he says, "You won't believe what modern education is developing! They actually have a program here in Laramie that will teach our dog, Ol' Blue how to talk!"

"That's amazing," his Dad says. "How do I get Ol' Blue in that program?"

"Just send him down here with $1,000" the young cowboy says.. "I'll get him in the course."

So, his father sends the dog and $1,000.

About two-thirds of the way through the semester, the money again runs out. The boy calls home.

"So how's Ol' Blue doing son?" his father asks.

" Awesome, Dad, he's talking up a storm," he says, "but you just won't believe this - they've had such good results they have started to teach the animals how to read!"

"Read!?" says his father, "No kidding! How do we get Blue in that program?"

"Just send $2,500, I'll get him in the class."

The money promptly arrives. But our hero has a problem. At the end of the year, his father will find out the dog can neither talk, nor read. So he shoots the dog.

When he arrives home at the end of the year, his father is all excited. "Where's Ol' Blue? I just can't wait to see him read something and talk!"

"Dad," the boy says, "I have some grim news. Yesterday morning, just before we left to drive home, Ol' Blue was in the living room, kicked back in the recliner, reading the Wall Street Journal, like he usually does. Then he turned to me and asked, "So, is your daddy still messing' around with that little redhead who lives
in town?"

The father exclaimed, "I hope you shot that SOB before he talks to your Mother!"

"I sure did, Dad!"

"That's my boy!"

The kid went on to be a successful lawyer, and then he went on to become the Governor of Illinois.

RyanAir to Charge to Use Toilets

Really? Or, is it a joke. If it's a joke, I laughed so hard I almost peed in my pants.

The Guardian reports that RyanAir's chairman has said that he would like to charge for using the toilets while a flight was in progress. His goal is to keep the cost of the air fare down and gives Liverpool Street rail station as the example of how you have to pay for this privilege in other transportation settings. There's no end to the possible puns for this story ("no relief for passengers on RyanAir" is a good start), but I can imagine a Senate hearing on this if any American airline tried it!

New gTLDs to Confuse and Amuse - II

Another entry in the new gTLD sweepstakes is dotSport -- as in poor.sport and many other inanities that I can imagine. I find this one interesting in that dotSport is apparently already trademarked. It's also being coordinated by someone who is pretty knowledgable about the ICANN environment. I wonder if this one has legs?

New gTLDs to Confuse and Amuse - I

Dot health is one of the organizations who is trying to convince us that the new gTLD process will lead to a ripening of the top level of the DNS and a series of useful and good DNS names.  I’ll try to provide a link to the .health support site when I find it.  I have no idea whether or not .health is a good idea (www.bad.health?) but I’ll certainly look forward to see if it has the money (ICANN) or traction to make it through the new gTLD process.

Guerrilla Knitting

I'd never heard of guerrilla knitting, but apparently this is a widespread practice. I've never seen such things in Madison, but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough. I wonder if there is a chapter of Knitta Please here in Madison. Naturally, I'm happy that such a practice is referred to as "fluffy" graffiti.

London and the Snowstorm

Another picture from the snowstorm that brought London to a standstill in early February.

Snow Shuts Down London

24 Books a Year: (2) Borkmann’s Point

Added to the long line of Swedish police mystery series, we now have English translations of the Inspector Van Veeteren mysteries by Hakan Nesser. The first of these to reach English translation is his second book: Borkmann's Point [ amazon.com or borders.com ].

Borkmann's Point is more in tune with the sorrowful and lonely Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell than the older Beck series by Sjowall and Wahloo. The principal, Van Veeteren, has the same detached approach to working through the mystery, but Nesser focuses on the drudgery of the work needed to find solutions to crimes. That drudgery doesn't get in the way of a good story and the principal vehicle for the story is a set of characters who shift back and forwards in the story's frame almost as silently as wolves in a Swedish forest.

In this case, the mystery involves sending Van Veeteren to a tiny police force to assist in the investigation of two ugly axe murders. Van Veeteren leaves during a vacation and the investigation is colored by the loss of his vacation and the difficulty of making progress. The story follows Van Veeteren's emerging relationship with an older chief of police and the sheer grind of attempting to get enough information to draw conclusions about the axe murders. The half of the story line that follows Van Veeteren's relationship with the aging cop is bittersweet and unusual in a police procedural. The other half, following the investigation itself, is simply less compelling stuff.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is that, for the alert reader, the murderer is identified about two-thirds of the way through the book. This makes the last third a story of finding the evidence needed to compel the murderer to confess or to confront them with their guilt. It's this last third of the novel that is worth the price of admission. The grace and light style of this final part of the story is exceptional. This makes the book seem like part of a series that will certainly be a worthy addition to the remarkable tradition of Swedish police procedurals. Nesser uses this last third of the book as a meditation on how difficult investigations can be and how they are both a physical and mental exercise. There's not a huge set piece at the end, just the inevitable and gradual accumulation of information and personal characteristics that leads to a very surprising but believable conclusion.

Here's hoping that there's more Van Veeteren to come in English. Recommended to mystery readers.

[ 256 pages; ISBN 978-0333989845; read it in the Hardcover version ]

Switched from TDS to AT&T

USB Fever

I'm as geeky as anyone else, but this site is a terrible temptation. My absolute favorite is the USB slippers (Blue) and the customization that says: "Today is Saturday, Feb 21 109." Hilarious.