Click the photo to see this burning sensation at full size.
Last year, it was all about sending glitter to people you don’t like. This year, it’s about giving “My First Fire” to their kids!
Click the photo to see this burning sensation at full size.
This is a real product available on Amazon, but it’s just a prank gift box and not actually a set for kids ages 2 and up to start their own fires. Ah well.
Click the map to see the original at Judgmental Maps.
“Alex S.’s” map is pretty accurate, and nowhere near as racist as the one for Vancouver. In case you were curious, I live in “Older Suburbs”.
It’s going to be a warm week leading up to Christmas in Tampa Bay, starting with some thick fog. I’m going to have to set aside some patio bar time this week!
For those of you outside the three countries that don’t use Herr Doktor Fahrenheit’s old-timey system for measuring phlogiston, I’ve added the temperatures in Celsius to the weather report above.
Okay, local friends — when are we going to St. Pete’s Pour Taproom, which boasts 85 serve-yourself taps? They just opened, and it appears that they have a solid selection, including gluten-free beers.
Pour Taproom charges by the ounce, not by the glass, which makes it easier to try a small sample of something and see if you like it. The combination of a Disney World-like wristband and sensors on each tap make it so that you can serve yourself while they tally up your bill. Their prices range from 20 to 90 cents an ounce.
Find out more:
This will sound like a fantasy to a number of my friends with a writerly bent, but it’s real: Allan Bednar, owner of Simply Hydroponics and Organics, a 25 year-old business based in Largo (a 40-minute drive southwest of my place), will give it to the person who writes the best essay explaining why he should do so. That’s right: you can win a business by winning an essay contest!
Entries will be accepted through March 15, 2018, and the winner will be announced on April 2, 2018. The original announcement date was scheduled to be April 1, but too many people forgot that this is Florida and assumed that the contest was an April Fool’s prank.
Find out more:
Florida leads the nation in identity theft, and is famous for people making terrible choices for insanely petty reasons, so it’s only natural that someone would combine the two. Teresa Bradley had to resign from her position of Mayor of Davenport, Florida (it’s just under two hours east of Tampa) after it was discovered that she was parking in handicapped spaces with permits acquired by stealing dead people’s identities.
The Tampa Bay Times has an amusing article about the Florida men and women who choose act as their own attorney in court. One of them did jury selection by asking potential jurors: “Do you like pets? Do you think I look like Charles Manson? Do you hate my hair?”
Click the screenshot to see the source.
Come to think of it, I can recall a few times where I thought that killing my opposition would make me very happy. Also, one of the things I say to Anitra when I kiss her goodbye each morning in addition to “I love you” is “Death to your enemies.”
Found via They Might Be Giants.
The second-greatest moment of yesterday’s Senate election in Alabama was when CNN anchor Jake Tapper had to explain to Ted Crockett, a Roy Moore campaign spokesperson, that you do not have to swear on the Bible when taking the oath of office.
When this fact was explained to him, he sat in stunned silence for a few seconds, like one of those robots on old-school Star Trek who’d just been told a contradictory fact by Captain Kirk:
Crockett valiantly tries to rally by reminding us that he and Trump swore on Bibles when they took their oaths of office, and Tapper pointed out because they’re Christian (well, at least in name), and that was their choice. Tapper had to state that it’s not required by law.
Other politicians have taken their oaths of office by swearing on other documents:
Crockett closed out the interview with a weakly uttered “Merry Christmas”, which sounded rather like a poorly-disguised “fuck you”. It’s funny-sad how these “freedom of religion” guys usually mean “freedom of religion for me, but not for thee.”
If you’re looking for a legal precedent, check out the 1961 Supreme Court ruling for Torcaso v. Watkins. It reaffirmed that the U.S. Constitution prohibits the U.S. state and federal governments from requiring any kind of religious test for public office.
It came about when the governor of the state of Maryland appointed Roy Torcaso, an atheist as a notary public. Maryland’s Constitution at the time required “a declaration of belief in the existence of God” in order for a person to hold “any office of profit or trust in this State”. Torcaso refused to make such a statement, and they revoked the appointment. He took it first to Maryland’s First Circuit Court, and then the Court of Appeals, where he lost both times. It was only when he took it to the United States Supreme Court, which used the ruling from Everson v. Board of Education…
The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.
…and Torcaso — and hey, the rest of us — won the case.
If you’re going to be a weirdo, be a useful weirdo.