Minimum security, mostly drug offenders.

What is "Camp Cupcake," the federal prison camp where Martha Stewart is heading for five months?

For the gentleman whose manhood is so small...

...that not even a Hummer will boost his ego, International offers the CXT. This "pickup truck" is actually a commercial severe service vehicle that doesn't require a commercial license to operate, which is EXACTLY what we need on our roads.

An International rep actually boasts, "You can put the Hummer in back and take it with you." The CXT is TWO FEET taller than a Hummer, it weighs over 5 TONS, is 21.5 feet long and no doubt gets 2 miles to the gallon. My favorite "convenience" option? The tilting bed, of course, which should come in handy when unloading after a trip to Costco. It also has the safety feature of being able to crush 75% of the vehicles on the road in an accident.

It's only a matter of time before the pimps, players, movie producers and lawyers start cruising around the suburbs in this monstrosity. Damn you International...why couldn't you just bring back the Scout? (Thank you Matt C!)

Holy crap, I'm (officially) an uncle!

Jasper Tate Warren popped into this world at 02:31 PDT this morning, September 7th, 2004. He weighed in at 5 pounds, 8 ounces and stretched to 18 inches. When my wife and I arrived at the hospital at about 0:30, my mother informed us that the baby would be there any minute. My ESP kicked in and the time of 02:36 flashed in my mind. Okay, so I was off by five minutes, but c'mon, I would have easily won the (imaginary) office pool. My sister is just fine and was quite lucid after the delivery, which took just a few hours. Her husband and my mother were doing just fine too!

To add to the surreal factor of this whole experience, my wife and I were over at my sister's place last evening to check in on her and bring her puzzles and Vogue to keep her occupied during her remaining two and half weeks of bed rest. We enjoyed the truly bizarre experience of seeing the baby practice his kung fu moves against my sister's belly, little lumps pressing out THROUGH HER SHIRT! She admitted to us this morning that she was in labor the whole time we were there but didn't want to be wimpy and admit she was in pain. Ay chihuahua! And for those of you paying attention, yes, my sister did go into labor on Labor Day. May the corny jokes begin! More to follow...

Gaze Into the Future of "word processing"!

So my friends and I were reminiscing yesterday about good, old-fashioned typewriters. You know what I’m talking about: keys that depress about two inches and make that fantastic ‘ka-chunk’ sound…lots of Wite-Out…piles of crumpled paper in the wastebasket.

Then there were those fancy electronic typewriters that had the tiny LCD screen. You could type a whole page (but only see one line of text at a time) and correct all your errors before you even put ink to paper. The best part was typing it all up, inserting the paper and watching the thing type away at the speed of…a really fast typist. Cool, like a player piano.

Along came the home computer and typewriters became a thing of the past. The purpose-built word processors quietly slipped into oblivion because home computers could do THAT and so much more. Well things seem to be taking a step backwards. Purpose-built word processors are back! Granted, they are sleeker and more portable, they run for 700 hours on three AA batteries and some even have wi-fi capabilities, but still…. At least with the electronic typewriters you didn’t have to plug it into your home computer to print a page.

Cleveland Indians 22, New York Yankees 0

It's stories like this that warm my heart and make being a Seattle Mariners fan in 2004 a bit more bearable. Oh look, a slideshow!

All I Want for Xmas...

...is this kick-ass, multimedia, does-everything-but-toast-bread Pocket Video Recorder. It's Tivo for your pants pocket! Look what it does!