Heh...I'm lazy. I accidentally broke the latch that holds my microwave door shut yesterday (it caught on my watchband and snapped), and I just assumed that it would be difficult or impossible to get a replacement for, so I was just going to spend $100 on another microwave. I would have already bought a new one if I hadn't been feeling like launching a 115 gr. JHP into my head, but luckily I decided to look online just now for a replacement part, and found one for $0.49 at RepairClinic.com. Shipping was $3.95, so I just saved my lazy ass about $95 by spending two minutes on the computer.

I just got back from the emergency room at Casketview Hospital--it turns out that I have strep throat and a really bad ear infection. The only reason that I even went to the hospital is that last night, pressure started building up in one of my ears, and it turned into very severe pain. I "borrowed" a Lortab from my sister to help relieve the pain, hoping that by morning it would be gone. Instead, I sat awake in bed all night long, with strange (almost hallucinogenic) thoughts running through my mind, and I probably only slept for 45 minutes the entire night--I will never again go near a Lortab. By the time daylight rolled around, my ear didn't hurt much, but I could barely hear out of it, and my other ear had some slight hearing loss as well. My throat also hurt like hell (still), so I figured it was time to see a doctor.

Now I have to wait a half-hour until the pharmacy at Wal-Mart opens, then I can fill my prescription (antibiotics). Hopefully the hearing loss will go away with the infection, but right now it's extremely annoying only being able to hear out of one ear.

Man...I thought I felt like crap on Saturday morning, that is until I came down with the flu on Sunday. I took the past two days off work, and though my body is feeling better today (no achiness or nausea), my throat hurts like hell. Instead of taking DayQuil like I have the past few days, I just took some Excedrin this morning, and so far it's made the pain at least bearable.

It looks like the shooting range that the county is going to build won't be at the fairgrounds after all. Of the three locations they're considering now, northeast Price would be perfect, seeing as how it's the closest to town. For the other two locations, Ridge Road and Airport Road, it probably wouldn't be worth my time dealing with going to a range if I'd have to drive as far as I normally do now to go target shooting--unless weather is a factor, which it hasn't been for me much over the winter. I guess it depends on the cost, if any, of going to the range, and I don't see any reason why the county wouldn't charge for range-time. Even though they've budgeted $1.5 million for the range, I still wouldn't expect it to be better than any of the county's other substandard facilities.

Wait a minute--shouldn't Florida's law banning weapons on school grounds have stopped this armed robber dead in his tracks at the school's property line?

"Hollywood Halfwits--exposing the ignorance, insanity, and anti-Americanism of Hollywood celebrities." Good reading.

I figure I'd better post before a whole week goes by since my last update. I woke up this morning with an extremely bad headache and the urge to vomit, which only goes to show what a good time I had last night. =) Thank the devil for Excedrin. It was poker night with the boyeez, and I brought a whole box full of booze, mostly schnapps and other sweet girlie drinks, most of which is now gone. I normally stick to rum and coke or lime daiquiris, but I had fun doing shots of everything. Oh yeah, poker sucked. I think I lost about $4.75 (yeah, it was really small-stakes), but I expected to lose every penny that I bought-in with ($7.00), so I guess it wasn't too bad. Despite sucking ass at poker, I had a good time. It's a good thing that my wife condones such behavior every once-in-a-while.

The truth about Bowling for Columbine.

Juan Paul got arrested for--get this--driving under the influence of drugs, possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of meth, possession of a meth lab with intent to distribute and possession of paraphernalia. I'm only surprised it took him this long.

There was an absolutely ridiculous public forum article published in the Salt Lake Tribune last week, so ridiculous that I just had to respond. I sent in the following reply, though since I haven't heard back from the Tribune yet, I assume that it's not going to be published (probably due to the length). I figured I'd post it here so the 15 minutes it took me to type it wouldn't go to waste:

In response to Barbara Nash's Public Forum article (March 13), I must say that she has taken extreme liberties in stretching the truth regarding not only what Senator Waddoups has said, but also regarding the supposed 850 concealed weapon permit holders who have been convicted of felonies.

I don't believe Senate Bill 108 was necessarily intended to arm the public in order to "provide additional protection" to Utah's school children. Rather, it was designed to allow concealed weapon permit holders, who wish to legally protect themselves from others who might do them harm, to continue to do so no matter if they are on school property, or driving their children to and from school.

Although I do feel that law enforcement personnel, with their limited numbers, do the best job possible in protecting the public, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable leaving it to chance that a police officer would be at my side when confronted by somebody intent on taking my life. Senator Waddoups' logic makes perfect sense in that, if you can't keep criminals from possessing dangerous weapons on school grounds, then law-abiding citizens should be allowed to at least protect themselves in such places. If schools had armed guards and metal detectors, such as airports, jails, and courtrooms do, then checking weapons at the door shouldn't be a problem for permit holders.

As to the number of convicted felons who currently hold concealed weapon permits issued by the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI), I would put that number closer to zero. The BCI conducts daily checks on each and every concealed weapon permit holder to verify that no permit holders have violated the conditions of their permits. Any individual who is in violation of the terms of his or her permit has that permit instantly suspended or revoked.

Besides that, do you really believe that anybody convicted of a felony is going to avoid carrying a weapon on school grounds because it is against the law? It's already against the law for a convicted felon to own or possess a firearm, and prohibiting permit holders from carrying firearms just serves to limit those who would only use their firearm to lawfully defend their life or the life of another.

I just got finished doing a slight revamp of the Miscellaneous section, including the addition of the much-needed writeup of that whole Carbon Credit Union experience from about a year ago. I really need to add some more content to that section...

How pitiful is it that the only way to reliably get your music played on MTV is to buy a 30-second commercial spot and play a clip from your video during that 30 seconds? I've seen the commercial for that one Evanescence album several times, though I've only seen the actual video once, and that happened to be during a very rare moment when MTV was actually playing videos. I remember, back in junior high school, when I'd return home after school and watch the top 20 (Guns-N-Roses, baby)--back when they played actual music--and most of that was white-people music. And after the top 20, they played even more music--there was no such thing as The Real World, or any of the other real shit that they show now. Now, during the unlikely event that they're playing videos, it's 50% likely that it'll be rap or hip-hop, most of which is trash. Who are they catering to? Sure, it seems like younger people are even more stupid than when I was that age, but do they really like Missy Elliott and N*Stync? This world is going to hell.

It seems a little early for my allergies to start kicking in, but in the past few days, each time I've gone into my back yard, even for a few minutes, my eyes start itching and watering, and I start sneezing like hell. Michael's been sneezing a lot too, so it looks like he inherited the same problems from me. If this shit keeps up, this spring and summer are going to be a bitch.

If a man severely injures himself while making a bomb in his apartment, should doctors really spend 16 hours trying to reconstruct his hands? Where's Darwin when you need him?

I put a new poll up, and this one is a toughie. I chose the options from my favorite cartoon series, so your favorite may not be up there (i.e., yours sucks). This one's so tough because, seriously, how can you choose between The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park? Sure, the other three options are great too, but the first three are just so damned good. I voted for Futurama because, even though I laugh so much harder at South Park, so much more thought goes into each episode, and you can watch each one over and over and catch new things that you missed the last time. I've started staying up until 12:30 a.m. just to watch it, even though it's playing hell with my work schedule.

I just realized this morning (thanks to Bret) that, all my life, I've spelled the word "gauge" incorrectly. I've always spelled it "guage," and I can't imagine how I never noticed that it wasn't correct before. I mean, the abbreviation for "gauge," when referring to shotgun shells or wire thickness, is "ga." It should have been obvious. I did a search of the archives on this site, and came up with 10 matches for the misspelled version of the word, but no matches for the correct version. I've always considered myself to be excellent at spelling and grammar (well, excellent for a Carbon High School graduate), but this has just shattered my self-image. Well, not really, but it's wierd to find out that I've been making a simple mistake like that for so long without realizing it.

Maybe this is just police bias (though I doubt it), but it always seems like when the media reports on an arrest for one reason or another, they always mention something like in this article: "Officers also found three handguns and other weapons inside the house." There's no mention of whether or not the weapons were legally owned, but of course if they were, I don't think the media would want to tell you. Just being able to correlate "evil guns" with "evil drugs" is enough to get their agenda across, and any more information might just ruin that.

Seriously, were there any steak knives in the house? Drano? Maybe a case of Mountain Dew? I'm sure the public is dying to know what other inanimate objects (and potentially deadly, if placed in the wrong hands) were found in the house.

If this doesn't make you drool all over your monitor, you have some serious problems. [via RoadSassy]

I was watching Conan O'Brien last night while sitting in bed, and they showed this bit from an old show where Conan was sitting behind his desk and wearing nothing below the waist, but they had (of course) blurred out what you're not supposed to see. They only showed about two seconds of that, however, before the screen was filled with the KSL logo, and after a few more seconds, it returned to Conan (after they'd moved on to the next bit). How shitty of a job is that, watching the NBC feed that KSL sends out, with your finger on a button, just in case something "objectionable" comes through? All I can say is, "what a bunch of pussies."

Update: Last night on Leno, they had a similar bit where this Scottish bagpipe player was being interviewed, and when he uncrossed his legs, the crotch of his shorts was missing, and they had blurred it out. But whoever pushes "the button" at KSL must have been slacking off, because they never cut into the Leno broadcast. Damn slackers.