I don't get it. I'm not the first person to ask this question, and that might make it even more frustrating. We all wonder this all the time, and yet it continues to be a big ugly pain in our collective neck.

Why can't I find a decent mechanic?

Last week I went to get my brakes checked. Aside from the fact that it wound up being radically more expensive than I would have thought (I didn't just need pads, and rotors are que expensive.) The mechanics did a piss poor job of what they should have done.

The New York Times has applied their unending technological prowess to one of the internet's more mundane features: email. 10 Proposals for Fixing the E-Mail Glut.

You can tell it's going to be good because it's almost 2010 and they still refuse to sentence-case headlines, and spell email "E-Mail." They also insist on capitalizing "Web." Like the web is a person, and could just as easily be named Frank...although wouldn't it be the Frank?

Dear evil radio conglomerates everywhere,

Let's start with the full disclosure here. I've never liked Chris Brown.

With You was poorly written, poorly executed saccharine crap. Forever was poorly written, better executed saccharine crap. I Can Transform Ya is an atrocious piece of crap featuring Lil Wayne -- that's the lyrical genius who brought us the poetic masterpiece I Wanna Fuck Every Girl in the World.

I hate balloon boy, mostly because of what he shows us about ourselves.

In all the hubbub about whether or not the parents should be charged, or billed, or burned at the stake; about whether they knew the kid wasn't in the balloon; or about whether it was a publicity stunt or an honest mistake; we're missing the big picture here: the claim that that balloon was carrying a child is, was, and always will be a nonsensical claim.

Unless you were under a rock all afternoon you've certainly heard of the infamous "Balloon Boy" by now (also known as Falcon Heene - seriously). He's the Colorado tyke who clambered into his father's half-assed attempt at the monstrous love child of a blimp and a flying saucer. Except he didn't, and I assure you his father knew that, and so should have everyone else. I even tweeted my call of "hoax" shortly before young Falcon was found safe and sound.

Recently I started a Netflix trial period.  It's been pretty sweet so far, but two of the four DVDs I've gotten in the mail have been busted up pretty badly. I don't want to go making wild accusations, but between this and the experience of a friend I suspect someone in the mail system is breaking Netflix DVDs. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

I never thought in a million years I'd say this, but thank god Sarah Palin showed up when she did!

Now we all know Americans have a high tolerance for stupid.  We've practically made a national pastime of idiotic arguments.

The health care debate has been a wonderful game of this real national pastime.  The crazy idiot juice was (and still is) really flying over this one.

Then, out of left field comes Sarah Palin.  She popped up out of nowhere, spouting such insane lies and gibberish that even the FOXbots thought it was out of hand.

Why I don't use JSON in a nutshell: security concerns, over complexity.

Most people seem to just gloss over the glaring security concerns inherent in passing data through JSON.  I guess they figure it's up to the programmer to properly santize and validate all incomind data.  I say I shouldn't have to work so hard at internal security just to shuffle a bit of data back and forth between a browser and a server.

Today I got an email from a coworker about some guy who speculated to the AP that maybe his house got broken into while he was vacationing because he was using Twitter to yammer about his trip. He apparently ran some sort of video editing business out of his home and the thieves took all his fancy video editing stuff. I would like to postulate the theory that maybe he just got robbed, and Twitter had fuck-all to do with it.