Hawaii Blog

Man, I should’ve joined that Saddam dead pool. Soon after watching the “live” address by Saddam Hussein following the unexpected target-of-opportunity strike on an Iraqi bunker (some 26 hours ago), I posted a theory to MetaFilter that the target was Saddam himself, that he was already dead, and that the...

Oh, god, how I love Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I don’t care if, technically, they’re an AOL property. That show’s a highlight of my week. It’s impossible to do anything else when it’s on… and the Danzig episode had me laughing so hard my ribs ached. “That is very wrong!...

Your tax dollars at work. Does swapping “Freedom” for “French” defame the French, or equate the French with Freedom? And why would the French care if we took their name off a food product they have nothing to do with in the first place?  [MeFi] How much more ridiculous can things...

Forgive the USA Today link, but this piece — yet another article addressing how poorly America, if not Americans, are being received beyond our borders — had a quote that I relished. In Ugly sentiments sting American tourists, Vince Vaughn recounts an encounter he had with some girls in England. They flirted...

During the (long) drive home yesterday, I was listening as usual to Marketplace on Hawaii Public Radio. During the show, former Maine Governor Angus King called in with his regular report from the road (he and his family are touring around in a RV), this time from “Big Bend Country”...

Check out the new review of the Dixie Grill Bar-B-Que & Crab Shack by my beautiful wife. She’s qualified, and is turning out to be a more reliable writer to boot. Hey, at least something on this site got updated…

An important lesson to any student… beyond the fundamental, “plagiarism is bad.” And that is, “if you are going to plagiarize, try not to steal from an author who published the original work online.” Methinks Princeton grad Ung Lee is in a wee bit of trouble. The school has already...

I know an update to IMR is long overdue, but as I get settled in my new job, I come home more interested in sleep than anything else. (Once again having to deal with rush-hour traffic twice a day isn’t helping much, either.) I do like it a lot so...

Last night, I lost a couple of hours I could have spent doing more productive things by reading every single page of Hank Mishkoff‘s site. It’s an exhaustive, personal account of his legal battle with the developers of a shopping mall in his neighborhood. While I’m familiar and regularly read...

With a week to restore my soul between jobs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take the family on a trip to the Big Island. So, it’s 3:25 a.m., and I’m about to drag everyone out of bed and down to the airport for the first flight to Hilo. We’ll...

1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn’t have breakfast, why not? I don’t usually have breakfast, though I should. Just a little while ago I bought a ridiculously cute “Wonder Bread” sandwich holder, figuring it would inspire me to make PB&J sandwiches every morning. I...

Why does The Man Show have closed captioning? Captioning provided by the WGBH Educational Foundation, which touts “a commitment to be a trusted partner to parents and educators, providing programming and services that promote the healthy development of children”? Is a picture worth a thousand words? How many words can...

Ergh. For months now CNN‘s repackaged “Headline News” has been annoying me every which way from Sunday, from folding in live musical acts to the sad attempts at being clever with graphics and ticker crawls. Just now a pretty-face reporter in Texas, describing the recovery work in the Columbia disaster,...

The turkeys pardoned by President Bush today — the “First Turkey,” for the first time a female, and the backup (in case, I guess, the “First Turkey” bites the dust before the White House ceremony) — were named Katie and Zack.

I agree with my wife in thinking the anti-Democratic automated telemarketing effort hitting Honolulu is terrible, and in Jen’s case, definitely backfired. (Although local reports have the Hawaii Republican Party disavowing any involvement, even suggesting the attack calls secretly being arranged by the Dems.) And that the negative campaigning is...

Not that I’ve been a prolific journaler or blogger lately anyway, but in case you’re wondering why IMR isn’t going to see many updates for the month of November, it’s because I’m writing elsewhere. Yep, I’m doing the NaNoWriMo thing (National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated). A wholly ridiculous...

The Internet can bring about many wonderful, magical things, but nothing is quite as heartwarming as when it facilitates the smackdown of a dumbass. The Story: A Ford SVT dealer technician takes a customer’s 2003 Cobra on a 140 m.p.h. joyride. He brags about it on a Mustang message board...

Dear Casey Choi, Candidate for Hawaii State Senate District 11: You don’t know me, but you wave at me twice a day. I don’t wave back, and feel a little bad, so I thought I’d tell you why. I represent a small constituent group of little strategic value, but one...

If a meme washes ashore in the uncharted backwaters of the Internet known as DIARY-L, then I know it’s being beaten to death. It used to be All Your Base. Now, it’s, “When come back, bring pie.” Simply because it was a mystery to me, I feel compelled to post...

Or perhaps simply inevitable. My beautiful wife, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of web journaling (and now writes more often than I do), also now has a weblog. Though only time will tell if “Aside” will flourish, I suspect Jen will soon be blogging...