Superstar

Recognize this guy?

Impeccable taste in guitars, btw.

Matthew Santos — a hint.

See the video below to find out how I found him.

Keep hope nope alive!

This is excellent.

Not bitter at all.

Found at MVRWC.

Holy moly!

The Biggest Hole in the world is in Russia.

The gaint hole is actually a diamond mine in Eastern Siberia near the town Mirna. It is 525 meters deep and 1.25 km in the diameter.

The suction above the hole resulted in several helicopter crashes, so all flight above the hole is prohibited now.

Crikey.

A pretty big hole

Big Hole

The Big Hole is a huge open-pit mine in Kimberley, South Africa and claimed to be the largest hole excavated by hand.

There is also a Big Hole in Montana

Big Hole National Battlefield

On August 9, 1877 gun shots shattered a chilly dawn on a sleeping camp of Nez Perce. Colonel John Gibbon and 163 men of the 7th Infantry and 34 Bitterroot Volunteers had orders to stop the non-treaty Nez Perce and return them to Idaho. The nearly 800 Nez Perce men, women, and children had fled their native lands when being forced onto a smaller reservation.

Bacon bits

This is amazing.

Probably NSFW.

A tale of love…

And a tiny bathing suit.

Somewhere Rosetta is crying…..or in his bunk.

I love this guy!

Hope he doesn’t mind that I put up almost his entire post:

Most of you already realize that Earth Hour took place last Saturday at 8 pm. The newly-created event designed to raise awareness for energy conservation was not a big hit with KSK’s Monday Morning Punter, and that contributor commemorates the event with a running diary of how he answered the World Wildlife Fund’s call to help the environment.

7:59 - Turned on every light in house, including both TVs, which are both in the living room. The 32-inch and 19-inch sets are tuned to CBS and FOX, respectively. The PlayStation 2, despite not being used, is also turned on, but with no game in the system.

8:02 - Answered the door from disgruntled next-door neighbor complaining about “light pollution” and how I’m not “doing [my] part.” Gives a confused look when I scold him for lack of butane conservation after he lights up a cigarette.

8:06 - Order two large pizzas from Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s. Tell each person taking my order that I will tip generously if the pizza arrives before 9, but insist that if the pies arrive right at 9 or later, I will not pay.

8:09 - Wife calls and tells me she’s running late from work. I remember that I have a wife. I leave the cell phone on the table.

8:12 - Throw one sock in washing machine. Set wash cycle for a full load with hot water. Without soap.

8:17 - Pull out electric guitar and amp from closet and set up on front porch. Attempt to spraypaint PUNTER-PALOOZA in the front yard grass, but realize too late that I’ve made my letters too big.

8:19 - Ignore unattractive woman walking by that asks, “What’s PUNTE?”

8:24 - Papa John’s guy shows up during uninspiring solo performance of “Wild Thing.” I tip half the bill. Before tax, of course. Neighbor shows up (holding a candle) to complain about something after dropping his newspapers in the green bin by his garage, and then storms back into his house when I don’t offer him any pizza. He leaves in such a huff that he forgets his lighter.

8:31 - Go inside to take a shit. Realize I have no toilet paper, either on the roll or under the sink, but I do have a whole can of hairspray. I fumble through the wastebasket hoping to find a partially used tissue that I might have either bled on or blown my nose on, something that still has enough life that it could withstand one good wipe of the ass. I immediately abandon this plan when I realize that I would be, in fact, recycling.

8:36 - Cell phone rings, but I’m stuck on the shitter, so I can’t answer it.

8:40 - Finally suck it up and wipe ass with a picture of Kate Bosworth ripped out of Marie Claire. I mutter something sexual and unclever during the act. Flush toilet several times to make sure paper doesn’t clog the toilet.

8:42 - Fuck, the toilet did clog. Plunger time!

8:46 - Head back out to the front porch to start my second set when I hear a loud crash. I get outside and see that the Pizza Hut delivery driver has rear-ended the Domino’s delivery driver. I realize they’re both okay when I hear the Domino’s driver ask, “What’s PUNTE?”

8:51 - Shitbag neighbor comes back out during performance of “Louie Louie” and threatens to call the police, but gets shouted down by the Domino’s and Pizza Hut drivers, who are enjoying the show while they’re waiting for, ironically enough, the police to show up and take an accident report. But now the neighbor’s not backing down, and the three of them are shouting toe-to-toe.

8:53 - I run back inside to the bathroom and grab the can of hairspray under the sink . I run back outside and pick up the lighter my neighbor left on my porch and run over to his recycling bin, which is full of newspapers. The lighter lights on the first try, and I hold the can of hairspray just behind the flame.

Go read the rest.

Thanks to Eddiebear.

Hey, your hole is burning!

Adventures in engineering disasters involving drilling holes in things, part 2.

Darvaza: The Burning Gates

In 1971 a search for gas went wrong when a whole drilling rig fell into an underground cavern. Natural gas started coming up from the hole. It was set alight so it wouldn’t kill everything around. For 35 years now the flames keep burning providing an spectacular seen for tourists. At night the burning gas makes the crater seen from miles away. The crater is located in Turkmenistan in the heart of the Karakum desert. The crater is called Darvaza or The Burning Gates.

Click the linky above for lots more cool pictures of the big burning hole.

The good news…

We put out the fire. The bad news?

You won’t be able to get into your building until Spring.

Sunday Morning Cartoon

[Wicked was supposed to be back on the 17th.  Since he hasn't shown his face yet, I'm posting this post that he left in the draft area for over a month.]

This one isn’t a cartoon, but it’s cartoon related. I’ve been seeing this commercial all over the place and I can’t help but find it funny. I still say that Comcast and Geico have the best ad campaigns on the planet.

Former Co-worker “Mr Slate pays well, but not that well.”

Gets me everytime, I love the co-worker part.

Sorry for missing the last two, I picked a hell of a time to take a break, what with all the jazz that went down this week, I will be sure to make the next one, but still gonna be spending a lot more time in the real world, It really looks a lot different in person than it does on television.

Not gonna suck

I think this is going to be pretty good in about five hours.

Last night’s non-Warrior Diet effort after the jump.

Resistance is futile

Found at Junkyardblog.

This IS a tasty burger

The Food Network recently visited a place where I ate a lot of greasy (but good) burgers during my college days. Making sure that you order correctly is part of the of the experience. Not as crazy as the hot dog joint a few posts down, but a great place none the less.

Crazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger.

I’m homesick

I used to live about two blocks from this place.

The producers of the show tried to make this into a social commentary. I never saw anything but good humored fun. Plus, they ALWAYS start it.

What do you expect from a bunch of drunks?

Is this legal?

If you can’t tell, I’m suffering from a bit of early primary burnout.

Regular silliness to resume shortly.

Lucky

Scumbag of the Year makes the Chicago Tribune

It took a few days, but the story of shitbird extraoardinaire, Jay R. Grodner, caught the attention of the press.

John Kass covered the story today in the Chicago Tribune.

I’m going way beyond fair use, I can’t find any part that I could leave out. Kass talked to more of the people involved than we’ve heard from before — except for the bad actor himself, who remains hidden.

As of this evening, this was the most viewed story on the Chicago Tribune web site.

Jay R. Grodner is officially — infamous.

Marine Sgt. Michael McNulty — now on his way to Iraq for his second tour of duty in the war — took meticulous care of his car.

It is a black two-door BMW, an expensive ride for a young Marine from Chicago, but then, McNulty didn’t exactly join up for the big paycheck and luxury vacations.

The 26-year-old McNulty was a trader at the exchange and enlisted in the Reserves after 9/11. He babied his car so much that he had military vanity plates along with a sticker in his window that let people know that a Marine or a Marine supporter drove that car.

But someone didn’t like the Marine sticker, or the pro-military plates, and decided to stage an anti-war protest, with a key or hard piece of metal, on the shiny black finish of Sgt. McNulty’s car that caused $2,400 in damage.

“It’s a really nice car. It’s in perfect condition. He keeps it meticulous. And he was going to sell it,” said Sgt. McNulty’s friend, Tom Sullivan, a college buddy from Loyola University.

The last time Sgt. McNulty was in Iraq, he worked a .50-caliber machine gun from a Humvee. Now that he’s going back, he really doesn’t need a shiny black BMW that shows dust.

“There wasn’t a scratch on his car,” Sullivan said.

But there is one now.

It is a big scratch, a particularly long scratch in that black paint, a scratch stretching from the rear driver’s side around the back, across the trunk, then up to the passenger’s side.

If you have a car, and parked it on the street, surely you’ve thought about what an angry key could do to it.

According to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, it wasn’t an accident, but a deliberate key job, not done by some kid or street thug, but by a Chicago lawyer who apparently can’t stand the military.

Private attorney Jay R. Grodner, 55, of Chicago has been charged with a class A misdemeanor — criminal damage to property — punishable by up to one year in jail and up to a $2,500 fine, said Andy Conklin, spokesman for the state’s attorney’s office.

Late Wednesday, I reached Sgt. McNulty, who declined to comment for the paper but confirmed the facts in the police report.

And I wanted to get Grodner’s side of it because he’s been accused but not convicted of anything. So we called all the Grodner numbers we could find — home and business — including those on the police report and others in the suburbs and Chicago. Many were disconnected, and his cell phone voice mail was full.

I’d like to ask him two questions:

Why?

And, are you proud?

“McNulty was just coming to pick me up for breakfast, because he was going to training just before deployment,” Sullivan said of that morning on Dec. 1 in Rogers Park.

There are several one-way streets near Sullivan’s home, but McNulty missed the turn, and rather than drive two or three blocks around, he put the car in reverse and backed up a hundred or so feet. He pulled up in front of his friend’s house, rang the bell and Sullivan came downstairs. McNulty then turned around and saw Grodner’s hands on his black car.

“Mike says, ‘Hey, what are you doing to my car? Open up your hand!’” Sullivan told us. “And [Grodner] goes, ‘[Blank] you! Just because you’re in the military you don’t run the roost!’”

There were allegedly many more epithets and cuss words, some allegedly applied to the United States Marine Corps, to the U.S. armed forces and to Sgt. McNulty himself.

“Quite frankly, you don’t even look like a soldier. You’re a small little [blank],” Grodner said according to Sullivan.

This last bit really bothers William McNulty, who is Sgt. McNulty’s brother, and he called me.

“My brother should be commended for not just smashing that guy’s windpipe right there for all the stuff he said about our military, and the insults,” William McNulty said. “Instead, my brother called the police, as he should have.”

According to the police report I read, other investigative accounts and interviews, Grodner was upset to have been accused of purposely scratching the car. So upset, that he accused his accusers of being anti-Semitic.

The Chicago police officer responding to the call didn’t take the accusation seriously, according to the report, because he couldn’t justify it. And Sgt. McNulty’s brother and Sullivan say it is outrageous and nonsensical.

“The officer wasn’t going to hear this kind of talk. He put the kibosh on the whole thing,” Sullivan said. “So [Grodner] became apologetic.”

According to the police report, “The offender denied scratching the victim’s vehicle, but did admit to rubbing past it.”

Rubbing past it? I guess it all depends on what the definition of “rubbing” is.

That’s where it is now, awaiting another court date, set for Jan. 18, after Sgt. McNulty refused to back off and drop the charges in earlier court appearances.

Lawyers know how to drag things out, with continuance after continuance, stalling until complaining witnesses get tired and move on.

But Marines on their way to war don’t seek continuances.

And all Sgt. McNulty wanted was a little respect, and the chance to sell that car of his, without a scratch.

Wow, Grodner turns out to be an even bigger scumbag than it seemed originally. Pompous, arrogant, obnoxious and now obviously — pretty fucking stupid.

Grodner, if you haven’t figured it out yet, you are completely fucked. You screwed the pooch this time. The best part is — you did it to yourself.

Bluster and hubris are not your friend. This time, you get to bend over and grab your ankles. What is the correct term for a self-inflicted ass pounding?

BOHICA, baby!

I look forward to reporting your sentencing.

Be careful out there

Sage advice from our friends in the Liberation Army Against Freedom.

Background  here.

Totally Awesome Awesomeness

I like bacon. A lot.

Who doesn’t?

A lot of other people must love bacon too, based on the amount of hits I get every day on the Deep Fried Bacon Cheese and Beer Dog  post. I live blogged my Bacon Wrapped Steak experience and have previously found such wonders as the Bacon Martini and the Bacon Scented Tuxedo.

But, I think I have met my match when it comes to bacony bliss.

Everyone’s tried a bacon cheeseburger, but this guy/genius made a Bacon Cheese Baconburger. The burger is made out of — bacon.  And, then topped with bacon! Wonderful. Lot’s of yummy pictures.

He also made Bacon Cereal and the Ultimate Bacon Sandwich.

Dude’s got skillz.

Best Christmas tree ever