Ever have days like this?
Posted by Scott via Hello

A Kuwaiti student driver that failed the roundabout part of the test... I'm sure he still got his license though...
Posted by Scott via Hello

Actual Conversations...

I've had two bizarre conversations in the past hour that I just have to share:

The first one was with one of the gate guards. There were a few cars in front of me, and I got a text message on my cell phone. You're not supposed to use cell phones at a checkpoint, but I had a few seconds so I hurriedly typed a reply. I was putting the phone down as I pulled forward and showed the guard my ID. He asked me if my cell phone had a camera; I smiled because this was the second time I had been able to use the line "No, and my camera doesn't have a cell phone" while pointing to my camera hanging on the passenger seat.

Guard: What do you use the camera for?

Me: [pause] Taking pictures? Are there other uses I'm not aware of?

Guard: [longer pause] Taking pictures of what?

Me: I don't know; if I knew there was going to be a quiz I would have studied. How is this relevant?

Guard: Sir, you are not allowed to take photographs at this location.

Me: I'm well aware of that, have you seen me using the camera?

Guard: I saw you on the phone, which you are also not allowed to be using at the ECP (Entry Control Point).

Me: [Looking in the rearview mirror, making sure we're not holding someone up with this highbrow conversation]. And you'll take my word that it doesn't have a camera in it, but you question the camera on the seat next to me?

Guard: [smirking] Ok, your point; have a nice day.

Me: Thanks! You too!

The next conversation was at the PX. A soldier in the checkout line across from me noticed my Hard Rock Cafe hat from Munich, and asked me if it was nice. I told him it was, and went back to checking out. He asked me if I saw David Hasslhoff while I was there, and I told him that I didn't, and resumed checking out. He then informed me that David Hasselhoff is a big musical star in Europe, but we Americans only know him as a great actor... i swear that's what he said. I asked him, "Great actor?", to which he replied, "oh yeah!". He then went on to tell me that he wasn't a big fan of his music, except for a few songs that had "surprised" him, and that he loved the songs that he did for the movie Eurotrip... and he "REALLY" like the song he did at the end of Baywatch Nights.

At this point I'm just wanting to get out of there as fast as I can... so I literally grab my receipt and move as fast as I can while lugging a footlocker and not knocking over anyone... as I'm walking across the parking lot I hear "Have a nice day", but I don't know for sure that it's anyone talking to me. I hear it again, and I turn and sure enough it's the David Hasselhoff fan waving to me...

Me: Thanks! You too!

Just another day in my life.

Why do I love Mike?

Mike is my other co-worker here, and I'm sure I've expressed my respect for him in previous posts. He's an intelligent person, and enjoys arguing as much as I do... and he's almost as good as I am at it too... almost.

Anyway, after Carl and a fuel truck failed to occupy the same space at the same time, we were issued a replacement vehicle... a Ford Mondeo ... which is like a Ford Tempo, only not as nice. We knew this was just a temporary replacement until they could procure us a new vehicle, and we expressed a desire to get another pickup truck, because of the myriad uses we'd found for our recently deceased one...

Eventually, they delivered us a Chevy 1500 Z-71. The list of things wrong with this thing are too numerous to document here (not to mention boring), but when I arrived to work tonight I asked Mike to send another email to our regional staff describing the latest discovered defect. Here's the letter, and the reason I love Mike:

Maybe it had a cardboard box on it...

Scooter blown up in security scare
Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:53 AM GMT
LONDON (Reuters) - Heidi Brown was told she could park her new scooter outside the vehicle registration office while she waited to get number plates.
To her horror, it was blown up by the army after someone reported that it might be a bomb.
Police in Ipswich confirmed on Thursday that a moped had been blown up in a controlled explosion after local business people "raised concerns" that it could be a bomb.
"The moped was chained to the perimeter fence outside the building. We weren't able to identify whose vehicle it was because there were no number plates on it," said a spokeswoman for Suffolk police.
She said the surrounding office buildings were evacuated and three roads were closed off.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported the scooter belonged to Brown, a 22-year-old care worker, who said she had been told she could leave it there awaiting inspection.

What this news report doesn't state is that she left it there on a friday night, so it sat there for THREE DAYS. It wasn't until the employess of this Government building came in on Monday morning that they noticed this "suspicous moped" without license plates parked in front of the place where you ummm.. get license plates.

Like I said before... the terrorists have won. Now we're blowing up mopeds because "someone reported that it might be a bomb" and "local business people raised concerns". What's the lesson here? Don't chain up your unlicensed moped? Better safe than sorry? People are idiots?

Check out all the news Google has on this.

In other news (days later), the Terry Schiavo case rages on. I've largely ignored this issue, because I didn't know (or really wanted to know) the particulars of the case... When I read this, I was appropriately irritated:

Talk about a new low
Congress and President Bush ignored the Constitution when they whipped up a law that would take a legal dispute out of Florida courts and put it into a federal court, where some people hope it might be settled differently.

That seems doubtful; the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to accept the Terri Schiavo case, which suggests it believes Florida's courts have handled it properly.

Judges have affirmed repeatedly that Michael Schiavo has the right to have the feeding tube removed from his wife, who has been severely brain-damaged for 15 years. He says she told him she would not want to be kept alive under such conditions.

But because she did not put those wishes on paper, her distraught parents are trying to keep her alive. The courts have repeatedly ruled for the husband, not the parents.

Needless to say, a decision to turn off the technology that keeps bodies, if not minds, functioning is difficult and wrenching. Yet Americans make those decisions every day on behalf of loved ones, and the legal procedures to guide them are well established.

Congress and the president know that. They also know that some of the religious and political organizations that helped elect them are demanding that Florida's laws and precedents be ignored. As a memo circulating among Senate Republicans noted, this is a great political issue.

But great politics is different from great government, which is what the Founders tried to give us when they divided power among three branches. They wanted to protect us from unrestrained power. Congress and the president are trying to violate that crucial principle that shields our freedom.

So is U.S. Rep. Walter Jones Jr., who's trying to intimidate the Marine Corps into dropping the prosecution of one of its own for emptying two M-16 magazines into two unarmed Iraqi men and putting a triumphant sign over their bodies.

Whether the lieutenant is guilty as charged remains to be seen. But if the Marines believe he should be tried, the Marines' legal system should be allowed to operate without meddling by politicians looking for votes.

Or maybe we should abolish all the courts. Kill all the lawyers. Throw out the laws, precedents and intricate rules worked out over centuries. Forget the rights and opinions of minorities.

Let Congress and the president decide everything from family disputes to criminal prosecutions, based on polls and how many votes it might get them.

There's a name for that form of government. Mob rule.

Used without permission. Here's the link to the original article.

Yes, I've still got a story to tell you ... a couple of them actually, but haven't had the time yet. I'll do it soon ... but in the meantime:

CARL DID IT!
	On 19 March 2005, Carl was hit by a fuel truck. Fortunately for him, I'm posting this here instead of in a eulogy. The truck, however, didn't do so well...
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