PSoTD

I bet Chuck Todd is jealous.

I used to throw a tank of plus in every now and then (imagining I might get "better performance"). But these days, it's regular all the way!

This has to be a good time to buy stock in bicycle companies.

You got yours planned yet?

Every summer, Annie and Duane O'Neil look forward to renting a motor home and hitting the road with their four children to explore the West or visit family in Seattle.

This year, with soaring gas prices and the economic downturn hurting the family's office-supply business, a lengthy trip was out of the question.

So instead of heading for the interstate, come August the O'Neils will pile into a rented RV and drive a whopping 12 miles from their home in San Marcos to South Carlsbad State Beach for a five-day getaway.

“I can't imagine going now on one of our normal trips. It would be outrageous,” Annie O'Neil said. “By staying here, we're still getting a great family vacation, but not spending as much.”

Families unable to keep up with rising travel prices, but unwilling to forgo a break from the daily routine, are opting for vacations closer to home in a trend that has a catchy new name: the “staycation.”

I think I'm going to camp out in PSoTD's backyard and fish in the hot tub!

Thanks for wasting my paper:

Ameritoner.com
Health Care Informer, Volume 1, Issue 1. The first edition! WOW!
Some bogus ass health plan. Screw you, Limited Time Service, supposedly and most definitely not an opt-in fax service.
Another Bahamas Cruise offer. Seriously, does anyone ever respond to this?
Alright, Affordable Life Insurance. Apparently they're affordable because they don't pay for voice lines or physical addresses since neither are provided.
Hey, again! I can die twice now!
The Energy Bull. They're just missing the S word.
PremierHealthCare.
And last, the Human Resources Department finally faxed me about Employee Vacation Time. Apparently they're offering some sort of wholesale rate to the entire company! Hey, I thought I was the Human Resources Department. Apparently I've been demoted.

Bash Hillary Clinton here.

Bash Barack Obama here.

Bash your brain into mush here.

Superficiality reaches a new level. We're ridiculing unattractive produce!

Uppity blind people are causing trouble.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court says paper money discriminates against blind people.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld a ruling that could force the U.S. to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values.

Such changes could include making bills different sizes, including raised markings or printing oversized numbers for people who see poorly.

The appeals court ruled 2-1 on Tuesday that the U.S. didn't explain why such changes would be an unreasonable burden, especially since many other countries have done so.

For years - maybe 20 years - I rarely have dreams that I can recall. I don't know if this means I'm not having any dreams, or if I just NEVER wake up at a point to remember them. I guess I should be happy that I don't have nightmares.

Anyway, somebody sent me this link to The Curious Dreamer the other day, and I figured that some of you that actually have dreams that you can remember might want to check it out.

Everybody know about this? If you have kids with phones, you probably do. They record their message to sound like they're actually answering the phone and talking to you. Then you get "Ha ha ha ... what are you talking to my voice mail for?"

Very annoying. I'm putting one on my phone tomorrow!

Who is the most famous person you have ever kissed?

Best answer scores a pair of well-fitting khaki pants!

7:02 PM - The Grille of Hampden

"What is your vegetable du jour?"

"Oh, that's the vegetable of the day!"

There are many foods that I disliked as a kid but have developed a taste for over the years. Clams, sauerkraut, cooked carrots... lotsa others. But pickles are still x'ed off my list and I anticipate they'll stay that way.

What really annoys me about pickles is that restaurants insist on letting them share the plate with sandwiches. This is wrong! Pickles infect whatever they touch with gross pickle juice. When a pickle arrives on my plate positioned promiscuously next to my sandwich and fries, I toss it on the table in disgust.

Join the cause! Ostracize the pickle! Maybe one day we can make the sour green gourd the dinner table outcast it rightfully should be.

I stumbled onto this movie clip on YouTube. I don't even remember such a movie being made, but this is clearly an alltime painful performance.

She can sing. She can act. She's got the best rack in Hollywood.

And not in that order.

K-Lo shares an email from one of The Corner's dim-witted readers.

I sometimes wonder how the really evil Corner "pundits" put up with the purely stupid ones.

Update: The post is gone. Apparently somebody decided speculative commentary on Madonna and Hillary's sex lives was too stupid even for The Corner.

About Muncie, the city of my birth and where I last lived in Indiana before our family moved to California. Muncie is smaller now than it was when we moved in 1971.

We used to live on Imperial Lane, which is in the Southeast part of town, and according to the article, the bleaker part of town. Just makes me sad. I haven't seen Muncie since the late 1970s, and one of these days I still want to bore our kids with a brief tour of where I spent much of my elementary school years, but I'm not quite sure what to expect.

I noticed today that in the 2007 version of Microsoft Access, they've changed the prompt from "Sort Ascending" to "Sort from Smallest Value to Largest Value". No Duh!

Hint: Harrisburg/West Shore

So this is how Kessler Boulevard was named such in Indianapolis. I went to first grade at Crooked Creek Elementary School which is on the Boulevard -it was the only year I ever had to take a bus to school in my entire life.

Seems like it could be a decent organization, but they really should NOT be spamming my fax number. Counterproductive - guaranteed to not get my donation.

This amazes me!

Submerged in a water-filled sphere on the stage of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" during a live broadcast, Blaine held his breath for 17 minutes and 4 seconds. That bested the previous record of 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland's Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.

Blaine had a smile on his face soon after his head rose above the water and he took several deep gulps of air. Within about a minute, he was able to hold a microphone and tell Winfrey, "I feel great," later adding that breaking the record was a fulfillment of "a lifelong dream."

Before his attempt, Blaine was allowed to inhale pure oxygen for up to 30 minutes, although he inhaled for only 23 minutes. A Guinness World Records judge was on hand to certify the feat.

In May 2006 as a finale to a week spent in an aquarium with an air mask at New York's Lincoln Center, Blaine tried to set another type of breath-holding record. Without breathing pure oxygen beforehand, he tried to break the existing record of 8 minutes, 58 seconds for an attempt of that type.

But he had to be rescued shortly after 7 minutes when he was unconscious and having convulsions.

When I was a bored kid in grade school, I sometimes amused myself by checking how long I could hold my breath. No brain damage jokes, please. My teachers probably wondered why I was gasping for air. Anything over two minutes was exceptional.

OK, let me give it a try now ......... ninety seconds and I got a bit of headache from it. No convulsions though. I could have done better if I had inhaled some pure oxygen first!

So how long can you hold you breath for?