Whimsy: April 2008 Archives

I was listening to the news on KRMG and was inappropriately amused to learn that the lawyer for District Judge Jesse Harris, who has been charged with indecent exposure, is named Allen Smallwood. Which fact inappropriately reminded me of a certain Latin legal phrase and a rather fitting limerick which ends in that phrase (after the jump to avoid scandalizing the easily offended).

In a bit of online video oneupsmanship, CBS has posted all 79 episodes of Star Trek (the Original Series) as streaming video on the web -- free. These are the original Original Series episodes, not the remastered versions with new CGI special effects.

The sound and video quality is amazing and the buffering was utterly smooth. There are only a handful of very brief commercial breaks. CBS is also offering the first seasons of MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O, and Melrose Place, and the first and second seasons of The Twilight Zone.

They've still got a ways to catch up in the classic TV department with Hulu, NBC Universal and Fox's joint venture which features plenty of classic and current TV, including the first two seasons each of The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Dragnet (1967), and the first seasons of I Spy and The DIck Van Dyke Show.

Remind me again why I'm paying for cable?

Not really. But there's a parody news story about Randi Miller sending the big guy packing on a new blog called Irritated Tulsan. Here's how it starts:

The Tulsa County Fair Board continued their un-expansion Tuesday with the eviction of the Golden Driller.

"The Golden Driller was unable to provide us with a solid business plan," said Randi Miller, Tulsa County Fair Board Chairman, "He has to be let go."

With Bell's eviction, the upcoming Driller's move and the renaming of the EXPO center to the Quiktrip Center, the TCFB continues to disappoint taxpayers of Tulsa County....

The bill for the eviction will cost taxpayers $5 million.

"I know that seems like a lot of money," [Expo Square CEO Rick] Bjorkland said, " but a least it's not mine. Seriously, $5 million is nothing compared to what I've wasted."

The construction of the parking lot in the former Bell's location cost $25 million. The glowing lights on top the Quiktrip center cost $600,000, and only worked for one year.

$25 million doesn't seem right to me, but the overall cost to the taxpayers of evicting Bell's Amusement Park was quite high.

Irritated Tulsan also has a couple of funny shopping rants (just be warned that Irritated Tulsan drops the occasional foul word -- not for kids): his own about the horror that is the Admiral and Memorial Wal-Mart and one from a reader about the scooter people.

He has some opinions about our streets, too:

If you don't live in Tulsa, you may not be familiar with our roads. There are six potholes for every square foot. A group of dedicated city employees fills the same holes over and over again. Each time it rains, there's a small breeze, the sun shines, a cat meows or an angel farts, the pothole reappears. I think it's because a mixture of pudding and oatmeal is used for road repair.

How to complete our streets? Borrow a tactic from cash-strapped schools:

The whole "Complete Our Streets Task Force" could bake. They claim more than 150 committee members.

If not a bake sale, how about the "World's Finest Chocolate?"

We sold those candy bars to raise money for our elementary school, why can't the city sell them too. The committee could go door-to-door, stand outside Reasor's and sell candy-bars at work.

We've been pimping out our kids with the "World's Finest Chocolate" for decades, and now it's time to pimp out our city leaders.

If for no other reason, Irritated Tulsan deserves a link here for calling attention to the B-52s' new album Funplex -- you can listen to the whole thing at MuchMusic.