Hpecker

Nachos are named after a person, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, who owned a restaurant known as El Moderno in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, in the early 1940s. Around 1943 he began serving fried tortilla chips topped with melted cheese and jalapeño peppers, calling the dish “Nacho’s Especiales.”

The taser’s name was inspired by a 1911 adventure book for boys, Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle, involving a rifle that fires electricity rather than bullets. The taser’s inventor, NASA scientist Jack Cover, thought this was an apt description of his own weapon, so he made an acronym of Tom Swift’s Electric Rifle.

Both origins are borne out by the Oxford English Dictionary.

This might be the most hilarious part of an insane election. Also, if you pitched the actual events of this election for a season of Veep, you’d be fired.

Look, here’s the thing, her foreign policy is going to be less racist than every single Republican president, and right in the middle of the pack of Democrats, so, sure, you can say that US foreign policy is always racist (super fair, and probably the right move), but if you’re singling Clinton’s policies out as especially bad, you’re wrong and an asshole and an idiot.

Things Bill O'Reilly doesn’t trust the government to do:
- health care
- prevent businesses from cheating workers
- regulate guns in any way

Things Bill O'Reilly does trust the government to do:
- own slaves

“if your keyboard starts smoking, you’re being hacked. what color is the smoke?”

I think it would be better if the Green Party did shit more than just in presidential election years, and I think it’s hilarious that the Libertarians got out-crazied by the fucking Republicans.

Look, I love me some Bernard Brothers, but if black lives matter to you, jesus, maybe let some black opinions matter to you too.

That feeling when you accidentally wander into a #raymondcarver novel (at Ocean Park Motel of San Francisco)

Advertisements in the Sing Sing inmate newspaper Star of Hope, May 19, 1900:

WANTED — A home-like home. Present one, not what it is cracked up to be. Address Clinton 4,320.

WANTED — A good night’s rest. Gallery shouters and instrumentalists take note. Nemo, Star Office.

WANTED — An eraser, (must be mighty sharp) to blot out the past. A stock of experience, (fringed and threadbare) given in exchange. For particulars, Auburn 20,101.

WANTED — That rara avis, the con who does not think he is better able to manage the Star than the present Editor. Applications solicited by Sing Sing 51,094.

WANTED — A few blank pages in the Book of Life, wherein we desire to make some new entries — on the Cr. side. Address Summa Summarum, New York State Prisons.

WANTED — Immediately — an Opportunity. Price no object if goods are fair and in good working order. Anxious, Clinton 4,298.

WANTED — Anno Domini 1902. Will give in exchange one and a quarter yards of warranted genuine, homemade Spring po’ms — just too lovely for every day wear. Samantha, Auburn 595 (W. P.)

LOST — Five days’ ‘short time.’ Finder can have same by arranging with the Powers That Be. Address Nostalgic, Auburn 20,210.

(From Karel Weiss, The Prison Experience, 1976.)

German scientist Otto von Guericke conducted a memorable experiment on May 8, 1654: He connected two hemispheres, sealed their rims together, and drew out the air between them using a pump of his own devising. The resulting vacuum was so strong that 30 horses could not pull them apart.

At the time the experiment was seen as a strike against Aristotle’s dictum that nature abhors a vacuum. It’s repeated today as a dramatic demonstration of the power of atmospheric pressure.

Me: What’s wrong?

Client: My computer’s not working!

Me: Have you turned it on?

Client: Obviously! I’m not stupid!

I turned on the monitor. The computer was running fine.

Yeah, I’m what you’d call a “Fiscal” Nazi.

Oh hell yeah. It’s great. It’s not perfect, but one thing that it definitely is is it’s better than the original in literally every single way.

Also, treating the extremely isolated (though high profile) incidents of cops getting shot and the extremely common incidents of black folks getting shot as if they’re somehow equal is fucking ridiculous. Guess what, fuckos, people who shoot cops GET PROSECUTED (or just killed), the outrage is that when cops kill black folks, they get vacation and donations from Republicans.

Listen, say what you will about Taylor Swift, but her white feminism is probably genuine white feminism.

A foolish young man said to John Wilkes (1725-1797), “Isn’t it strange that I was born on the first of January?”

“Not strange at all,” said Wilkes. “You could only have been conceived on the first of April.”

More Louis V/My momma couldn’t get through to me #kanye #dumpster

So I do pro bono work for a non-profit my grandparents run with a lot of other elderly people. They’re good people and it’s a good cause, so I don’t mind donating a few hours a week to them. They are adorable trying to learn and incorporate new technology into their work. Today I came in to do some updates to their website and one lady had a question about viewing a PDF. This is what followed. 

Client: So I open it up in Word but the format is off.

Me: That’s why you want to open it in Adobe Reader.

Client: We found it’s easier to open it directly into Word.

Me: And why is that?

Client: Because we have to use Word to make changes in the forms.

It turns out that they would print out a form, white out the words that needed to be changed for some reason or another, scan it in as a picture, paste it into Word, type over the white out parts, then print it out again.

I was stunned, not least of all by the complexity of the troubleshooting and problem-solving. It was actually kind of genius. In any case, I made them a form in Word so they could just edit it directly.  

Seriously, if you’re not man (I’m positive these fuckos were men) enough to hear legitimate criticism of the racist-ass practices of your job, how the fuck are we supposed to believe you’re brave enough to actually uphold the fucking law. Fuck these cops, and fuck the racist ass police unions who support them.

Yeah, weird how they buried this story about how the White Community doesn’t respect cops. Weird.

I used to do video work. I was asked by a friend to take on a client he didn’t have time to deal with.

Client: I need you to film something. I just need you to provide me with the raw footage – I’ll do the editing.  Can you do it?

He offered me nearly twice my day rate for just a couple hours of work, so of course I accepted.

He filled me in on the details. He was going to take his girlfriend out for a picnic and ask her to marry him. He wanted me to film it without her knowledge. Oh and he was on crutches because he’d had a serious injury to both his legs. He was going to use his recovery time to learn how to edit video. How could I say no?

He’d scouted the location - a large country park - and had decided on a tree that they would picnic under. Because of its dense foliage, he wanted me to hide up the tree and film from there. He’d also made a rather nice photograph album detailing their time together. The ringwas concealed in a cut-out at the back. The plan was that they would read through the book together, she’d find the ring and he’d propose.

On the day, I met him in the car park and he showed me the tree and paid me (in cash!). We arranged a signal that he would give prior to pulling the album out. And he would give another signal for when it was time to climb down and film them overtly. He went off to meet his girlfriend and I climbed the tree.

Minor glitches started piling up. They were over half an hour late returning. What’s more, she chose a different tree to sit under – because he was on crutches, she went on ahead to set up and set up under the wrong tree.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to climb down from a tree and then invisibly and silently climb up another one that people are sitting beneath. I can now say that I have, and what’s more, I even managed it successfully, without being noticed. I turned on the camera and began filming. Out came the photograph album. She loved it. Perhaps a little too much. She reminisced about EVERY PHOTO. I actually wore out my battery filming this – luckily I had a spare, and managed to change it before she got to the ring.

Eventually she reached the end, found the ring and he proposed. She said yes! They hugged and he gave me the signal to come down. His fiancé was startled when I came down, but he explained what I was doing there. They invited me to have a glass of champagne.

I never heard from him again. It was a ridiculous job that wound up taking over twice as long as he said it would and I had to deal with some bizarre and difficult circumstances, but it was maybe the loveliest work I’ve ever done. I hope he did a good job with the editing.

Go with “hip-hop, but the smart stuff, some of it’s really good.”

Weird how a racist idiot is a fucking liar. Also, I don’t know, Blue Lives Matter should really be All Lives Matter, don’t you think???

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