C&P's from Newsday.  Check out the part about owning a pet!  WTF! 

CHICAGO -- Americans apparently know more about "The Simpsons" than they do about the First Amendment.

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey.

The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.

Joe Madeira, director of exhibitions at the museum, said he was surprised by the results.

"Part of the survey really shows there are misconceptions, and part of our mission is to clear up these misconceptions," said Madeira, whose museum will be dedicated to helping visitors understand the First Amendment when it opens in April. "It means we have our job cut out for us."

The survey found more people could name the three "American Idol" judges than identify three First Amendment rights. They were also more likely to remember popular advertising slogans.

It also showed that people misidentified First Amendment rights. About one in five people thought the right to own a pet was protected, and 38 percent said they believed the right against self-incrimination contained in the Fifth Amendment was a First Amendment right, the survey found.

The telephone survey of 1,000 adults was conducted Jan. 20-22 by the research firm Synovate and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Alright, I need to enlist the help of you food-savy bloggers again.  I just took a culinary gamble and it totally paid off.  This time it was a cookie.  I don't recall ever seeing a cookie like this...maybe similar to, but somehow different.  Anyways, this was a tan cookie with a texture that visually resembled the oatmeal cookie but once I chewed it, it bore no resemblence (texturewise) to the oatmeal.  This is what made it strangely delicious though.  It had some kind of brown goo interwoven inside of it.  The goo was sorta stiff but still chewy.  You could see it from the outside too, but it also went beneath the surface somehow.  There may or may not have been chocolate chips in this cookie too...I thought I could taste them but I definitely couldn't see them.  Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.  So, has anyone else seen this cookie before?  Does it have a name?

Yeah, so I was trying to fall asleep with the TV on last night because my mom hates that and some news report came on talking about the division of wealth in the great state of Connecticut.  They said that the only other state with a larger division between the rich and the poor was Tennessee.  Then they said that Connecticut is the richest state in the richest country in the world and that kind of blew my mind a little bit.  What the hell are we doing with all this money if there are so many poor people here.  Its really frickin' disgusting.  It just makes me so mad that I'm going to give that guy with one leg another 10 spot.  That should fix everything.

So I was sitting around watching the Today show like I do every morning and they started talking about the Anna Nicole Smith trial that is starting today.  I'm not all that interested in the case itself, but I was watching Ann Courier drone on about it.  They interviewed Anna Nicole's attorney and he was talking about how bankruptcy decisions should go to the federal court...then they interviewed the attorney for her late husband's estate.  It was they guy that works right down the hall from me!  I knew that he was going to argue in front of the Federal Supreme court and all that jazz, but it was totally surreal to see him on the Today show.  The guy is really cool and I've done a few things for him in the past few weeks.  I hear that he's a bankruptcy genius and is one of the leading experts on historical bankruptcy law.  Sometimes this guy will cite cases from pre-colonial British law.  He even writes sections for Collier's on Bankruptcy, which is the defacto set for Bankruptcy law.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Go Eric! 

I'm blogging! Totally out of control today. I think I'm delirious from being too scared to sleep last night. Yeah, that's it. Ghost pirate induced delirium. So, I figured I would blog because I'm listening to an awesome CD and I feel compelled to share with my fellow bloggers. Its a 3 disc moe. set called 'Warts and All Vol. 4' and it is currently making me very happy. So, who wants to hear what awesome presents I got for my birthday? I sure do. Because there wasn't much. :) I'm just kidding! Actually, the coolest present was a phone call from someone I haven't talked to in ages. Totally made my day. A very close second is the gift I gave to myself. Yeah, that's right, I totally spoil myself with fancy things because I'm stupid. So I got myself a sweet new watch from the Victorinox store (Swiss Army). Its the Swiss Air Force model (model?) and its fucking beyond fantastic. First off, the face is the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen on a person, place or thing. It has a lovely titanium link wrist band thing which really brings out the titanium in my elbow. There really is no way to accurately describe the coolness of this watch without a visual aid, which I might do later. Oh wait! I can describe it with words! Fucking expensive. Yep. A dumbass purchase that I couldn't live without. I could go into greater detail but my vanity is showing. Lets see, I also got a new Yankee's shirt. The duece-duece baby! Number 22, Robinson Cano! Yeah, that's an awesome addition to the other 8 NY shirts I have. I really needed that too. Mmmmkay, lets see what else was thrown at me while I slept off a night of heavy drinking. The mama-llama got me a new wallet, which is dumb because my old one hasn't disintegrated yet so I really have no use for a second wallet. Maybe I'll keep monopoly money in it and then next time I get robbed I can give the robber that one instead. I'll just carry two wallets like a goddam Rockafeller. Man, this CD really rocks in a way that few CDs rock nowadays. I think that's about all I got. Oh yeah, Natanis bought me a shot of Jaegermiester, TwoStripe bought me a car-bomb and my buddy Jay bought me a can of Guinness. My sister took me to Finn McCools and bought me a Philly Cheesesteak also. Oh yeah, I almost forgot! My buddies on the Odd Todd TV Board made me a kick ass thread full of really nice words about me and pictures of things that I want. So it was by all accounts a wonderful birthday. Thanks to everyone who participated in this, the most sacred of the Julian calendar days. :)

Holy crap, I had a really bad nightmare last night.  It scared me so much that I didn't want to go back to sleep for fear of continuing where I left off.  Alright, I know you are all super interested now so I'll cut right to the meat of the story.  Bascially, I was on a ship and we were heading out into Ghost Pirate waters, which should have been an immediate tip-off that this was not going to be a good dream.  We totally knew that we were going to where the Ghost Pirates were but we had to go anyways.  So, we get there and we crash our ship into all this red ice (which I'm assuming was drenched with the blood a thousand pirates or something).  I was down below in the ships hold with a Spanish lady and her teenage daughter.  Then, after we hit the ice, the hatch opens up and someone throws a baby down to where I was.  That was a pretty bad omen.  Then, all of a sudden, the door to the bathroom swings open and there's a goddam Ghost Pirate standing there looking right at me!  I totally screamed like a little girl.  It was weird though because he was looking at me while he was going over to the Spanish lady.  He proceeds to rape her but she doesn't even fight back or anything.  She just has this look on her face like, "Eh, Ghost Pirate...what did you expect?"  So then this other Ghost Pirate comes over to me and pushes me into the bathroom and he tries to rape me!  I was totally disgusted because he was this haggard looking Ghost Pirate, not exactly Johnny Depp like I had been hoping for.  Anyways, I started asking him why he wanted to rape me and he didn't really give me a good reason or anything...he just kept trying to get me into position or whatever.  Man, I was pissed off.  Then I woke up and I was terrified to go back to sleep again.  Eventually I did and I got to play bocce ball with one of the attorneys where I work.  That was a relief.

It just dawned on me that snakes must really have a tough life. First, and probably most obvious, they don't have any hands. That is just weird. Well, maybe not necessarily 'hands', but just appendage or something. That's gotta be tough for eating and stuff. I wonder if all snakes look the same to each other too. Like say you were a snake and you had kids or whatever, would you be able to tell them apart? And what the hell is up with snakes and evolution? I know that there were like turtles and sharks millions of years ago and they have remained pretty much the same through a long period of time because they were well adapted to their environments, but snakes? C'mon! I wonder how long snakes have been around for...I would assume that they are pretty old because they're reptiles and old animals always turn out to be reptiles. Like dinosaurs, or as I call them, 'Thunder Lizards'. That whole reptile/scale thing is weird too. I wonder if its possible to de-scale a lizard...would they be like pink and fleshy underneath? Man, that is pretty sick and I'm sorry I thought of that. That's just horrible.

Hot damn, I love my job.  First off, its been a really slow week and I completed all of the 'side-projects' that we can think of so I got to spend a lot of time just surfing around the internet willy-nilly.  I've been totally addicted to Odd Todd's TV Board for almost 2 years now and I've gotten to spend a lot more time there with my internet friends.  Secondly, I get to go down to the State Library and do some legislative history work today, which totally kicks ass.  Its not too cold out today (36 degrees) so it should be a good walk.  I'll probably stop by Dunkin' Donuts on the way and use up the rest of my gift card.  Thirdly, since my birthday is on a Sunday, the other librarian just came over to my desk and told me to come to work on Monday only if I really feel like it.  What!?!  Seriously?  Seriously.  Yeah?  Yeah.  So, we'll see how Sunday night goes...it will most likely be a bust and I'll show up here on Monday because I'll really feel like it, but it is pretty cool that I have the option of going out Sunday night with no repercussions on Monday morning.  Lastly, the coffee here is excellent and I drink a lot of it.  My new favorite is the Rainforest Nut. 

The largest snowflake in recorded history was reported at Fort Keogh, Montana, on January 28, 1887, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The snowflake was reportedly 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. The person who found the snow flake, ranch owner Matt Coleman, described it as "larger than milk pans."

Holy crap, that is unbelievable!  I was expecting the biggest snowflake ever to be maybe an inch across at the most.  This one was over a foot long!  I wonder if this was some 'rougue flake' or were all the snowflakes back in 1887 in the proximity of one foot across?  Eight inches thick too...seems kind of dangerous really.  Actually, I bet the guy that 'found' it was totally lying but he figured that if he was going to lie about the size of a snowflake, he may as well 'go big' and totally blow everyone's mind. 

Man, this is a pretty unbelievable story.  This lady works for my law firm now.  Fuckin' crazy story.

http://www.oprah.com/rys/omag/rys_omag_200109_phenom.jhtml

Man, this week flew by like a double-wide in a tornado.  The other librarian is gone today and I've got the place to myself.  Well, really this isn't much different than most days except today I have to field all the reference work on top of my other responsibilities.  The sad part is that I've taken care of my responsibilities already and there has only been one reference request as of yet.  It really doesn't feel like a Friday though and I dont' know why. 

Hey, this is going to sound strange, but could somebody help me determine what I am eating?  It is a round, flaky, pastry-type food formed in concentric circles and some kind of cherry filled jelly substance in the middle.  Its about six to eight inches in diameter and it tastes really good.  I would like to thank the person who brought it to me but I don't want to ask them what it was because I should probably know.  Thanks! 

Well, the first half of the day was pretty much surfing the interweb, but things got totally rockin' after lunch (well, as rockin' as things can get in a law library). First, I had my last probationary review. Needless to say, it was really frickin' good again. Too many superlatives to list. :) The really cool part was that my boss sent all three of my reviews (which were all great) to get reviewed by HR and put into my file. Kick ass! Then I got this pretty difficult project to work on because the other, more experienced librarian was too busy for it. I won't bore you with details, but it was about mutual insurance companies. I searched around like Hellen Keller in a labryinth for like 3 hours when I finally stumbled across a sleeping golden minataur and kicked its ass. The attorney I was doing this for almost crapped his pants. It was weird though because I was supposed to be looking specifically for treatises and I happened to stumble across some articles that I thought might fit the bill. So, I brought him the treatises I found and he said they were good...then I mentioned that I also printed off some articles, but I left them at my desk because I knew he didn't want articles. He asked for them and I brought them over. He flipped out over one of them and kept saying, "oh, cool! This is all quant! Total quant! Can you show me where you got this?". Apparentlly quant is dorky lawyer speak for 'quantitative' and he was flipping out about math. Whoo-de-frickin'-do. So, that was totally cool because I was feeling like a dumbass for the first 3 hours when I couldn't find squat. Well, I'm gonna make like a fetus and head out. Woot!

I did my tax returns last night.  Somehow I managed to get five W-2's from my various jobs over the past year.  Super psyched about the return though!  Definitely the most I've ever gotten.  I was pretty surprised and now I'm hoping that I didn't screw something up in the paperwork.  I guess I claimed a lot of something or other and they had been taking lots of money out of my checks.  Thanks you, government, for giving me back a lot of the money I lent you to invest for yourself and somehow manage not to turn a profit with it.  Maybe this year I will loan you more money and you can make foolish investments and then return my money to me all over again.  You know what I thought of last night.  Of course you don't.  Maybe this is something that is completely obvious to everyone and I'm the last one to board the S.S. Economic Theory.  Say that the price of foriegn oil continues to rise.  That would put a strain on our oil-dependent economy which would result in an economic crash if the strain got to be too big.  Then the value of everything depreciates and all of the newly rich oil exporting countries would come in and buy up lots of 'stuff' in America on the cheap.  Then they drop the price of oil so that America prospers again and they get a huge return on their investment. 

Usually my job keeps me occupied all day long, but for the past week its been absolutely dead after two o'clock.  So I've been spending inordinate amounts of time on Blogs4me, Myspace and OddTodd's Daily Fact Board.  But now I'm spent and I asked the other librarian if there is anything I can do, like for work or something.  She gave me two books to read:  Cataloging and Classification and Reference and Information Services.  I totally loved the historical parts where they describe how these fields were developed, but the rest of the books are as dry as a fifty year old loofah.  So, now I have about an hour to kill.  I wish I could pull out my bus-book from the closet (Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas) but that would just look really bad.  I guess that's about it.  Goooo clock! 

Yawns are ridiculous, exposing the soft pink recesses of your cranium for all the world to see.  Silently letting everyone around you know that you did not achieve the noble goal of a full nights sleep.  A human yawn is so vastly different than that of say a lion.  When the king of the beasts lazily exposes his insidious incisors, it is an awe inspiring display of majesty mixed with an envious dose of nonchalance.  When a yawn is performed by a human, it is commonly percieved as a silly face for a grown up to make...not to mention a singular display of one's oral hygiene.  Yawn.  Shake head.  Rub eyes.  Repeat. 

Goddam Hector!  I know its your first day and everything, but pay attention!  I asked for a cheeseburger, not a hockey puck with cheese!  Oh yeah, and quit jibber-jabbering to that little amiga of yours!  I'll make an exception if you are like that guy from Memento and you always forget that you put a burger on the grill, but if that's the case then you should be over at the sandwich counter making chicken wraps for the never-ending line of health conscious secretaries!  I guess its going to be a light lunch today...camel light to be exact. 

A giddy youth is skipping through the wilderness, seemingly oblivious to the dangers around him. His cap is on backward, as if he doesn't know -- or doesn't care -- whether he is coming or going. Dum-dum-de-dum. Skip along, skip along. In his left hand he holds, as though presenting it to society, a white rose, the apple's opposite, emblem of purity and innocence. Over his right shoulder, tramp style, a stick with a bag hanging from it. What is in your bag, Fool? Dum-dum-de-dum. We will trade you a kilo of gold for the contents of your bag, sight unseen. Dum-dum-de-dum. He is an admirer of clouds. And with his eyes turned upward, he has skipped right to the brink of a deep and rocky chasm. The promontory is crumbling beneath his boots. Yet forward he goes, clear eyes squinting in the sun, a smile on his lips, his bag of useless trinkets swinging wildly. ~T.R.

Scientist say that they found a planet way out beyond Neptune.  They're also saying that it is larger than Pluto, which kind of brings into question the official planetary status of Pluto.  Cool in a way, but not cool to be dissing Pluto like that.  This reminds me of a song by the now defunct 2 Skinnee J's. 

With depravity,
I break lots of gravity
Blast past the atmosphere
to the last frontier
I go boldly through space and time
The sky`s the limit,
but the limit isn`t the sky
I break orbit by habit,
I ignite satellites and leave rings round the planets
A flying ace like that beagle,
nevertheless this alien remains illegal
Cause their discovery don`t cover me
the immigrants been left in the cold
to grow old
and disintegrate
Discriminate
against the distant and disclaimers,
Cause small minds can`t see past Uranus
When I shun their race
cause that`s just a phase
and my odyssey runs in 2001 ways
And I can see clearly now like Hubbell
shoved off the shuttle,
here`s my rebuttal
It`s a planet.

Who do you represent?
I represent the smallest planet
A tourney in this journey
versus those who tried to ban it.
If you don`t agree
go see interplanet Janet Cause
the sun is star like
Pluto
is planet.
So lend me all ears
and let me state my case,
about all the types of satellites we must embrace
Cause like parents`
great-grandparents,
this planet was an immigrant,
to deport it`s an offense.
It`s an upstanding member of the solar system
Abide the laws of Earth and make it a victim.
Of Proposition
107,
When Pluto spawns a moon it will apply to the heavens.
A dandy like Judas of a chariot
If you demote this boat
remote to a goat
It`s like taking ET`s custody from Elliot,
support yours
clearly put cause,
simply put

Pluto is a planet. Pluto!
Pluto is a planet. Pluto!
Pluto is a planet. Pluto!
Pluto is a planet. Pluto!

Do it
for the
children,
if not for yourself.
Pluto
is a

A friend of a friend just learned photoshop and he's gone all nuts editing Samuel L. Jackson into a bunch of movie posters.  I laughed my ass off at most of them.  Maybe its just me.

http://whatifonly.blogspot.com/