The husband just sent me a link to this post with the title line of the email stating, ahem, "MUST HAVE!"

What must the husband have? you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, ask. Well, I'm glad you asked, because it's basically a Craftmatic adjustable bed. For extreme dorks.

I quoteth from the posteth:

{...}The bed includes built-in electronics: wireless Internet connectivity and a wireless keyboard; a built-in iPod docking station; integration to life|ware Connected, a Windows Media Center program that controls home electronics; as well as 1.5 terabytes of storage to maintain your media collections.

It provides a surround sound system with four eight-inch subwoofers, an audiophile ribbon tweeter, and 2,500 watt RMS amplification. A headboard projector casts a 120-inch (10-foot) screen on the wall and can be used to project movies, books, music navigation features, the Internet and the local daily weather.

Next, thereÂ’s anti-snore technology. The bed detects snoring with a vibration-detection system and automatically moves itself into an angle that will help open the sleeperÂ’s nasal passages to reduce mild to moderate snoring. When the snoring stops, the bed returns to its original position.

Plus, vibration sensor and load cell technologies measure how much you toss and turn, and how often you get out of bed during the night. According to a company press release, the same vibration sensor technology detects and monitors rhythmic breathing patterns that indicate relaxation. It compares these movements to a 30-day baseline measure of the sleeper and then provides tips on a “Good Morning Screen” to improve sleep quality. That’s right. Your bed will start giving you advice about how to improve your sleep performance.

If you donÂ’t sleep alone, each of you can control the temperature on your side of the bed, from 68 degrees to 117 degrees Fahrenheit.{...}

What? No cup holders?

Here's what it looks like.

So, like I said, it's a Craftmatic adjustable bed that your grannie would lurve to have, only you can plug your iPod into it. Grannie wouldn't know what to do with an iPod, but you would, right?

And get this. It's going to cost anywhere between $20 and $50...thousand dollars.

I can only say this: I am NOT going to want to listen to a mechanical hum as it raises itself up every time the husband starts snoring. Nor am I going to want to listen to it reposition itself to a horizontal position when he stops. It's sounds like something out of Logan's Run. Only without the neat metallic leisure suits and Michael York trying to fight the future on a monorail. No one needs that. Really and truly. The only time I am currently allowed to wail on the husband is when he starts snoring, because it's the only way to get him to shut up. If he thinks I'm going to listen to all that racket, ON TOP OF THE SNORING, well, his shins aren't going to be the only thing that's bruised come morning.

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Could it be...

...the ferocious snap of a whip?

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Yeah, so I think we all know that while France is a member of NATO, they haven't committed any troops to that mission since De Gaulle was president. We all know this, right? You didn't? Well, that's what the deal is. However, ever since Sarkozy was elected president, France has been toying with the idea of supplying troops to NATO again. Apparently, however, they're concerned with how NATO is run.

Their concerns have nothing to do with the possibility of their troops being sent out to, say, Afghanistan, unlike their neighbors the Germans. No, their concerns have to do with NATO's bureaucracy---and how unwieldy and bloated it is.

France, which is studying a possible reintegration into NATO military structures, called on Saturday for faster moves to reform the 26-nation body's labyrinthine internal structures and budgets.

Defense Minister Herve Morin told a security conference in Munich that NATO had a 2 billion euro (US$2.90 billion) annual budget and a staff of 22,000 full-time employees, the equivalent of one for every three alliance troops currently on missions.

"It has nearly 320 committees or sub-committees, with some carrying the name of 'committee on the challenges of modern society' or the 'food and agriculture committee'!" Morin said.

Who would have ever guessed that France (FRANCE!!!) could (or even would) be so concerned with the size of a bureaucracy that they might rule out reinvolving themselves because they judged it to be so out of control?

This is shocking.

It's on par with some scientist announcing that, indeed, cats and dogs don't really hate each other.

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Have you heard? Foster and Associates (the geniuses who gave us this brilliant work of art. ) are in the process of building the world's first carbon neutral city, to be called Masdar City.

Wanna guess where Masdar City will be located?

Abu DhabiÂ’s renewable energy initiative, Masdar, has laid the cornerstone of its carbon-neutral, waste-free city, saying it will invest $22bn in the hope that the project becomes a blueprint for sustainable development around the world.

Oil-rich Abu Dhabi said it was committing $15bn (€10.3bn, £7.7bn) into a broad range of alternative energy projects beyond Masdar City, such as solar and hydrogen power plants and solar panel manufacturing sites.

Foster & Partners architects will design the car-free city, housing 50,000 residents by 2016. Masdar’s research institute, founded in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be located in the 6.5 sq km development that aims to turn into an alternative energy cluster for 1,500 ­businesses.{...}

Yes, you read that correctly. This environmentally forward and car-free project will be built in Abu Dhabi.

And, of course, it will be funded with the proceeds from the sale of all that glorious Texas Tea.

Think that's good? Just wait. It gets better.

{...}To maximise energy efficiency, the cityÂ’s narrow thoroughfares will draw on the traditional architecture of the old walled towns of the Middle East. Carbon emissions saved by these techniques will then be monetised through carbon credits under the Kyoto ProtocolÂ’s clean development mechanism.

{my emphasis}

That's just freakin' genius. Would that we could all be so canny.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Thank God the husband no longer plays World of Warcraft.

You're probably thinking that he quit because I was having trouble with all the time he spent playing. Nope. If he wants to play MMORPG's, I don't really have an issue with it, so long as he's not spending every waking hour on the damn computer either playing or dealing with "guild business." It's fun for him. While I don't get it and never really will, it's not for me to judge. And, as I've mentioned before, anything that leaves me with sole control over the tee vee is a good thing.

No, the reason I'm glad he's not playing WoW anymore is because of crap like this.

Now, the husband would never want this bit o' machinery in the first place, mainly because he likes to build his own gaming rigs. But, I'm glad he quit playing because I don't want him associating with people who would buy this sort of thing.

Embracing your inner geek is one thing; slapping down your credit card to buy a World of Warcraft Edition Dell Laptop is entirely another.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Coming soon to a gamer with boundary issues near you: http://www.ageofconan.com/ "Time enough for sleep in the grave."

Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at February 07, 2008 11:58 AM (6r15q)

2 Back in MY day, it was BCGs and pocket protectors that announced your Everlovin' Geekishness to the masses. Huh.

Posted by: Margi at February 07, 2008 03:44 PM (IYBY1)

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Alcatraz: Future Home of Global Peace. Or at least that's what some hippy drippy trippy idiot would have it become.

San Francisco voters will decide on Tuesday whether to remove the famous Alcatraz Prison visited by thousands of tourists a day and instead create a "global peace center."

The proposition sharing the presidential primary ballot comes from the director of the California-based Global Peace Foundation who gives his name as Da Vid. He says transforming Alcatraz will "liberate energies, raising the whole consciousness of the Bay Area."

Supporters would like to raze the prison and build a medicine wheel, a labyrinth and a conference center for non-violent conflict resolution. Volunteers collected 10,350 voter signatures last year to put it on the local ballot.

But even in a city long famed for its embrace of counterculture, many are skeptical about he plan.

"Perhaps we haven't reached the proper stage of enlightenment yet, but we're more inclined to support propositions with defined sources of funding attached to them," the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial.{...}

I went on a tour of Alcatraz a few years back, when the husband and I visited San Francisco. It was one of those guided tours, where you wear headphones and listen to certain tracks as you visit different places within the facility, and one of the parts that struck me was when former prisoners reminisced about their experience and said that when the wind came across the bay from Oakland and San Francisco, they became miserable and depressed because they could hear the life they were missing out on. The sounds of traffic carried, but so did the sounds of laughter and conversation. One can only hope that, if such a place were to be built on Alcatraz, the wind would carry the sounds of guitar strumming, Kumbaya singing hippies to the residents of those fair cities---and perhaps, just perhaps, they'd get so annoyed they'd ditch their dippy hippy ways and would get with the freakin' program already.

Posted by: Kathy at 07:27 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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...or so Whitney Houston warbled all those years ago. Yeah right.

{...}Authorities said that a 17-year-old girl in a hot-pink sweatshirt approached Smith outside of a Winn-Dixie supermarket at Hypoluxo and Jog roads in Boynton Beach Wednesday evening and asked the girl what her favorite cookies were. Police told WPBF that, while Smith was telling the teen about her favorite Cinna-Spins, the teen snatched an envelope containing about $167 off of Smith's table, hopped into another teen's car and drove away.
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Smith told WPBF that she turned to her mother in tears, saying, "Mommy! That girl took all my money!"

Authorities said they caught up with the 17-year-old girl Thursday and pulled her out of class at Park Vista High School, where she allegedly confessed to the crime, WPBF reported. Investigators said the girl's female accomplice, another a Park Vista student, also confessed.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said that the case has been handed over to the State Attorney's Office to determine if charges will be filed against the teens.

Smith's mother, Charlene Rubenstrunk, told WPBF that the girls returned to the store Thursday to taunt her daughter.

"They are within 10 feet of the same kid they just robbed last night and there is nothing anybody can do about it. I find that offensive," Rubenstrunk said.

The girls, whose names are not being released because they are minors, told WPBF that they were not remorseful for the crime, and that they did it because they "needed money."

"We went through all that effort to get it, we got all these charges and we had to give the money back. I'm kind of pissed," one of the girls told WPBF.

The other girl told WPBF that she was upset because police found them.

"I'm not sorry, I'm just pissed that I got caught," the girl said."

You think that's offensive? Check out the video. Pretty much the same as the article, but chock-a-block full of attitude.

I thought it was bad enough that they'd said what they did, but the way they said it, the way they apparently thought it was cool to be on tee vee is even more offensive.

You needed money, so the best way to go about that is to steal from a freakin' girl scout? What the hell?

You know, since I don't have kids, I generally refrain from telling parents how to raise their offspring. But if either of those girls was my kid, well, I'd take a strap to them. Then, when they're incapable of sitting for a few days, I'd let the police arrest them and throw their worthless asses into jail for a few days without bailing them out. Then I'd make them volunteer in a homeless shelter for about a year. To show them what it's really like to need money.

But, I don't have kids, so what do I know?

{Ht: Laura W. over at Ace.}

UPDATE: I just showed this to the husband and his question was, "Do we have someplace to throw little whores like that other than Vegas?"

Posted by: Kathy at 12:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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