Well, here we are. Another week down. The news is getting hot, might as well start us off with something from the other side of the pacific this time.
#1 
Meanwhile, in Venezuela.
#2 
A picture I took in Taos. They wouldn’t let you go inside. Irony?
#3 
Winners!
#1
#2
#3
Notable Entries
#1
One True Athena
“Homeowner arrested for animal cruelty when dog found on the floor”
#2
MikeS
SP made me go all the way out here to eat my pineapple pizza
#3
Florida man
*not available in Pakistan
Several of them could have been chosen, they were all great. I hope the next one goes just as well.
I’ll be collecting some good photos while I finish my vacation in VT.
So some people thought this might be a good idea. I like the biweekly pattern, though, so that’s what you’ll get. I like the name, and hope the FCC will stick. I hope I can find some good photos for you all to ruin. I’ll alternate the contest and the winners every week.
Let’s start with a few off my computer.
#1 This is one of the family dogs. This was about a year ago.
#2 DOOM, unhappy there’s a camera taking his picture.
#3 This is a picture I took at some national park between Boulder and Taos.
I’ll pick the top few for each, but this is no dictatorship.
DOOM’s Drinking Game Guide
By 1337n00bers – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Sometimes, friends get together and make an evening consuming alcohol together. People they don’t know get invited as well, and people start looking to activities to help them drink. Some games we play are social and involve some planning. Games like beer pong or flip cup. Those games, while fun, are a bit too boring sometimes. So I thought today I would share a few of the games my friends and I play.
First, the games we always play. 24/7, 365.
Game Of Life
This one is rather easy, but requires cans of beer. Although they do can wine at this point, so who knows. The rules are simple. The goal is to keep the tab at the top bent to a side. When you open your beer and take a sip, the beer becomes ‘in play’. You turn the tab off to one side, and keep drinking and socializing like normal. An opponent attempts to move the tab back to the 12 o’clock position without you noticing. If you take a sip with the tab at 12, and get called, you finish you beer. That’s it!
Our house plays this every day. It also helps with ID’ing your beer (my tab always goes to the right, 2-3 o’clock)
BUFFALO
By Ikiwaner – Own work, GFDL 1.2, Link
Another game we play everyday all day. This game requires some knowledge of your peers, but is pretty easy.
You can no longer drink with your dominant hand. All drinks must be held by your off hand, in my case left. If someone catches you holding your drink in your dominant hand, they say “Buffalo!” and you have to take a good swig. It was originally the whole drink, like Game Of Life, but we changed that after a half liter of vodka was being passed around. I suppose it’s mostly on an honor system in the house at this point. There’s a great twist! If someone calls buffalo on you and you were not using your dominant hand, they drink. If you have a drink in both hands, they must drink the beverage in your dominant hand. This leads to great trickery; you can hide your beer under the table and let people call you out.
I have to note, I was introduced to this game back in Montana- I have no idea where it came from.
Now some games that require some planning.
Chandelier
Warning! This game will get you drunk very fast.
Players:3-as many as can fit.
Needed items: pong balls, solo cups, beer.
Table, preferably round.
This game needs at least 3 people, I’ve found that 4-6 is pretty ideal. A version of this can be found online, but is far slower than I like. For the ease of explaining, I’ll pretend there are 5 people playing.
To set up, we need 6 solo cups. Everyone gets one, and one is filled with water*.
Place the water cup in the middle of the table, and spread the people around the table as evenly as possible.
Everyone’s cups go in front of them, somewhere near the center cup. I prefer a few inches between center cup and the player cup, but you do you.
For a game of 5 players, 3 pong balls are needed. This step is the most important when it comes to what pace you want.
Everyone puts some beer in their cup, and we are ready to start.
To begin, 3 players grab a pong ball each. They try to bounce the ball off the table into an opponents cup. If the ball goes in an opponents cup, they take the ball, drink, and then shoot at another opponent. They then refill their cup as quickly as possible.
If a ball is thrown and it misses, it is free game. There are no turns. Whoever picks a pong ball up gets to throw. If the ball goes in the center cup, the whole game changes.
At that point, everyone playing must play a modified flip cup. Everyone chugs, and places their cup at the edge of the table. They must flip the cup over, so it lands upside down on the table. The last person to accomplish this must drink an extra time.
The game then resets. Everyone refills their cup, people grab pong balls, and its back to it.
You should probably do this game in short periods. Maybe with a mandatory water break half-time or something.
*this cup could be beer to drink after flip cup. I think it depends on what’s being consumed and desire to not share germs.
Stump
This game also needs some things.
A stump or log- ideally 2-3 ft long, and from the base of the tree. A short barstool.
A hammer- I like a lighter ball-peen
Box of nails- no finishing nails, people.
2-6ish people
If you haven’t played Stump, you haven’t been to a summer party with me. Which is too bad, because I’m pretty good at it.
The idea is to strike your opponents nail into the stump before yours goes.
To start, someone puts all the players nails into the stump. The less the better, just enough to not fall out of the stump if there’s a poor hit.
Players stand in front of their nail, and open a beer, and pick the direction of play (clockwise?)
The player throws the hammer in the air, flipping it at least 360 degrees. The player can not touch the hammer until it has done this flip. They then catch the hammer, and in one motion, brings it down on an opponents nail.
If there is contact, and the nail goes in at all or is bent, the opponent who owns the nail must drink (proportional to the damage done).
The hammer is then passed to the next player, around and around.
If there is a glancing blow and sparks appear, someone yells “Sparks!” and everyone drinks.
If you drop the hammer, you must drink and you lose your next turn.
If the hammer is dropped but lands on the stump, the person the handle is pointing to must also drink with the person who dropped it.
When the head of the nail is fully below the surface of the stump, that player is out.
If it is your turn, you can use it to conduct “Home Improvement” and straighten your bent nail. You can take as long as you want but you will be mocked. You can not pull the nail further out. You do not get to throw the hammer if you use your turn for home improvement.
Well, those are the games I enjoy the most. Next time, I may do one on different drinking games for movies.
By Neptuul – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link
Derpetologist’s Spot the Not: Louis Farrakhan
1. America is in trouble, and I say God is about to wipe this nation from the face of the Earth. I’m not crazy, I’m not drunk, how long do you think a nation can do evil and not face the wrath of god?
2. You see everybody always talk about Hitler exterminating six million Jews. That’s right. But don’t nobody ever ask what did they do to Hitler.
3. The Mother Wheel is a heavily armed spaceship the size of a city, which will rain destruction upon white America but save those who embrace the Nation of Islam.
4. If somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a White man. I’d do it nice and slow.
5. White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet.
6. Qaddafi is hated because he is the leader of a small country that is rich, but he uses his money to finance liberation struggles.
When I finished my education at the wonderful North Bennet St. School in Boston, I was left to make a few choices on where to pick up my trade in locksmithing. Sixteen states, like New York and Texas, require a license to work in any shop. My home state of Vermont had none, and I moved back to start there. The problems of trying to move to a state, pass the certification, and then wait to receive the license proved too much for my wallet.
The calls for licensing were quickly heard as I entered my career. There was a perception that people were being had by fakes, they were being vastly overcharged in their worst moments. There are companies that use fake addresses and temporary numbers, hoping to make a week’s wages on an unfortunate soul. My coworkers and colleagues wanted to help, genuinely. I don’t think any of them thought their ideas could be used to hurt new entries to the field. Like all other licensing schemes though, that will be the result.
The goal may be noble; an attempt to sort the skilled workers from the non-skilled so the general public doesn’t make a bad choice. The immediate problem is that when this is done by a board of insiders, the door closes, the requirements deviate from that first goal, and no one is allowed in. New York City is probably the worst offender in this way, you need to have two friends in the club invite. Good luck, I’m sure no one would mind losing ‘territory’ to your new business venture. Looking through the requirements, I see nothing about knowing any building or fire codes, no test on practices or skills, but I do see a child support check. How that relates to a skilled technician, I am not sure. Probably for the best that person can’t start in a trade, he owes some money. There’s also a fee and expiration date, because FYTW. The idea that licensing locksmiths in New York has helped the consumer is nonsense, a quick google search says New Yorkers still have problems and accuse several businesses of scamming them.
A better solution would be registration and private certifications. Milton Friedman wrote 55 years ago:
By registration, I mean an arrangement under which individuals are required to list their names in some official register if they engage in certain kinds of activities. There is no provision for denying the right to engage in the activity to anyone who is willing to list his name. He may be charged a fee, either as a registration fee or as a scheme of taxation.
A much less intrusive way to go about the attempt to publicly identifying shady businesses without setting up serious barriers to entry. Registration and certification already exist in private associations.
The Associated Locksmiths Of America has been testing for certification. ALOA’s stated mission is to enhance the professionalism, education and ethics among locksmiths. They have levels of certification. As good as this organization is, ALOA thinks they are not enough and is actively pursuing licensing around the country. They say this is to protect consumers, but the PDF is mostly protectionist. Of course, admitting that this protects locksmiths is the giveaway. To pretend that unlicensed (by ALOA) people are automatically all part of this scamming scourge is ridiculous. To keep locksmith tools out of the hands of the public forces a cost on someone who wants to try their hand in the field. They want the power of the state to ensure that only their locksmiths are allowed to do any business. We may approve of a government register, but I will always oppose government certification and licensing.
This muddying between public certifications and government licensing of a trade is not unique to locksmithing. We all know how important it is to protect the consumer from Sweeny Todd, and dammit, the government is the only way. You can’t be trusted to do any work on your bathroom door lock, and you should be fined for letting your handyman take a crack at it. We should instead be able to find workers that have been trained and have a certification given by a reputable group if we want to.