Riding A ButterTub

Ode To Science

You’d think that science would have better studies to run. Also, when they say “the average man can extend…” I really didn’t think the second half of the sentence would fit there… but I guess I’ve been wrong before…

Oh Dammit Denise, You Stole My Idea

Last year you took my idea to come to the dress up party as the sofa. The year prior I thought for sure I had you tagged as a cheeseburger with onions girl, but sure enough you came as Teddy Roosevelt, and now this year, a phone-head? How the hell are you seeing me do this? Mini-spy cams aren’t going to be invented for another 20 or 30 years yet so whatever you’re doing, knock it the eff off because you’re really starting to be a huge buzzkill, seriously.

Seriously? After “x” Years You Haven’t Changed It?

Does it take an act of God to change the name of a town? Who in this town would be against renaming it? I’d be willing to bet that if they put enough money into making that sweet facade there that they’d be able to whip up enough money to change the frickin’ city name – but hey, who am I to judge, for all I know the whole town could be of that profession and then it’d make sense after all…

Montana’s Legislature is really busy

This story comes from Wednesday’s (1/21/09) Helena Independent Record.  The four kids that spoke in opposition to this bill are awesome.  I’m sure the guy who wrote the song is a good dude, but the legislator that introduced this bill should be ashamed.  (The bill was officially rejected.)

State love song: Kid tested, but disapproved

By JENNIFER McKEE IR State Bureau – 01/21/2009

Jerry McGowan, a 60-year-old Boston transplant now living in Alberton, really loves Montana.

Some 12 years ago, he wrote a song about how much he loves Montana, and now he wants to give that song to the people of this state.

But he has to get past 9-year-old Thomas Ticknor first.

Ticknor, of Helena, and three of his older siblings were the only people to speak against designating McGowan’s song entitled “The Montana Song” as Montana’s official state love song.

Montana already has three official songs, the children testified before the House State Administration Committee Tuesday morning, and that seems just a little bit silly.

“It’s already excessive,” said Hannah Ticknor, 17, who added that lawmakers in 2009 have proposed no fewer than four bills to make the Legislature meet every single year, instead of every two years.

Maybe if lawmakers weren’t spending their time discussing possible state love songs, she suggested, they’d be able to get all their important work done more quickly.

McGowan, however, is undeterred. So, too, is Rep. Bill Nooney, R-Missoula, who sponsored House Bill 184, designating “The Montana Song” the state’s official love song.

As McGowan tells it, the song will make money for the state and it puts into words the powerful and complicated feelings so many Montanans feel for this place.

“If (Montana) doesn’t move you to tears, you’d better open your eyes wider,” he told the committee shortly before sitting down with his guitar and singing the song. “I seek nothing from this except to offer it to the state. This is a gift to Montana and it’s from the heart.”

McGowan met his wife, Beverly, in his native Boston. As a girl, she had traveled to Montana with her father, who was a tire salesman. She fell in love with it, McGowan said, and after they met and married, they talked often of returning.

They did in 1997, taking a week’s vacation and covering as much Montana ground as they could in seven days. Two weeks later, they sold their possessions and moved out here.

“We didn’t know where we’d live and it didn’t matter,” he told the committee.

They settled in Alberton, in far western Montana. McGowan wrote “The Montana Song” soon after.

Initially, the song didn’t mention much east of the Continental Divide. Earlier in the 2009 Legislature, he rewrote one of the verses after good-natured concern arose that the song didn’t encompass all the beauty of Montana, particularly her high, wide and handsome eastern plains.

McGowan envisions the song being used in tourism. He also told the committee he will pay the cost of producing a CD of the song, and proceeds from the sales will go back to the state’s tax coffers.

The committee didn’t make any decisions about the song.

Top 100

ESPN.com’s Keith Law added us to his blog roll.  As a thank you, and definitely if you are a baseball fan, go check out his list of top 100 MLB baseball prospects.

Don’t Run Over Mattresses

This guy ran over a mattress (box spring) and decided to keep going. The ensuing jumble finally whipped around enough to put a tear in the gas tank and the subsequent lack of fuel is what finally brought this vehicle to its knees.

It had still managed to drive 30 more miles decently with a 60lb tangle wrapped around the driveshaft.

He complained that the vehicle had a “shimmy” when driving at high speeds.

This is what the dealership found:

Deep Thoughts Thursday #22

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.

You Stash the Cat

Ok Dmitri – Quick, you go inside and convince Mom that nothing is going on out here. She’ll freak out and obviously come screaming as fast as she can out of the house because you may have lit the car on fire again. Once she comes out I’ll release Mr. Fluffles and Mom will trip. Olga, that’s when you dart in the house with the booze and hit the basement, my old man never goes down there any more and we can totally score this booze… Make haste my minions!

The 2008 Funniest Posts of Web Comedy (aka “The Buttertubbers”)

So here’s the deal and we don’t know if we have the clout to make it work, but it has some pretty sweet possibilities for the best comedy around if we can swing it.

So the gist is that we’re shooting for the same layout as the NCAA basketball tournaments with approximately 64 teams (posts) that will battle to be the Funniest Web Post of 2008 and owner of the first ever Buttertubber award!

Yes, we said 2008 – If it is successful, we’ll do it again for 2009, but what we’re looking for is your FUNNIEST post you had in 2008. The most comments, the biggest laughs, the heaviest traffic for you. We’ll take all the posts and randomly match them up one against the other starting as soon as we have (ideally) 64 posts entered.

From there we’ll post match-ups daily between 2 post and the fans in the comments section will determine the winner. We’ll give it 24 hours from the first post to determining the winner. We’ll go from 12pm PST to 12pm PST the next day to leave voting open.

Do I have to give you my comedy to post on your site? Oh, absolutely not. That’s the point here, we’re giving you a backlink and sending people to your site to read your comical expertise. We’re just posting the links, you get the love!

Can’t I just vote for my post 1000 times and just rig it? I’m sure you can try, but we’re not completely lame, we can see what IP you’re commenting from. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell all your friends and family to vote for you or if you have some magical hacking genius that can vote for you over and over again, I guess we can’t stop that, but let’s try to keep it honest.

What if you get more than 64 posts submitted? Welp, if we do, we’ll have to decide where to go from there. Maybe another mini-tourney or just increasing the 64 to [insert big number here].

What if you don’t get enough posts? Again, will have to play it by ear, but we imagine that we can still make a tourney with 20 or 30 posts as well. 64 just carries more weight and really, it doesn’t even have to be the top 64 as discussed above.

Can I submit more than one post? How many can I submit? Let’s just for starters say you can give us your “top 3″ and we’ll go from there. Ideally we’d have 1 post from several sites, but if the turnout is low we’re happy to make it work.

When does it all start then? Like we said, this is the first time we’ve tried this out and it may fall on its face, but in theory, it sounds like it’d be pretty fun and a pretty good traffic boost

Why do you want to participate in this? Well, aside from the free traffic you’ll get from the tourney, and the fact that you’ll be able to laugh at the funniest most commented pieces from across the web without trying to find them yourself, you’ll ALSO be in the competition for the loot at the end.

The loot you say? Do elaborate! That’s right – to make it even more exciting the champion of the web deserves to be recognized for their comical expertise. $100 will go to the winner in the form of their choice. An Amex gift card? Paypal? Amazon gift card? Something else that costs $100? You choose. You made us all laugh, you get your choice.

I live in [insert anywhere in the world]. Can I participate? Sure, as long as you can accept payments and it isn’t illegal in your area, we can send money ANYWHERE with Paypal!

How do I submit my stuff to you guys to participate? Use our CONTACT FORM and select “To Enter the 2008 ButterTubbers Contest!” from the dropdown and be sure to include:

The post name
The URL of the post
A quick 1 to 3 sentence intro to your post (which will be placed in each of your match-ups along the way – make it witty to catch the readers eye)!

What kind of comedy are you looking for? Are there any limits as to what I determine funny? Well, we’d like to be as close to PG-13 as we can. Read the stuff on here, if it is along similar lines, we’re cool. We will however reserve the right to refuse service to anyone if we think it too offensive to be associated with us and the contest.

Does it have to be any specific format? Nope. Whatever you think is funny that YOU created (or enhanced) and can post on your own site. We will just hold the link. If it isn’t working on your site, you may lose that game.

A lot of the stuff that you guys post is “borrowed” from around the web – how’s that work? That’s a key piece of the pie. If it is a funny video that someone else created, that’s not you. A funny image? Not you. HOWEVER – like we do on this site a lot, we write some witty phrases that enhance the image/video and add to it which will be accepted. The video/image alone (if not yours) will need some meat to it to make it better than the original work.

Are you guys participating? Nah – to keep it as clean as possible and free from any ideas of deception and theivery, we’ll be sitting it out and giving the pirate booty to the winner.

So when does it end? Welp, we’re kinda playing it by ear depending on the amount of entries we get – In theory if we get 64 entries (March Madness style), we’d play 3 matches per day (one day with two) for the first round taking a total of 11 days. 2 per day for the second and third round for a total of 12 days. Then 1 per day for the final 4 and championship 3 days. So again in theory depending on entries, the whole thing would last about 26 days…

When does it start? Once again, it’s a completely new idea for us like we said. Start sending us your posts IMMEDIATELY and we’ll pencil in a Feb. 5 start date (unless we only have 4 entries or so) to have entries submitted – you can have up to 3 of your posts in it, so start sending them to us in the format above now!

That’s it! Feel free to ask us any questions in the comments section or shoot us an email if you’ve got any more!

You Can’t Fire Me! I’m Drunk!

This story comes to us from beautiful Lima, Peru. A land of beauty, intrigue, and unique laws…

LIMA (Reuters) – Peru’s top court has ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job, a decision that was criticized by the government on Wednesday for setting a dangerous precedent.

The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo be given his job back as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos, which fired him for being intoxicated at work.

The firing was excessive because even though Cayo was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody, Fernando Calle, one of the justices, said on Wednesday.

Calle said the court would not revise its decision, despite complaints from the government.

“It’s not a good idea to relax rules at workplaces,” said Labor Minister Jorge Villasante.

Celso Becerra, the administrative chief of Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, denounced the ruling.

“We’ve fired four workers for showing up drunk, and two of them were drivers,” he said. “How can we allow a drunk to work who might run somebody over?”

(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by Dana Ford)