Easy And Bogus Energy Star Certifications

Newly added to my list of things that annoy me would be the EPA and the DOE. That's the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Both sound like they would be something that would not annoy me. They certainly sound like things that should not annoy me. But when I read over yonder at Fox News that "The federal government has been slapping "energy-efficient" ratings on products that don't even exist" then I get a little annoyed. I get even more annoyed when I read that one of these non-existent products was "...a space heater with a duster and several fly strips attached to it". Wait. What now?

Correct. A space heater with a feather duster and fly strips attached to it. What. The. Hell? According to the article, the Governmental Accountability Office (which is sort of like the Internal Affairs of the federal government) "...wanted to see how easily the feds could be duped". Apparently, the answer to that question is "very". Very easily is how the feds could be duped.

They submitted 20 different products and 15 of those were approved for the "Energy Star" rating. Great. So 75% of the time, they're just certifying crap. Good to know. What else? Well, the reason this happened was because "...Energy Star does not verify energy-savings data reported by manufacturers." So, wait. So you can just tell them whatever the heck you want to about your product, whether it be real or fake, and they're not going to ask you to prove your claims?! Are you kidding me? LOOK at it!!

For cryin' out loud. Now, this wouldn't annoy me all that much except for the fact that a company that makes a product that is Energy Star certified gets humongous tax breaks. Thus, I can see the incentive for any company to claim that anything that they have is energy efficient in order to get that rating and receive their tax breaks. I can see the incentive even more considering that one of the bogus products that the DOE and the EPA approved was a (wait for it) "a "gas-powered alarm clock" that "...was described as a generator-sized clock run on gasoline." Are you kidding me?

How would an alarm clock that runs on GASOLINE be considered "energy efficient"? Granted, it doesn't use any electricity, I'll give it that! But that's about all I can give it! And it says that it's "generator-sized"? That sounds like it's HUGE. Why would anyone even WANT a gasoline powered alarm clock? How would that work? EVER?!

Now of course, after these departments were notified of this little incident (in which a space heater with a feather duster attached to it was certified as being energy efficient), they responded "...that they continue to check up on products after they are certified." Hmm. That's really not explaining how a space heater with a feather duster on it got certified in the first place, but good to know that you'll be checking up on it in the future! Good. To. Know. Maybe they'll look on one of the bogus product websites that the GAO set up for these things.

Further, "In a joint statement, the DOE and EPA said they take the findings "very seriously" and that they have started "enhanced testing" to improve. But they said the public should not lose confidence in the program. " Enhanced testing? You need enhanced testing to figure out that a space heater with a feather duster on it is NOT an energy saving appliance? You DO? Really?! And because you need that testing, THAT is what is supposed to make me not lose confidence in the program?! Really?! You're going to have to explain to me WHY that would be, because from what I can tell, the folks that are running the certification show over there are a bunch of morons.

They also tried to cover their asses by saying, "A review last year found that 98 percent of the products tested met or exceeded the ENERGY STAR requirements." I find that to be an interesting statistic, as this little experiment done by the GAO managed to get 75% of their fake crap certified. Were they just having an off couple of weeks there? Because this isn't an elongated process at all. That space heater debacle? Yeah, "The EPA approved it in 11 days and listed it on the official Web site." Good Lord.

What have we learned? We've apparently learned that just because something is labeled Energy Star, it doesn't necessarily mean crap. We've also learned that the EPA thought it was a good idea to feature a space heater with a feather duster attached on their website. And that means that we've learned that there is obviously more than one moron working over there and they all seem to be on the same page. And from what we've learned, we can just simply assume that we're doomed. Doomed. And if you'd like to look at the GAO's report and see for yourself just how doomed we are, it's available here.

Tea Party Photo Goodness

Yesterday was tax day here in the US. And as one could expect, there were Tea Party protests/rallies/demonstrations across the country. They were entertaining, but not as entertaining as the health care protests last summer were. Now those were something. One of the main differences that I've noticed is that the Tea Party folks, for the most part, can spell. That doesn't mean they know what they're talking about, but it is concerting that they have a grasp of the basics. That being said, let's take a look at some signs and scenes from yesterday, shall we?

Here we have a child being made to hold a sign that is supposed to represent her feelings. The sign reads "Obama took my toof fairy money!" He apparently also took the forward facing Fs, Rs and Es, as well as the TH sound.

That wasn't the only sign wielding child out yesterday. Here's another one. Um, honey? I'm not so sure that you want to be part of a "tea bagger family". Tea party family, perhaps. But I think that being a "tea bagger family" is probably illegal. Definitely off-putting.

I appreciated the originality of the Tea Party Mobile or whatever you want to call it below. I like how there's just a little bit of everything thrown in there. Jesus. Truth. Insanity. Disaster. Lies. Taxes. Pork. Health care. Right. Wrong. Repent. Perverts. Wait. Perverts? Yep. Over there on the left. Next to Pork. Perverts. OK. I'm against perverts. Nice. Thanks.

This was one of the very few misspelled signs that were out there. The sign to the left of it was one of the most all inclusive signs out there.

It wouldn't be a protest in America without some nutjob questioning President Barry's citizenship. What is wrong with you people?

Where's the birth certificate? It's on the Internet, nutjob. And yes, it's real. For cryin' out loud.

And along those same lines, it just wouldn't be a protest without someone making the Obama-Osama comparison. Yes, we know. They sound a lot alike. Adolf and Rudolph sound a lot alike as well, but you don't hear folks comparing that little reindeer fellow to Hitler, now, do you?

Ahh. Go back to Kenya. Lovely. You're not doing a lot to add credibility to your cause, but you do make me laugh, so that's something. By the way, HE'S NOT FROM KENYA! Morons.

And here we have a little birther action combined with a little "In Living Color" action. Interesting combo to say the least.

Why bother with multiple signs when you can just cram it all onto one piece of poster board. The problem with it is that they're really only taking a stand against two of those things. They don't want the fascism or the socialism and they seem to think that the Obamacare sucks. Other than that, they're just sort of stating issues. Oh, how I only wish they had stated what "ALIAN CARE" was exactly and why it is illegal.

I've got feathers and a pitchfork. I also have torches and axe handles if you need some of those as well, sir.

And finally, we have these folks. The one, dressed like a priest (I think) is proclaiming that God hates taxes. I don't know why God would care about taxes. God doesn't pay taxes. But that's not really what I'm focused on here. I'm focused on what in the hell that is over to the right of that dude! It's like one of those guys from the cantina in Star Wars wearing some sort of mossy coat and trousers. It's odd and I have no idea what it has to do with tax protests. And I'm dying to know what brochure he's holding.

Porn For The Blind

You know, I don't always think about what other people don't have or what other people can't have. Take folks who are blind, for example. I'm well aware of their lack of sight, but some of the other things that they can't enjoy must have not been all that evident to me. Like porn. How do the blind enjoy porn? Maybe they couldn't before Lisa J. Murphy came around, but they certainly can now. Kind of.

Ms. Murphy is the author/artist of Tactile Mind, "a book of nude photographs for the blind/visually impaired". From what I can tell, it's a book of raised images accompanied by Braille descriptions of said raised images. Now, I'm not blind, so I really don't know if this is something that would be desired or that would, probably more importantly, even work. And believe me, I'm vaguely familiar with porn. But I don't think that I'm familiar with this kind of porn. I don't know. You tell me. Below are some images from the website that I linked to above. All images were used with neither permission, nor malice. That being said, let's continue.

Here we have Woman In A Disco Pose. It is described as being "A tactile picture of a naked woman dancing. She wears only a detailed mask of paper and cardboard, and a belt of paper stars around her waist. One arm points to the sky." Um, yes. Yes, I can...I can see that. I just don't know why. See, the porn that I'm vaguely familiar with doesn't have masks of paper and cardboard and there is a noticeable absence of paper star belts as well. I don't get it.

Then there is the Naked Pink Elephant, described as being "A tactile picture of a woman dressed as a pink elephant. She wears a cardboard & paper mask, a chest plate with holes for her breasts, and paper "feet" tie around her wrists with ribbon. Her vagina is shaved, and her pregnant belly is small." Wait. What the what?! Again with the cardboard mask. Why is that? Is there some cardboard fetish that is specific to the blind that I am unaware of? I'm beginning to get the impression that there is!

The book doesn't contain just images of women. No, there are images of men as well. Like this one called Bad Bunny. As you can see, it's the typical sort of naked male porn that one would find in the sighted world, what with "A tactile picture of a naked man dressed as a bunny rabbit. He wears a paper bag mask, maxi pads across his chest, and a toilet paper roll with cotton balls around his penis. Paper hearts decorate the background." Good thing that those paper hearts got included to soften the whole thing up a little bit, right? Uh, your guess is as good as mine. Why...why...why does this exist?

If you can tell me what that exists, perhaps you can also tell me why this exists. It is entitled Woman With A Strap On and it is depicted as "A tactile picture of a naked woman kneeling, wearing a toilet roll attached by hosiery to her groin area. On her face is a mask with egg carton eyes." Huh. Also known around here as "Thursday night".

Then there's the Satanic Ram. It is "A tactile picture of a naked voluptuous woman dressed as a satanic ram. She wears a long cardboard mask of spires, a beard and an inverted cross. Her pubic hair forms a triangle between her legs." Right. Because nothing says "good porn" like a woman with a beard. Sure. That's real normal.

Not to be outdone by Satan, there is the Frog Prince. It's your typical frog prince. It's just what you think of when you hear the words "frog prince". It's "A tactile picture of a man dressed as a frog prince. He wears a cardboard mask with attached crown, holds a cardboard magic wand and is covered in paper spots. Paper cut-out hands cover his own, and his circumcised penis is visible." See? Just like in the fairy tales.

But let's just wrap this up with the Love Robot. Because robots are awesome! Right?! Sure! And what's better than robot porn?! (OK, fine. LOTS of things are better than robot porn! That question was mostly rhetorical! Keep reading!) "A tactile picture of a naked man dressed as a robot. He has a square mask, square box feet, and holds a cardboard gun with a heart on it. A small paper control panel is on his chest, and his penis and testicle are visible." Again with the masks! And the hearts! And wait! Testicle? Singular? Where's the other one! In the sighted world, our porn has TWO testicles! There are no hearts on things! Especially on guns! Feet are not boxes! There are no cardboard masks! What is going on here?! How is this porn?!?!

Something Everyone Knows About Ellen

Remember in the 80s (provided you remember the 80s) when morning TV was just chock full of game shows? All kinds of game shows. None of them particularly difficult or anything. (There certainly wasn't Jeopardy! on at 10am or anything like that.) But there were a ton of them. And there are really very few game shows on these days. The ones that are on seem to be holdovers from that era. And one of the ones that has managed to survive the test of time (not to mention several different hosts) is Family Feud.

The Family Feud concept is simple. Two teams, each composed of 5 family members, compete against each other by guessing answers to questions that were obtained by surveying 100 people. (Hence the term "Survey said!" That's usually followed by a little "DING!" or a buzzer sound. It just depends how into it you really want to get.) And not only is the concept simple, so too, are some of the contestants.

Apparently, on a recent episode of Family Feud the question was "Name something that everyone knows about Ellen DeGeneres." OK. That doesn't seem too difficult. Personally, I was amazed that there were any other answers other than "She's gay." But there were! There were actually five answers that people came up with! Five? Really?

Of course, the number one answer was that she was gay. 74 folks came up with that. Huh. Only three-quarters. I guess I would have thought it would have been more than that. But let's look at some of the other answers. The number two answer what that she was a talk show host. All right.

The number five answer was that she was a good dancer. Really? You hear "Ellen DeGeneres" and the first thing that pops into your mind it "Man, can that lady dance!" Really? Who are you people?


The number four answer was that she's funny. I don't know who would come up with that answer, as I find it to be rather subjective (she IS hilarious, though), but I can at least get that answer more than I can get the "she's a good dancer" answer.


Now those four folks have answered and it goes back to the head of the family, a guy named Mike. Mike gets the question read to him again by the wonderful actor, whatever his name is, who played J. Peterman on Seinfeld, and what does Mike answer? What is it that Mike says is something that EVERYONE knows about Ellen DeGeneres? That's right. Mike says, "I would say that she doesn't like our country very well." Wait. What now?


That she doesn't like our country very well?! What the hell kind of an answer is that?! EVERYONE knows that?! I don't think that they do! Do they?! I don't! (And by the way, the last answer was the she is married to Portia deRossi, who is smokin' hot. OK, they didn't say the smokin' hot part, but that's what folks were thinking. Trust me.)


Now, in the clip of this episode below, I noticed the same thing that Ellen was pointing out when she played this clip on her show. This guy gives his answer, "I would say that she doesn't like our country very well" and all of the family members and the audience are just clapping away! Yay! Good answer! Good answer! BUZZ!! Awww. So close! We really thought that was it! What the hell was going on there?! What a bunch of morons. I know they're supposed to be all chipper and happy and supportive of their team members and all, but isn't there an out clause for stupid ass answers like that?

Happy Easter From Super Chicken

Happy Easter from Super Chicken and a rather felonious Easter Bunny. (Jay Ward was the greatest.)

Islands Don't Tip Over

I'm under the impression that just about anyone can be a representative of Congress. Congressman, Congresswoman, doesn't matter. I'd like to test my theory that a rhesus monkey could successfully win a campaign to be said Congressprimate, but I don't have much interest in going through to whole process of acquiring a rhesus monkey. (I'm assuming there's a process. Seems like there would be. Actually, I take that back. It seems like their should be. In which case, it would be fair to assume that I could probably pay off a zookeeper somewhere and make my way home with a new little friend.) Being as how I'm sans monkey (in more ways than one), I'm going to have to rely on actual members of Congress to make my point here.

Meet Hank Johnson.

Rep. Johnson represents the US state of Georgia in Congress. He was attending a Congressional hearing where the topic of discussion was locating approximately 8,000 - 9,000 US Marines in Guam. If we take into consideration the family size of these troops, that amounts to somewhere around 25,000 people who will potentially be relocating to Guam. This is important to know, as it makes the story funnier.

Guam, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a small island. Not "relatively" small. Small small. It's about 212 square miles. See? Small. For the sake of comparison, Rhode Island is approximately 2,000 square miles. So, Guam is one tenth the size of the smallest state in our fine land. It's small. Now, the size of Guam is important because of the number of people that will be potentially living there in the near future. And if it had been me debating that information, the only thing that I could possibly see myself being concerned about with that many more people in such a small area would be the potential for over-crowding or the potential for a lack of water and/or food. Those would be my concerns if I were to have any. (In reality, I don't think I give a fat rat's ass what goes on in Guam. Sorry, Guam.) I would not be concerned that the island would, in fact, tip over. Wait. What now?

Correct. According to CBS News (and the rest of the entire Internet at this point), Rep. Johnson is concerned with all of those extra people being on the island to physically cause the island to capsize. He voiced this odd, odd concern when he was questioning Admiral Robert Willard, who heads the US Pacific fleet. It took him a while to get to it, though. He had to noodle his way through the actual size of the island first. Let's read a portion of what he said, shall we?

Rep. Johnson: This is a island that at it's widest level is, what, 12 miles from shore to shore? And at it's smallest level, uh, smallest, uh..location, it's uh, 7 miles, uh, between one shore and the other. Is that correct?

Admiral Willard: I don't have the exact dimensions as to your point. But Guam is a small island.

Rep. Johnson: Very small island. About 24 miles if I recall long. 24 miles long. About 7 miles wide at the least widest place on the island. And about 10, about 12, miles wide, uh, uh, on the widest part of the island. And, um, I don't know how many square miles that is. Do you happen to know?

Admiral Willard: I don't have that figure with me, sir. I can certainly supply it to you if you'd like.

OK, let's just stop right here for a moment. After I had sent a link to this video to a friend of mine (Oh, calm down! Calm down! The video is below! I'm not just going to make you read about something this good! You need to actually see and actually hear this one to get full enjoyment out of it.), she commented on how the guy knew what the length and the width of the island was (even though he couldn't come up with the term "width" or "wide", which would have been sufficient as well), but claimed to not know what the square footage was. He couldn't do the basic math for calculating area and multiply length times width? Huh. Interesting. But not as interesting as what comes up next!

Rep. Johnson: Yeah. My fear is that, uh, the whole island will, uh, become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize. Wait. What now?

He's afraid the island is going to tip over?! For reals?! Um, Congressman? Do you really think that the US Marine folks who would be in charge of all of the relocating would put all of the troops on the same side of the island? Because if you really thought that, wouldn't that be kind of crazy? You know. Almost as crazy as thinking that an island can tip over in the first place?! Good Lord, man. What is wrong with you? (And when you watch the video below, take note of the hand gestures. I really appreciated those. Just in case I was a little unclear on what he was trying to say, he made sure to gesture in a tipping motion just what he meant. It's awesome.)

Now, I wasn't the only one having a hard time with this line of questioning. The Admiral seemed to be working very hard at controlling any sort of laughing outburst.

Admiral Willard trying not to crack up: Uh, we don't anticipate that. Uh, the Guam population is currently about 175,000. And again, with 8,000 Marines and their families, it's an addition of about 25,000 more into the population.

Rep. Johnson taking things in a very different direction: And uh, also, uh, things like the environment, uh, the sensitive areas of the environment. The coral reefs and those things. And I know that lots of people don't like to think about that, but you know, we didn't think about GLOBAL WARMING EITHER. And, um, now we do have to think about it. So, um, I'm concerned from an environmental standpoint as to whether Guam is, uh, uh, the best place to do this relocation, but it's actually the only place, is that correct?

I'm lost. Someone help me out here. The coral reefs? And "those things"? What "things"? By "things", does he mean all of the bodies that will go tumbling into the sea when the island takes a nose dive into the watery abyss? What in the world does global warming have to do with the imbalance of an island?

Admiral Willard, still stifling laughter: Um, this is the BEST place. This is the farthest west US territory that we own. And, you know, this is part of our nation. And in readdressing the forward presence and posture importance to Pacific command, Guam is vital to this decision.

OK, then. Wow. That's a new one. The island might tip over. But wait! There's more! More from Rep. Johnson's camp! Of course, once this thing caught fire on the Innerwebs, Johnson had to explain his remarks somehow, so he issued this statement: "The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island." Huh?

The humor wasn't subtle. It was overtly hilarious. And I know what a metaphor is and that wasn't one!

At the same CBS News link above, they provide a response to Rep. Johnson's "concerns" by Madeleine Bordallo, who is Guam's delegate in the House. She said, "I know Congressman Hank Johnson, and I'm sure that -- he's been here to Guam -- so I'm sure that it was just a joke." Hmm. Let's say that was the extremely unlikely case. Are you not a bit annoyed by someone joking around in a Congressional hearing? I think I might be. Might. I don't know, maybe I wouldn't. But considering that almost everything that Congress does these days annoys me, I'm guessing I would be.

The article continues with, "Furthermore, Bordallo added, she is not concerned about Congress being ill-informed about the island. Over 50 percent of the Armed Services Committee has been to Guam, she said." Is she not concerned about folks being ill-informed about THE island or about islands IN GENERAL?! Because I, for one, am a bit concerned about folks who think that an island can TIP OVER like it's some sort of boat or something. Those folks concern me a great deal! They concern me because if they think that, I have no choice but to assume that they're morons. And yes, I am concerned by morons in Congress. Thus, this concerns me.

CBS News even went with the headline "Guam Tipping Over Comment No Concern For Guam Officials". So does that mean that they weren't concerned about Guam itself tipping over? GOOD!! They shouldn't be! NO ONE should be!!