There will be no stupid April Fools Day jokes on this site today. That is all.

(Mainly because all the good domain names are taken.)

Justice Bedford:

After all, how many cases can be summarized by the Los Angeles Daily Journal as, “Government’s approval of ski resort to use recycled sewage effluent to make artificial snow on San Francisco Peaks violates Religious Freedom Restoration Act”?

That’s not even the good part.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Florida lawyer Michael Alex Wasylik announced that he has filed suit today in U.S. District Court in Tampa against Chicago-based web application firm 37Signals. The suit alleges trademark infringement of the Perpetual Beta name and seeks damages in the amount of 13 signals – just over one-third of the company.

“I’ve ben using this name since 2000,” said Wasylik, “and then these guys come along and tarnish it by applying it to fly-by-night dot-coms like Google and Flickr. They’ve probably never had an original thought in their lives. I’ll show them!”

Citing a recent surge in online theft of intellectual property, Wasylik said the only remedy was to “sue the bastards. Sue them so hard that their grandkids feel it.” Asked how he filed the suit on a Sunday, Wasylik said that the court has special hours for the April 1st holiday

Contact: http://perpetualbeta.com/contact/

Via Dan: Weightshift’s SXSW Recap in Infographic Form

Watching Monday’s Colbert Report, I couldn’t help but notice that Tennessee’s Congressman Steve Cohen bears a striking resemblance to a better-known representative of the dead.

Double Dagger would be an apt and sinister name for an edgy design shop, font foundry, or squad of assassins for hire.

Too bad it’s taken.

My partner just made a bag of microwave popcorn, and its foul vapors have permeated every cubic inch of the office. My windows are flung wide, my door closed, to keep the smell out, and I think I might run out to buy some incense.

It’s like a negative contact high.

Where are my matches?

I was going to stop, really I was. But I couldn’t pass this up:

Winning two national championships in nine months probably makes making out with a fat girl not so bad. At least as long as your fingers don’t get lost in the arm fat. Gross. Having said all this, if Tim Tebow were a woman, I’d rank them No. 1.

Clay Travis ranks the SEC schools by the attractiveness of their female population… and Florida ranks 11 out of 12.

UPDATE: Think Clay’s wrong? Look for yourself. (Not Safe For Lunch)

Found on today’s New York Times:

The jokes, they write themselves. Seriously, can’t you think of your own fart joke?

Overly depressed by the notion of a Speaker Pelosi or a Majority Leader Reid? The Onion has the cure for what ails ya’.

Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line Of Healthy Snacks: In January, Frito-Lay will launch a Flat Earth marketing campaign based on the slogan, ‘Bet You Can’t Eat Even One.’

And it’s organic, too.

Jonah:

I for one welcome our new Democratic overlords.

The joke was inevitable.

Scott McClellan never would have said this:

Senior aides to Mr. Bush scoffed at suggestions that the announcement of the verdict had somehow been orchestrated by the White House.

“Are you smoking rope?” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Saturday in anticipation of the verdict. “Are you telling me that in Iraq, that they’re sitting around — I’m sorry, that the Iraqi judicial system is coming up with an October surprise?”

Unknown whether the “rope” was a double-entendre referring to the designated execution method, hanging.

So, anyone got some bootleg copies of Snakes on a Plane?

Oh, wait, wrong kind of pirate. And this shirt would still be a great gift for me (size XXL, pelase).

In this day and age, many courts issue their orders electronically, and most lawyers have access to the online public records, which means that when a judge does something unusual, the e-mail chain spreads it quickly. This one just landed in my email box.

Wednesday, a federal judge in Orlando, Gregory Presnell, ordered the lawyers in one case to resolve a minor procedural dispute through a game of rock, paper, scissors, angrily noting that this was “the latest in a series of Gordian knots that the parties have been unable to untangle without enlisting the assistance of the federal courts.” I’ve mirrored the order online [pdf document].

Apparently, the lawyers have offices in the same building, four floors apart, and couldn’t agree whether to have depositions in that building or some “neutral” location. As a general matter of practice, the party who seeks the deposition has the right to select the location, unless the location is outside the jurisdiction. Why the parties couldn’t agree, I cannot say.

Although it may be seen as an improper abdication of judicial responsibility to settle disputes, this is really a stern rebuke to the parties involved. The court may or may not intend the lawyers to actually play this game; the court does clearly intend that the lawyers shouldn’t waste the court’s time on minor procedural matters that professionals ought to be able to resolve themselves.

Also, Orlando Sentinel reports on the matter, along with a couple of other weblogs: Guboogi and SALTlawyer.

UPDATE: One of my collegaues is familiar with at least one of the attorneys on the case and is, shall we say, unsurprised that this lawyer finds himself in this predicament.

The Thing In The Crib, via Jeff:

I edged open the door of the darkened chamber with trepidation. The stench of human effluvia was overpowering. The light from the portal fell upon a raised cage of ancient wood, not quite square, and decorated with icons of some lost tribe that worshipped beasts. The sigils celebrated the gluttony of the bear, the wild and uncontrollable fury of the tiger, the fatalism and endurance of the donkey, the inscrutable yet impractical wisdom of the owl, the smug quickness of the rabbit. The metallic rim of the construct glinted as if angered that illumination had touched it.

Ever read Lovecraft? Ever changed a diaper? This essay’s for you.

The arguments on ForgiveTaxCheats.com sound suspiciously like some arguments making the rounds on other issues of note lately…

Ever heard the expression “don’t throw good money after bad”? Well that’s exactly what the IRS enforcement is. It’s a losing proposition and the prospect of an IRS audit deters tax cheats about as much as the death penalty deters murderers.

It’s time for CHANGE. It’s time for REFORM. It’s time to WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN.

Hmmm.

I just got e-mail pitching various medications from a dude named “Interstellar D. Sawdust.” Isn’t that what became of Alderaan?

Can of Worms Announces the “When will Katherine Harris Quit Pool”:

Because nearly everyone on her team has quit and now even the Tampa Tribune thinks she is crazy and she is probably in the office by herself by now, I would like to start a pool picking the date within the next 2 months that Katherine Harris will officially announce that she is dropping out of the race for the US Senate.

My pick? Cold dead fingers, baby, cold dead fingers. Harris is no Tom DeLay.

We all know that Cynthia McKinney is a raving loon. The fact that she’s a Member of Congress (again!) troubles me only a bit, because even the clinically insane, paranoid, and racist are entitled to have representation in Congress, and why not one of their own? Besides, if you took the nutjobs and the morons out of Congress, you couldn’t get a quorum. You probably would have to cancel the Congressional baseball game. You might not even be able to get a set together for a game of bridge.

But I digress.

Rep. McKinney’s complaint, in essence, is that a Capitol Police officer stopped her from entering the building and asked for ID when she wasn’t wearing the shiny pin that identifies her as a Member of Congress. Mind you, it’s the job of the Capitol Police to prevent entry to anyone who tries to walk around the security checkpoint without the required ID.

The officer just didn’t recognize McKinney, and that got her fired up enough to shove him. Now, you might say to yourself, a Capitol Police officer charged with working the doors ought to quickly memorize the faces of all 535 Members of Congress. Maybe so. But even if that were both reasonable and possible, the fact is that McKinney has recently abandoned the schoolgirl-style braids she wears in her official photo and has opted for a dramatically different look called a “twist-out.” (For an even better look at the “twist-out” check Michelle Malkin’s screencap.)

So yeah, it’s not crazy to think that even a Capitol Police officer who knew Cynthia McKinney from her photo might not recognize her with her new don’t ‘do, and might stop her to ask for ID. How this translates into what her lawyer calls “the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials because of how she looks and the color of her skin,” is frankly beyond me. (OK, she now claims that she was not only “stopped” but “inappropriately touched” – but to stop someone dodging the security checkpoint without ID, the degree of “touching” required to rise to the level of “inappropriate” would have to be somewhere between medieval and Ted Kennedy’s waitress sandwich.)

I expect Cynthia McKinney to depart from reality from tiem to time, since she’s a founding member of the race-card-based community. But what’s this? Danny Glover backstopped her at the press conference? Danny Glover lent his support to this, of all causes? What would your buddy Mel think?

I used to like Danny Glover. But now? Dead to me.

Someone is waaaaay too much into his inkjet printer:

Just now, I was doing some full-duplex (2-sided) printing of some SXSW information. I was watching the paper come out, pleased at how well the printer works, and then it sucked the paper back in! It made a kind of “hmm” noise, and then it somehow flipped the paper around internally. Then it printed the second side of the same page, backwards from the way it had come out before. After I took the paper from it, the printer emitted a satisfied “I am so hot” sound as its inkjets settled into standby mode.

The effect was almost exactly like when you’re (a guy) sitting at a nice restaurant talking to an attractive woman, and she takes the cherry from her drink and pops it into her mouth. A few seconds later, the stem and pit come out, but you notice the stem has been tied into a knot by her tongue. She smiles as if nothing special has transpired, and continues the conversation while you try to remember what the hell you were talking about.

You know how, sometimes, you see a pretty girl walk by, and she looks at you, and you get this tingly feeling, and that feeling reminds you of that totally awesome print job you ran the day before, the one where the print was crisp, the pages fed properly, everything was collated, and the toner smelled like roses?

You don’t?

Neither do I. But I wonder if Dave does.

UPDATE: Hmmm. Mere moments after I posted this, the linked post vanished. It’s back now. I think that Dave was updating at the same time I was posting because a bunch of new posts appeared at the same time as the other post seemed to vanish.

Sploid reports that the official logo of the Cleveland Police Deaprtment bears a hidden pig. The shape of the badge itself suggests a pig’s head, complete with round cheeks and floppy ears. The flag image circles in the center perfectly corresponds to where the node would be. Mask out the word “police” on the bottom, and then “Cleveland” banner on top, and what’s left are two eyes and shading to complete the image of the ears.

According to area news reports, the logo was redeisigned in the late 60′s “right after the Hough Riots” to “change the face of the police department.” So here’s the question – is this a coincidence, or did a clever graphic designer deliberately enhance the pigginess of the badge logo in order to make a subtle statement?

I’m about a week late on this, but it’s worth it: Confessions of a Political Junkie » Ten Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

Chuck Norris can bend irony into balloon-animal shapes.