British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced yesterday that the UK will begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq (link). Reportedly, Bush has asked Tony Blair to reconsider, saying, “Ok, so maybe establishing a stable democracy in Iraq ain’t gonna happen. But at least stay in the game until we can establish Walmart.”

The lawyer. The boyfriend. The Bahamanian Immigration Minister. Zsa Zsa’s Husband. Osama Bin Ladin. Good lord - Was I the only person not having sex with Ms. Smith? Why didn’t anyone tell me?

I can’t believe KT Tunstall wasn’t even nominated for “Best New Artist”. But when you consider that this is the category that brought us such musical geniuses as A Taste of Honey and Milli Vanilli, perhaps it was a compliment.

Pundits like to point out that we are a deeply divided nation, and they’re right. There’s us - people who like interesting, intelligent, creative and original music - and them - people who like Christina Aguilera. And it’s one of the great tragedies of democracy that we can’t round them up and shoot them for their appalling taste.

I have a recommendation. Don’t turn 30. In fact, stay away from 29, too, just to be safe. If you’re reading this too late, well, I’m very sorry.

I reached my 29th birthday without any significant physical problems. I was never gifted as an athlete, but also seemed to be blessed with a degree of robustness. I could eat what I wanted, and do what I wanted, and never worried about getting fat, sick, or injured.

But several months before turning 30, things began to change. I’m starting to feel like the used cars I buy. Here’s a list of stuff that’s broken (and definately out of warranty) in the last two years:

1) I’ve gotten approximately 58 cavities and had two teeth removed.
2) I can no longer eat spicy food. Water gives me heart burn, now.
3) I’ve gained 20 lbs. (But then, who hasn’t.)
4) The formerly 20/10 vision in my right eye is now 20/11,436, and I have so many floaters that the view from inside my head looks like I’m snorkeling in a toilet bowl.
5) I injured my knee in a risky snowboarding maneuver known as “going in a straight line”.
6) I broke my hip.
6) My shoulders and back pop when I raise my arms over my head to put on my glasses.

At this rate of system failure, I’ll be having walker races in the hall of my nursing home by the time I’m 40.

Yesterday night, around 9pm, I got paged because a server was down.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: The monitoring system opened a ticket because the server “ancient-pos-4″ went down earlier today.

ME: What are you paging me?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: ‘Cause the server went down.

ME: It’s up now.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes, but when we try to log in, it asks for a password. We don’t know the password.

ME: Yes, but the fact that the server is asking you for a password means that it’s up.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes, but if we can’t log in, we can’t run the “uptime” command to find out how long it’s been up. If it’s been up more than two hours, we can close the ticket. If it’s been up less than two hours, we have to page you.

ME: When did all this actually occur?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: In the morning, around 10:00am.

ME: Why am I only now getting paged?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: We forgot.

ME: So you knew the server was up around 10:00am?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes. But we couldn’t log in to ..

ME (interrupting): And it’s 9:00pm now.

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: Yes.

ME: And you haven’t gotten any other tickets about the server going down in between then and now?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: No.

ME: But you’re not sure whether the server has been up for more than two hours?

TIER 1 TECHNICIAN: No, because, like I said, we can’t log into the server to run the “uptime” command.

ME: Buddy, I can buy you a ticket for the Logic Train, but I can’t make you ride.

List of changes the Dems are sure to make now that they’re in charge of the House:

http://www.rightwasright.us/

My favorite:

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

You know, one of the things I don’t miss about being unemployed is daytime network TV. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t have cable.

As near as I can tell, there are only four things on TV during the day:

1) Soaps starring B-list celebrities
2) Talk shows featuring B-list celebrities and incredibly stupid people
3) Paid programming trying to take money from incredibly stupid people
4) Small-claims court shows featuring incredibly stupid people

The Spanish-language channel is a little better. It has all the same crappy shows, but with mega cleavage. The soaps. The talk show hosts. Even the Spanish version of Judge Judy has a low-cut blouse. (I really hope I don’t catch their version of Judge Joe Brown.)

Funny video: Link

Not safe for work, children, mothers, people who don’t like swearing, the politically-hypersensitive, etc.