Posted by Davis | Filed under Uncategorized
For the the first part of this series, please go here.
Federal News Service makes its money by providing “timely verbatim English-language transcription of U.S., Russian and Middle East government press briefings, speeches, and conferences. FNS also transcribes and translates broadcast interviews on official policy covering a broad range of national and international issues.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ryan | Filed under Adventure
Liability ruins everything. If you’re doing something really, really fun, chances are it’s because the person responsible didn’t think very hard about his liability. That’s how my local church group took the local young men down to someone’s farm and shot an old cannon at antique cars all day one day. That’s how Davis and Christian and I can spend and evening shooting bottle rockets and roman candles out of PVC pipes at each other. That’s how, when I was going to scout camps as a teenager, we spent one whole camp clinging to the tops of SUV’s as they drove at high speeds up and down a shallow river. These are some of the ‘fun’ highlights of my life, but any rational legal actor stays a million miles away from this stuff. Luckily, people forget about liability once in a while. But then there’s all those days when they don’t. That’s when liability wins, and we all lose.
I don’t know whose fault it is. A lot of people think it’s the lawyers, but let’s be honest, a lawyer is only as sleazy as the client he’s working for. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christian | Filed under Uncategorized
Davis is gone. You’re stuck with me. To any of you who only come to the blog on Wednesdays only to watch the Big Dave Show: you just got Punk’d.
In honor of this special week, here’s a new installment of my advice column, Dear Sharkman, where I take your questions about anything and everything. Today is the Shark Edition. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ryan | Filed under Random
One of the more significant crutches of my frail psychology is my desperate need to always have some near-future event that I’m looking forward to. A break from work- whether for a vacation or a holiday, extended visits from relatives, a good concert or a big game. This is the kind of thing that I need to punctuate life if I want to keep it livable. The calendar is kind enough to provide these things regularly, though unevenly– President’s Day is a poor refreshment from the chasm that is February, but still, it’s something. No matter where in the year you find yourself, there’s almost always something to look forward to.
Then comes August. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christian | Filed under Uncategorized
When I was but a lad of 5 or 6, my kindly elder brother Davis became frustrated with me playing with his action figures. So he talked our mom into allowing him to charge me $1 for every one of his toys that I touched. Why did my sweet mother allow her pre-age-of-accountability son to be extorted thus?
I. Have. No. Idea.
Maybe she had just read Lord of the Flies or Origin of Species and thought juvenile anarchy and the stong preying on the weak would work nicely in our home. I was Piggy, Davis was Jack, and protective Ralph was nothing more than a figment of my daytime wishes.
“Wasn’t Ryan Ralph?”
No, adolescent Ryan was more like Data from Star Trek.
Hey Ryan, can you protect me from Davis for a minute?
That. Is. A. Negatory. Small. Humanoid. I. Am. Presently. Exclusively. Engaged. In. Building. My. Sherlock. Holmes. Costume. For. Halloween. And. Studying. To. Take. Earth’s. Bar. Exam. At. Age. 9.
But Davis was always a smooth talker. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ryan | Filed under Terrorists, parody
From a recent article in the Atlantic about how incompetent many terrorists can be:
Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika.
MEMO
TO: ALL OPERATIVES
FROM: TALIBAN CENTRAL COMMAND
CAVE 6, MARJAH, AFGHANISTAN
RE: NEW HUGGING PROTOCOLS
Greetings to the freedom fighters and jihadis in Allah! May peace and the comfort accompany all of battle efforts! Thing is very good in Cave 6, exception Mustafa has no shower total 8 months, and no difference of smell from donkey! No, but Mustafa is great sport.
Cave 6 crew is celebration Mustafa’s birthday. Was too crazy night!
Being now serious, great problem makes new policy all Taliban follows. Many times before have we make strong warning: all the hugging is do before dressing up with bombs! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Davis | Filed under Uncategorized
We’re happy to present a guest post today from frequent commenter and longtime DDDT friend Troy.
Hi, my name is Troy and I’m a Professional Salesman. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Davis | Filed under Uncategorized
If you ask any member of the Bell family what their favorite holiday as child was, they would hem and haw and ultimately be unable to choose between Memorial Day and the 24th of July. Christmas wouldn’t even be in the running. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ryan | Filed under Adventure, Heroism, Honduras, Stories
Part I here.
One summer during college, back when Davis, a.k.a. “Gordon Gecko,” still tried to get ladies by posing as a do-gooder, he convinced me to spend a summer in Honduras, do-gooding. We landed in post-Hurricane Mitch Tegucigalpa, picked our way around the carnage of broken bridges and collapsed shanties to the bus terminal, and took a mountaineering bus four hours out to our new home in the outlying village of San Lorenzo. We moved our light belongings into a simple three room unfurnished house, and set about finding beds and a table. It was a spartan existence, but we were cohabiting with a suprisingly awesome guy and two girls, one of whom was following Davis Do-Right around on his do-gooder deeds. We had a lot of fun. We also taught presentations to Honduran middle school students about AIDS prevention using drawings of a cheery animated character named Senior Condon! He was great. But we’ll get to that some other time.
Davis’s Honduran birthday party, before life turned into a walking nightmare
Everything about the house was hard. Hard tiles on the floors, hard plaster on the walls, dim lighting, hard chairs and a table in the main room. In fact, I honestly never saw any carpet or upholstery or plush furnishings of any sort the entire time I was in Honduras. Not even any grass. It sounds weird, but you come to miss softness. Every night we would come home to that hard house and sit in the hard chairs and sweat in the hard heat, and swat at the bees in the room. There were always a couple bees flying around, just in that main room. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christian | Filed under Uncategorized
Ryan has been travelling, and had his travels extended, so I’ll be your host today.
Take a look at this list of real complaints (hat tip Azucar) allegedly sent in to some city authority after this year’s 4th of July parade in Kaysville. I attended this parade, and while some of these complaints are obviously silly, there are a few legitimate ones I agree with.
“The band didn’t stop and play in front of me.”
This is one of my pet peeves. Read the rest of this entry »
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