I want to take over the world

What's the place on earth nobody wants to claim as theirs? It's not Ohio, it's a little region called Bir Tawil, on the border between Egypt and Sudan. The issue is that it's adjacent to a disputed region called the Hala'ib triangle, which is rich in... minerals and stuff. Thanks to a weird quirk of topography, the group which would own Bir Tawil would also not have a claim to the Hala'ib triangle. So, nobody wants it.

So, I beg of you, Egypt and Sudan; please let me have it. I'll take good care of it. I promise I won't use it as my base of operations for my inevitable supervillainry.

Apparently, the moon and other celestial bodies are also Terra Nullius, places not claimed by any state. I think I'd rather use the moon for my super-villain schemes, but I've got to start somewhere.

Thanks Wikipedia!

What a friend we have in atomic energy

Despite the general feeling that what's going on in Japan is going to kill us, things aren't too bad. A minimal amount of radiation leaked out, but this was after an outdated, 40-year-old design was hit by an earthquake 10 times the maximum strength it should have held, (because the richter scale is log... a 3.0 is ten times weaker than a 4.0, etc) AND was hit by a 20 foot wave. That's pretty solid.

Or you could say 'look at Chernobyl', look how terrible that one was. Well, the Soviets designed something badly. Big shock there. And the thing is it failed under a perfect storm of horrible events happening in juuust the right sequence. That's actually not that bad. That's actually kind of a ringing endorsement, in a bizarre way that feels like something Reagan would have agreed with.

Anyways, I cling to my irrational affinity to atomic energy in the same way that old people will cling to crazy beliefs like "the Soviets are still around", or religion.

Cleaning house

We used to have a problem with ants. It got really bad, too. I'd be eating lunch, and I'd see about fifty ants come up and ask 'you gonna finish that?'

When floating restaurants get ambitious.

According to CNN, patrons of a floating restaurant in Cincinnati had to be rescued when the restaurant broke free from it's moorings.
I wouldn't exactly call this a rescue. They were taken from someplace exciting and placed in a climate that's generally inhospitable, and overwhelmingly dull: Ohio.

You know Stockholm syndrome? It's called that because Stockholm is also boring. It's way less fun than being tied up in a basement.

Finding parking in Silver Lake

I did an open mic for the first time in ages. This meant I had to find a spot to stow my car, and that is not as easy as it sounds.

I turned on this hilly little alley that they consider a street. Two way traffic in theory only. and zero parking to be found. So I kept ascending. Eventually, there's snow and mountain goats, and some penguins. Then some hipster climbers frozen to their fixies.

Dear hipster climbers, when you climb the mountains that nobody else has heard of, nobody rescues you.

Official ruling: MSNBC lies to us edition

Headline: 'Two suns' spotted in China defy explanation

In the article:
The double sun image is an effect of optical refraction

But but... I thought you just said...
MSNBC, You lied to me.

The article goes on to say that we don't know what causes it, and the effect is pretty rare, but you've got the explanation right there. It's not like scientists are scratching their heads going "well, it could be an exploding star, it could be a weather balloon, it could be the return of the demi-god Morthos, it could be global warming... we have no idea what it is"

I'm invoking an official ruling:
If we have a phenomenon which we can attribute to some known effect, even if we don't fully know the cause behind it, it does not "defy explanation".

I hate you, California Pizza Kitchen Salad guy

I am usually a very patient man. But California Pizza Kitchen tries my patience in ways that only slow cashiers and the 110N can.

Here's my problem: it appears that they employ a man whose sole task is to make salads. However, no more than 7 feet to his right is a large display case of salads, ready to go. There's no shortage of salad, no large demand for it. Why?
NOBODY ORDERS SALAD. This man's task is to rearrange leafy greens before they go bad. It would be more efficient to place these salads straight in the trash. He doesn't actually make food; its more for decoration, or guilt-tripping for when you eat fatty foods. This man could be making my pizza, but instead he's wasting his time making sure that each container has exactly one scoop of crumbled feta.

It's sad that I feel more strongly about bbq chicken pizza than local elections.