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Wherever I go, I always make sure to have my pocket camera with me. It’s a good thing too, otherwise I’d miss great photo opportunities like this one, which I took Friday on my walk home from the bus stop.

The chair had been dumped there half a week earlier. No one really knows why, since it’s a fairly nice-looking chair. Over the course of a few days, people had tagged the chair with graffiti, which I thought improved it by adding some much-needed color and uniqueness. But I knew there was still something missing to make this the perfect chair. Little did I know that the one ingredient it lacked was a lovable hobo sleeping in it. Don’t you just want to adopt him like a puppy?

“Meatballs”

There was a local hostage standoff, the feds made a huge mortgage bailout, and the two presidential candidates are finally campaigning about the economy, but right under the masthead in the Chicago Trib today is a story about neckbeards. God bless America.

The first rule of public speaking is to appear confident. Take your time and annunciate. Don’t rush the words; your inflection is what will make you appear powerful or passionate, not your speed. If you’re nervous, don’t smile or you’ll appear dazed. Don’t look from side to side with just your eyes, or you’ll seem shifty and untrustworthy. Finally, whatever happens, never ever stutter. Don’t say “um” or “uh”, and especially don’t lengthen those sounds when you’re cut off by applause.

Oh, and when you mention an injustice, and the crowd boos to show they also dislike that injustice, cut them off quickly so it won’t seem like they’re booing you.

That’s my advice after watching Sarah Palin at the Republican convention Wednesday night. She wrote an amazing speech. I didn’t agree with her opinions, but the speech was very well-written. However, her execution of the speech was another story. She warmed up a bit over the course of it, and by the end she was doing okay, but she spent most of it so cold and nervous that she really didn’t come across as someone who could start swinging when backed into a corner. Instead of leading, she appeared to be suggesting.

She also spent quite a bit of time criticizing her opponents for flaws that she also possesses. Lines about Obama not authoring “a single major law or reform” would have sounded a little better when spoken by someone who had authored one themselves.

After watching Palin tonight, I have respect for her but not confidence. I believe she wants to try hard for me, but I don’t believe she’ll be able to pull it off. I hate to make this comparison, but it must be said: If Palin had Hillary Clinton’s speaking skills, she would have knocked every one of us flat on our asses. It’s too bad for her that she didn’t.

For your hump day enjoyment, here is a monkey with a nicely trimmed afro.

I love pretty much everything Google does. I use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Docs, I create my own Google Maps when I travel, and I’m even holding off on buying a new cellphone because I want to try one that uses Android, Google’s cellphone operating system.

So I really love them, but today they released a web browser called Google Chrome, and I have never used a more worthless piece of shit in my life. It’s worse than terrible, with few features, horrendous usability, and no customization whatsoever. Google Chrome is like using toilet paper your entire life and then suddenly being forced to wipe your ass with your hands. I understand it’s a beta and features will be added, but Jesus Christ, why release this thing in its current condition? It’s an embarrassment. Here’s just a few of the quirks of this “intuitive” browser:

• There is no way to manage your bookmarks. Something as simple as deleting a bookmark requires you to click the bookmarks pulldown menu, right-click on the bookmark, and choose “Delete”. You have to repeat this process for each one you want to delete. That will waste a good hour of my time every week.

• The address bar doubles as your search bar, and even though it gives you a huge list of default search engines to choose from, it’s impossible to switch between them without a hassle. It also constantly tries to auto-complete any search term you start typing. These two forms should not have been combined. It’s a solution in search of a problem.

• Tabs are located at the very top of the toolbar, which makes them hard to reach. You can’t customize their location. In fact, you can’t customize any part of the toolbar. Or the rest of the browser. When people say they want “simple” programs, they’re using the word as a synonym for “easy to use”, not as a synonym for “borderline retarded”.

• No ad blocking, no RSS indicator in the address bar, no add-ons (a la Firefox), no importing bookmarks from Safari or Opera, no exporting bookmarks to other browsers (despite Google bragging about being “open”), no page setup or print preview, no fullscreen mode, no Mac or Linux versions (they’re “coming soon”, which in Google lingo means anywhere from six months to six years), the downloads bar is hard to read and previous downloads remain in the bar and can’t be deleted. I could go on, but this browser has wasted enough of my day already.

Granted, Google Chrome is fast, but that’s not hard when there’s nothing in the goddamn thing. The only salvageable parts of this disaster are the startup page that lists your most-visited websites, the built-in task manager, and how it automatically adds search engines to your list of possible default ones (it added a Daily Ramblings search option as soon as I visited this page). Other than that, Chrome is merely a turd painted silver.

Dear Students for a Democratic Society,

I realize that vandalizing things is really fun, but please stop smashing storefronts and spraying bleach and salt into the eyes of delegates in my hometown of Minneapolis. You see, Minnesotans are known for being friendly and educated, but you are clearly neither of these things. We don’t mind retards visiting our state, but people watching on TV think you’re us, and that’s a problem.

Since you’re using the name Students for a Democratic Society, may I suggest that you actually learn something about the original organization from the 1960s? They were ruined when their leadership was taken over by people who favored violent protests. The Emmy-nominated documentary The Weather Underground covers the ruin of SDS and the horrible flaws of violent protesting.

I’m a bit concerned that you haven’t released any sort of condemnation of these violent tactics that took place during your protest. How ironic and sad that this new version of SDS seems to be turning out like the old one.