I got a job! I start Monday morning, and since the show has a 13 episode order, I’ll be employed for at least a few months this time. I cannot even begin to describe my relief and excitement.

Especially because I will FINALLY have enough hours to qualify for Union insurance and be able to stop coughing up huge chunks of cash for health insurance as of the end of the year.

Ah, the small joys of adulthood.

The Daily Show’s research team truly outdid themselves last night, digging up some awesome double-talk about the Palin nomination. Take it away, kids:

The illustrious Casey Newton brings us a story from the wilds of Phoenix, where the Mayor of that city decided it would be a great idea to climb a tree to clear debris from a big storm. The tree disagreed, and the Mayor took a 13-foot header, resulting in a fractured vertebrae.

My favorite section:

“It’s a dangerous job even for people who are trained and know what they’re doing,” Jason Nunemacher, an arborist and general manager of Tree Pros in north-central Phoenix. “I would definitely recommend leaving it to professionals.”

Told of the arborist’s recommendations, Gordon said, “Tell him I agree with him,” according to a spokesman.

A close second is the section dealing with his previous battle with a bougainvillea that left the Mayor with a staph infection.

Too bad he’s not a Republican: He’d immediately be qualified as a at least a Cabinet-level official for his work on both Health Care and the Interior.

Joanna’s wedding was lovely. Very nice, very low-key, and a fun reception. I will say: I was impressed with the swiftness of the ceremony. I have been to at least five weddings of various friends and family where the vows alone were longer than the entire ceremony was here. An excellent strategy for preventing weeping brides (and grooms, and parents of the bride, etc).

Got to buy the father of the bride a shot of good scotch at the after-party. Got to drink enough beer to make me not want to drink another beer for at least another few weeks.

Got to see some folks I haven’t seen in a long time, several of whom are now significantly taller since the last time I saw them, they were twelve. Got to do a lot of catching up with D.C. folk I hadn’t seen in forever, since I haven’t actually, you know, been to my evil hometown in forever.

Joanna’s house is outstanding. She and Matt bought a run-down Victorian about 30 miles outside of Albany a couple years ago, and with the help of Matt’s contractor dad, did their very own Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They showed us the before pictures when we visited Saturday, and it looks like a totally different house.

I still can’t get over how weird it is that she’s married and owns a house now. Joanna and I have been friends since the fifth grade, when we were both 10 years old. We have known each other for seventeen years. It’s so strange to realize people you grew up with are now…grown-ups.

Although I will admit, the fact that the newlyweds, the best man, myself, and Rachel (another friend from High School I roomed and split a rental car with for the weekend) spent Monday afternoon at a School Bus Demolition Derby probably did not help in my efforts to convince myself that we are all adults now.

It was, however, the completely fucking awesomest post-wedding activity I have ever encountered. Dude, a school bus got flipped on its side a minute into it! How can you NOT love such an event?

Particularly since the winner of the derby was a politician running for local office. I tried to find out what local office he was running for, but he has the same name as a (female) porn star, and she’s all that comes up when you Google his name.

All in all, a rather entertaining weekend, capped off by a trip through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, completely drowning in Republican-conventioneer-targeted advertising, and approximately the size of the state of Rhode Island. I wish those of you covering the Convention luck in figuring out where in the fuck your gate is when you’re trying to leave.

I’m off to Albany, New York for the first wedding of one of my high school friends, which is really, really weird. Actually, I’ve known Joanna since we were in 5th grade, which makes this whole endeavor even fucking weirder.

Her brother, who I still picture as the eleven year old he was when we graduated from high school, will be picking me up from the airport. This weekend is going to be hilarious.

Well, except for the five hour layover I have tomorrow between 5-10am in Detroit. That’s just going to be brutal. Thanks for changing the schedule on me like 8 times, Northwest!

* - Where the title comes from.

Some days I feel like the guy in this Onion Radio News bit (Achtung: loud, autoplaying audio).

Gee, it would be nice to be employed.

So Flickr has a feature wherein you can compare the statistics of all your pictures, and see which ones are the most popular, see where your hits are coming from, and things of that nature. It’s pretty interesting and a fantastic way to kill time if you’re really bored.

I have one photo that is far and away the most popular one (almost 2500 views vs. the 2nd place photo’s 1900, and 10th place’s 390). Is it well-composed? Is it of something particularly unusual? Or is it this:

That’s right, a picture I took of a grow room in the Amsterdam Hemp and Marijuana Museum is the most popular picture I’ve ever taken. It’s managed to make its way onto the first page of search results for both “hemp” and “marijuana” on Flickr, so I suppose that helps.

I’m inordinately amused by how very, very many people seem to enjoy this picture, despite how utterly craptacular it is. Piss-poorly framed, shot with a terrible resolution camera, and really kind of indistinct. But it’s weed, man, so it’s popular.

Clearly, I should start aiming more of my efforts in everything artistic at the stoner crowd, because they’re easy to please.

Sorry to stick y’all with another bullet-pointed post, but these things happen when you’re broke and unemployed and not doing much:

• Went sea kayaking with my friend Lisa this morning, which was great fun. We paddled at least 2-3 miles up the coast from the Malibu pier, and it was a really gorgeous day for it, too. However, I forgot how much seawater fucking stings when you get it in your eyes, and I also didn’t realize how much kelp that’s about three feet underwater could look like a shark. It did not help that I recently re-watched Jaws.

• Between the opening and closing ceremonies, are there any fireworks left in China? I know it’s the country that invented them, but man, that was an awful fucking lot of fireworks.

• Man, the Chinese do know how to put on a show. Between the fantastic opening ceremonies and the very nice closing ceremonies, the organizers of London 2012 must have been watching that and going, “…oh, bloody hell.” Particularly since the Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis portion of events was (with the arguable exception of Jackie Chan singing) the most flagrantly goofy part of the closing ceremony that often came across as a cross between Cirque de Soleil and Starlight Express.

• I’m sort of sad to see the Olympics go, since they were a wonderful, wonderful diversion from the fact that there is nothing good on television right now except Mad Men. However, I’m glad they’re going now, since I just did my annual “How the hell am I going to TiVo everything I want to watch?” spreadsheet and have determined that, at least before I start deleting things that suck, I have 26 hours of TV a week on my prime-time schedule. I think the “cancel season pass” key is going to have to be merciless this year, because I am not going to have time to actually watch all that.

• So speaking of television, does anybody have any desire for me to do a few TV reviews like I did last year? I basically talked about new shows as I watched them (making sure to divulge the ever-increasing number of shows I have friends working on), some briefly, some at greater length. Did you guys actually find that shit interesting, or was it like, “Dude…you watch too much TV”?

Finally, I have a job interview tomorrow, so hopefully these bullet pointed posts whining about how I’m bored stiff will soon be replaced with ones whining about how exhausted and overworked I am. Fingers crossed!

A few of the more entertaining subject lines from my spam box, all of which feature Paris Hilton since I think people will believe she has done any or all of the following:

• Paris Hilton denies screwing Ron Paul
• Paris Hilton Wins Pulitzer Prize [okay, this one may stretch the bounds of believability]
• Paris Hilton Had Sex With Aliens

and my personal favorite:

• Paris Hilton’s vagina bites mailman!

I see your giggling at inappropriate Olympic medalist names and raise you my hysterical laughter at Barack Obama’s Inconvenient Snorkel.

Hat tip to TWoP co-founder Tara Ariano’s blog.