I enjoy a good margarita as much as the next person. Margaritas also have a tremendous advantage in that they are flexible. We've covered margaritas before on our first Cocktail of the Week! as well as the cranberry margarita 11 cocktails later. Today we have a special treat brought about more by serendipity than anything else. Alice enjoys fruit and while I sometimes do also, I mostly tolerate it. My general feeling is that the work to enjoyment ratio is far too high. In particular I am speaking of the tangerine.

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Today is the Summer Solstice: Monday, June 21, specifically about half an hour ago. It's the day during each yearly cycle with the longest period of daylight. That means it's light when you woke up and it will be light when you sit down for dinner. It also means more daylight for Solstice parties! Woot!

*Please note that June 21 is only the Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere. You Southerners have to wait until December for your next 'longest day party'.

"Shadow boxing the apocalypse, and wandering the land"

Think of it like those radio shows that play 1 second fragments, only harder! And hey! Hey! No googling!

Last year we talked about SCO Group, and their CEO Darl McBride. SCO has been involved in multiple frivolous lawsuits intended to generate revenue for a corporation that has little else going for it. SCO's ongoing attempts to suck money from worthwhile corporations while wallowing in the death throes of bankruptcy have continued unabated. Well this may all be over with now, as SCO's current legal attempt for validation is over, victory: Novell

I may have been a little harsh last year when I said "we have a legal system that can empower parasites to continue their life cycle of frivolous lawsuits." Well, alright, we do have such an empowering legal system, but I will grant that that is the price we pay for a system that allows anyone their day in court. Ultimately, justice comes down to a human decision and every judge or jury can only do their best.

Today, and in the case of SCO and Darl McBride, justice was served. Hopefully this will be the last we hear about SCO Group until their bankruptcy obituary is posted on the back pages of the Wall Street Journal. We can now return to important issues like the human suffering caused by hot coffee, Google maps, and women falling asleep on airplanes.

This just might become a new feature! You see a lot of odd things on Craigslist.org. It's humanity, distilled down onto one web page and there are no holds barred. People solicit, sell goods, buy goods, and often act out to the fullest extent possible in a mostly anonymous forum.

(© Lester Wall, Veni, Vidi, Voce)

Now I won't bore you with the usual "Selling 2003 Nissan Sentra - no title" stuff. These people are a dime a dozen, with excuses from bureaucratic error to "the dog ate it". You just chuckle and move on. Today, however, I came across one of the true classics. An individual that stretches reality and truth so much as to result in total comedy. Yuyz4 of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin posts this in the "Free" section of Craigslist:

Free:
Firewood you cut down

Date: 2010-06-09, 9:23PM EDT
Reply to: sale-yuyz4*********@craigslist.org

I have a dead tree that I would like to have cut down. I'm willing to give the wood to somebody if they cut it down SAFELY. All I'm looking for is to get the tree topped but if you want the whole tree that's fine too.

So we have a guy with a tree he no longer wants. Rather than call a tree service and pay $250 to have his tree lopped off, he offers the tree as "firewood" that simple needs to be... uh... cut into smaller sections. But Yuyz4 is a flexible guy, he is only concerned about the dead and dangerous portions of said tree falling on his house. If you want to, he won't mind if you bring your bucket truck, or your professional tree climber friends and just "top" his tree nicely; just so long as no branches fall ON HIS HOUSE.

I salute you Yuyz4, you have taken human creativity to a new level.

Apple has finally released the iPhone 4; the iPhone 3 is dead. To recycle a phrase from an old Pink Floyd song:

"Aye! A roar he cried frae the bottom of his heart that I would nay fall
but as dead, dead as ‘a can be by his feet; de ya ken?"

Let me repeat that in English: The iPhone 3 is dead, no longer sold, it is an ex-phone, pining for the fjords even. Anyone who can (OK, Apple, AT&T) is diving into the fray selling the iPhone 3GS for $99, 'cause, you know, it's the contract that's the killer.

So why am I on about this anyway? I don't have an iPhone and AT&T doesn't service the dead zone we live in. So why!?? Because everyone, and I mean (nearly) everyone that owns an iPhone 3 is selling them "Cheap! in every classified online ad you can find.

"Psst... buddy... wanna buy an iPhone, cheap? Jus' $250 but only today! They're goin' fast! so hurry!"

Yeah... just walk away. Go get your new i4 for $199 or if you're on a budget, grab an i3GS for $99.

Google is apparently being sued by a woman who, as a result of following directions provided by Google maps, was struck by a car. Lauren Rosenberg, our next entry into the frivolous lawsuit hall of fame, follows Stella Liebeck, who sued McDonalds for selling hot coffee. Ms. Rosenberg clearly didn't think her plan to easy riches through completely, or perhaps she wasn't familiar with the previous 'hot coffee' incident. Simply carrying a cup of McDonald's or Starbuck's coffee while being run down certainly would have compounded her pain and suffering, and easily doubled her anticipated ill-gotten gain.

Lauren, next time you are traversing busy lanes of traffic, remember to put down your Blackberry long enough to watch for oncoming cars.