A Blast from my Past

20. February 2008 · Comments Off on A Blast from my Past · Categories: General

When I was a young child, sometime back in the dawn of time (oh, sorry – the late 60s), one of my favorite songs was by a group named Think. The song was called “Once You Understand.” It was basically a constant refrain providing the background sound for snippets of conversations between parents & teens. In keeping with the times, every parental interchange was angry/uncaring/non-supportive of their child’s latest dream or activity. The refrain got louder as the song progressed.

“Ma, I’ll be home at 11…”
“You’d better be home at 10, or don’t bother to come home at all.”

“Hey, Dad! Did you see my new guitar? I joined a group!”
“Son, there’s a little bit more to life than joining a group, or playing a guitar.”
“Yeah, Dad? What is there to life?”

When I was 10-12, this song was the epitome of everything that was wrong with parents. I had one of the those old K-Tel vinyl compilations that included this song on it. Over the years, the record got lost, and I have periodically scoured the internet hoping to find it. Alas, all searches were in vain.

Today, wandering through my blogroll, I checked out LaShawn Barber’s Corner. LaShawn has recently changed the primary focus of her blogs from politics to music – digital music in particular. She wrote about a new search engine called SeeqPod – kind of a “google” for music. So I jumped over to SeeqPod, and typed in “Once You Understand,” hit search, and crossed my fingers.

Eureka!

I still can’t find it to buy, but at least I can listen to it, and remember singing along at a slumber party 35 years ago. That’s better than nothing.

Thanks, SeeqPod!

h/t LaShawn Barber

Ol’ Yeller

20. February 2008 · Comments Off on Ol’ Yeller · Categories: General

Dude works for a big company. Blogs. Gets noticed. Gets fired. It happens.

Now, he claims he’s never seen an employee manual, which I find really hard to believe – those guys in HR are really into making sure people read those things. But, whatever.

Naw – my problem is his usage of metaphor ..

… that is until the day she was taken out into the figurative woods without any warning and given the Old Yeller treatment.

Dude. Ol’ Yeller wasn’t taken into the woods. Yeller was confined to a pen when he turned rabid and that’s where Travis did the deed. 

That and .. Ol’ Yeller had to die – he was rabid.  I don’t think the fellow is trying to make the point that his friend acquired rabies defending her boy against a wolf, and then had to be shot by his best friend.

Unless that’s really where he’s going; his friend got all weird in the course of her work so her corporate masters had to tearfully execute her.  Naw, that’s just too weird.

I call a metaphor penalty.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Rachel Lucas Was Wrong…But It’s Not Her Fault

20. February 2008 · Comments Off on Rachel Lucas Was Wrong…But It’s Not Her Fault · Categories: Technology

First, go read this post.  I’ll wait. I need a fresh lemonade anyway.

Done? Cool.

First of all let me say that for someone who doesn’t work in the telecom industry that it’s very easy to think badly of T-Mobile after reading that story. Hell, if I didn’t know what was really behind what happened there, I’d be just as peeved. But the whole story isn’t there and I think it needs some clarification.

Okay, so the events that took place happened in January of 2008. Let me double check, yep, by the information that’s provided, that seems correct.

What most people don’t know is that back in December of 2007 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed stricter Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) regulations that all U.S. Telecoms have to abide by. Before those new regulations it was pretty easy for anyone to call in, give their name, confirm the name on the account, confirm some personal information, and they’d get full access to that other person’s account. Since the new CPNI standards went into effect, that’s no longer the case. The FCC decided that only the account owner (the person who’s name is on the acount), or the people that the account owner had designated as Authorized Users on the account, may have access to the account information…which would include access to buying a phone in that person’s name. Apparently in the past, unauthorized folks just called up, ordered a phone, charged it to someone else’s account, mom’s, dad’s, daughter’s, and off they went with a new phone and no one was the wiser until the bill showed up.

If any of those T-Mobile employees had allowed that girl’s dad to buy a phone for her on her dead husband’s account when the dad wasn’t an authorized user they would have been guilty of a federal crime.

I don’t know about the T-Mobile employees, but I wouldn’t be willing to go to jail for anyone, no matter how bad their situation.

I realize that it’s easy to hate cell phone companies, trust me, I work for one and I think it’s absolutely scandalous that they just don’t give away cell phones and forgive every bit of overage that customers accrue through ignorance or apathy. It’s like they’re in business to make a profit or something. (sarcasm…in case you missed it) In this case though, they did exactly what your government told them to do.

Castro Resigns

19. February 2008 · Comments Off on Castro Resigns · Categories: General


source

It’s expected that his brother Raul will be the new president.

HAVANA – An ailing, 81-year-old Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba’s president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when parliament meets Sunday.

The end of Castro’s rule — the longest in the world for a head of government — frees his 76-year-old brother Raul to implement reforms he has hinted at since taking over as acting president when Fidel Castro fell ill in July 2006. President Bush said he hopes the resignation signals the beginning of a democratic transition.

Here’s hoping that their next 50 years are better than the last.

UPDATE: Val Prieto (and friends) do their usual good job of providing background and commentary on all things Cuban over at Babalublog. Val’s blog is where I first started reading more about Cuba, a few years ago. It’s always the first place I head when I see something about Cuba in the news.

Saw A Great Bumper Sticker

19. February 2008 · Comments Off on Saw A Great Bumper Sticker · Categories: Politics

“Monica Lewinski’s ex-boyfriend’s wife for President!”

It’s just so wrong that it makes me giggle.

Rock and Hard Place

18. February 2008 · Comments Off on Rock and Hard Place · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, World

The run-up to this presidential election has a horrid fascination about it, kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We have on one side, Her Inevitableness and the Fresh Prince of Illinois, in the words of a recent blog commenter, vigorously throwing melanin and ovaries at each other. It would be funny, if not for the sure and certain knowledge that one of them will be the Democrat’s anointed by convention time. And also that our grandees of the conventional media establishment will have pulled themselves together by that time and tied a big best-of-show ribbon around the neck of one or the other. Never mind that half the MSM are at present going all wobbly-in-the-knees for Mr. Obama and the other half are indignantly insisting that there is nothing wrong, nothing the least bit wrong with the spouse of a two-term president waltzing into the White House for a term of her own, born up on a rising tide of her previous experience there.

Me, I am left relatively unmoved by the dreaminess, charisma, vision and whatever of Mr. Obana. Like P.O’Rourke, I consider the desire to adore a head of state, or any prospective applicants for that office, to be a grim transgression against republicanism (Small r there, meaning the system of government, not the actual political party). I am also left similarly unmoved by the notion that just because Her Inevitableness is a woman of certain age, with all that long memory of feminism in the last quarter of the last century, that OF COURSE I am going to vote for her. Fight the Patriarchy, the glass ceiling, sisterhood is powerful! Umm, no. Sorry; this is not Argentina and she is not Eva Bloody Peron. Frankly, the thought of Bill “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” Clinton prowling the corridors of the White House trolling for interns – yet again, sort of makes my skin crawl. I would have respected Her Inevitableness so much more if she had dumped his sorry ass, after L’Affaire Monica. And dumped it with vigor and sufficient force to achieve low orbit

On the other side; not much better, really; either Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani would have worked for me. I could have voted for either one without too much cringing – but alas, neither had the stamina to hold out long enough to be a serious contender. Which leaves me with John McCain; and I keep thinking I ought to be more enthusiastic about that. Way back in the primordial dark of the 2000 primary season, I had rather liked his candidacy, and held considerable of a grudge against GWB for certain dirty tricks pulled against McCain in the South Carolina primary. So, the man has a good shot at the Republican nomination now – and I ought to feel better about that. But he has a long record in public life, he is a cranky maverick with a bad temper and has gotten into political bed with some pretty unsavory people…so, who knows?

God knows, I don’t. All I can do come this November is to walk into the voting booth and vote for the one that I think is the least worst.

And then I remember – and hope! Even given that the worst of the three takes the oath of office next January. It’s only four years. God knows, we should be able to survive. I mean, we got through the presidency of that blob of vacuous sanctimony known as Jimmy Carter, even if we are still cleaning up some of the mess from his term.

Open

16. February 2008 · Comments Off on Open · Categories: General

Because it’s the weekend. And it’s funny.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

via.

Spoilsports

14. February 2008 · Comments Off on Spoilsports · Categories: General

The Air Force recently came by and did some simulated bomb runs on City Hall. The idea is that ground controllers need practice guiding air strikes in urban areas. Most bomb ranges are way the heck out in the middle of nowhere and lack urban terrain, so they come up here and do their thing.

Makes sense to me – you guys in blue do know how to rock on completely.

The paper described the AttackSimEx [1] as controversial but the only people who actually objected were six members from the Fox Valley Peace Coalition. One of whom was confused about what he was upset about.

“Apparently, this exercise is to improve the accuracy of bombs so they don’t have the ‘collateral damage,'” he said. “Collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent people, and I strongly object to my government killing innocent people. This is one small gesture on my part to at least make this known.”

Um, yeah. Actually the military [2] is all about killing as many people as possible; good, bad, innocent, guilty as sin, as long as the gun sight lays on ’em we’ll pull the trigger. Our only problem is we can’t slaughter them fast enough; they keep wiggling around and throwing off our aim.

No, it’s the nancy pants [3] in Accounting that insist we get as much bang for the buck as possible. While carpet bombing is a whole lotta fun and a terrific emotional release it’s just not effective enough. The taxpayer is footing the bill and it’s our fiduciary responsibility to make sure the bombs land as close to the actual target as possible. That way we can use less of them – it’s a win-win for everyone.

Except the guys who are actually the target. But we in the War Mongering business call this hard cheese.

That angular monstrosity is City Hall – the target. Talk about putting the ‘close’ in close-air support …

[1] I have no idea if the milspeak shorthand for this really is AttackSimEx or not – but if it were it would not surprise me.

[2] Sarcasm.

[3] You don’t really believe this, do you?

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Memo: A Reminder of Basic Principles

14. February 2008 · Comments Off on Memo: A Reminder of Basic Principles · Categories: Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, Good God, Rant, sarcasm

To: The Arch Bishop of Canterbury
From: Sgt Mom
Re: The discrete attractions of sharia vis a vis English Common Law

1. Having been raised in the relatively intellectual and logic-based tradition of the Lutheran church, the temptation to take a swipe at a church founded on Henry VIII’s scheme to get out of one unrewarding marriage and into another more to his liking is almost overwhelming. The Church of England came about because King H. had the hots for Anne Boleyn and she wasn’t giving him any until he ponied up a ring and a crown and lots of other pretty shiny baubles. Lutherans have the 95 Thesis nailed to a church door, and the C of E… has Henry VIII’s gonads. I admit, Bish – you made a damn good show of it though, especially with the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible and all that. Speaking as a wordsmith, it beats Luther’s Small Catechism all hollow. Pure ecclesiastical and literary gold, but lamentably, it looks like your church has been running out of steam ever since.

2. What on earth where you thinking, urging your fellow citizens to acquiesce to the use of sharia law in Britain, as anything other than a small-scale, mutually-agreed-upon-between-the aggrieved parties adjunct, a sort of counseling service? Did you have any idea of the ruckus that would arise, upon suggesting that it was inevitable and by implication a good thing in this pretty, shiny multi-culti 21st century Britain? Do you even, god save us, have any idea that your casually tossed off remarks appeared to approve of grafting an alien sprout onto the tree of common law? An alien and wholly contradictory sprout that no matter how often or how loudly the praises of sharia law are sung by the usual chorus, casual consumers of recent media reports cannot help concluding those places in which sharia law holds sway are violent and benighted hellholes? In the eyes of those innocent of spectacles constructed of industrial-strength rose-colored glass, it is a turd. No amount of gold-plate will make it acceptable, not least, I suspect, to those who have had first-hand experience of it. (Especially those of the female gender.)

3. It is one thing, my good Bish, to discuss theoretical constructs – it is quite another to install them as workable and working systems, when real-world experience of them suggests that the outcome will be something comprehensively different, from what it appeared to be in ones’ airy world of theory and abstraction. See the practice of communism, when tried out in any place you could name.

4. Hoping that this memo will be of assistance to you, in explaining the storm which has descended upon your miter-capped head.

5. Sorry; coming up with an explanation for all those gorgeous but empty church buildings the length and breadth of Britain is more your line of work. Good luck with that.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

Later:This lovely monologue/rant courtesy of I-don’t-know-who-it’s-a-couple-glasses-of-chablis-into-my-birthday-eve here

Eh – Rantburg, the source of all things sour and sarky

Mo-Toon Cartoons of Doom One More Time

13. February 2008 · Comments Off on Mo-Toon Cartoons of Doom One More Time · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Rant, World

Yes, I did write quite a number of posts about them, didn’t I? Stern words, had to be said. And I think I did a pretty ringing job, the first time around, so here are exerpts and links:

The strength of the West is in that very noisy disputation, our freedom to put everything on the table, to question, to non-conform, and by disputation and argument, make our beliefs even stronger for having all the idiocy knocked out of them. As such has been our custom, and in the reported words of Martin Luther, at the Diet of Worms: “Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason–I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other–my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen.” (original post here)

As far as American newsprint and broadcast television is concerned, the phrase “freedom of the press” is from this day now enshrined in my favorite set of viciously skeptical quote-marks. The affair of the Danish Cartoons, and their non-appearance in all but a handful of newspapers has put the lie to every bit of lip-service ever paid to the notion that the American people had a right to know… had an absolute right, enshrined in the foundations of our very Republic to know… well, whatever it was that would goose the ratings, or boost circulation this week… A right that every journalist would fearlessly defend, with every fiber of his principled, journalistic being. Oops, there seems to be a little contradiction there. Principled… journalist… now there is a concept worn to tatters by this little international imbroglio, especially after Eason-gate, Rather-Gate and all the other tedious-gates. (original post here)

…the next time I hear someone pontificating away on the awesome responsibilities involved in upholding the “freedom of the press”… and they are from a newspaper which refused to run the Danish Cartoons, or a television station which refused to air them, citing “community sensitivities” or “deference to religious feelings” or whatever the sad excuse du jour is…. I shall laugh and laugh and laugh. (original post here)

Amusingly, that lugubrious old talking prune, NPR’s Daniel Shorr was coming out on the side of being all sensitive and being responsible about “using the power of the press” as regards the Matter of the Danish Cartoons. (Doesn’t that sound like a very dull Sherlock Holmes adventure, or the worst name for a war since the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”?) Just like the pet professor of international relations whom my local paper keeps on hand to drivel on about the Moslem world and international relations, and how the US must…must…zzzzz… oh, sorry. Dozed off there for a moment. I do that when reading the gentleman’s editorials, but so do probably most of his students. (original post here)

Wouldn’t change a thing… well, except to point and laugh at Daniel Shorr a little more.

Return of the Danish Cartoons

13. February 2008 · Comments Off on Return of the Danish Cartoons · Categories: General

No, it’s not a long-hidden horror flick. It’s the next volley in the fight to support freedom of speech/freedom of the press. It seems that the Danish government recently arrested some Muslim conspirators who were planning to kill Kurt Westergaard, the man who drew what was deemed to be the most offensive of the cartoons two years ago.

That would be this one:
Photobucket

You may recall that our own Sgt Mom wrote about this very topic the first time around, castigating the mainstream press for kowtowing to the Islamofacists. I’m certain that she’ll be weighing in on this revival, as well. I’m heartened by the fact that the Danish papers have responded to this recent arrest by re-publishing the cartoons. As Captain Ed says, they are “on the front lines for free speech.”

According to the article, Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch newspapers also republished the cartoons. Anyone want to take any bets as to when we’ll see them in the NY Times?

Why Hillary Can’t Win

13. February 2008 · Comments Off on Why Hillary Can’t Win · Categories: The Funny

From that funny magician guy, Penn…you know, the one that talks. Have to say I agree with him…about Hillary anyway, I’m not sure that Obama is the next President, but pretty sure he’s right on about why Hillary won’t be.

Via He Who Needs No Linkage.

A New Canterbury Tale

12. February 2008 · Comments Off on A New Canterbury Tale · Categories: European Disunion, Fun With Islam, General, General Nonsense, Good God, sarcasm, World

From Iowahawk, naturally. How can an English major resist a parody entitled:
“Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte.”

Read, and savor the final punchline. You won’t regret it. Really.

A Comparison: North & South

12. February 2008 · Comments Off on A Comparison: North & South · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

(Another one of those rather amusing emails, forwarded by a friend)

The North has Bloomingdale’s, the South has Dollar General.

The North has coffee houses, the South has Waffle Houses.

The North has dating services, the South has family reunions.

The North has switchblade knives; the South has Lee Press-on Nails.

The North has double last names; the South has double first names.

The North has Indy car races; The South has stock car races.

North has Cream of Wheat, the South has grits.

The North has green salads, the South has collard greens.

The North has lobsters, the South has crawfish.

The North has the rust belt; the South has the Bible Belt.

FOR NORTHERNERS MOVING SOUTH :

In the South: –If you run your car into a ditch, don’t panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don’t try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.

Don’t be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store…. Do not buy food at this store.

Remember, “Y’all” is singular, “all Y’all” is plural, and “all Y’all’s” is plural possessive
Get used to hearing “You ain’t from round here, are ya?”

Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later on how to use it.

Don’t be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They can’t understand you either. The first Southern statement to creep into a transplanted Northerner’s vocabulary is the adjective “big’ol,” truck or “big’ol” boy. Most Northerners begin their Southern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it.

The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper.!

Be advised that “He needed killin'” is a valid defense here.

If you hear a Southerner exclaim, “Hey, Y’all watch this,” you should stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he’ll ever say.

If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn’t matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.

Do not be surprised to find that 10-year olds own their own shotguns, they are proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim.

In the South, we have found that the best way to grow a lush green lawn is to pour gravel on it and call it a driveway.

AND REMEMBER: If you do settle in the South and bear children, don’t think we will accept them as Southerners After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we wouldn’t call ’em biscuits.

YES WE CAN

11. February 2008 · Comments Off on YES WE CAN · Categories: Politics

We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as divided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, that we are one nation, and together we will begin the next chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea; Yes we can.

Yes, I know it’s hyperbole. There are some that scoff at a music video carrying a campaign message. I know that many people that I respect have called Obama’s campaign a cult of personality. All that being said, the more I read about his platform, and the more I listen to him speak, the more I would prefer this man to anyone else that’s currently in the running.

Hope is not a plan. I know this. After the past six and a half years since 9/11, hope sounds very good. Hope sounds much better than the “realists” and the “pragmatists” who want me to fall back in line every time “GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR” or “ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTAL JIHADISTS” are thrown in my face. Yes, I still believe they’re a threat. Based on what I’ve seen however, I don’t believe we’ve done enough to protect OUR country from those threats. I’m not convinced that stabilizing Iraq and/or Afghanistan is more important than stabilizing US. Hope is not a plan, but striking out in fear is not a strategy.

I haven’t decided who I’m voting for yet. There’s too much time between now and then. If you had told me six months ago that I’d be considering a Democrat who is for universal health care and a scheduled pull out of Iraq to get the Iraqis to start pulling their own crap together, I would have laughed at you. I’m not laughing, I’m thinking.

The best thing about getting older….

08. February 2008 · Comments Off on The best thing about getting older…. · Categories: General

…is that it beats the alternative. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. And for once, I’m not talking about myself, although I don’t seem to be getting any younger, these days. I’m talking about my dad..

He turned 77 on his birthday last November. He spent his birthday weekend in the hospital, dealing with a heart attack. He had gone to the ER in his small town to get checked out for a suspected urinary tract infection (his regular doc had retired, and he didn’t have a new one yet), and they realized he was in the midst of a heart attack. They kept him over the weekend, and released him early the next week.

But my aunt called me last week. She’s the one who takes care of my dad’s finances, and has full power of attorney to handle whatever needs handled, since my mom passed away. Dad’s doctor says he needs to move out of his split-level house, before the stairs kill him. He doesn’t do stairs well – they trip him up. He had a stroke in 1976, and his right leg has never worked particularly well since then. His answer to the stairs in the house was to go out the back door, take two steps down from the back deck, and walk down the sloping hill to his truck. Until he fell one day, and couldn’t get up. Thankfully, two neighbors saw him and came over to help him to his feet.

He is a stubbornly indpendent man, my father. So we are NOT moving him to assisted living. We are helping him get his house ready to sell, and we’ll help him buy a small single-story in his small town. I’ve rearranged my vacation time to go north and help out. Other than that, I try not to think about it.

My daddy… I have always endowed him with some mythical heroic power, and while he may not have hung the moon, I was always convinced that he could have, if he’d wanted to. In one swift move, he could grab me up and hoist me to his shoulders, assuring I got the best view of the Santa Claus parade as it wound through our neighborhood. We found a domestic rabbit shivering in our garage one winter day, and next day, he built a wood and wire rabbit hutch for it, out of scraps he had, and with no plans to work from. When we built our “dream” house in 1975, he and Mom did the roofing, the siding, the flooring… before his stroke he was all-powerful, and full of genius, if short of patience.

After his 1976 stroke, I closed my eyes to his limitations and encouraged him in his successes. It was easy to do then – I was a teenager, still in high school. Now I’m an adult, and high school is 30 years behind me, this May. Dad is 77, and not as healthy as he used to be. His heart is enlarged, his liver is fatty, and his bad leg drags enough to scare you if you watch him walk, because it looks like he won’t make it across the room if he’s barefoot.

But he’s still around for me to love, and that beats the alternative. Still, I find my eyes tearing up at odd times, and I’m dreading this northern trip on Feb 26, helping him get ready to sell the house my mother died in. I find myself wondering if I’ve really told him enough about how much he means to me. I try to reassure myself that actions speak louder than words, even for someone as vocal as I am, and that driving across the Appalachians in the tag-end of winter declares that I care. But I think I’ll work on sending cards more often, to let him know I’m thinking of him, and that I love him.

And I marvel at how the fact that my dad is growing older can make me feel so much like a very young child.

Join the Marines

08. February 2008 · Comments Off on Join the Marines · Categories: General

Travel to exotic lands
Meet exciting unusual people
And kill them.

Protesters without a clue.

Berkeley, the famously liberal college town in California, has taken aim at Marine recruiters, saying they are “not welcome in our city.”

Unh, ladies?  The ditty you’re quoting isn’t a protest slogan.  It’s usually found on t-shirts and bumper stickers for sale outside the main gate and in Army-Navy surplus stores across the land.  It’s one of those yin-yang duality of nature mock-ironic things that service members do so well and clueless zealots just don’t get.

Instead of mindlessly repeating something you read on a recruiter’s bumper sticker, may I suggest a return to the classics?

1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4
We don’t want your dirty war!

or

Hey, hey what do I say?
Kick the Marines into the bay!

or

Hey, hey, look our way!
We’re naive and we like it that way!

You’re welcome.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

This is Weird

07. February 2008 · Comments Off on This is Weird · Categories: Politics

The more John McCain talks, the better Barack Obama sounds.

My friends, I know…kind of freaks me out too.

Curious Edibles

07. February 2008 · Comments Off on Curious Edibles · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, World

“You have curious things to eat…but I am fed on proper meat” – From R.L Stevensons’ Child’s Garden of Verses

My mother had a fairly open-minded attitude about what exactly constituted edible animal protein; if Dad’s paycheck could afford it, and it was available from any of the places providing our edibles in the 1960s, she would damn well have a go at making something tasty out of it. Beef-heart casserole and fried rabbit made appearances often; so did ground beef in any of a hundred different guises, as well as liver and onions – basically, if it didn’t look too awful and smelled good, we were prepared to be adventurous. Except where liver and onions were concerned, which smelled good but tasted revolting; and which Mom insisted we eat because it was A) cheap and B) good for us.

Generally, that attitude served me well ever since; overseas on Japan and Korea, in Greenland and across Europe. Roast chestnuts – good to go. Unidentified bits of chicken flesh on a skewer, brushed with some kind of soy-based sauce and grilled over a little charcoal brazier – excellent! Stir-fried noodles and strange vegetables – oh, yeah! Strange meaty stews with lots of potatoes, served up in a French youth hostel in the summer of 1970? My traveling friend, Esther Tutwyler and I cheerfully agreed that it probably was horse-meat and ate it anyway. We were hungry and on a budget – and when in Rome, or in this case, Paris – do as the Romans. We were generally baffled by the bread rolls, though – they went hard and inedible after a day or so, and every time we had had a bag-luncheon from whatever youth hostel kitchen was supplying our nutritional needs, there were at least two of them. What to do with the uneaten extras? Seemed kind of ungracious and wasteful to throw them away, but we had to eventually. There was that time we did have a game of kick-football with one, in the corridor of a subterranean hostel in Vienna’s Esterhazy Park, – until the roll skidded underneath the door of someone’s room. We always wondered what the occupant of that room thought the next day, finding a stale bread roll in the middle of the floor.

On the whole, youth hostel food was pretty much like my mothers – fairly edible and usually recognizable; cheap cuts of meat figured fairly highly, and always good sturdy bread. The breakfasts in Scandinavia were especially tasty, for the hostels generally set up a buffet table, with bins of different sliced bread, and every sort of condiment and bread topping imaginable. Kind of strange, we agreed, having salami for breakfast, but when in Rome, et cetera.

There was only one meal that left us completely baffled – coincidently, it was the evening meal in a Scandinavian hostel: Bergen, Norway, if memory serves. The main course at dinner was… well, we couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It appeared on our plates as opaque white gelatinous circles about three inches across and about half an inch thick, obviously sliced from a canned or extruded mass. It had a very faintly fibrous texture and feel in the mouth, but otherwise had no discernable taste at all, offering no clue as to its origin, animal, fish or vegetable. I mean, it tasted and smelt of precisely nothing. It was served with a dollop of almost equally tasteless béchamel sauce (milk gravy to Southerners) and formed a symphony of unappetizing white on each plate. At least we recognized béchamel sauce, but the stuff that it was on? It appeared almost as if the kitchen staff had just opened generic cans labeled “food” and gorped out a neat and faintly rubbery slice on each plate. I had never seen the like – and after fifteen years of Lutheran pot-luck lunches and dinners, and Mom’s cooking, I thought I had seen everything. We ate it – no one opting for seconds. By luck, none of the kitchen staff that evening seemed to understand English, so the mystery food remained a mystery.

Two or three years later, my high school had a Norwegian exchange student. I described the mysterious rubbery, tasteless white stuff to him, and he said it was fish pudding. A Norwegian national dish, apparently. Kind of like lutefisk, but without the rat poison.

Appreciating Winter

06. February 2008 · Comments Off on Appreciating Winter · Categories: General

There is one nice thing about changing a tire in Wisconsin in February: all that ice and snow gives you good place to jab your tire iron so it stands upright.

This keeps it ready-to-hand and super easy to find.

The Irony, Election 2008

05. February 2008 · Comments Off on The Irony, Election 2008 · Categories: Politics

What I love about the current popular wingnuts who are saying they won’t vote, or that they’ll for Clinton before they vote for McCain is that these are the same people who have accused the Dems for years of voting for political gain vs for the good of the country.  It just makes me giggle.

VOTE DAMMIT!

05. February 2008 · Comments Off on VOTE DAMMIT! · Categories: General, Politics

That’s for all the idjits who have decided that they’d rather let someone else make their decisions for them. For all the wingnuts who have decided to not vote at all rather than to vote for McCain. For all the moonbats who are pouting because Kucinich has left the race.

VOTE.

As Heinlein once wrote, “There may not be someone to vote for, but there’s always someone to vote against.”

“Sins of The Assassin” Review

05. February 2008 · Comments Off on “Sins of The Assassin” Review · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam

Robert Ferrigno’s “Sins Of The Assassin” is released today in hardcover. A couple of years ago I received an email from Robert asking me if I’d like to get an advanced copy of “Prayers For The Assassin.” Since I never turn down a free book, I said yes and wrote this review about it. A few weeks ago I received another email from Robert asking if I’d like to get an advanced copy of “Sins.” See above for my answer. I still love the fact that he shot out advanced copies to bloggers. I’m sure he didn’t have to this time around, yet he still did.

I would have been perfectly happy if the story had stuck around the Islamic areas of America for its backdrop and continued with Rakkim and Sarah’s hunt for The Old One. Robert changes the scene on us this time around. Rakkim takes a mission into The Bible Belt. The Southern States that, by all that’s holy, weren’t going to be converted to Islam. What would it be like if the country divided? Who would be in charge? What would they do for fun? What happens to New Orleans the next time it gets slammed by a hurricane? What happens when intellectuals don’t have their colleges as their pulpit? What will Mexico and Canada do?

This is future history. It plays what if and it plays it pretty darn well. The fun thing about future history is that you can comment on today’s events from a distance. The perspective may surprise you. I found it hilarious in a lot of ways. Not the least of which is the running commentary on how exceptionally smart people can be pretty darn useless, if not downright dangerous if they’re put in the wrong situations.

If you haven’t read “Prayers” yet, “Sins” stands well on it’s own. Robert does a good job of filling in the backstory without beating you over the head with it. One of the things I hate about some series is when an author feels the need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on exposition. It’s okay if you haven’t read the previous works, but if you have, it can kill a book dead. “Sins” doesn’t do that.

I hope the third one comes out quickly and sincerely hope the trilogy gets picked up for a movie deal. I think the guy from Lost would make a great Rakkim.

I would have gone over to Borders later to pick it up if I hadn’t received an advanced copy.  I was that anxious for it.  Normally I wait for the paperback version of anything.

Magical Spam

04. February 2008 · Comments Off on Magical Spam · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, sarcasm, Site News

Among my regular chores as regards maintenance of this site is that of emptying out the spam queue – which, unless there is more than a couple of hundred entries in it – I feel obliged to do a quick pass-over just to make sure that no ones legitimate comment has been caught in the spam torrent. This does happen, on occasion, although the program that Timmer plugged in more than a year and a half ago is supposed to be self-regulating. It learns, in other words. But the most marvelous part is that none of the automated comment spam has ever “leaked” into the blog, thus depriving our many readers of a handy link with which to purchase or download a dizzying variety of pharmaceutical products, porn, online games of chance and cell phone ring tones. Every once in a while, there is a spam which looks like a completely conventional and legitimate business; a spam with somewhat of an embarrassed look to it, as if not being able to figure out how it got into such disreputable company. But such are very rare – and since I do not click on the links, I have no way of knowing if they are indeed legitimate – or just generated by someone who is a little cleverer about disguising themselves.

Most of this stuff is so inept, so very bad at even looking like a blog comment that I wonder what they are getting out of generating it to start with. Sometimes it comes in Russian, sometimes Italian and Spanish, but most often in fractured English. Last week, it came with topic headings like this: “Cartoon Alien Porn” “lindsay lohan razzie” “limewire 2008 free download” and “Celebrity Cartoon Porn”. Some of the most curious comes with a two word comment that looks like someone has been playing a random matching game with a thesaurus. It results in such madly poetical conceptual pairings as “shooing inosculate” ” trimmed pestiferous” “dilutions hernial ” “fecundated anticorrosive” “surfeit psychoanalyze” “adumbratively tawdries” ” insolvent joists” “nettlier intarsia” “glutinously cosmos”. Yes, those phrases came from last weeks spam haul – I copied over the most hilarious for your delectation.

Some spam comments have just a random string of letters as text: thusly – “qjkdgtvf tdelpfnq ngwakhqb phkm ncyflb jhgikz ykwlqrcvp” but others have made a go of inserting a sentence – or at least half a sentence. All the following examples came as text for links to various porn sites. At least someone is trying. Not very hard, or with much success, but at least they are trying:

An English-language quarterly magazine targeting professional

Suzanna Gratia Hupp (born 1959) is a former Republican member

Jon Tester is a third-generation Montana farmer who understands

Hyperlinked encyclopedia entry provides a personal and political profile of the US Senator for

The last variety of spam is a real head-shaker: that’s the one that comes as a couple of hundred lines of text with links embedded in every two or three words. These go on and on and on, to the point where one wonders where the hell whoever generated it has been for the last couple of years. I believe most blog spam-filters kick back comments with more than one or two embedded links. One would think one with two or three hundred would be kicked back so far it would come out the backside of whoever sent it out – but hey, I don’t know anything at all about the thought processes of whoever generates this stuff. I just deal with the results.
More »

The Boy is Back In Town and He’s Loaded for Bear

03. February 2008 · Comments Off on The Boy is Back In Town and He’s Loaded for Bear · Categories: General

Cap is back .. and he’s packing heat.

 

Sadly, the article is short on details.  What kind of weapon is that?  Does he have to follow rules of engagement?  Is he available to be a spokesman for Colt?  Does Cap have a rifle in the truck of his Captain Americamobile?  Cause when you want to really reach out and touch someone a pistol just isn’t going to do.

I am morally certain that – this being Captain America – he’s packing am M1911, chambered in .45.  What could be more frickin’ American than carrying an All-American gun like that?

Subject Line Tip o’ the Hat to Thin Lizzy.

Friday night they’ll be dressed to kill
Down at Dino’s Bar and grill.
The drink will flow and blood will spill
If the boys want to fight, you’d better let them.

Good Iraq Wrapup of “The Lies”

03. February 2008 · Comments Off on Good Iraq Wrapup of “The Lies” · Categories: Iraq

Jay Tea over at Wizbang has a good wrapup of how we got into Iraq in the first place. I know I’ve linked to various posts like this over the past few years, but it’s always good to be reminded of what happened vs the rewrites often repeated over and over by the anti-war crowd. I refuse to apologize when calling a man’s bluff.

He’s a little easier on the conduct of the war than I’ve become. But then, we’ve all got the advantage of hindsight there as well. I do think “The Rumsfeld Doctrine” will be studied in years to come as a sub-category of the war college course, “What’s Wrong with Wishful Thinking?” Or whatever it’s called.

Rant

31. January 2008 · Comments Off on Rant · Categories: General

Half Sigma said [1]…

I am not impressed by McCain’s military experience. I worked for the army as a civilian, and it was the most poorly managed organization I ever worked for. Romney, on the other hand, has the proven capacity to run large organizations.

I think that whatever McCain’s failings, earning his wings as a Naval Aviator speaks volumes about young John McCain’s intelligence, adaptability and ability excel. Dummies don’t fly airplanes.

Now, I’m not sure when Half Sigma worked for the Army .. but generally he’s right.

The military is optimized to break things and hurt people. When it’s not actually doing this – and that was most of the time before between 1973 and 2001 – it’s incredibly inefficient.

The reason is that it’s really tough to run a lean military optimized for peacetime and then change stuff around in the span of a few months so you can destroy Iraqi mechanized armies with minimal waste. Or at least minimal waste on our side.

Nobody wants to replay Task Force Smith.

I was in a support role in 1991 and it’s amazing how many wasted cycles .. suddenly were not when we had to pack up people and gear and move them halfway around the world.

Did 3D FSSG need a whole bunch of desert camo in 1990? Going to the Middle East wasn’t our mission so you might think that the cubic set aside in the warehouses were wasted space.. But when we were tasked to send people the guys who went were pretty happy to be able to draw the gear they needed.

Likewise in 1990 3D FSSG didn’t need a DFASC [2] – mainframes in a trailer [3] – but when 1st and 2nd FSSG found theirs were breaking down (AC issues) we were able to ship them ours on a day’s notice.

Sorry for the rant – ignorance irks me.

Via.

[1] A rant is a terrible thing to waste so I’m recycling and editing a comment from another blog into a post.  Some editing for clarity, some to correct a faulty memory.

[2] Rumor had it that we were going to get rid of it someday and in the meantime we didn’t use it – or at least hadn’t in the year and few months I’d been assigned to that unit. After 1991 the mainframe guys routinely dragged them out and operated them on field exercises.

[3] Interesting beasts they were – two semi-trailers per DFASC, one for the mainframe, one for the operators and programmers.  Since my MOS was ‘programmer’ if we’d had to deploy ours I would have been put to work doing ‘programmer’ work.  Since I hadn’t done that since school that would have been interesting.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

« Older articles
Newer articles »