Fun and Games – Page 11 – The Daily Brief

A Jolly Good Time Was Had by All: Pvt. Beauchamp

08. August 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Home Front, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Military, World

Well, that was fun; sort of what I imagine a fox-hunt to be, with a pack of hounds and a merry collection of red-coated hunters on swift steeds. The successful conclusion of the milblogosphere kerfuffle-du-jour, the beat-down of aspiring fabulist Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp was just like one of those exhilarating hunts beloved by viewers of the very high-quality BBC dramas that have been exported to the lonely outposts of Peoria, Tujunga and Boise for lo, these many years.

There was the wily fox; not as wily as he thought he was, obviously… spinning an oh-so-tempting yarn for the editor of TNR, who eagerly snapped it up. And over there is a hound, a hound with a very clever nose who thinks something stinks and begins to bay, and a huntsman with a horn blows “tally-ho”, as the hounds quarter the rough ground, yapping noisily as they discover more and more interesting little discrepancies. No wounded woman at FOB Falcon? A small graveyard and not a dumping ground for victims of an atrocity? And where are the officers and NCOs, and how the hell is it possible for a clumsy tracked vehicle to run over a nimble street-mutt anyway? And for someone to find himself jaded and degraded by war… before he even arrives in theater?

So the hunt went off, in full cry, hounds and horses pounding over the rolling field and between the trees, spilling through the gaps in the fences, in hot pursuit of the nimble fox… who runs and runs and runs, twisting and backtracking. But every time he looks over his shoulder, the pack and the hunters are closer behind. And when the fox looks ahead, suddenly there is another hunt… a hunt of grim-faced people in mottled green and brown cammies, with lots of stripes on their sleeves or dull-metal stuff on their collars.

And the fox runs to ground. But he is hauled out by the scruff of his neck by the grim-faced people, and held so that everyone in the milling crowd… the hounds, the hunters, a great crowd of spectators can take a good long look. The fox squeaks out a few words admitting that everything he wrote was not true, whereupon he is sentenced to clean latrines with his long bushy tail for the foreseeable future.

Oh, there was a hunt-saboteur who tried to run interference for the fox, insisting that everything the fox said was of a high degree of truthiness… most everything had been confirmed by other foxes and experts, but that he just couldn’t share their names just yet, and why was everyone being so mean?

Well, that’s what the hunt-saboteur was saying just as he got trampled by the hunt, so he went off on vacation, and is there still, nursing some bruises and wondering what he did to deserve this, no doubt.

I shouldn’t worry, though. There’ll be another fox and another hunt, any time now. Just listen for the hounds and the sound of a horn, ringing over the blogosphere. And it will be fun!

Way To Much Time On His Hands

27. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Navy, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Good God, Technology, World

A model of an aircraft carrier… made entirely out of Legos.

(link courtesy of Rantburg, the source for all things civil and well reasoned.)

Fortune and Mens Eyes

24. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Iraq, Rant, Veteran's Affairs, War, World

It is a curious coincidence that just as the milblogosphere is reveling in the righteous joys of thumping another credulous editor of a formerly-pretty-reputable legacy media venue… here we are dished up another heaping helping of military bashing from a couple of personalities that I have never heard of. Allegedly, this doofus is claimed to be a regular on Saturday Night Live. The hell you say… is that show still on? Wow.

Whatever A Whitney Brown’s problem is, I’ll bet it’s damned hard to pronounce. And this guy at least had a few remaining shreds of decency left to him… enough that he pulled his post about how the modern military was creating mass murderers and serial killers…

Ops, scuse me, while I go outside, and flag down that idiot with the car speakers which go whoop-whoomp-whoomp at such a deafening level that his car actually sounds like it’s farting. I’m going to chop up his inconsiderate ass into quarters with a chain-saw and Fed-Ex each quarter and his head to five different places…

No, just kidding. But not about the car stereo… it really does sound like the car is farting.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes… military = killers. Got it. Kind of the point actually, in an official, just-doing-our-job, ma’am sense. Yes, we kill those who have been designated as our enemies; neatly, efficiently, and without particular prejudice. Unsanctioned, off the books free-lancing is still frowned upon, however. Just so we’re all on the same page, here.

Still, to note all this is to wonder… why all this perfectly rotten press now? And without the obligatory “Of course we support the troops!” in this round of being pissed-on… guess they’ve noticed we’re not buying the claims of the stuff just being rain.

I do wonder what has brought the usual suspects to a fine frothing boil; I haven’t seen such hysterical insistence on the brutality and licentiousness of the soldiery since the putrid days of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Makes a bit of a change from painting them as poor widdle disadvantaged and victimized cheeeldren who had no other way to get ahead than to listen to the siren allure of the recruiter, which is the alternate method of denigration to date At least the “brutal and licentious” bit will give the troops credit for being grownups. Sort of.

But no credit for anything else, and credibility is where this whole thing is going… oh, not by any deep-laid strategic plan. More like some kind of subconscious hive-instinct, an irrational passionate urge to make the Iraq war and the whole WOT thingy just go away. And to go away without any blame attaching to the usual suspects, win or loose. Loose is always in the cards, of course. The middle east has been a veritable snake-pit for decades. If it reverts to type… no skin off ours, as long as we’re safely out of the middle, and a repeat of Saigon, 1975 can all be safely blamed on the Bush cabal. With appropriate tisk-tiskings, of course.

But…. What if the “surge” is working? What if the Iraqis are stepping up to the plate, and taking real control of their lives and their country? What if all those nice hardworking reservists and those high school graduates from Nowheresville, and those Marines from flyover country have managed to pull of a shaky miracle, and in another fifteen or twenty years, Iraq looks like South Korea, only with palm trees and more sand?

Wow, wouldn’t that be a facer for people like Senators Kerry and Murtha, for the Kos Kidz and the staff of the Guardian, among a long list of others… like A. Whitney Brown? Their advice has been spurned, and they are in peril of being shown up by the people that they secretly, or in some cases, not so secretly, hold in contempt. Makes it kind of hard to maintain that effortless air of superiority over lesser mortals, so of course, something must be done!

When old-time autocrats didn’t like the message, proverbially, they shot the messenger. The new autocrats in the legacy media, the nutroots, or in the higher ivory-towers wouldn’t be so crude. They’d rather denigrate the messenger; the troops and the leaders alike. Taint them by association; paint them as sociopath degenerates, brutal and vengeful and incompetent. Shame them into silence, make them shrink back into the little Nowheresvilles they crawled out of, put away their uniforms and their medals, and hide their associations away in the corners.

Really, it makes it so much easier to betray allies and friends, when these pathetic little people and their stupid “duty, honor and country” just forget all of that and do as their betters like A. Whitney Brown tell them.

And that’s what I think is going on here. Your mileage may vary, of course

Words to Remember

12. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, sarcasm, The Funny

….when it comes to the age-old battle of the sexes:
(gleaned from the FEN Yahoo news-group)

1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

3. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

4. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don’t Do It!

5. Loud Sigh: This is actually not a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)

6. That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

7. Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or Faint. Just say you’re welcome.

8. Whatever: Is a women’s way of saying F@!K YOU!

9. Don’t worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking “What’s wrong?” For the woman’s response refer to #3.

(Post any additional loaded words or phrases in coments)

Apocalypto: DVD Review

21. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, That's Entertainment!, World

It’s a curious movie, very different from the usual run of action flics. It reminded me in some ways of “Dances With Wolves”, in the degree of attention to detail paid to the lives of the Mayans. (Did anyone else but me notice, that in “Dances With Wolves”, every conversation among the Indians was carried out while they were going something? Work, mostly. No one was just sitting around, yacking to further the plot points. They were doing something, and talking as an aside…) The DVD of Apocalypto is available very shortly, and I posted a review on Blogger News Network, here.

Another One

09. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

…of those e-mailed lists going the rounds:

Number 10: Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9: Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8: Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. f you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.

Number 7: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.

Number 6: Some people are like a slinky … Not really good for anything, but you still can’t help
but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

Number 5:Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Number 4: All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Number 3: Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you 30.00?

Number 2: In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take prozac to make it normal.

And the number 1 thought for 2007: We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven’t got a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.

And finally, this little warning: “Life is like a jar of jalepenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow”.

Why Is Duct Tape Like the Force?

06. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General

Because it has a light side , and a dark side, and it binds the Universe together!

And also does a pretty good job on ducts, too. Which is why I remembered that joke: I’ve been up in the attic crawlspace, possibly my least-favorite place in my house, although flat on my back with an adjustable wrench in my hand trying to remedy a persistent malevolent leak under a bathroom sink is in neck-and-neck competition.

Did Martha Stewart ever do a show, or a magazine article about replacing lengths of AC duct? I seriously doubt she ever has; it has all the charm and appeal of a DIY septic tank pumping. About all that can be said in favor is that replacing lengths of ducting yourself is significantly cheaper than paying someone, even an illegal alien to do it for you. I was actually briefed on how to do it, by a client six or seven jobs ago, who did HVAC as a side-line. Being that my house is fairly new, and everything about it is standard and bought by the contractor truck-load, swapping out any elements, from door-knobs to the kitchen sink is a pretty straightforward one-for-one exchange with stuff on the shelf at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

See, this came up because I had the yearly maintenance inspection done a couple of weeks ago, and the technician said the AC unit is fine and functioning as well as could be expected… but that the ducts were well beyond anything but last rites… there were in fact, gaping holes in the inner layer of the largest ducts, where the plastic outer layer had disintegrated, and the fiberglass insulation layer had also dissolved. This must have developed late last summer, or perhaps over the winter… as I said, the attic crawlspace is not my most favorite place in the house. It does explain why the air emerging from the vents in some rooms was coming out as a less-than-frigid blast, even when the thermostat was set really, really low.

And this is South Texas, where air conditioning in the summer is absolutely positively essential. I don’t even live in one of those old-fashioned houses, which they used to build in the days before routine installation of AC… you know, the sort of houses with deep verandahs, thick walls and a good cross-breeze through tall windows on all sides? We flirted with the thought of patching the broken places by wrapping them with layers of heavy plastic trash bags and a lot of duct tape… but how would we know if there were other breaks, in places we couldn’t see them? It was just easier and probably cheaper in the long run to buy three boxes of different-sized ducting, two packages of plastic ties… and lots of duct tape, and spend a lot of uncomfortable time scrambling around in the rafters.

With luck, I will manage to replace all the segments running from the central unit to the various registers without putting a foot through the ceiling. I can’t spend too long up there at a stretch; either… it gets too hot, now that I have stopped up most of the cool-air leaks!

Power and Control

02. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Military, My Head Hurts, Rant, Stupidity, World

Well, so much for active-duty Army mil-blogging, if the Army Powers-That-Be have their way. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, public affairs-wise… but color me fairly unsurprised by this latest move to constrain active-duty Army bloggers. Frankly, if I am surprised at anything, it’s that milblogs by active-duty troops managed to escape the clammy clutches of the Public Affairs office for as long as they have. For a long while, I thought that someone up in the higher-echelons was actually being rather clever; in taking the hands-off approach. Milblogs got the word out, without being tainted by association with military propaganda; about the war, about the military, provided expert commentary and feedback, under no particular censorship other than that of good sense and op-sec as practiced by the individual.

For surely the military public affairs world must have known about military bloggers, fairly early on (say at least by 2002). I myself made a long slog up to the PA shop at BAMC about that time, offering to pass on any appeals they might have on behalf of injured troops. This was when Blondie was over in Kuwait, and our readers at the time were overwhelmingly generous to her unit… to the point where I wanted to see it shared with other troops. I talked to a civilian PA type, who at least had heard of military blogs, and promised to pass on my e-mail and URL to his superiors, and that was the last I ever heard. I’d have thought, based on my own experience, that as interested as the Public Affairs was in traditional media coverage of the military… I’d have seen a little more interest. Unless they were total boobs about this newfangled internet thingy. That wouldn’t have surprised me… much, but assuming some sort of hands-off policy at least gave credit for intelligence and creative thinking at the highest military PA level.

But… and that is the industrial-sized, multi-purpose, all-wool-and-a-yard-wide but (Hey, who let Rosie O’Donnell in here?). But… the military is an authoritarian institution. Top down and paved wall-to-wall with regulations for most things. As a rough rule of thumb, those in charge are supposed to have an idea about what the lower ranks are up to… yes, even you, General Karpinski. And those in charge prefer that those lower down the chain of command are doing what they have been told to do. Personal initiative is all very nice, and even lauded from those who have proved they can exercise it wisely and responsibly. For everyone else, there are rules. And it is one of those lamentable realities of the military world that almost the first reaction to a new situation or set of conditions is to make a rule or regulation about it. Leopard, spots, can’t change. Reaction, knee-jerk, officers for the use of.

I thought the Army was about the most extreme in this regard; the Air Force generally operated on the initial assumption that their personnel were intelligent and responsible, and only descended like a ton of bricks when an individual decisively proved the contrary. The Army seemed to operate from the opposite set of assumptions…possibly because it either saved time or was just easier. I saw a perfect example of this during my year in Korea, at Yongsan Garrison. Out of the clear blue, the Army Powers-That-Be suddenly forbade uniformed personnel to consume food from street-vendors, unless it was something like a sealed soft-drink can, or something in a package. Probably some poor troop got a tummy-ache from a bite of bad bulgogi at a street stand, but after a great deal of vociferous complaint and requests for clarification (what constituted the sort of food that was forbidden, what exactly was a street vender? Some of the open-air vendors were pretty permanent establishments!) the Powers-That-Be grudgingly clarified their purpose; which was that they didn’t want us to be eating food prepared by unlicensed vendors. Well, asked we at AFN… wouldn’t it be more logical just to tell people to not eat from unlicensed vendors… maybe, perhaps, maybe teach our audience what a Korean Department of Health food-vendor’s license looked like, and how to request it politely?
Certainly not, returned the Army Powers-That-Be, rather grumpily… that was not how the Army did things.

Ah, said we, in resignation… Of course; it was just the easy way. Not the most thoughtful way, or the way that encouraged people’s own sense of self-preservation, or the way that preserved the livelihood of those hard-working and licensed local national food vendors, or the way that might truly protect uniformed personnel from bad food. It was just the easy way. Make a rule.

Pouring Scorn and Derision on Terrorists

19. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, General Nonsense, sarcasm

I thought we ought to have started stuff like this, ages ago. Here’s one small step on the road to making Binny and Friends a laughingstock.

I thought the line about taking out the Verizon guy was giggle-worthy. Courtesy of Rantburg, one of the finest veins of sarcasm around.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN AGING DISC JOCKEY WHEN…

05. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Working In A Salt Mine...

(Courtesy of the FEN news group: One of those nostalgic things going around. I do, in fact, have scars on my fingers from miscalculated cuts, while editing audio tape with a razor blade. Just call me Miss Butterfingers)

– You were first hired by a GM who actually worked in radio before becoming GM.

– Radio stations were no place for kids.

– You excitedly turn the radio up at the sound of “dead air” on the competitor’s station.

– Sales guys wore Old Spice to cover the smell of liquor.

– Engineers could actually fix things without sending them back to the manufacturer.

– You worked for only ONE station, and you could name the guy who owned it.

– Radio stations used to have enough on-air talent to field a softball team every summer.

– You used to smoke in a radio station and nobody cared.

– Engineers always had the worst body odor, not because they worked too hard, but because they just didn’t shower that often.

– You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap reel-to-reel tape.

– Religious radio stations were locally owned, run by an old Protestant minister and his wife, never had more than 20 listeners at any given time, and still made money.

– You have a white wax pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M splicing tape in your desk drawer – – just in case.

– You can post a record, run down the hall, go to the bathroom, and be back in 2:50 for the segue.

– You knew exactly where to put the tone on the end of a carted song.

– You only did “make- goods” if the client complained. Otherwise, who cares?

– You can remember the name of the very first “girl” that was hired in your market as a DJ.

– Somebody would say, “You have a face for radio”, and it was still funny.

– Sixty percent of your wardrobe has a station logo on it.

– You always had a screwdriver in the studio so you could take a fouled-up cart apart at a moment’s notice.

– You always had a solution for an LP that ‘skipped’. (usually a paper clip or a dime on the tone-arm, somewhere)

– You would spend hours splicing and editing a parody tape until it was “just right”, but didn’t care how bad that commercial was you recorded.

– You still refer to CDs as “records”. (really old hands refer to them as ET, or electrical transcriptions)
– You played practical jokes on the air without fear of lawsuits.

– You answer your home phone with the station call letters.

– You used to fight with the news guy over air-time. After all, what was more important: your joke, or that tornado warning?

– You knew how to change the ribbon on the Teletype machine, but you hated to do it because “…that’s the news guy’s job.”

– You know at least 2 people in sales that take credit for you keeping your job.

– You have several old air-check cassettes in a cardboard box in your basement that you wouldn’t dream of letting anyone hear anymore, but, you’ll never throw them out or tape over them. Never!

– You can still see scars on your finger when you got cut using a razor blade and cleaned out the cut with head-cleaning alcohol and an extra long cotton swab on a wooden stick.

– You still have dreams of a song running out and not being able to find the control room door. (I have nightmares about the various players not working, or the control board has magically reconfigured itself)

– You’ve ever told a listener “Yeah.I’ll get that right on for you.”

– You have a couple of old transistor radios around the house with corroded batteries inside them.

– People who ride in your car exclaim, “Why is your radio so loud?”

– You remember when promotion men brought new LPs to the station – and you played them the same day.

– You have at least 19 pictures of you with famous people whom you haven’t seen since, and wouldn’t know you today if you bit ’em on the ass.

– You wish you could have been on “Name That Tune” because you would have won a million bucks.

– You even REMEMBER “Name That Tune”.

– You were a half an hour late for an appearance and blamed it on the directions you received from the sales person.

– You’ve run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and gave the tickets to your cousin.

– You remember when people actually thought radio was important.

AARGH

17. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Home Front

Red Haired Girl competed in the regional Scripps Spelling Bee this week – a victory there would have taken her to Washington for the national competition. She’s a very good speller, but these things tend to be luck-of-the-draw (I never heard of a cruller, or for that matter, a muumuu). She did well until the second from the last (p-e-n-u-l-t-i-m-a-t-e) round when she got the word fuselage. When asked to repeat the word, the pronouncer – consistent with her performance the entire evening – gave it a somewhat British flavor. RHG, who reads a lot but not the things that boys read, spelled it the way it was pronounced that night – fusilage. Another girl was eliminated for spelling angst as ongst, and yet another for spelling chronology as chrinology – in both cases they spelled it as it was pronounced to them.

I have always considered my time in the USAF in the early seventies to be a defining point in my life, and have an on-going fascination with airplanes, so this particular defeat was somewhat crushing. RHG took it in stride though, looking forward to next year. On the way home we went through some words that she might encounter in the future, like empennage.

The Top Ten Signs That You’re Being Stalked By A Leprechaun

17. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

(More e-mail fun, for St. Patrick’s Day)

Generic-looking green van parked across the street with Notre Dame bumper sticker.

Every time you turn around the pitter-pattering stops and that green fire hydrant seems to have gotten a little closer.

Green lipstick marks on the butt of your Dockers.

You’re being followed by a large woman with a sultry voice and a dying career. (Oops! That’s a sign you’re being stalked by Chaka Khan.)

You don’t recall owning an anatomically correct lawn gnome.

Card delivered with the bouquet of 4-leaf clovers reads, “I bet you’re magically delicious!”

When you come home from work, the potatoes are missing from the cupboard and your parrot is singing “Danny Boy.”

Prank caller has a really corny Irish accent, and Richard Gere has an airtight alibi.

Those tiny green hairs on your toilet seat.

Sultry voice from shower soap dish asks, “Is that your shillelagh, or are you just happy to see me?”

Pink hearts, yellow moons, blue diamonds scratched on your car at knee-level, and Ross Perot is nowhere to be found.

Them little green pellets in the litter box ain’t M&M’s, Chester.

Every day this week you’ve noticed the same buckle shoes dangling just above the floor in the stall next to you.

Job Descriptions in the Real World

15. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, sarcasm, World

(From one of those e-mail lists going the rounds)

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn’t know you had in a way you don’t understand.

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. (Mark Twain)

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he
predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the
personality to be an accountant.

An actuary is someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane, because that
decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the plane.
(Laurence J. Peter)

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
which isn’t there.(Charles R. Darwin)

A topologist is a man who doesn’t know the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000 word document and calls it a
“brief.”

A psychologist is a man who watches everyone else when a beautiful girl enters the room.

A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.

A schoolteacher is a disillusioned woman who used to think she liked
children.

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

I WOULD RATHER GOUGE MY EYES OUT WITH A DULL SPOON THAN TUNE INTO FOX NEWS

10. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, Politics, sarcasm

One of the things I like about the Democratic party is that when they form firing squads, which they are often wont to do, they do so in a circular fashion. In their latest move, they pulled out of a co-sponsorship arrangement with Fox News for an August debate of Democratic presidential hopefuls in Las Vegas. This was precipitated by MoveOn.org, whose members apparently cannot bring themselves to tune their TVs to Fox News, and whose leader has reportedly said that his organization “owns” the Democratic party. I hear that there is a deal with al Jazeera in the works.

Where is Zell Miller when the country and his party need him?

AN Art Linkletter Interlude

04. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Home Front, The Funny

I received an email from an aunt whom I’ve not seen since my Dad’s funeral in 1978, but who recently discovered email and the viral distribution of jokes and stories. The most recent message was titled “Funny Things Kids Say to Their Grandparents”. Having brought Red Haired Girl home at nearly forty years of age, I can personally attest that it is not always the grandparents who get the good zingers about age. Anyway, here are some of the choice ones.

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather’s word
processor. She told him she was writing a story. “What’s it about?” he
asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t read.”

——————————————————————–

My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday He
asked me how old I was, and I told him, “62.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Did you start at 1?”

Oscar Night

25. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, That's Entertainment!

So, anyone else going to stay up and watch the Oscars tonight?
Meh… I was surprised as heck to discover that I have actually seen anything nominated this year for anything like a major award. Blondie dragged me to “The Devil Wears Prada”… which made me wince uncomfortably about some of the people that I have worked for. And we watched “Pirates of the Caribbean” on video. I did actually go out and see “Flight 93” (my review here), but it’s only up for editing.
Good enough reason to watch some taped stuff… catch up in the morning. About the only thing that interests me at this point, is which actress was suckered into wearing the most hideous gown, but I’m damned if I’ll burn a couple of hours of my life trying to figure that out.

Later: Oh man, the Goracle’s global-warming screed getting an Oscar while large chunks of the US are snowed under and frozen stiff is a vein of irony as rich as a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. Relish it deeply!

More Than a River in Egypt

21. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Home Front, Politics

Ordinarily I don’t link to stuff that Instapundit links to, as I suspect that is redundant… but in the case of this particular “shrinkish” essay, I make an exception. The good doctor touches on some very salient points… and kind of explains why the level of discourse on certain topics has sunk to the vitriolic level that it has. Read and follow the links, for extra credit.

The Writer’s Life Waltz Again

12. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Home Front, The Funny

Oh, the blogging has been light this last week, since I was trapped in the snares of literary endeavor. That is, pounding out chapter 12 of the new book. Some of the chapters come easily, as if they were already written down in my head, and some of them are hauled out inch by inch and word by word. Last week was one of the ï¿½hauled out inch by inchï¿½ weeks, but the week before I knocked out three chapters. Ehï¿½ go figure. I also had a couple of hours to work on Friday at the part-time secretarial-admin job, that between a weekly shift at the radio station, my retiree pension, and the very-slightly-more than paltry income from blogging allows me to stay at home and slave over a hot computer writing this centuryï¿½s answer to ï¿½Gone With the Windï¿½.

So I am completely uninterested in the hot-news-item do jour, the pitiful life and sad demise of whats-er-fern (Ok, so her and Princess Di- first time tragedy, second time farce, and all that? Are we sure that the late and extravagantly mourned Ms A.N. Smith was not actually some animatronic creation devised by the tabloid industrial complex in order to generate the maximum quantity of tawdry headlines? I mean, inerrantly choosing the maximum tackiest of life choices at every possible opportunityï¿½ that goes beyond a gift: that argues a fiendish degree of forethought and planning. Oh, well, at least there is no breath of a whisper that she got it off with anyone really, really important in politics. Yet, anyway. Where was Iï¿½ oh, yesï¿½ creation of semi-competent pop literature. Back on track, sorry for the diversion.)

I did briefly slip the shackles of duty yesterday: my sister Pippy had sent my daughter and I both gift cards for Borders Books, and so we popped down to spend a semi-blissful afternoon picking out the books that we wanted. Blondie went for an illustrated Terry Pratchett, but I had resolved to spend the gift card on some books that I could use for ï¿½the bookï¿½ï¿½ ones that I didnï¿½t have to keep returning to the library! I already possessed a good number of books that I needed for the writing of ï¿½Truckeeï¿½s Trailï¿½, but in writing ï¿½Adelsvereinï¿½ I am starting from scratch, and discovering that there exists a ton of excellent and thoroughly researched non-fiction about the German settlements. Either I can check it out from the library and keep it for about a month and a half at a stretch with renewals, or buy the stuff that I know I will need for longer.

And this book is going to be longer. Iï¿½ve already mapped out thirty chapters, and they have a wicked way of expanding, as interesting happenings and characters beg for more attention. Forty years worth of events in the Texas Hill country has an insidious way of becoming totally fascinating. Not to mention the people, of course. I write sometimes with a book open on my lap, to refresh my memory about places, descriptions, events and people. This is our history, and those who came before us; I need to get it all right. How it looked, tasted, smelled, what people in that time would have thought and felt and seen. Details count. I put myself in that place, with a book in my lap, and it all comes clear.

Oh, yes, the people: both the real ones, and the ones that I have totally justï¿½ you knowï¿½ like made up? They take on life of their own, which is exhilarating and kind of scary at the same time. Itï¿½s easy and at the same time hard to write about them. For instance: in the next couple of weeks I will have to write about the deaths of three very appealing charactersï¿½ one of whom is a fairly major hero. Sorry, it just has to be, for such sad events drive the plot, and it has always been so, from the instant that I conceived the whole story arc. (And it really was in an instant. I read something in one of the booksï¿½ and just knew instantly that that was something which had to be a part of it story. This has happened, over and over. Really.) But still, it will be hard to write about. I was in tears for one whole afternoon, writing about a character in an early chapter who was fairly dispensable and barely seen anyway.

About the only harder thing to do will be about half a chapter on the heroineï¿½s wedding night; something tender and erotic and a bit funny. Knowing that most women of the era were kept in a total state of ignorance about what the marriage bed involved, and that most men had a fairly detailed ideaï¿½ and that a lot of married women of the era adored their husbands with desperate and operatic devotion (Queen Victoria herself, exhibit 1)ï¿½ well, really, that argues that a fair number of Victorian-era bridegrooms must have done some fairly effective sex-education, at speed and on the fly, as it were. Otherwise, I presume their wives would have been (a) traumatized incredibly, and (b) loathed their so-called helpmates to really unparalleled degree. I am fairly sure that good properly married Victorians really had about as much fun in bed as any of the rest of usï¿½ they just didnï¿½t go on about all the details as much. This proper reticence just makes it harder for the rest of us. I donï¿½t mind, really.

Blondie says she will loan me some of her bodice-ripping romances, in order that I should get into the proper spirit. Yeough; if they dictate that I should have to write a sentence like ï¿½she grasped his throbbing man-root and guided it into her turgid fleshï¿½ I am so going to put my head in the oven. (For about 15 minutes)

It is an electric oven anyway, but you get the general idea.

Unneccessary Snark

02. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, sarcasm

While practically everyone in the mil-blogosphere, and the blogosphere in general is lining up and taking turns to thwack the “Piniata o’ The Month”, one William Arkin who is represented to be (admittedly on very thin grounds) the “military expert” for a couple of legacy media outlets who should have known better….
Oh, one of them was the L.A. Times. Never mind. Anyway, I thought the Washington Post might have known better. It’s just that it looks like this doofus’s claim to be a military expert is based on a four-year Army enlistment in the 70ies. According to Hugh Hewitt in this article ‘many of his bylines from the past two decades described him as a “military intelligence analyst” ‘

“Military Intelligence” — Wasn’t that one of those things which was always being sarcastically desribed as a contradiction in terms? Honestly, sometimes these things just write themselves.
More piniata-whacking here, if you have the strength.

Caption This One (070126)

26. January 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games

(U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Gina Chiaverotti)You know what to do and where to do it.

If you want to submit a picture, send it to me. I’m kind of tired of finding them myself. Keep them military related and remember, no branch or rank is sacred. Also, please try to give me a link and/or credit.
Others:

OTB.

Wizbang.

Here’s a different way to pass the time….

31. December 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, Fun and Games, General

I’d love to see what Julia could do with this one.

DIRECTIONS
1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 — first sentence
3. Book #2 — last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 — second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 — next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.

My result:

In a sheepfarmer’s low stone house, high in the hills above Three Firs, two swords hang now above the mantelpiece.
“I want from you an alert, a query, transmitted to all your agents around the world, barring none.”
“Who decides what to do?” So did the alcohol: the sinners who drank it became more insolent; the prohibitionists who reviled it grew enraged at its proximity. He might as well have been singing.

The instructions seem a little vague, though… “Make the five sentences into a paragraph.” Does that mean simply copy the five in straight sequence, with no additions, as I’ve done above, or does it mean to be a little creative?

In a sheepfarmer’s low stone house, high in the hills above Three Firs, two swords hang now above the mantelpiece. “That’s irrelevant,” he snarled. “I want from you an alert, a query, transmitted to all your agents around the world, barring none.” He might as well have been singing, for all the attention his words received. The tension in the room increased. So did the alcohol: the sinners who drank it became more insolent; the prohibitionists who reviled it grew enraged at its proximity. But who decides what to do?

I’m thinking this would be a good writing exercise, or another tool for combating Writers’ Block.

Oh, and my five books were:

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon
A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
Sporting Chance by Elizabeth Moon
Rising Tide:The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry
The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

These are just the five that were closest to my sofa, not requiring me to get up and search for books to use.

h/t: Joshilyn Jackson (who, it seems, has written a book titled after my favorite Georgia town name. Must. Get. Book.)

Caption This One (061229)

29. December 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games

(U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Garrett Hothan)Winners on Monday…ish.

Wizbang goes to the Apollo.

OTB believes in the magic of the holidays.

Caption This One (061222) Dah Winnah

22. December 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games

(US Army Photo by Tech Szu-Moy Ruiz)APV: “This red blip only occurs once a year, a few days after the winter solstice. It almost looks like a flying reindeer, but that’s impossible.”

Bad, Bad Toys

20. December 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Pajama Game

Ran across this little account of the Very Worst Toys Ever, and began to chortle…. Not so much at the toys themselves, although JP, and Pippy and I were actually given at least one of the deadly worst and a couple of the others mentioned in the comments.

We, of course, emerged un-maimed, although Dad probably regrets to this day that he didn’t give either one of us the atomic energy lab. Probably couldn’t afford it, as he was only a poor graduate student on the GI bill, round and about then. We did have loving and generous grandparents, though; how we didn’t ever get BB rifles like all the other neighborhood kids is a mystery. Mom probably put her foot down about that, believing that yes, you could put out an eye with them. Well, so could you with a “wrist rocket”. We had a pair of them, a sort of bent-metal sling-shot with a bottom end that braced against your wrist so that you could sling a bit of gravel at practically ballistic speed. But they weren’t toys- we had them to chase the blue jays away from the house where they tormented the cats and dogs unmercifully. As far as I know, Dad was the only one of us who ever actually hit a blue-jay with a wrist-rocket impelled missile. Square in the butt, actually. It let out an enormous squawk and vacated the premises henceforth and forthwith and at a good speed.

We did have a variant of the creepy-crawler toy, with the heater that heated up a pair of metal moulds that (IIRC) made little GI Joe figures and their various little accoutrements. Just open the little bottles of black and brown and OD green rubber compound goop, pour into the molds, and bake until done. It did heat up quite hot, and the baking rubber smelt pretty vile. Still, no dangerous adventures to report, no animals ever ingested the little marble-super-balls… but the “clackers” rather lost their charm after some painful bruises. Picture a pair of billiard-sized balls, on either end of a length of cord, with a finger-hold in the middle. The object was to get them going, “clacking” them against each other while hanging from your hand, and then get them going so fast that they would rebound and “clack” against each other above your hand. Eh… it was the novelty toy in about 1966… for as long as it took for kids to figure out that the damned things hurt.

Other bad, bad toys? Definitely the water-rocket. I clearly remember watching Dad and JP launch them from the back yard of the White Cottage, which would put it squarely in the early 60ies, the Golden Age of Really, Really Dangerous Toys. It was bulbous blue plastic rocket; there may have been a pair of them. They flew on an interesting combination of (I think!) baking soda, vinegar, water from a garden hose screwed into the launcher mechanism, and some kind of pressure pump-thingus. It was a wet and messy business, preparing for flight, but they zoomed up to a thrilling height from the ground when released from the launcher with considerable force.

Who needed lawn darts to maim each other with, when you had rocket power? Although to be fair, I don’t think we had nearly as much thrilling fun with them, as we did when Dad was overseeing the launching. And Dad brought us enough in the way of dangerous toys; it was his notion to snake-proof us at an early age, by having us handle the not-so-dangerous sorts. And Dad was the one who gave us an enormous magnifying glass and showed us how to focus the suns’ rays with it, so that we could set stuff on fire. And he brought home dry ice from the lab; heaps of fun, throwing a great lump of it into the baby’s wading pool, and enjoying the bubbling, and the billows of white vapor. That was nearly as much good clean fun as the insulated flask of liquid hydrogen, and dipping leaves and rose petals into it for a moment… then dropping them on the tile kitchen counter where they would shatter like glass.

Grannie Jessie was notoriously blasé about toy hazards, but even Grannie Dodie, who wasn’t, still let us play with Dad’s classic old Erector set, which included enough small nuts and screws to provide a choking hazard to an entire elementary school… and the crown jewel, a small electric motor. Said motor was a good three or four decades old when we played with it, and even to my eyes looked a little… I don’t know… frayed? Insulation cracked… connections not quite up to par? We never managed to spindle, shock, or mutilate with it, so perhaps it wasn’t quite so child-unsafe as I remember it. Oh, yeah dangerous toys – bicycles without helmets, large horses, and go-carts on steep hillside trails, rope swings in tall trees.
Oddly enough, we survived. Even without the toy nuclear lab. Add your own accounts of Bad, Bad Toys. Especially if they were received as Christmas presents.

(Don’t drool, people… Dad’s old Erector set survived our childhood, still in the original case, but it was in their garage when the house burned to the ground, four years ago.)

Caption This One (061201)

01. December 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games

(U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Joshua Strang)

Winners on Monday

Other Captioning Blogginess.

Wizbang

Venemous Kate

Custom of the Season

27. November 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

I did, on one single occasion, spend the entire Friday-after-Thanksgiving in the mall and department store. Not because I had a yen for joining the yearly Christmas-shopping exercise in masochism… but because I was working retail that year. I was on terminal leave, and job-hunting in a desultory fashion, and took a temp position in a department store which paid a salary plus commission on sales. (If nothing else, this arrangement will guarantee attentive sales staff… and besides, the employee discount was totally generous.) It was rather fun, at first; If you truly enjoy shopping, and hanging out with other women, and people-watching, who wouldn’t get a kick from hanging around a department store? But the day after Thanksgiving was all that and doing a sort of sales-floor triathlon; we were at top speed all that long day. Not much more than half an hour for lunch, no times when it slowed down long enough that you could sit down in the back room and put up your feet.
Dense crowds in the mall, cars slowly rotating the parking lots looking for that rare species, a parking place, long lines at every cash register, and workdays that stretched out so long that another sales associate lamented that the only place she could shop for Christmas, besides the store we worked in was Walmart, because it was open twenty four hours a day. I had my fill of holiday retail madness after that experience, and truth is, I usually don’t need to shop for Christmas presents during December.

That is because I am one of those tiresomely organized people who shop for Christmas throughout the year. I didn’t start out that way, honestly… it came about because of being overseas for so long. The mail deadline for sending parcels to the States, and getting them there by Christmas was routinely in October, which meant that I had to be done with shopping by the end of September. Sometimes opportunities to shop were limited, which stretched the shopping season out for a couple of months, and bumped back even thinking about what to get everyone to… oh, say early summer. Spring, even. This set the habit for me, of buying things with an eye towards Christmas… especially if they were on sale, whenever I saw them. “OOhhh, that would be perfect for (insert name here)!”, so add it to the collection in the box on the top shelf of the master suite closet. Christmas… it comes every year, just like April 15th. Putting off doing anything about buying gifts or doing the income tax return will not, will not make either of them go away. Trust me on this.

This has the advantage of being extremely easy on the pocketbook… as long as you remember who the heck you bought something for; a disadvantage with a large family. So, all I have to do during December’s retail madness is to take out the box with the gifts bought throughout the year, and wrap them… in the paper that I bought the week after Christmas of last year when it was marked down 70%.
And put up my feet and have another glass of Chablis. You’re welcome – I live to serve.

(next: Sgt. Mom’s specialty gift Christmas baskets)

Caption This One (061124) Da Winnah!

24. November 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games

(USAF Courtesy Photo BY David Darkow)

John Jenkins: The iRifle plugs into your iPod here.

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