Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
Wizbang’s got proof that not all members of the bin Laden clan are worthless.
Rodney’s finally given up the Santa references and is back to…politics as usual.
And a question for you regulars. Do you WANT me to pick a winner or are you okay with my just letting it fade away?
Shamelessly stolen from The Venemous One, here’s a list of end of year memes for you all to play with:
1. Who is your candidate for the Biggest Idiot of 2005 (excluding yours truly, of course) and why?
Howard Dean for making it appear that the Democrats truly do hate our country.
2. If you had a time machine, what one event in 2005 would you undo?
Hurricane Katrina.
3. List someone famous (living or dead) who ought to be a blogger and think up a blog title for his/her blog.
John Belushi blogging at, Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
4. Run to your underwear drawer (or wherever you stow your undies) and list all of the things there that are not underwear. (No fibbing!)
Various and sundry laundry tags, a collection of orphan socks and an old Zippo Lighter.
5. List the title (with a link) to the single worst entry you wrote during 2005. (Score extra karma points if you post an entry on your blog linking back to this question.)
I don’t like most of what I write about two days after I’ve written it. Why don’t you all tell me what your least favorite post of mine was?
6. Let’s pretend you’re going to write your autobiography next year. What will it be titled?
The Recruiter Forgot to Mention That
MORE:
7. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before?
Shaved my head.
8. What was the best thing you bought?
Toss up between our iPods and the Bose Home Theater.
9. Where did most of your money go?
Paying off debt and getting some things that improved our quality of life.
10. What was your greatest musical (re)discovery?
Led Zepplin. Especially Robert Plant.
Something to do while you wait to eat, or before you nap.
1. YOUR PORN STAR NAME: (first pet and street name):
Fluffy Ashland
2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on mother’s side first name, favorite candy):
Leo Snickers
3. YOUR “FLY GIRL/GUY” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name):
T. Tra
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite animal, name of high school mascot):
Cat Tiger
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born):
Joe Chicago
6. YOUR OPPOSITE SEX NAME: (name of dad/mom, cell phone Company you use):
Rita Verizon
7. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother’s maiden, first 3 letters of your pet’s name)
Tra Ers Mik
How to tell when your getting older:
Your house plants are alive, and you can’t smoke any of them.
Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.
You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
You hear your favorite song in an elevator.
You watch the Weather Channel.
Your friends marry and divorce instead of “hook up” and “break up.”
You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.
Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as “dressed up.”
You’re the one calling the police because those %&@.. kids next door
won’t turn down the stereo.
Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
You don’t know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.
Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.
You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonald’s leftovers.
Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.
You take naps from noon to 6 PM
Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.
Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset,
rather than settle, your stomach.
If you’re a gal, you go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.
A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer “pretty good stuff.”
You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.
“I just can’t drink the way I used to” replaces “I’m never going to drink that much again.”
90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.
You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.
The poochie-liberation-front has struck again…PETA does’nt have s**t on me!!!!!
This from William J. Dobson at TNR:
There is no question that the growing size and scope of public unrest is a matter of grave concern for Beijing’s leadership. But what must be more alarming than the number of protests is something more fundamental: the erosion of the political formula that is supposed to keep the current regime in power. The Chinese Communist Party believed that, with the ushering in of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms more than two decades ago, it had struck a grand political bargain with the people: that as long as Beijing kept the country’s economic engine humming the public would accept both the lack of political freedom and the state’s abandonment of the socialist principles upon which it was founded. Income was supposed to replace ideology.
But the country’s economic growth, which remains among the world’s fastest, is not keeping a lid on dissent. Indeed, just about the only thing rising faster than the country’s economy is the people’s anger at the government. Since 2000, the country has held steady with 9 percent economic growth. During the same time, protests have grown by more than 20 percent a year. For Beijing’s leaders, what is worse than the rising number of protests is not knowing how to stem the tide.
[…]
China’s leaders have probably long since realized a growing economy isn’t enough. Indeed, the country’s experiments in cowboy capitalism have led to many of the abuses that are now fanning the flames of protest. No one doubts that Beijing’s technocrats know what it takes to engineer impressive GDP growth. It’s less clear that they can condition millions of party officials to stop preying on their local populace and to start providing the type of governance that will give the party a good name outside of Beijing.
China’s leaders have been good students of the recent experiences of the former Soviet bloc. yet they have failed to pay heed to one virtually incontrovertible historical fact: economic liberalization virtually always portends political liberalization. Revolt is fomented in the middle and upper, not the lower classes.
I know I’m going to regret this.
Other Captioning Blogginess:
Wizbang
Random Numbers
OTB.
You’ve got to see them to believe them.
Via Michele…who’s NOT blogging at A Small Victory anymore. Yes, I check there now and then hoping that she’s lost her mind and come back.
Because the State Legislature is FREAKIN’ AWESOME!
————–
LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF IDAHO
Fifty-eighth Legislature First Regular Session – 2005
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 29
BY WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION STATING LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND COMMENDING JARED AND JERUSHA HESS AND THE CITY OF PRESTON FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THE MOVIE “NAPOLEON DYNAMITE.”
More »
that I really care about football. I’m the product of a mixed marriage, Dad was a Bears fan, Mom was born and raised in Wisconsin making her a Packers fan down to her very core.
Usually I cheer for both teams when I can watch them play. Except for today. Today it’s different. Today I have to apologize to my Mom and grin up at heavan to my Dad and simply say with no irony:
May the spirit of George Halas be with every one of you.
I woke up way too early coughing my lungs out. I have to at least stop in at work today. My sinuses are packed solid. My head is throbbing.
Laughing seems to clear things up for me.
So…what’s your favorite joke right now? Funny story? Amuzing anecdote?
Wizbang’s is up.
So is OTB’s.
Random Numbers has got one going on.
…To consider the 153,00th way in which I do not resemble Martha Stewart… which is, as of 10:30 AM, Central Time, I was running a medium-warm iron over sheets of gold, green, red and white tissue paper, to take out the wrinkles and fold marks. Yes, indeedy, I am re-using Christmas tissue paper, stuff in which gifts that I received last year were nestled, or slightly crushed and added to the top of a gift bag… for pete’s sake, people, it is only slightly used! It’s perfectly good, and have you seen how much it costs, anyway?
I also re-use the heavy paper gift bags, but then all of our family does: until my parents’ house burned, two years ago October, there were some particularly sturdy bags which had been circulating for a decade or so. Honestly, do we look like we are made out of money? And never mind the cardboard cartons and the large bag of Styrofoam popcorn, out in the garage… with a little forethought a sensible and thrifty person with sufficient storage space need never be caught short of packing materials in this Christmas season… and have you seen how much they charge for packing materials at the post office, or at the Container Store, or your friendly neighborhood accommodation address/UPS Drop/ Kinko-Klone? Why pay for things that your spendthrift friends and retail outlets are sending you, gratis? Honestly, most people will never notice, and those that do, and will hold it against you… well, really, those are people whom you are best off without. If you are related to them by marriage or economic bonds, my sympathies… unfortunately, I do not think Amazon.com offers “A Life” or the means of sending such to them. At the rate things are going, however, this may be possible in the near future. Check back in a year or so.
Number 1 or 2 in the ways in which I do resemble Martha Stewart… Ummm… I am organized, and do my Christmas shopping early. Way early. All during the year, in fact…ever since I bought a Japanese porcelain tea set for my sister Pippy and stashed it under my bed in the barracks in Japan for six months until it came time in October to mail it home. This may actually be what have done it for me, instilled a rigorous sense of what was required, giftwise, and the knowledge that it had better be done in time to mail it to CONUS by the October deadline. You know that Christmas is coming, every year. You know that gifts are obligatory, to those you are bound to, by ties of blood and affection or duty. You know that you will have to buy them something… why not be sensible and organized, and pick up things for them throughout the year, as you see them by chance, or on sale, or as opportunity presents, rather than be bludgeoned into buying any old thing at the last minute, or even… gasp (the last resort of a person who has no clue at all) dashing off a check dated December 25th. Even a gift certificate is better than that, at least showing a grasp of what, and which retail outlets the giftee prefers.
It’s Christmas, people. It comes every year, about this time. It’s not like it is a surprise, or anything. Of course, if you really enjoy being packed into a mall or big-box store, searching for a parking place, and jammed in cheek-by-jowl with a million other shoppers, and being attended to by exhausted retail associates who are wearing tennis shoes because Friday after Thanksgiving is a day they can depend upon being run out of them… well, whatever floats your boat.
I shall think of you as I wrap my own Christmas presents in slightly used tissue paper.
You probably don’t want to hear about how the thrift store is the best place for baskets and picture frames… or that Half Price Books and the grocery store is the best place for books to build pretty Christmas baskets around.
(Buy a basket at the local thrift store, and a cook book at an off-price outlet. Mark a nice recipe, and fill the basket with all the ingredients to make it. Package and ornament as your budget allows. When all else fails, buy people on your list something to eat. This does not fail. Number 3 in the way that I do resemble Martha Stewart.)
It is a truism that travel broadens the mind, and brings the adventurous traveler in contact with many, many things— some of them elevated and educational and some of them mundane – and one of the mundane adventures is the exposure to the many, many different ways that human waste can be disposed of, ranging from the elaborate to the unspeakable.
The United States being, as Europeans are so tiresomely fond of reminding us, a relatively new country, our indoor plumbing arrangements are fairly recent and relatively standardized; rare (at least on the West Coast, and outside the historical districts) it is to encounter the old-fashioned toilet with the water tank up near the ceiling and a chain-pull hanging down, which releases the water, sending it thundering down the pipe to flush the bowl in one mighty, gravity-fed blast. But this was quite the usual sort I encountered in Europe- amusing, noisy, but fairly familiar and most usually clean.
Such is not always the case, as travelers find to their dismay- and even military standards of maintenance and cleanliness are not quite up to the challenge of keeping plumbing in a temporary building gone twenty-years over the originally expected lifetime up to par. This is, of course, a roundabout way of leading into my highly personal account of the Top Three Most Disgusting Public Lavatories I have ever encountered. No doubt, others have encountered worse, and are welcome to comment with the gruesome particulars.
The Third Most Disgusting was a little shed, an outhouse at the edge of a field, beside the road between Towada City and Lake Towada. There was actually nothing inside the shed save a hole in the floor of it and a fetid stench rising from the hole and the unspeakable pit underneath, a stench of such solidity in the heat of summer that you could practically see it, like the little ripples in the air over a cartoon skunk. And that was it— no paper of any sort, no water, just the little shed beside the road. It was the only thing resembling a public lavatory for miles – unless of course, you counted the benjo ditches, but not many Americans had the insouciance to use the ditches, not in broad daylight and in the open, anyway.
I regret to say that the Second Most Disgusting was actually the latrine at EBS-Zaragoza, a little cubicle at the end of a thirty-year old Quonset hut that housed the radio and engineering sections, which cubicle actually boasted a small window. The window saved it by a short head (no pun intended) from being a contender for First, in that it fresh air could be induced to enter, and dilute the potent reek emanating from the urinal. No matter how the cleaning lady scoured it, and no matter how many gallons of bleach and other cleansing agents we poured down it, on hot summer days the odor of crusted urine imbedded in thirty-year old plumbing beat them back and emerged triumphant, wafting down the corridor as far as the passage to the automation room. I hung a neatly lettered sign on the door to the latrine during one particularly hot summer; Warning: You are Now Entering The Bog of Incredible Stench, and everyone laughed their ass off, except for MSgt. Ken, the Station manager, who made me take it down.
The Most Disgusting Public Latrine in the west of the world actually was also in Spain; a service station restroom on the outskirts of San Roque, close by Gibraltar. I had to stop and fill the VEV’s gas tank, and both Blondie (then about 11 years old) and I badly needed to use the facilities. It was immediately apparent, from the moment that I opened the door at the back of the service station building, that the staff of the service station did not include any of the female persuasion. Not only was the toilet and sink caked with a unique assortment of filth, but a cardboard carton which performed as a waste basket – since a lot of facilities in Europe are incapable of digesting toilet paper it was full to overflowing with what in the good old US of A is normally flushed down the toilet – was covered with a moving carpet of enormous insects. Some kind of mutant daddy-long-legs was moving and seething, all over the carton of waste, the floor, the filthy sink and the walls. It looked for all the world like that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie with the cave full of tarantulas. My daughter took one horrified look at it, and said,
“Mom, I don’t have to go that bad!”
Unfortunately, I did. The bushes out at the back of the service station were thin and insubstantial, and I practically levitated a good ten inches over the disgusting seat. I have mercifully blocked out the name of the gas company – otherwise I would have advised nuking it from orbit, as the only way to make sure of it being cleansed from this earth.
Blondie has since made a practice of checking out the women’s restroom of any restaurant before she consumes anything from their menu, on the theory that if they can’t keep the can clean, the Deity knoweth what standards prevail in the kitchen. Words to live by, people, words to live by.
Sense
Common Sense and a Sense of Humor are the same thing simply moving at different speeds.
A Sense of Humor is simply Common Sense dancing.
~Unknown~
When a musician submits a favorties playlist to iTunes and half the songs on it are by THAT musician. No, I want to know what you’re listening to, not what you’re selling. I think far less of Isaac Hayes than I did before.
Steel Curtain. I’m glad it’s going well. I have no doubt we’re kicking ass and taking names. However, I can’t help but feel like a Chicago cop who’s been told he can finally go after the mob guys after a year or two of watching them destroy a neighborhood. Why are we celebrating the fact that we finally did the right thing over on that border?
AFPC. Because I know they’re swamped and I know my life has made them busier the past few months, but I’d like to know what’s happening with the rest of my life.
College Math. They’re really going to make me take it to get my CCAF. Sigh. Shit. Well, once that’s done my Bachelor’s is only about 9 credits away…I know…you don’t have to say it.
France. Let me get this straight, they’ve treated their Muslim poplulation like second class citizens for at least a full generation and when these citizens, who were born there, riot at the fact that they can’t seem to find their way out of the welfare trap, the government offers MORE free crappy stuff? Do I have that right? First of all, send in the Army and stop the frelling rioting. Secondly, lose the system of free crap.
Must work out now.
Your peeves welcome in comments.
…so why don’t you all tell me what you’ve been listening to lately. What’s tickling the ears? What’s putting the hitch in your giddyup (hat tip to Larry the Cable Guy)? What are you and yours using to get the bowm-chicka-bowm-bowm flowing?
…if only because she realizes that we’d honestly be inteterested in The Professional Cheerleader Blog, and it doesn’t seem odd to her to let us know about it.
So, in what movie does the following line of dialogue appear? (No fair googling)
“…The kidnapper yelled “greetings!”, and melted his lug-wrench…”
| King Edward I You scored 81 Wisdom, 77 Tactics, 60 Guts, and 53 Ruthlessness! |
| Or rather, King Edward the Longshanks if you’ve seen Braveheart. You, like Edward, are incredibly smart and shrewd, but you win at any costs…. William Wallace died at his hands after a fierce Scottish rebellion against his reign. Despite his reputation though, Longshanks had the best interests of his people at heart. But God help you if you got on his bad side. |
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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Which Historic General Are You Test written by dasnyds on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
Via Dave at It Comes In Pints?.
