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

31. December 2006 · Comments Off on Here’s a different way to pass the time…. · 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.)

The Year of Living Dangerously

31. December 2006 · Comments Off on The Year of Living Dangerously · Categories: General, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, War

If the personal stuff is anything to go by, then 2006 was the year of living dangerously. It’s the year when both my daughter and I cheerfully said “the hell” to what we had been doing for a while, and resolved to pursue what we really wanted. Blondie plunged into college (funded by the GI Bill, and a small VA disability payment), and I exited full-time employment in the pink-collar ghetto with a cheerful face and almost indecent haste. No, really, I think I was given a healthy shove just as I was nerving myself up to jump. Life is too short to spend it looking at the clock and wishing for the work day to end so you can get to the stuff you really want to be doing.

But I look ahead to 2007 with a vague yet unshakeable feeling of dread. I have the feeling that things are happening faster and faster; and that they are well beyond anyone’s ability to control. There have been… is the word “portents” too heavy? Baleful, maybe; like one of those Technicolor Texas sunrises; all purple clouds edged with gold and the sun rising blood-red in smear of pink sky. One thinks of that kind of sunrise as a herald, a red sky as a warning of storms.

The execution of Saddam Hussein is just the most recent of these events; did it not seem to happen very suddenly? The various trials looked to be one of those continuing circuses that would drag on for decades. Saddam would grow fat and old, and his lawyers would quibble, delay and appeal for stays, and he would eventually die of something prosaic like a heart attack, long after anyone ceased to care, except for the last few toothless protest ‘tards waving signs in front of the last few McDonalds’ in Europe. Instead… short walk and a swift drop, thank you very much.

Iran with nukes, and a charismatic leader with apocalyptic visions… and a hard-on for Jew-killing. Not a reassuring combination, all things considered. Consider also that this doesn’t seem to bother the usual UN and Euro protest ‘tards who have a conniption every time an American administration sneezes. The possibility of a mushroom cloud blossoming over Tel Aviv, or Marsailles, or Rome doesn’t seem to keep much more than a handful of us awake at night… Eh, it won’t be a US nuke, so what? They’re the only ones that really matter, apparently.

Even more dispiriting than the possibility of Iran using nuclear materiel for un-peaceful purposes, (which admittedly is only a possibility) is the challenge which has already been conceded, yielded up and surrendered by our mainstream press and so-called intellectual elites. Contemplate how easily and how consistently the flow of AP and Reuters news releases, video and still photography from Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority were slanted by partisan interests. Now there is a dagger in the heart of any pretense at impartiality. Rathergate and See-BS 60 Minutes might have been a one-off, and I’ve been able to avoid watching TV news magazines for years, but AP and Reuters releases are at the heart of local newspapers everywhere, especially those who can’t afford to send a reporter much beyond city limits.

The affair of the Danish Mohammad Cartoons depresses me even more, every time I think on it. For me it is a toss-up which of these qualities is more essential, more central to western society: intellectual openness to discussion and freewheeling criticism of any particular orthodoxy, the separation of civil and religious authority, and the presence of a robust and independent press. The cravenness of most of our legacy media in not publishing or broadcasting the Dread Cartoons o’ Doom still takes my breath away.

They have preened themselves for years on how brave they are, courageous in smiting the dread McCarthy Beast, ending the Horrid Vietnam Quagmire and bringing down the Loathsome Nixon… but a dozen relatively tame cartoons. Oh, dear… we must be sensitive to the delicate religious sensibilities of Moslems. Never mind about all that bold and fearless smiting with the pen, and upholding the right of the people to know, we mustn’t hurt the feelings of people who might blow up the Press Club*. The alacrity with which basic principals were given up by the legacy press in the face of quite real threats does not inspire me with confidence that other institutions will be any more stalwart.

Interesting times, interesting times… as that Chinese curse has it. It would make a great book, though… assuming that we survive it all. A then-obscure poem quoted in a New Years Day broadcast, sixty-eight years ago has a an odd resonance for me this year:

“I said to a man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown,’ and he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light and safer than a known way.”

(M.L. Harkins, 1875-1957, quoted by King George VI, 1 January 1940)

(BTW, The new book is shaping up nicely, with practically operatic levels of drama, murder, vengeance, betrayal and stolen children. The proposal for the novel about the Stephens Party is going to be presented by a writer friend of mine to his publisher, so keep fingers crossed on that one!)

* Meaning the MSM, legacy media, lamestream media… which as a national institution seems to be imploding of its’ own weight

Spirit of America still standing fast

30. December 2006 · Comments Off on Spirit of America still standing fast · Categories: A Href, General

Today’s Opinion Journal online has an editorial by Daniel Henninger about Jim Hake’s Spirit of America.

I love his subtitle: “Cut and Run is Not in Their Vocabulary.”

It is ironic that despite the years of our daily engagement in these places, the “information age” has brought us so little knowledge about the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologically, much of America has already cut and run from these two countries.

Some Americans, though, simply won’t.

In April 2004, this column told the story of Spirit of America, organized by Jim Hake, to provide citizen-supported aid to the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then in May 2005 this space was given over to an account of American businesswomen working to help women in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Here in the U.S., the political new year will fill up fast enough with politicians and pundits offering ways to unwind and spindle the commitments America made to Iraq and Afghanistan. So this seemed a good moment to revisit the folks running Spirit of America and the Business Council for Peace. They’re not going to leave.

(snip)

With the SonoSite ultrasound company, SoA delivered handheld ultrasound machines to the primary hospital in Al Qaim, Iraq, near the Syrian border. “Before this,” said Mr. Hake, “they were using seashells to listen to the sounds of a pregnant mother and baby; the Marines couldn’t believe it.”

Jim Hake says Spirit of America’s contributions have fallen off since 2004 owing to general fatigue with Iraq, “but under the circumstances people continue to be quite generous.” An end-of-the-year funding request raised more than $150,000. “The emails we send to donors are not a good-news operation,” says Mr. Hake. “We don’t want to put a happy face on it. But the information is more encouraging than what they typically hear. The destroyed projects are hardly good news, but there are lots of guys and gals in the military there who are not just marking time, who want to see this work.”

If you’re looking for groups to support with your hard-earned dollars, after you’ve sent your share to Valour-IT, think about Spirit of America and the Business Council for Peace.

Women in Statuary Hall

30. December 2006 · Comments Off on Women in Statuary Hall · Categories: General

I don’t pay much attention to DC architecture, and was pretty much unaware that something called Statuary Hall existed in the Capitol Building. But I’m watching President Ford’s funeral, and as they were talking about taking his coffin to the Rotunda, they kept talking about Statuary Hall (apparently, his kids used to play there, when they were younger).

Barbara Walters said that among the 100 statues in Statuary Hall (2 from each state), only one was of a female. The male commentator said “Frances Willard,” and she was surprised he knew who it was. He said he went to Willard Elementary school, in Illinois.

So my curiosity was piqued, and I jumped online to learn about Frances Willard, to see who she was and what she had done. Then I got curious about Statuary Hall, and wondered who my home state had enshrined there.

As I was browsing the list, I found the name “Mother Joseph.” Now, I’ve been dense in my time, but it just seems to me that someone named “Mother” is most likely female. So I clicked on the name to learn more about that subject, and she was, indeed female. So that’s two women in Statuary Hall, not just one.

I continued perusing the list, noting with interest that Mississippi enshrined Jefferson Davis there, and Louisiana erected a statue of Huey Long, and then saw the name “Esther Hobart Morris” from Wyoming. Hmmm…. Three women in Statuary Hall.

Oh, my… only a few names further down the list is Montana’s Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives (1916). Four women, now.

And only five or so names further down I find Florence R. Sabin, of Colorado, the first woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She’s number five on the list of women in Statuary Hall.

Directly below her is Sakakawea, a name I’m used to seeing spelled Sacajawea. Number six.

Sakakawea is immediately followed by Maria L. Sanford of Minnesota. Number seven.

Continuing down the list, I eventually find Frances Willard, of Illinois. Number eight.

And two names below her, Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute woman from Nevada, whose autobiography Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, was the first book written by a Native American woman. She’s the ninth woman in the list of statues.

Maybe I mis-heard Barbara Walters, or whomever the commentator was, but I’m confident that I heard her correctly, because she made a big deal of her male counterpart knowing the name of the only woman in Statuary Hall. So I thought maybe it was that only Frances is actually *in* Statuary Hall, and the others are scattered throughout the building, and I re-sorted the list, by location.

Some statues are in the crypt, some in the Hall of Columns, others in the Connecting corridors, but there are three statues of women in the actual National Statuary Hall, if one counts the vestibule as part of the hall. So that’s not it.

When I clicked on Frances Willard’s name, I found where my confusion arose. Frances was the FIRST woman to be placed in Statuary Hall, not the only one. I’ll grant you, “only” sounds better than “first,” but it’s just not accurate. And while two of the statues were placed fairly recently (Sakakawea in 2003, and Sarah Winnemucca in 2005), the others have been in place for decades.

Barbara Walters’ mis-statement bothers me. It probably doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but to whomever was listening to her tonight, the message she imparted was that fifty states placed a total of 100 statues in a national gallery, and only one of those statues was of a female. How symbolic of the male-dominated society some believe America to be. But the truth is, almost ten percent of the statues are of women. And two of the nine are of Native Americans.

This did not require a huge amount of research on my part. But how many of the folks watching the funeral will bother to do the research? After all, if Barbara Walters said it, it must be true. *sigh*

Un-Civil War

28. December 2006 · Comments Off on Un-Civil War · Categories: General, History, Military, Old West, Pajama Game, War

“…From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean…”

In hot pursuit of my next “book”, I continue to plough through a great stack of readings, all about the German migration into Texas in the mid-19th century. Yes there is a great story there, of which practically no one outside Texas has ever heard, and given any sort of encouragement I will bore you rigid with all sorts of trivia. Like, for instance, the aristocratic patrons of the Society for the Protection of German Emigrants to Texas fell, hook, line, sinker and obscene amounts of cash to two of the biggest land swindles ever known. Three words “Fisher-Miller Grant”. That little fiasco was right on par with the sale of Manhattan Island, by a tribe that didn’t even own it. Ah, but it came out all right in the end… if the aristocratic members of the Society had possessed business acumen on par with their ambitions… well, let’s just say if that had been so, the second language of the state of Texas would not be Spanish. And it might not have joined the Union at all, but continued as an independent entity or quasi-German colony, which would have pleased a whole constellation of German princes and nobles, but really have annoyed the Confederate States, and deprived a great many Southern generals in the “late unpleasantness” circa 1861-65 of a great portion of their fire-eating, romping-stomping cavalry.

Texas joined the secession, to the heartbreak of Sam Houston, and enthusiastically entered into the whole spirit of the Confederacy… to be expected, since the Anglo (read American) settlers were mostly from southern states, and of that Scots-Irish breed of whom it has been oft-acknowledged that they were “born fighting”; Indians, British, the French or each other, whichever were most convenient at the moment. To read of the enthusiasm with which Texans volunteered to fight for the Confederacy is to wonder if it was just that they were spoiling for a fight, and the issues which impelled the secession were a minor bagatelle.

But this was not true of the considerable district around the German-settled areas around Fredericksburg and New Braunfels, all through the rolling lime-stone hills between San Antonio and Austin. This was the high country, the less-good land of hard-working farmers and small cattle ranches, solidly opposed to chattel slavery and who had opposed secession from the very beginning. They may have settled in Texas relatively recently, but they were a cohesive block, had put down deep roots, knew their rights and were prepared as stubborn and stiff-necked Americans to insist on them. If the Hill Country had been geographically contiguous with the Union at any point, doing a “West Virginia” and seceeding from the Secession would have met with solid approval.

As it was, the Hill Country Germans pretty much stood apart from the fray until a year into the war, in the spring of 1862, when the tide began to subtly shift against the Confederacy, to those who had the strategic sense to see the long picture. New Orleans was taken by the Union, whose forces began a slow progression up the Mississippi, slicing the Confederacy into two portions. Those who had been opposed to the whole secession thing were confirmed in their judgment, and those who had wavered began to wobble in the direction of loosing confidence… while the die-hard Confederates began to see the skull-grimace of death and defeat grinning at them from the corners.

Texas was put under martial law, and the supreme military commander was a foppish and overbearing little martinet named Hebert, who did much to make himself detestable to even supporters of the Confederacy. But what ignited resistance in the Hill Country, and farther north, around present-day Dallas, was the institution of conscription. Texas had poured 25,000 volunteers into the Confederate Army during the first year of the war. But volunteers were not enough, and in the spring of 1862 legislation passed which authorized the drafting of every Anglo (white) male between the age of 18 and 34… shortly thereafter, it was changed to 17 through 50. Resistance was instant and furious among Unionists. A party of 65 Unionist men from the Hill Country attempted to flee across the Rio Grande; they were ridden down by Confederate troops along the Nueces River, and half were killed outright or executed out of hand. In following weeks, another fifty men in Gillespie County, around Fredericksburg, were executed… many of them by Confederate vigilante gangs. It was said bitterly for decades afterwards, that more were killed in the Hill Country by such gangs during the Civil War than were ever killed by Indians, during the war or after it. A footnote in the history books, if even noted to begin with.

The experience of the Civil War had, I think, the effect of drawing the Texas German colonies into themselves, and emphasizing their distinct character, rather than diffusing amongst their neighbors as similar German enclaves did in the northern states. For they were long in forgetting what had been done to them, by their neighbors, and fellow Texans.

More about the German settlers, here and here, from the archives.

Christmas Eve Surprise

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Christmas Eve Surprise · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Memoir, Pajama Game

Some few Christmases ago, when Blondie was still stationed at Camp Pendleton, and my personal economics allowed me to fly out to California to spend the holiday at Mom and Dads’ house, my daughter and youngest brother conceived a grand scheme to give them a large color TV for Christmas.

Blondie and Sander also wanted to surprise them, and a huge box under the Christmas tree, no matter how cunningly wrapped, just would not deliver the same element of surprise… no, my daughter and my little brother had worked out a cunning plan to remove the old television, which had been inherited from Granny Dodo’s estate, install the new one, and gift-wrap the remote in a little box which would be in Mom’s Christmas stocking. They could pull this off because the television normally resided on a shelf of its own in a wall of books and cupboards, with a pair of louvered shutters closed over the screen. It was one of Mom’s enduring standards about television; that it be out of sight when not actually being watched, if not out of the living room entirely.

Such was the plan, but for the maximum surprise to be achieved, several challenges had to be worked out: the installation would have to be done after we were all done watching television on Christmas Eve, and Mom and Dad would have to be out of the house. The old TV would need to be unhooked from the antenna and VCR, and the new one put into its place, and all the evidence removed. Blondie and Sander estimated they would need at least twenty minutes. The optimal time to perform this substitution would be while everyone was at midnight candle-light service, at a church in Escondido, about half an hours’ drive away. As soon as they were out of the way, Blondie and Sander would set it all up and follow the rest of us in his car; hopefully not missing too much of the service. After all, this was one of the two official times per year when Dad actually set foot in church.

On some pretext, Blondie and Sander would lag behind, while all the rest of us; Mom and Dad and I, Pippy and her husband and the children, and JP and I would head down the hill to church service in several cars. And Blondie had sworn me to secrecy; my part in the plot was to make sure that Mom and Dad left the house on time. The new television was outside in the back of Sanders’ car, having been hidden at a neighbors’ house… oh, yeah, everyone was in on this, except for Mom and Dad, and possibly the pastor and church council.

At about twenty to eleven, Mom began reminding us all to change into something suitable for the midnight service. Dad turned off the television and closed the shutter doors, an event we all noted with covert interest, before Blondie and I went to the guest room to change. Blondie was going to wear her dress uniform… this always went over well with Mom’s friends at church, who were heavily into competition on the grandchild front. And her excuse for lagging behind would be an inability to locate one of her dress pumps, which she had carefully hidden under the bed.

So, everyone was ready but Blondie, with one shoe in her hand and making a pretense of frazzlement as she looked for the other, Dad was looking at his watch, Pip and her husband had rounded up the children, and were herding them towards their vehicle out in the driveway. In accordance with the agreed-upon plan, I put on a bit of a frazzled look myself (really, I am a better actress than most people give me credit for) and announced that Blondie can’t find her shoe, and that we should leave now. Sander chimed in on cue: he would stay and help her look, and catch up with us in his car.
“Don’t you have another pair of shoes you can wear?” Mom asks.
“No, I only brought the one set of dress pumps,” Blondie answered. No one even suggested that she borrow a pair; for a start, she wears a size nine and a half.
“It must be in the guest room,” Dad said determinedly, “Five minutes, we’ll take everything apart and look for it.” He and Mom looked like they were about to drop everything and look for the damned shoe. It meant a lot to them to have Blondie show up in uniform.
“Give us another minute, we didn’t look under the bed.” Blondie and I retreated to the bedroom and close the door.
“You’re got to get them out of there!” Blondie hissed at me.
“Give me a minute… OK, got it.” Of course… how devious. Devious, but effective.” I put on my coat, and picked up my purse. Down the hall, Mom was fussing around with her own coat and scarf.
“Did Blondie find her shoe?” she asked, and I whispered, conspiratorially
“It’s not lost, it’s just an excuse for the two of them to stay behind and set up a surprise present for Dad. Forget about the shoe; just get Dad out of here.”
I found Dad pacing up and down in the solarium
“Did you find it?” he asked, and I lowered my voice again,
“It’s just a ruse, so Blondie and Sander can stay behind and bring in Mom’s surprise Christmas present… just get her out of here, so they can get to work.”
Dad looked amused; he has always liked this sort of intrigue and with a minimum of fuss, they both headed for the car, with me trailing after and congratulating myself on my efficiency and guile.

And so it went according to plan… all except for Sander and Blondie getting to church after service had started, not knowing that they had locked the door into the sanctuary because of the late hour, and having to pound on the doors until the ushers let them in. The next morning, Mom unwrapped her first gift, and looked at the new TV remote with great bewilderment. Under all our expectant eyes Sander opened the doors to the TV cabinet with a great flourish… and Mom and Dad were both very, very surprised.

Merry Christmas… May all your surprises be the nice ones!!

Hohoho From Iraq

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Hohoho From Iraq · Categories: General

Caught this one in a WaPo Editorial that Blackfive linked to. Couldn’t resist re-posting it.

(US Army Photo by Master Sgt Winston Churchill)
 

Spam, Spam, Spam Spam

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Spam, Spam, Spam Spam · Categories: Domestic, General, Rant, Site News

When Timmer upgraded the site to a newer version of Word Press, he also installed the Akismet spam-killing option, which keeps a running tally of spam comments intercepted and deleted. This is actually kind of amusing, because at current rates of accumulation, I believe we will have deleted 100,000 individual spam comments by New Years’ Day… none of which have actually posted.

I scroll through the pages of spam occasionally— like when there is only a hundred or so—just to make sure that there are no legitimate comments stranded there, and a depressing chore that is, too. Multiple identical, ungrammatical or just plain gibberish comments, with a link to a website embedded somewhere out the wilds of the internet.
Lots of kinky sexual practices, porn that to judge from the title line tends toward the disgusting side of the scale, boatloads of dubious drugs, a scattering of payday loan sites, insurance, and of late, a couple of sites that push ready-made term papers. A depressing collection of topics, and even more depressing is that it was probably less trouble for the originators to send it all out than it is for me to delete it all.

100,000 of these, all dumped on one site… none of which were actually posted. I presume there must be blogs somewhere out there with an unwary or careless administrator, where such comments do get posted and stay up, and presumably serve as free advertising, but probably not many. I suppose the spam-scum sending out this huge quantity of comments must get one or two links somewhere, and that must make it all worth while. But it’s kind of depressing… it’s the marketing equivalent of carpeting an entire town with spray-paint graffiti over every imaginable surface; walls, windows, other billboards, fences and retaining walls, all advertising some nasty sort of pawn-pornshop on the bad side of town. Even if all of it is swiftly and magically scrubbed away, a dozen times a day, I still resent the effort of having to do it. I loath everyone involved: the spammers who repeat this pointless exercise several hundred times daily, and doing it very badly, their disgusting clients with their rip-off business plan, and their schlubby loser clients. I hope they all get disgusting diseases, that their servers crash, and their pets all bite them. Bah, humbug, spam-scum… I wish a Merry Christmas for everyone else in the world but you.

So, taking bets on when we will get the magic 100,000; when will we cross the magic threshold?

The Best Part…

23. December 2006 · Comments Off on The Best Part… · Categories: General

…about sitting for a couple hours in the Kansas City airport yesterday was that I had the opportunity to help the server in the tavern play Santa’s Elf.

Some soldiers came in, so I called Chris over, handed her some cash, and told her the soldiers’ drinks were free, from a grateful citizen. And I asked her to tell them “Merry Christmas!” for me.

It was supposed to be anonymous, but one of them saw her getting the $$ from me, and came over to thank me. I told him it was my privilege to thank him, instead.

There have been so many times I’ve *wanted* to buy a soldier a drink. I’m glad I had the pennies to spare, yesterday.

It really made my day.

Good To See

23. December 2006 · Comments Off on Good To See · Categories: General

I’ve been hard on the moderate Muslim community for not speaking out louder. So it was good to see this over at the Headmistress’ place from the Washington Post:

Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims “believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again,” said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

A heartfelt salute to the Muslims who broke ranks with the fuck-tards who try to re-write history for their own profit and power.  It’s things like this that give me some hope that we won’t be fighting forever.

The Difference Between Military Friends and Civilian Friends

22. December 2006 · Comments Off on The Difference Between Military Friends and Civilian Friends · Categories: General

I normally don’t pass on “Friend Spam” but I haven’t seen this one before and it just rings true. Add your own in the comments.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Get upset if you’re too busy to talk to them for a week. MILITARY FRIENDS: Are glad to see you after years, and will happily carry
on the same conversation you were having last time you met.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Never ask for food.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Are the reason you have no food.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Call your parents Mr. And Mrs.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Call your parents mom and dad.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Bail you out of jail and tell you what you did was wrong.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Would be sitting next to you saying, “Damn…we screwed
up…but man that was fun!”

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Cry with you.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few days then give it back.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they forget it’s yours.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Know a few things about you.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that’s what the crowd is doing.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Will kick the whole crowdsââ,¬(tm) ass that left you
behind.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Would knock on your door.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Walk right in and say, “I’m home!”

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Are for a while.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Are for life.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have shared a few experiences…
MILITARY FRIENDS: Have shared a lifetime of experiences no Civilian could
ever dream of…

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will take your drink away when they think you’ve had
enough.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Will look at you stumbling all over the place and say,
“You better drink the rest of that, you know we don’t waste…that’s
alcohol abuse!!” Then carry you home safely and put you to bed…

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will talk crap to the person who talks crap about you.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Will knock them the hell out for using your name in vain.

Holiday Travel Travails

22. December 2006 · Comments Off on Holiday Travel Travails · Categories: General, Memoir, Pajama Game

When I was a child, our holiday travels were limited to the 80 mile drive to Grandma’s house. It wasn’t “over the river and through the woods,” though, just “out of the city and onto the not-quite-expressway and eventually onto the back-country roads through the Ohio coal-mining country.” Usually in the dark, usually with cranky kids in the back seat, and cranky parents in the front.

Our departure date and time hinged on various factors – what day Christmas fell on, what time we got out of school, what time Dad got home, etc. Mom had us working for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, making hand-crafted gifts to give to all the relatives. She got her ideas from an old craft magazine, “Pack-o-Fun,” which was all about re-using stuff that would normally be tossed. And this was long before Earth Day was established.

I remember using gallon bleach jugs to make piggy banks for my cousins. Or felt to make a holder for a yardstick, so you could hang your yardstick on the wall and always know where to find it (side note: my cousins called it “Mr Yardstick” and he figured prominently in their punishments when they misbehaved). One year, we taped tomato-juice cans together, stuck an orange juice can inside one of them, and created “yule log planters” by covering the whole thing with plaster of paris and brown paint.

When it was time to head “down home,” we’d gather all the stuff into the trunk of the car, bundle ourselves into our good clothes and winter coats, and head out.

The only travails these travels held for me were the cramming of 4 kids into the back seat of a 1966 Chevy Impala 2-door coupe, and the fact that there was absolutely *nothing* to do at Grandma’s, especially if the weather kept us indoors.

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I’ve Been Elfing People All Day

21. December 2006 · Comments Off on I’ve Been Elfing People All Day · Categories: General

In penance.  I’ve Elfed Myself.

My iPod’s ill :(

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on My iPod’s ill :( · Categories: General

It started on the way to my hotel from the airport Monday (yes, I’m on a business trip this week – whoo hoo). It would think it was playing, but no sound. Or it would skip around on a song.

Then on Tuesday, it just flat-out stopped. I thought maybe the battery was flat, but after it was fully charged, still nothing.

It has the “folder with an exclamation point” icon on it. Windows won’t recognize it, iTunes tells me it needs to be restored, but then won’t let me do it (gives me an alert msg, but when I click “ok” it takes me back to my music library screen, and won’t let me hit the “restore” button – doesn’t stay on the screen long enough).

I spent my lunch hour today at the client site, reading the Apple support forum/knowledgebase. I’d rather NOT buy a new one, as the 60gb are no longer easily available, and cost as much as the 80gb. I’d get the 30gb, but I had 27gb on this one. So if I need to replace it, I’ll wind up with the 80gb video iPod (which sounds cool, actually, since I can get it in black), but I’d rather not spend those $$ right now.

But I’d also rather not spend 2+ hours on a plane without my iPod.

I’ve owned it for 13 months now, and didn’t buy a product replacement plan when I got it, so to my knowledge there’s no warranty on it anywhere.

Any ideas?

Question about this link…

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on Question about this link… · Categories: General

Can someone please tell me who sings this version of White Christmas?

I want to own it, but have no idea who sings it.

Bad, Bad Toys

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on Bad, Bad Toys · 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.)

It’s a Blizzard

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on It’s a Blizzard · Categories: General

…and right now I can JUST see across the street. One of those days where you wondered why you went to work in the first place because we knew this was blowing in and everyone was just waiting to see how bad it was going to have to get before leadership sent us home. I would say they did okay. You could still see almost a block when we left.

I’m thinkin’ we’re not workin’ tomorrow either. Nine to eighteen inches of snow today and tonight propelled by up to 45 MPH winds. I think I’m going to be very happy I bought this thing for our little bit of sidewalk and driveway.

Update: Due to sideways snow, our windows are completely covered on ALL sides of the house. We haven’t got a lot of snow, there are still bare spots on the lawn, but the drifts are climbing to interesting heights.

Anatomy of a Rotten Day

15. December 2006 · Comments Off on Anatomy of a Rotten Day · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game

And I mean a day that sucked so badly it pulled small objects nearby into itself, a day that started off setting a new record for suckage, a day that spread blight, disaster and discouragement in every possible direction, even to the gingerbread cookies that Blondie attempted this afternoon, following a recipe from the pages of “Joy of Cooking” which defiantly should have stayed there and never seen the light of day. It’s the Gingerbread Man recipe on p 712 of the 1970s edition, BTW. Can’t miss them… tastes like ginger and molasses playdough, and look most unfortunately like dog turds. And we know dog turds, these days, for we are the one set of responsible pet owners on our street who do, in fact, whip out the approved plastic bags… no matter what that rude woman on the corner with her herd of nasty-tempered rat-dogs called after us, yesterday.

Oh, yeah, ginger-flavored dog turd balls, that’s for sure what we’re going to give to our neighbors for Christmas. The ones that don’t speak to us will probably never not speak to us again, and the ones that we do speak to will be looking after us strangely and discretely spitting out the bite they were polite enough to take into a paper napkin.

Does anyone actually ever eat the Christmas cookies from neighbors, anyway? I think they just pass them on to someone else. Like fruitcakes.

My computer has been glitching, over the last couple of says, abruptly terminating the internet connection, and sending me repeated pop-ups for things that I am not interested in, and so yesterday I burned several hours of writing time running the usual sort of diagnostics, with the result that this morning, absolutely the third thing I tried to do on line froze it up entirely: there was the desktop, and my documents and everything…less my accustomed cookies and log-ins…and it remained frozen. So, first thing of the day, a day dedicated to writing and a chapter of the new book which I had been thinking about all night, and planning to pick up where I had left off yesterday…and I can’t. All my notes, and the very complicated excel spread-sheet I spent hours on this week, plotting out the various events and characters…all locked up, because of course I haven’t copied them over to disc because they are not finished yet.

My computer genius friend says he can’t get to it until tonight, but if we meet his daughter at a place in our neighborhood that she is going to show to a potential buyer, she’ll take the computer to his place, and he’ll work on it after work tonight. We spend some time, locating the place, and waiting for the daughter. She tells us that there has been a sudden rash of malicious worms and Trojans, in the last couple of days… his own website crashed and a lot of his clients are infested up the wazoo with them. He may just have to rescue my documents, wipe the hard drive and start all over.

I have always thought that the jerks who write and set loose malicious stuff like that should be stripped naked, smeared with honey and staked out over a fire-ant nest. Alive. The prospect of perhaps having to re-write what I have so far (not all of it, because a friend who is away for the holiday had the first chapter sent to him as an attachment and he may have it still, but I won’t know until he is back after the holidays!) or even interrupting me when I am in the throes of creating something really, really terrific…and putting a crimp into earning my living writing makes me really, really furious. Yeah, I’ll go for the fire ants nest, but I’d like do to this malicious little bastard (who is probably chortling to himself in a nasty cold-water walkup in Russia or the Philippines or wherever these shits congregate) what the Comanche used to do to their prisoners. (Wasn’t pleasant, BTW. Involved eye-gouging, amputation of marital tackle, hot coals, and stakes.)

I finally finished hemming a length of fabric for a scarf for Blondie, and adorning each corner with an elaborate tassel of beads, all very headachy work, done under bright light with very tiny glass beads. I’ve been putting off finishing it for days, finally did so today, and when she took it back to her room this afternoon, one of the tassels caught on the baby-gate we use to keep the dogs our of her end of the house… and ripped it all loose. Beads all over. When I finally finished it, it stayed finished for a whole… I dunno, fifteen minutes?!!!

I can’t pay a bill that I have been promising I’ll pay today because I haven’t been paid… and I worked three hours and a half, clipping certain real estate ads out of the newspaper, trying to clip them so they could be readable, even if the particular section was on two sides of the same sheet of newsprint. I have a headache from this, and my fingers are all over newsprint and dust. Again, I won’t be paid for this until next week sometime.

I am waiting for the book I have already finished to connect with the publishing world; which is moribund until after Christmas, or even New Years, even. I had the mad notion to do a proposal for the new book, and include it as a two-fer, and I also wanted to try and do my Christmas card letter today… but can’t because my computer is frelled, all because some malicious little twerp decided to stick it to the man.

And we can’t afford to go to my parents for Christmas, when everyone else will be there, and it’s a week before Christmas, and we are juggling time and commitments and money. Candidly, I kind of wish Christmas was over already.

Oh, yeah, and some kids were running around the neighborhood vandalizing cars. And I have to write this on Blondie’s laptop, which has a keyboard and the weird little tracing pad and two buttons instead of a mouse, and everything is in the wrong place…

Bah, humbug… Merry ******Christmas! The person who tries to tell me how it could all be so much worse is getting an internet nuclear wedgie, as soon as I can figure out how to administer it.

Open Thread, Whatcha Doin’ This Weekend? 061215

15. December 2006 · Comments Off on Open Thread, Whatcha Doin’ This Weekend? 061215 · Categories: General

We’re going to see Eragon.

Remembering a life: Jan 4, 1930-Dec 12, 2003

12. December 2006 · Comments Off on Remembering a life: Jan 4, 1930-Dec 12, 2003 · Categories: General, Memoir, Pajama Game

mom at 66

On 12/12/03, my Mom passed away. The following is what I read at her funeral. I try to re-read it every year, to remind myself of how special she was.

Other than marriage, the parent-child relationship is probably the most complex relationship we’ll ever experience. Who doesn’t remember either saying or hearing, at some point in their life, “I hate you! I wish you were dead!”

And then one day you wake up, and they *are* dead, and your entire life is changed forever.

Hopefully, the “I hate you’s” were replaced by “I love you’s” over the years. Mine were, and I’m eternally grateful for that.

I’m still trying to realize what all I lost last week. Before I can do that, I need to realize what I had.

Mom was so much more than just a label – “wife,” “mother,” “sister,” “friend.” She was a human being, full of the complexity that we all are made of. I’m not going to tell you that my mom was perfect – she wasn’t. But I’ll let you in on a secret — neither am I. 🙂 She accepted my lack of perfection, and I learned that it didn’t matter if she wasn’t June Cleaver – what mattered was that she was my mother: the only one I’ll ever have. And now all I have of her are memories.

The nice thing about memories is that we can choose what we want to remember. I’m choosing to remember the good things, and the happy times.

I remember hot breakfasts on cold winter mornings before we would walk to school. I remember walking home at lunchtime to eat a hot meal that she fixed for us. I remember family dinners with home-cooked food, all made from scratch.

I remember our yard not having any grass, because all the neighborhood kids played at our house. I remember hallowe’en parties, with our basement turned into a haunted house. I remember a fairly happy childhood, with a mom who was involved. She had 4 kids in school, and juggled the class visitation and room mother duties somehow.

My mother, who was always nervous around large bunches of kids, became a den mother for my brother, and a girl scout troop leader for me and my sisters. She helped start an after-school activities program at our church.

As a kid, one of my major complaints was that she knew where the “off” button was on the TV set, and she would use it. 🙂 Instead, we would play games, or do arts and crafts, or even – gasp – clean house. Back then, I complained. Today, I tell my friends about these times, and treasure the memories.

We’re in the middle of the Christmas season, right now, and for me, that will always bring memories of Mom baking. She’d start baking before thanksgiving, and continue on until… forever, it seemed like. We had a cookie tree — a small, table-top artificial tree, decorated with candy canes and Christmas cookies. No matter how often we ate all the cookies off the tree, there were always more to replace them. Pies lined the counter, at Thanksgiving and Christmas both. And Mom made her pie-dough from scratch.

She made her bread from scratch, too — twelve loaves at a time, every week. Four kids go through a lot of bread, after all.

And in the middle of all her Christmas baking, she would find time to bake me a birthday cake, every year. I don’t know how she did it all, honestly.

She cared about people, deeply and genuinely, and people responded to that caring. My brother brought home a friend in the early ’80s — Mom gave Tom a “certificate of adoption” for Christmas one year, and treated him as if he were another son. Tom’s still a part of our family, 20 years later.

She was a determined woman. She knew what she wanted, and she made it happen. Although she didn’t graduate from high school, all of her kids did, and all of us attended at least *some* college classes.

She was terrified of lakes and pools, but she made sure we all learned how to swim. She didn’t drive, but she made sure that we all got our drivers’ licenses.

It’s hard to grasp what we’ve lost with her passing. She was our historian, and our glue. She was our constant – she would always be there, she would always love us, she would always believe in us, and want us to be happy.

She was our “doer” — “mom will do that,” we’d say. Or “ask Mom – she’ll know.” And she usually did.

She was a unique woman – an original. Not perfect, but not too shabby either. And she had a fantastic sense of humor.

I called her for Thanksgiving – a day late, as usual. We talked about how I hadn’t mailed her card yet (or her anniversary card, from late Oct, or Dad’s birthday card from mid-November, or even her own birthday card from last January) — I BUY the cards, I just forget to sign and send them. 🙂

A week later, I got 2 cards from her in the mail. One was my Christmas card, and the other one had a note that said “so you wont’ be embarrassed about how late your cards are.” I opened it up, and it was a Valentine’s Day card, for last Feb. I laughed out loud, and was going to call her and let her know how much I had enjoyed it. But it was the last week of the semester, and I had three papers due. Besides, I could tell her when I called her in a couple days, on my birthday, I thought.

I thought wrong, unfortunately. She didn’t make it to my birthday. But she knows now, how tickled I was. And she knows, better than I could ever find words to express, how very much I love her, and how much of her lives on in me.

We share the same faith, so I know I’ll see her again, as well. Until then, I’ll make do with my memories, and I’ll make sure I’m hanging onto the good ones.

Credibility Toast

12. December 2006 · Comments Off on Credibility Toast · Categories: General, Iraq, Israel & Palestine, Media Matters Not, Rant

I’ve been following the AP-Captain Jamail Hussein-Sock-Puppet imbroglio with somewhat less than my usual vicious interest in the follies of the MSM for two reasons: one, I’m distracted by the entrancements of the 19th century, and two, I’ve been pounding on this over the last two or three years, and I’m really, really tired of repeating myself.

It’s become pretty damned clear to us news junkies that depending on local stringers in certain areas of conflict, unrest or just generally feelings of bad karma was a shaky construction for a news entity who still wished to maintain some pretension of impartiality. The list of news-producing areas— those places which generate an inordinate number of headlines and passionate concern — where the crystalline flow of pure information has been tainted by the sewage of partisan interest has always been long. In my youth it included practically every news organization behind the Iron or Bamboo curtain; of course, the news bureau of a Communist state was slanting, censoring, bending folding and mutilating the news, and you were an idiot or a college professor of the Marxist bent if you didn’t know it and apply salt to taste.

Add to that now any coverage of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, southern Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, and hefty chunks of the Middle East by entities like Reuters, AP, CNN, France 2, the BBC, 60 Minutes…. Well, you get the idea. There isn’t a chunk of salt big enough to take away the taste of krep when partisan journalism masquerades as impartial newsgathering.

And what is the reaction of formerly trustworthy purveyors of news, upon having been repeatedly busted for falsifying pictures, for use of incompetently faked documents, staged footage and outright lies, pissing away decades or more of accumulated credibility? Oddly enough, it appears to follow a progression rather like the five stages of grief: denial, followed by anger, followed by bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

AP, as an aggregate news distributor has the most to lose when busted for credibility. It is not just one channel, or one reporter, like CNN or the egregious Dan Rather, but it feeds stories to newspapers world wide. It’s an authoritative higher power, kind of like the Pope. To have thousands of readers across the US open their various daily papers, see a story from Whereverthehellistan credited to the AP, and to realize that all of them are thinking, derisively “Whotta load!” and turning the page must be a bitter pill indeed for AP’s management. Hence the denial and the anger directed at those pesky bloggers who raised questions about the AP’s Baghdad Sock-puppet o’the Month, Captain Jamail Hussein. After all, we might start wondering about how many other sock-puppet sources feature other AP stories… or how many featured in the past.

Anyone else see AP’s credibility and profitability , flaming up and collapsing in ruin like a journalistic Hindenburg, if readers begin putting the AP brand on par with those supermarket tabs that always have stories about alien abductions, monkey-human babies and antique airplanes on the moon?

Give Reuters credit, at least their management zipped through the cycle to acceptance, in pulling suspect pictures from their archives. They can see the writing on the wall clear enough, and what they will loose by no longer being credible. But Dan Rather is still stuck in the bargaining phase, and it looks like AP is mining rich veins of denial.

I love the smell of desperation in the morning…. It smells like victory. Or maybe it’s just those weird pine-scented aromatherapy candles my daughter insists on burning.

Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer

10. December 2006 · Comments Off on Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

Last week I nerved myself up to actually call the literary agent who was reviewing the entire manuscript of “To Truckee’s Trail”. He had e-mailed me at the beginning of November that he was savoring every word and would let me know “soon”… but I had already begun to sense what the word would be, when I didn’t hear anything by mid-month.
And the word was, no, he didn’t think he’d be able to “sell” it to one of the big name publishers; although he was very complimentary— it’s a terrifically gripping read, very nice characters, and researched down to the third decimal place— but…

And this is what I have come to think of as the “Big But”; it would be a hard sell, harder than he wanted to dive into. It’s not quite a genre western, definitely not a romance, since the passionate relationship is between two people who have been married for a decade at least, and it’s not the sort of historical novel that seems to sell these days, which as he explained it, is about an unknown aspect of an event or person that people have heard about (Sigmund Freud, the Civil War). He floated the Stephens Party in a couple of casual conversations, and drew an absolute blank every time… which I thought would have been a selling point, but never mind.

No way does this put me back to square one: I’ve been applying to other lit agencies all along; so far, three form rejections which are about what I’d expect, but…

Another “Big But”… a friend of a friend who is a writer himself and coached me through writing up a proper proposal, and sample chapter, etc, is going to put it straight to his publisher. He is not one of the really big names, but he has made a regular living at it for a long while, and moreover is a big fan of my stuff. I’ve tweaked the manuscript again, in response to feedback from knowledgeable readers, and he will review it one more time, and send it in after Christmas. Apparently, nothing happens in the publishing world over Christmas.

Over the last month or so, I sent out a number of proposed articles to various magazines; rewritings of some of my best blog entries, actually. One of them is being considered by a history magazine, and two of them have been rejected…. But with a hand-written note of encouragement from the reviewing editor, expressing profound enjoyment of them, and apologizing because the publication had no budget for free-lancers this quarter.

This represents a step up for my rejection slip collection, actually; yeah, they’re rejection slips, but they are nice rejections, and give evidence that the submission was actually read and considered. It’s all about progress.

I’ve started the next book, too: the one about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country. Now, that will have positively operatic levels of everything: the wild frontier, lust, cliff-hanging danger and sudden death. I might even put some sex into it, too.

It’s Not TV, It’s HBO

09. December 2006 · Comments Off on It’s Not TV, It’s HBO · Categories: General, That's Entertainment!

If you don’t have HBO and you’re a fan of U2, make sure you get a friend to tape or TIVO the latest “Off the Record.”

Dave Stewart interviews Bono and The Edge. The questions are smart and the answers are absolutely delightful. My only complaint is that it’s not long enough.

Pouring Ridicule and Scorn…

09. December 2006 · Comments Off on Pouring Ridicule and Scorn… · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, General Nonsense, sarcasm, The Funny

…upon certain so-called celebrities who either cannot afford underpants or who have never been schooled on how to exit an automobile gracefully while wearing a short skirt.

Not quite safe for work, though… or the family hour, unless your family is Paris Hilton’s. Link found through of 2 Blowhards who found it someplace else… but scroll down, the other stuff is hysterical.

Pet Rules

09. December 2006 · Comments Off on Pet Rules · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, General

This was sent via e-mail from a pet-loving friend, and posted for your amusement

To be posted VERY LOW on the refrigerator door – snout height.

Dear Dogs and Cats:
The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate of food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn’t help because I fall faster than you can run.

I cannot buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep.

It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.

For the last time, there is not a secret exit from the bath room. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years –canine or feline attendance is not mandatory.

The proper order is kiss me, then go smell the other dog or cat’s butt. I cannot stress this enough!

To pacify you, my dear pets, I have posted the following message on our front door:

To All Non-Pet Owners Who Visit & Like to Complain About Our Pets
1. They live here. You don’t.
2. If you don’t want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. (That’s why they call it “fur”niture.)
3. I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
4. To you, it’s an animal. To me, he/she is an adopted son/daughter who is short, hairy, walks on all fours and doesn’t speak clearly.

Remember: Dogs and cats are better than kids because they:
1. Eat less
2. Don’t ask for money
3 Are easier to train
4. Usually come when called
5. Never drive your car
6. Don’t hang out with drug-using friends
7. Don’t smoke or drink
8. Don’t worry about having to buy the latest fashion
9. Don’t wear your clothes
10. Don’t need a gazillion dollars for college, and
11. If they get pregnant, you can sell their children.

Caption This One (061209) Da Winnah!

09. December 2006 · Comments Off on Caption This One (061209) Da Winnah! · Categories: General

(US Army Photo by Tech Sgt Joseph McLean)

Andrew V.:  “And now a clip from the extras on deluxe DVD release of Lawrence of Arabia.”

Very Shiny

08. December 2006 · Comments Off on Very Shiny · Categories: General, That's Entertainment!

Firefly Reborn as Online Universe

 By Mark Wallace

 

Like Capt. Mal Reynolds stumbling in after a bar fight, the short-lived but much beloved sci-fi series Firefly will soon make an unexpected return, not as a TV show, but as a massively multiplayer online game.

Now that’s shiny.

Multiverse, maker of a free MMO-creation platform, plans to announce Friday morning that it’s struck a deal with Fox Licensing to turn the show into an MMORPG in the fashion of Star Wars Galaxies or Eve Online.

 

I might actually play something like this online.

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