Wang Chi's House of Pancakes

Whatever happened to Saturday night?

2010-08-30T11:38:00.013-05:00

If it was last Saturday, Meat Loaf played at the House of Blues in Houston, and that was the first line of his first song. Hot patootie, bless my soul, I really love that rock and roll.

But first, the opening act--Pearl. Pearl's frontwoman is Pearl Aday, Meat Loaf's step-daughter. The band seems technically proficiant and she can belt them out, and if she finds a Jim Steinman of her own, I'm sure she'll be a pleasure to listen to. But that's enough about them. To quote Christopher Lee's infamous Saturday Night Live introduction, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to meet... Loaf! I beg your pardon? What? Oh! I'm... I'm sorry. Yes, of course. Ladies and gentlemen... Meat Loaf!"

On the scale of over-the-top awesomeness, "Bat Out of Hell" goes to 11, and doesn't stop there. In retrospect, I think it's the best album of the 70s, which really surprised me because I always thought "Dark Side of the Moon" had it locked up. Who'd of thunk it?

The band was great, and big enough to do justice to the music. Two guys on guitar, plus Meat Loaf towards the end of the show, one on the bass, another playing piano, another on keyboards and the sax, the drummer, and two additional singers.

I particularly liked the guy on the Flying-V with the Nigel Tufnel thing going on with his chin. You can't really see it in the pictures, but it looked like he'd taken a Sharpie to the cleft in his chin. I'm kind of surprised they let him out of the 80s.

The female lead was really good too, although when they opened the show with Meat Loaf's song from Rocky Horror ("Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul"), she was disturbingly reminiscent of Frank-N-Furter--the hair, the color of the dress, the rubber gloves.... Again, the cell phone camera pictures don't really show it, but they're all I've got.

She had a couple costume changes during the show and shed the Sweet Transvestite look. And she and Mr. Loaf made Paradise by the Dashboard Light as fun as that song deserves. Which is a whole lot of fun.

They played everything you would have wanted to hear, and then some. The show did drag a bit in the middle when they played several songs from the new album back-to-back, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I'd familiarized myself with the new songs first. There were also a couple parts that were slow intentionally, like Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, which didn't drag at all.

I don't remember what they were playing here, but it was good too.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Gord's Back

2010-08-27T19:01:00.009-05:00

Back in Houston, anyway. And by "Gord" I mean Gordon Lightfoot, who played to a packed house at the Verizon Wireless Theater on Wednesday (August 25, 2010).

And he sounded pretty darned good. I saw him a few years not too long after his brush with death. It was good to see him still alive, but he was sounding a bit thin and the while the performance was executed well, it seemed a bit wooden. I thought it would be his last tour.

But it wasn't.

This time around he'd recovered a lot of his old voice. Maybe not the 70's voice we all know and love from Gord's Gold, but at least the 80s voice from Gord's Gold II, with a bit more of the lower register on the old stuff. And while the band was tight as ever, the performance had a much looser, more comfortable feel to it. It was a really good show.

They started at around 8:00, and finished up at 10:00, with a short intermission about 15 songs in. I don't recall looking at my watch once during the show, which is pretty rare for me. Or I suppose I should say it's a rare performer who can hold my attention that long. Willie Nelson can do it, and AC/DC, Al Stewart, Hayes Carll, and maybe a couple others. Did I mention that it was a really good show?

Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures; it was the best my phone could do.

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever

2010-08-23T12:38:00.003-05:00

"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

--David St. Hubbins

I'm still trying to decide which side of the line this one's on:

In my mind this raises two questions:

1) Is it meant to be taken seriously?

It seems to me that this is really stupid or really clever. It has the feeling of a South park parody, but it could just be a caricature of itself--an unholy union of "Christian rock" of the Praise and Worship variety and patriotic country that pushes each idiom far beyond its limits. I prefer to think of it as brilliant satire, but I'm afraid it isn't. Or at last wasn't intended that way.

Which leads me to my second question:

2) Does it matter?

Socrates and/or Plato wrote in "The Apology":

After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them, thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them....

I think that may be the case here. Whatever the artist may have thought he intended, the Muse had her way with him,and, at least from an artistic point of view, intent is irrelevant. Whether the artist is mocking the protesters, or the Muse the artist, it's brilliant satire.

Hey, look! It's somebody's mom!

2010-08-04T13:44:00.005-05:00

This commercial has haunted me since I was 10 years old. For years I looked for it on the Internet with so little success that I'd begun to think I imagined it.

AC/DC

2008-12-15T19:13:00.016-06:00

Last time I went to a big name, high dollar concert also happened to be the last time I posted anything here. It was Steely Dan, and, as you may recall, I was not amused. A hundred and fifty bucks a ticket ($125 each, plus and additional $25 for Ticketmaster's so-called "convenience" fees) to be tortured with a bad song selection and a horrible sound system. After Steely Dan, I'd just about decided to swear off big time shows in big venues.

Just about.

And then along came Cliff and Phil and Malcolm and those two other guys. They sure do know how to put on a show.

"Yes, they do Otto. They just don't understand it."

2008-10-10T14:35:00.026-05:00

I just read the stupidest article that I've seen posing as legitimate, mainstream journalism in quite a while. It's called "An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad?", and it was written by someone named Amy Sullivan, who appears to be working for the Obama campaign, but publishing under a byline that suggests that she's an actual reporter for TIME (in partnership with CNN).

It's all about this web commercial that the McCain campaign put out:

I though it was pretty funny. But apparently you can't poke fun at Obama's Olympian ego without committing some sort of unpardonable sin like racism, or calling him the Antichrist, or denying Global Warming, or some such.

The first "evidence" of McCain's nefarious intent is the ad's reference to Obama as "The One," which the author seems to think is a reference to the Antichrist character in the Left Behind books:

As the ad begins, the words "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."

The funny thing is that you won't see Nicolae Carpathia referred to as "The One" in the Left Behind books. As anyone with half a brain knows, "The One" is Neo on The Matrix. And, of course, it's what Oprah called Obama:

But enough of "The One." Let's move on:

The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain's "Celeb" ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they're not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.

Hmmm.... The light shining through the clouds in the ad "seems to evoke the cover art of several of the Left Behind books." I guess that could be true, if depicting sunlight piercing through the darkness in a yellow-orange color were an original creation of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. In reality, only the first book of Left Behind series bears even a passing resemblance, and they still got the colors wrong:

I still haven't figured out why yellow-orange light poking through dark clouds is "sinister," but if the folks at TIME (in partnership with CNN) say it is, who am I to argue? In fact, I think I'll use it from here on out. (Way too much on the orange side, but it'll have to do.)

And a less critical viewer might might mistake the "staircase leading up to heaven" referenced in the article to the stairs in the aisle of the theater where Obama was appearing. At least that's what it looked like to me when I went back and watched the video again. (And just what is Ms. Sullivan implying about Led Zeppelin?)

And I suppose they could have used the "cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama" that the author thinks would be more appropriate, but somehow, I think something like this would have spoiled the mock-serious tone that they seemed to be going for:

But enough of that. This next paragraph is the real howler:

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue "O" logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what was "puzzling" about this imagery. What better to follow Obama's announcement that his ascension has stemmed the rising tide of Global Warming than Moses demonstrating his mastery over the waters?

And what's all this about the seal? So what if it doesn't resemble the Obama campaign "O" logo that Ms. Sullivan finds more familiar? Since they're poking fun at Obama's Titanic ego, why wouldn't they use the extremely presumptuous faux presidential seal that he used earlier in the campaign? The one that looked like this:

Perhaps if Ms Sullivan and the rest of the Obamatons at TIME (in partnership with CNN) learned how to use Google, or better yet Google Images, she, or a fact checker or editor (if they still have such things) might have noted the absurdity of the claim that the eagle is a reference to the Book of Daniel.

Here's the part (Daniel 7:2-4) to which the Mr. Sapp Ms. Sullivan interviewed was referring:

Daniel spoke, saying, "I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was given to it."

If it were a reference to Daniel, the wings would be on a lion, not an eagle. An eagle, on the other hand, can be found on the Great Seal of the United States, which makes perfect sense as a reference to Obama's use of a faux Presidential seal on his podium earlier in the campaign.

And besides, any Fundi worth his salt could tell you that the beast with a body like a lion and wings like an eagle was the Assyrian and Chaldean empire under Nebuchadnezzar (after whom the ship in The Matrix was named), not the Antichrist. The Antichrist is the little horn on the fourth beast (you remember the fourth beast--it was different from the others and had ten horns but no mention of any wings).

And I'll conclude with a clip from A Fish Called Wanda that's totally irrelevant, except tho the extent that "confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp" might be compared to Otto:

But what about Ms. Sullivan? Did she even read it, or did she just take some Sapp's word for it?

Can't Buy a Thrill

2008-08-22T00:08:00.010-05:00

"Can't buy a Thrill." That's the title of a really good album by one of my favorite bands. (And I use the term "bands" loosely, knowing full well that Steely Dan is two guys plus a bunch of studio musicians). And that band, as you may have surmised (and if not surmised, parenthetically deduced), is "Steely Dan." And that band is named after a dildo in William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch." And much as I like their music, I'm tempted to say "aptly named."

I'd heard that Steely Dan was strictly a studio group, but when I saw that they were playing in Houston, I went and bought tickets. I logged on to Ticketmaster relatively early, and ended up with a pair of tickets in row P in the center section at the Verizon Wireless Theater in Houston. And they weren't cheap. $125 per ticket, and with Ticketmaster's "convenience charge" and tax, it was just under $300 for two decent-but-not-great tickets. Add in gas to drive to and from Beaumont, dinner and drinks, and we're talking almost five hundred bucks for a night out. But what the hell, it's Steely Dan. It'll be worth it. Right?

Turns out that the answer to that question is "no." And I'm pissed.

Dinner and drinks were good (the Raven Grill gets a really big 'thumbs up') but Steely Dan in concert totally sucked. And by "totally sucked," I mean "totally sucked." It was not worth the time, much less the money.

First of all, the sound absolutely awful. The keyboards were way too loud relative to everything else, with a rasping, piercing sound only marginally less unpleasant that fingernail on a chalkboard or rubbing a balloon.

But even really bad sound can sometimes be ameliorated with really really good music, and Steely Dan has lots of really good music that they could play. Did I mention how much I really really like Steely Dan's music?

(BTW, in addition to Mr. Steely and Mr. Dan, there was an eight piece band (keyboards, drums, trombone, trumpet, two saxophones, bass and guitar) and three big 'fro'd backup singers. All of whom, I'm sure, were masters of their respective arts.)

But did they play good music? Hell no. It wasn't five minutes into the "Steely Dan" part of the show that I started looking at my watch. I don't know what that first song was, but it went on and on and on and just wouldn't stop. And it wasn't even slightly musically interesting. Just the same thing over and over again, until it started sounding like a dentist's drill.

And for what seemed like the first half hour, it was pretty much more of the same. Just the band--sans Becker and Fagen--doing some sort of Spinal Tap-esque Jazz Odyssey while we waited for the folks we paid an arm and a leg to see to finally come out and do their job.

And when they came out to do their job, they mostly played a lot of b-side crap. There were a few of the hits thrown in, and a bit more densely as the night wore on. So basically it was painful for the first half of the show, and then got mostly tolerable with even a few good moments on those rare occasions when they played something recognizable. But they somehow managed to leave out every single song I paid to hear--no "Rikki Don't Lose that Number;" no "Deacon Blues;" no "Do It Again," no "Reelin' In the Years." Not even in the encores.

And if all that's not bad enough, Fagen seemed to be self-consciously trying to look cool, but he ended up looking like a cross between Ray Charles in "The Blues Brothers" (for the smile, head movements, and shades) and George Carlin as Rufus in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (for his general appearance).

Pardon me for being a Philistine,but if I pay big bucks to hear a big name band play in a big venue, I expect to hear the big hits played over a good sound system.

If, for instance, Al Stewart plays the Mucky Duck or the Cactus Cafe and he decides to dig deep into his catalog for most of the songs, I think that's just swell. He's playing a small venue for mostly die-hard fans who paid $25 or $30 per ticket to see the show.

But if you're a big name group playing what looked to be about a 5000 seat arena at roughly a hundred bucks a ticket, I think you have an obligation to play the stuff even casual fans came to hear. And you absolutely, positively have an obligation to make sure that the sound is done right. That part's non-negotiable. Steely Dan did neither, and I feel really ripped off.

For an alternate take on the show, click here.

Still Livin' in a Hell Hole

2008-06-08T18:36:00.011-05:00

As everyone who knows me knows, the house I live in is a dump, or, as I put it in a previous post, a hell hole.

Of course, it's not all bad, livin' in a hell hole. At least you know where you stand in a hell hole. And sometimes folks lend a hand in a hell hole.

But the fact of the matter is that I could easily spend a week just making a list of the things that need to get fixed around here. And one thing on that list would be the plumbing.

The genius who designed the 1940s remodel (or more likely some subsequent remodeling job) decided that the washing machine belonged in the kitchen, and it drains into the same line as the sink. I' sure that at one time this arrangement worked well enough, but it seems that over the years the pipes have narrowed like a Cajun's arteries. ("The Louisiana diet will kill a man as surely as a sword.")

As a result, when the washing machine drains, the water will overflow onto the floor if the pipes are already full of water from the sink. But I found that a bit of lye now and then keeps things running smoothly, and generally prevents a puddle on wash day. I used to use Red Devil (the powder, not the liquid), but it seems to have disappeared from the market, and I switched to Drano Kitchen Crystals. Like this:

But just keeping the drains draining isn't enough. A few months ago, water started dripping out of the cabinet under the sink whenever the sink got much use. In a rare fit of initiative, I decided to fix it.

It turned out to be not too big a problem. The washer under one of the slip joint nuts had deteriorated almost to the point of non-existence. In case you were wondering, this is what a slip joint nut and washer are supposed to look like:

This is what the ones under my sink looked like (the washer is the gray-green crud):

I replaced the washer, and things seemed to work fine for a while (except for the washing machine drain occasionally overflowing), but then about a month ago another leak developed. I figured it was another bad washer, but couldn't seem to muster the initiative to do anything about it. There were lots of things that needed doing more, and besides, the occasional leak gave me an excuse to mop the floor.

Which brings us to this morning.

A house-guest of mine, laboring under the absurdly optimistic misapprehension that the sink had a garbage disposal, removed the strainer fro the drain so some food scraps could get ground up by the non-existent appliance.

Not a good thing.

But I had a can of those Drano Kitchen Crystals next to the sink, and I figured they'd dissolve the clog. So I poured some down the drain, and ran a bit of water over them to wash them down.

By the way, in case you were wondering:

And if you're wondering if that applies to plastic pipes as well, not to worry. Just read the fourth line down:

Well, maybe to worry a little. As the crystals interacted with the gunk in the drain and the noxious vapors bellowed forth, a very bad sound came from under the sink, followed by a gush of water. The pipe (the one whose washer I had replaced a couple months ago, as it happens) fell off the sink. And it didn't fall off because I put it on wrong. It fell off because the pipe, having been significantly heated by the chemical reaction within, had lost all its rigidity. It was sort of like a garden hose, only not nearly as stiff.

I tried to push the pipe back in place, but only succeeded in getting my hands covered with an extremely caustic mixture of sludge and lye. And a couple globs of wet Drano Kitchen Crystals splashed onto my arm and gave me a pretty good burn. I went to the bathroom to wash it off, but something about that slimy feeling that wouldn't go away reminded me that if you have a chemical burn from a base, you need acid to neutralize it. (I finally found a use for those high school chemistry classes!) Fortunately, I had a big bottle of vinegar on hand.

So I poured vinegar all over everything, but especially my hands and arm, and then spent about an hour cleaning up the mess. I didn't think the under-the-sink cabinet had ever been cleaned. At least not in my lifetime. It wasn't pretty. It took about an hour just to clean up the mess.

Anyway, here's what the pipe looked like after it had cooled and stiffened up again:

You may have noticed that, in addition to no longer being a proper cylinder, the end of the pipe isn't even round anymore:

And it certainly wasn't straight:

But somehow I managed not to appreciate the fact that the pipe was no longer pipe-shaped when I made my first trip to Home Depot to get replacement washers and slip joint nuts (I figured I'd replace them all, just to be on the safe side).

Of course, when I got home and picked up the pieces to put them back together, I realized that there was no way that was going to work. But at least I found out where the leak came from. It seems that something had eaten a hole through the side of the "T" junction:

Given the odd shape of the "T" junction, I'm guessing that the hole was the result of a previous run-in with Drano.

Once I got the mess more or less cleaned up and figured out what I really needed to do the job, fixing everything was surprisingly cheap and easy. I made another trip to Home Depot and got the parts to replace everything for about ten bucks. And it only took about fifteen minutes to put it all back together. Now it looks like this:

The cabinet's still disgusting, but at least the plumbing's sparkling clean.

But then, after it was all done, I found this in the sink:

I didn't put it there, and I've never owned silverware of that pattern. The only explanation I can come up with is that it must have been stuck in one of the old pipes and fallen out somewhere along to way.

Finally, in fairness to the good folks at Drano, the directions say to use one heaping tablespoon. I may have used somewhat more than that, in keeping with the seriousness of the clog.

The Results Are In!

2008-03-03T22:46:00.001-06:00

Believe it or not, I started to worry....

2008-02-15T16:21:00.007-06:00

A month or two ago I was riding home late at night when it started to rain. And it wasn't a light rain, either. I came up to a traffic light just as it was turning yellow. I gently applied the brakes. Just before the light, there was a big puddle that happened to have a muddy bottom.

You may not know this, but braking Fatboys tend to have a hard time keeping their balance in muddy-bottomed puddles. I wasn't going fast or anything, but the bike still started sliding out from under me and ended up laid down in the middle of the road.

With no small exertion of effort, I picked the bike up, straightened the mirror, and glanced around looking for a missing turn signal lens. I never found it. One reason for that might be that when I righted the bike, the headlight was no longer working.

I rode the rest of the way very slowly on little-travelled roads. When I got home, I put the bike in the garage, dried it off, and went to bed, figuring I'd fix the headlight in the morning.

I didn't.

But a week or so later, I finally got around to going down to the Harley shop and bought a new headlight. It was remarkable cheap.

When I got home, I took out the old bulb and put the new one in. While I was doing that, I noticed that there were a couple wires in the headlight housing that weren't connected to anything, but they didn't look like they were supposed to be connected to anything, so I didn't think much of it.

I also took that opportunity to adjust the brake lever and all the other controls on the right handlebar, which had been knocked out of alignment.

Anyway, I put the new headlight in, turned on the power and.... Nothing. Not good. I figured I must have damaged the wiring somewhere, but I didn't really have time to deal with it right then. It couldn't have been too bad, though, since the turn signals still worked, and the right signal switch is one of those controls that got knocked out of alignment.

So three or four more weeks passed with me not getting around to fixing it, and therefore not having the use of my bike. I finally decided that I'd have one more look at it, and if I couldn't find the problem, I'd take it down to the Harley shop and let them deal with it for an exorbitant fee.

But ever since I swapped out the headlights, those wires that weren't connected to anything had been bothering me. Could a wire have come loose from the part that the headlight plugs into?

I took the headlight out again and checked it out. And I decided that there was absolutely no chance that either of those wires were supposed to be connected to the socket that the headlight plugs into.

But what about each other? Could it be that those two wires were supposed to be connected to each other, and came unconnected when I dropped the bike?

Obviously not. One of them was clearly a ground wire, and the other had the end wrapped in electrical tape. They were obviously there in case some accessory was added at a later date.

Besides, when I removed the electrical tape, it was obvious that the connectors and the ends of the wires didn't go together.

But that wasn't about to stop me.

I sometimes wonder if I'm really as smart as I think I am.

It was only a little spark, and it only lasted a second.

I tried the turn signals. Nothing.

Duh. A fuse. I forgot to check for a blown fuse.

Once again, I forgot to check the most obvious possible cause of my problem. As some of you may recall, I have something of a blind spot when it comes to fuses.

Two fuses later, it's all better.

Good news, bad news....

2008-01-03T23:30:00.001-06:00

The good news is that the Hillary Clinton Inevitable Juggernaut ran aground in Iowa. Third place, behind Obama (convincingly) and Edwards (just barely). It's always nice to see the establishment's anointed dashed on the rocks.

And it's even better when it happens to someone like Mrs. Clinton, who claims to be the most accomplished and experienced of candidate, but can't seem to point to any "accomplishment" in her adult life that wasn't really something that was given to her because she was married to Mr. Clinton. And, of course, her claim to "experience" is based entirely on her having shared a residence with Bill.

But much as I enjoy seeing Mrs. Clinton get thumped, I'm afraid it's bad news for the only candidate I actually like. And the reason I think that is because I think there are a lot of voters in New Hampshire who'd just love to pile on. And a lot who would like vote for Obama, but only if he demonstrated in Iowa that he actually had a shot. But I can't really complain. Maybe if enough of them kick her when she's down, she won't be able to get back up. And that would be a good thing.

But, unfortunately, a lot of those folks who would only vote for Obama if it looked like he had a chance would have been voting for Ron Paul (or possibly McCain) if they weren't voting in the Democratic primary. In short, I think Obama's thumping of the former First Lady is going to shift a lot of the independent vote over to the Democratic primary, and that's bad news for the anti-establishment Republican candidate. (Probably bad news for McCain too, but I don't care about him.)

And speaking of McCain, the polls have him first in New Hampshire, followed by Romney. I'm guessing that'll be reversed by next Tuesday. But I wouldn't put any money on it. If Mrs. Clinton had won in Iowa, I'd have been willing to bet real money on McCain, Romney, Paul to win, place, and show in Hew Hampshire.

On the other hand, Ron Paul got a lot more more votes than the polls said he should have gotten in Iowa. Although most polls show Giuliani and the Rev. Huckabee 2.5-3% points above Paul, if he beats the spread by the same margin in New Hampshire as he did in Iowa, he'd still be very close to a third place finish in New Hampshire. I'd be happy with that. I'm still hopeful, but I'm expecting another fifth place finish.

And while a fifth place finish would be disappointing, it's really the message and not the man that counts. And as long as he's getting the message out, that's all we can really expect. The Ron Paul Revolution might not bear fruit in 2008 but we might have at least planted the seed that will ripen in 2012 or 2016. I just hope my fellow Americans wise up before Fred Thompson's dream of a mushroom cloud over an American city is realized.

But if he can just beat Giuliani again, it'll all have been worth it. I don't think Il Duce can recover from two consecutive losses to a "kooky" "fringe candidate" like Dr. No. Too bad he won't get almost three times Giuliani's total in Hew Hampshire like he did in Iowa.

-------------------------------------

And since I wouldn't want to appear sexist in singling out Hillary for criticism on her over-hyping of her supposed resume-- What's the deal with Rudy's supposed foreign policy / terrorism expertise? Did he anticipate or prevent the 9/11 attacks? Did he prepare for such an eventuality by providing the firefighters with the necessary equipment to respond to such a situation? Because I though I heard that a whole lot of firemen died because they didn't have working radios. And locating the anti-terrorism command center in the World Trade Center complex was a stroke of genius. Did Rudy actually do anything other than pose for pictures and make speeches?

And how 'bout the Rev. Huckabee claiming to have some sort of special understanding of "Islamofascism" because he took a few Bible classes in college. Isn't it enough to know that they hate us for our freedom and they'll follows us home and all that?

-------------------------------------

Speaking of polls-- The polls say that, of the Republican candidates tested (which naturally does not include Ron Paul), McCain is the only one who stands a chance. Any Democrat beats any Republican except McCain. But the polls say McCain would beat Hillary, that it's a toss-up against Obama, and that he'd lose to Edwards. Edwards. Can you believe that?

I don't know who's going to be on top, but I have a feeling the Democratic ticket is going to have Obama and Edwards on it. And that doesn't scare me nearly as much as the prospect of a Republican ticket featuring Giuliani and Huckabee.

--------------------------------------

Update: It seems my punditry-fu may have been weak that day. The latest Rasmussen poll from New Hampshire has McCain (31%) with a commanding lead over Romney (26%), and Ron Paul (13%) comfortably in third place. Bring up the rear are Huckabee (11%), Giuliani (8%), and Thompson (5%).

One other interesting tidbit:

The Republican race remains fluid as nearly a third of GOP voters say they could still change their mind. Sixty-four percent (64%) of McCain’s voters say they are “certain” they will vote for him. Sixty-two percent (62%) of Romney supporters are that certain along with 83% of Ron Paul voters and 66% for Mike Huckabee.

Only 17% of Ron Paul supporters think they might change their mind, while the figure is about twice that for any other candidate list.

In other news, the Rasmussen poll of the other side shows Obama with a ten point lead over Clinton in Hew Hampshire.

That Darned Huckster....

2008-01-01T16:23:00.000-06:00

From Reason Magazine's roundup of 2007's best videos.

IT'S ON!

2007-12-07T10:17:00.000-06:00

The Ron Paul blimp is a go. It was just pledges before, now it's real money.

They needed to raise $200,000 by midnight tonight to have it in Boston in time for the Tea Party, and they just went over.

Update: Reuters has picked up the story.

This is just too funny....

2007-11-28T15:40:00.001-06:00

Some wacky Ron Paul supporters thought it would be a good idea to get him a blimp. All they needed to do was raise $350,000 to rent the blimp for a month. They were at around $25,000 when I first stumbled on it a week or so ago.

Well, it seems that word has gotten out, and as I write this their website says:

$383,500 pledged as of 11:18 pm 11/27/07

I sure hope they're able to collect on enough of those pledges. It's got to be about the best campaign gimmick ever.

Support Ron. It's Important.

2007-11-24T05:51:00.001-06:00

It's not often that we get a chance to vote for someone who might actually make a difference. Vote "NO" to the status quo, and give 'till it hurts. That money won't be worth anything in a couple years anyway.

Are you in your right mind?

2007-11-13T10:32:00.000-06:00

Fascinating thing from the Daily Telegraph.

Click on the link, follow the instructions, and report back.

Apparently I'm pretty right headed. I tried to focus and make her change direction, but couldn't make it work.

Then I remembered studies that were discussed in a philosophy class I took twenty-something years ago wherein it was learned the brain may process information differently depending on which eye sees is. I think the experiment involved something like showing one eye a picture of a chicken and the other a shovel, then when asked what they say, they'd say chicken but point to the shovel. Something like that, anyway. Then the left brain, being in charge of language, would make up a lie about why the right brain was pointing at the shovel (to shovel up the chicken poop, or something). Something like that, anyway.

So I thought to myself that if I close one eye, maybe she'll spin the other way. But my eyes weren't that easily fooled. Still clockwise regardless of which eye I closed.

But then I looked away from the computer and when I did, I thought I saw something funny out of the corner of my eye. And sure enough I did. I repeated the experiment, and as soon as I'd turned my head far enough that the image passed from the field of view of my left eye, she changed directions.

But the even odder thing was that although no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get her to change directions while watching with both eyes, when she was turning counter-clockwise, it was easy to think her into turning clockwise again.

Brains sure are funny things.

R.I.P.

2007-11-07T22:05:00.000-06:00

This picture was taken on Monday.

The vet gave him two to six months. He took a few more.

It's been a hard year.

When I let him out on Sunday, he lay down in the back yard and had a look in his eyes that said "I'm never getting up again."

There was a scene in Little Big Man where Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) says "It is a good day to die" and lies down in the to die, but nothing happens. "Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn't."

That time, it didn't.

And eventually he got up and came in the house.

But I knew it was time, and on Monday I called the vet and made an appointment for Tuesday afternoon. I took the day off work on Tuesday.

Tuesday was a very long day. He hadn't been eating much for the past couple weeks, and he hadn't eaten anything since Friday. But that didn't stop him from throwing up whatever was left in his stomach, nor did the fact that nothing was left in his stomach stop him. And it was strangely vocalized; it was a human sort of sound that I've never heard from a dog before.

On Sunday, I tried to pick him up and bring him into the house. He growled at me like he'd never growled at me before, and I put him down and let him be until he was ready to come in on his own. On Tuesday, when it was time, he didn't seem to care anymore. He didn't react at all when the vet stuck the needle in.

It was the hardest thing I ever did.

Remember Remember the Fifth of November....

2007-11-05T19:49:00.000-06:00

It has been reported that on January 8th, Mitt Romney raised just over $3.1 million. That was the single biggest day for any Republican candidate in 2008, and the largest online haul for any candidate ever. Today, Ron Paul, an unserious candidate relying entirely on spam contributions from geeks, nerds, and hackers, all of whom live in their parents' basements, beat that record by a substantial margin.

As of 9:00 p.m., EST, he's a bit over $3.3 million for the day.

While Hillary Clinton reportedly holds the all-time record for single day find raising with $6.something million, Mr. Paul has the distinction with raising his money without the benefit of questionable fundraisers like Mr. Hsu.

I wonder how Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the MSM will explain this away.

I wish they didn't block YouTube at work....

2007-11-04T01:25:00.000-05:00

Because there are a few people who need to watch this:

To heck with the AFI. Here are the real top 100 movies.

2007-10-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

To heck with the AFI. Here are the real top 100 movies (in no particular order, except that the top ten are the top ten, although in no particular order.).

This is a work in progress. Suggestions would be appreciated. Of course, since this is my list, I will feel free to reject anything that I don't like.

And the winners are:

A Clockwork Orange
Brazil
Blade Runner
Casablanca
Galaxy Quest
Zardoz (That's a joke... I say, that's a joke, son.)
Big Trouble in Little China
This Is Spinal Tap
Beavis and Butt Head Do America
Star Wars
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Seventh Seal
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Matrix

Next 90 (and yes, I know that was more than 10 and what follows doesn't round out 100. One or more of the top ten and elsewhere might not really belong there, and there might be a few others that belong on the list.):

The Princess Bride
12 Monkeys
The Godfather
The Seven Samurai
Pulp Fiction
Apocalypse Now
Maltese Falcon
Labyrinth
Taxi Driver
Jaws
South Park Bigger, Longer, Uncut
Rocky
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Shall We Dance (Japanese version)
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Captain Blood
Citizen Kane (but only because it's the most overrated movie of all time and it has the Witch of Endor)
The Third Man
Repo Man
City of God
Escape From New York
My Father's Glory
My Mother's Castle
Airplane
An American Werewolf in London
Arsenic and Old Lace
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Wayne's World
Boogie Nights
Blast From the Past
The Bridge On the River Kwai
A Christmas Story
Cyrano de Bergerac
Dawn of the Dead
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
Fargo
Fight Club
A Fish Called Wanda
Forrest Gump
Goodfellas
Highlander
Henry V (Branaugh)
Independence Day
Kagemusha
Les Miserables (1998)
Lawrence of Arabia
Magnolia
Harakiri
The Maltese Falcon
The Sea Hawk
Men in Black
Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noel)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python's Life of Brian
My Cousin Vinny
My Man Godfrey
National Lampoon's Animal House
Office Space
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
Ran
Red Dawn
Repo Man
Requiem for a Dream
Sanjuro
Shaun of the Dead
Singles The Sixth Sense
The Terminator
Titus
Tremors
True Romance
The Truman Show
The Twilight Samurai
Unbreakable
Wallace & Gromit: Three Amazing Adventures
Withnail and I
Yojimbo

A few observations: The critics seem to insist on including silent films. Granted, they might be "important," and they might have been good in their time, but even the best of them (and that would be Metropolis and Nosferatu) just don't hold up. The tools were not available when those movies were made, and however good they may be for what they are, they just don't make the cut.

Citizen Kane really doesn't make the cut either, but it gets extra points for being incredibly overrated for more than half a century.

And before the list is finalized, Zardoz will be eliminated. It's hardly better than Citizen Kane.

Listen up; I'm only gonna say this once!

2007-10-09T20:16:00.000-05:00

Hayes Carll will be doing an end of year tour December 27th – 31 st . Hayes Carll 's End of Year Rock and Roll Jamboree and Toga Party will be in the following cities:

Dec 27 th Little Rock AR
Dec 28 th Dallas , TX
Dec 29 th Houston TX
Dec 30 th Austin , TX
Dec 31 st New Braunfels TX

There will be contests and various activities that are certain to make this a must-go-to event.

They are also going to offer a “Travel like a Rock Star” option that will allow you and your friends to charter a tour bus and tour with Hayes and company from city to city. They will provide you with a bus, road manager, laminate backstage passes and other essential elements.
Stay tuned for more details.….

And I've never been to Boston in the fall....

2007-09-22T17:47:00.000-05:00

Those darned Boston cops are at it again (Massachusetts State Police, actually, but they're still cops in Boston). I guess making complete asses of themselves over the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Lite Brite signs wasn't enough for them, so they've done it again.

Our terrorist du jour is an MIT student by the name of Star Simpson.

It seems that this young woman went to Logan International Airport with a fake bomb strapped to her chest. Or at least that's the official story. Or at least the story I read on boston.com:

Star Simpson, 19, was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and approached an airport employee in Terminal C at 8 a.m. to inquire about an incoming flight from Oakland, according to Major Scott Pare of the State

Police. She was holding a lump of what looked like putty in her hands. The employee asked about the plastic circuit board on her chest, and Simpson walked away without responding, Pare said.

Outside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.
"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said at a press conference at Logan. "There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol ... we may have used deadly force."
Simpson was arrested, and it was quickly determined that the device was harmless.
"She said it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said. "She was holding what was later found to be playdough.
* * *
Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device and was arraigned today East Boston Municipal Court. She was held on $750 cash bail and ordered to return to court Oct. 29.
* * *
"Thankfully because she followed our instructions, she ended up in our cell instead of a morgue," Pare said. "Again, this is a serious offense ... I’m shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport."

In case you were wondering, here's what this imitation IED looked like:

You'll notice the sergeant pointing to large amount of imitation explosive material that this imitation IED was supposed to detonate. Or not. I can see the "I" and the "D," but the "E" part seems conspicuously absent. I guess the moral to this story if if you're going to fly, make sure you don't bring your ID to the airport.

Of course, if the little lump of Play-Doh she'd been playing with had been C-4 and her circuit board contained some means to detonate it, and it had somehow been attached to the detonator, the explosion would have been more than enough to blow off her hand and to seriously startle people tens of yards in every direction, possibly causing numerous whiplash injuries. And probably bring down any passing aircraft.

I suppose that from a distance someone might reasonably wonder whether it might be a bomb or be intended to look like a bomb, but on closer inspection, I'd think they'd be able to recognize that it was obviously neither. After all, anyone who's flown commercial in the last few years knows that bombs look like this:

Or this:

Or maybe sometimes (though rarely) like this:

Of course, after having made a huge show of force with their MP-5s at the ready and all that they couldn't just let her go with a nice: "Sorry for the inconvenience, ma'am, but we have to check these things out. Can't be to careful these days." But no, that might make their initial reaction look slightly hysterical. So rather than risk looking a little foolish, they have to arrest her charge her with something.

And, of course, it was the "hoax device" thing, same as the Aqua Teen guys.

And, as with the Aqua Teen guys, the Authorities don't have a legal leg to stand on, but what the hell, the chances of ending up like Ray Nagin for are about one in a billion. Maybe by threatening to prosecute her for a felony (which would cost her tens of thousands of dollars even though she'd win), they can get her to plead to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct or something.

Just enough to protect them from a lawsuit. Or maybe some sort of deferral thing with an apology and community service.

Same as the Aqua Teen guys.

G-ddamn hysterical fascist ninnies. I wish they'd get the hell out of my country. Or at least learn to tell the difference between a cute geek-chick and a terrorist.

Maybe this would help-- Cute Geek Chick:

Terrorist:

(For anyone who's interested, here's a more in depth story from MIT's student paper: the story.)

And for anyone who's wondering about the title of this post, watch this:

I know it's totally irrelevant, but it's what I associate with Boston. Along with wacky liberals and jack-booted thugs.

Carbon Credits Anyone?

2007-09-10T17:39:00.000-05:00

A friend was kind enough to send me a couple seedlings to replace two of the tall pines I lost in the hurricane a couple years ago. Since everything grows like weeds here in East Podunk (it's the wet spot of Texas, after all), if they don't die in the first month, they'll be furiously sucking up carbon for the next forty years or so.

Since I have achieved a carbon-neutral lifestyle by other means, I have no need for the carbon offsets that these trees will provide. If anyone would like to buy the offsets, which I figure to be not less than five hundred pounds per year per tree, I will let the offsets go for £500 per tree per year. (The two trees should be worth about 20 minutes per year on a Gulfstream V, so if you know any earth-conscious celebs, please forward the link.)

I expect you may be wondering what "other means" I've found to become carbon-neutral. It's quite simple, really. As we all know, growing trees absorb gobs and gobs of carbon from the atmosphere, but that carbon is returned to the atmosphere when wood or wood products are burned or allowed to decay. However, when they're buried, that carbon is sequestered for all time.

So what I do is that when I shop, I always look for products with the most possible paper or cardboard packaging. And then, rather than recycle, which would just keep that carbon in circulation, I throw it away so that it can be hauled off to the local landfill where it will be buried and its carbon forever--or at least for the foreseeable future--removed from the atmosphere.

If we'd all just do little things like this to help the Earth, I'm sure the Global Warming catastrophe could be avoided. So please, do your part--buy my excess carbon credits and always buy the product with the most unnecessary packaging. The Earth and I are counting on you.

More Internet Quizzes

2007-09-07T20:46:00.000-05:00

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic
You think rationally, clearly, and quickly.
A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

Molotov - Frijolero

2007-08-31T22:20:00.001-05:00

I like this band.

They're funny.

Complete Ron Paul Interview, Parts 1 through 4

2007-07-23T22:51:00.001-05:00

How could anyone not love a candidate for President who'll appear for an interview in some guy's dorm room?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Ron Paul on Colbert Report 6/13/07

2007-07-23T13:12:00.001-05:00

Ron Paul is Bill Maher's New Hero

2007-07-23T13:11:00.001-05:00

Whaddayawannabet...?

2007-07-20T12:58:00.000-05:00

While driving back to work today, whoever was subbing for Rush Limbaugh reported that a missile launcher was found in the flightpath of the Newark airport, and that it was the kind of missile used to shoot down airplanes. I looked for the story and at the top of the page Drudge had the headline:

Feds Seize Rocket Launcher In NJ; In flight path of Newark Airport...MORE...

Drudge didn't have it in large text. I just thought it looked better that way. He did have it in red, though. I clicked through the link, which took me to this Breaking News CBS2 Exclusive: Feds Seize Rocket Launcher In N.J..

According to the print story, a New Jersey woman found an AT-4 anti-tank weapon in her front yard. Although an AT-4 fires a projectile with a maximum effective range of 300 meters, the authorities are apparently greatly concerned because her house lies somewhere along flight path for Newark Liberty International Airport. If someone's going to threaten aircraft with such a thing, her house would have to be practically right at the end of the runway. But never-mind, it's good fodder for the "terror" mill.

But I'm guessing what they found was not a genuine AT-4. Probably just a spent, demilled AT-4 tube, which is not reloadable and is not a weapon and can be legally purchased at online stores, on eBay or from brick and mortar military surplus stores. I'd even go one step farther and venture a guess that it's someone's Airsoft toy, possibly built from a spent, demilled AT-4 tube. Like this one:

Pretty scary stuff, eh?

Whaddayawanna bet?

EDITED TO ADD:

Well, that didn't take long: Rocket launcher 'harmless,' feds say

FBI spokesman Sean Quinn said the launcher found by a homeowner in front of her house was essentially an empty tube.
"There was no threat," he said.

Apparantly the First Responders weren't sharp enough to notice that it was an empty tube.

EDITED AGAIN TO ADD:

Who cares if it was just an empty tube that posed no threat. It was the top story after Hillary's cleveage when Sean Hannity opened his show. And even though the story he was reading from said it was an empty tube, he still said it's somehow evidence that there's a terrorist under every rock, and poeple who doubt the seriousness of the threat just don't understand what it means to live in a post-9/11 world. How could anyone not love talk radio? It's way funnier than anything on TV these days.

Internet funnies.

2007-07-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

A dear old friend reminded me of this one. Go to Google, paste in "French Military Victories," and click on "I'm feeling lucky."

I don't care what anyone else says, those Google guys deserved to make billions.

Yet another place holder.

2007-07-14T17:06:00.001-05:00

Your generation stuck mine with a motherload of cultural horrors (bradys! disco! plaid! roller skating!). -30% for being a yuppie.

5 point bonus for telling me where you saw this. Thanks!

Final Score: 89.35

I can't believe I'm getting blamed for the Bradys, disco, and such. I was just a kid! What could I have done about any of that? And I was far too young and unemployed to be a yuppie back when the term was actually used.

Internet Finds

2007-07-08T12:59:00.001-05:00

A Painter Passing Through

2007-06-25T08:50:00.000-05:00

A Painter Passing Through.

That was the title of Gordon Lightfoot's penultimate album, a 1998 release that didn't really do anything for me. It was also the name of about the fifth song he played last night, and the first tune that I couldn't name within the first three notes. It was a lot better live.

"A Painter Passing Through" is an obviously autobiographical song about getting old and being past his prime. It has a certain poignancy live that you just can't catch in a studio album. Gord's voice isn't what it once was. The richness at the low end of the register is gone. And while that's not a good thing, it isn't all bad either. After listening to a few songs, I was reminded of a description Kurt Vonnegut wrote in The Sirens of Titan:

But Beatrice did have a face — and an interesting one. It could be said that she looked like a bucktoothed Indian brave. But anyone who said that would have to add quickly that she looked marvelous. Her face, like the face of Malachi Constant, was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme — a variation that made observers think, Yes — that would be another very nice way for people to look.

And that's sort of what I thought about Gord's voice. It's not the voice he once had, but it's another very nice way for people to sound.

And the band was fantastic.

Really.

I don't remember the last time heard a band with such a tight sound live. If there was a last time.

All in all, a very good show. Well worth the time, the money, and the drive to and from Houston.

MAMA'S MAN

2007-06-19T00:35:00.001-05:00

One of Monster Truck's greatest German hits.

This is what American soldiers do when forced to spend extended periods overseas.

That would be my brother on bass, by the way.

Bring the boys home.

For God's sake, bring the boys home!

I believe this was recorded somewhere around the first Gulf War.

And the lyrics are these:

Mama's Man
(N. Gifford & O. Cowan)

Daddy hit the bottle
When mama hit the bars
She spent a lot of nights
In the back of a lot of cars

I remember the day it happened
It came as no surprise
She knew he knew her secret
From the look in his eyes

And she knew she couldn't keep him
No words had to be said
He couldn't stand the shame
Of that stranger in his bed

Said he'd never really known her
And that ring on his hand
Couldn't stop my daddy
From takin' my mama's man

He spent his life a workin'
With all the men downtown
Oh they built this city up
But it tore our family down

As the love between him and mama
Withered and died
Oh the life he'd made it crumbed
'Cause he'd been livin' a lie

And she knew she couldn't keep him
No words had to be said
He couldn't stand the shame
Of that stranger in his bed

He said he'd never really known her
And that ring on his hand
Couldn't stop my daddy
From taking my mama's man

Couldn't stop my daddy
From taking my mama's man

By the way, Monster Truck is (or was):
Nathan "Giff" Gifford - Guitars and Vocals
Owen PD Cowan - Bass and Vocals
Scott Farnsworth - Acoustic Guitar and Vocals
Dynamite Daniel Fischer - Drums

They've been slowly converting old videos to a MySpace compatible format. More of their stuff is posted here, now including their fabulous versions of YMCA (from before it made its comeback in the 90s), Hey Jude, and a host of others.

Corrections and addenda:

Mama's Man was written in 1992, and the video was from a June 10, 1994, show at Lucky's Bar in Augsburg, so it was a bit after Desert Storm. It was Monster Truck's second to last show, their farewell show being August 6, 2004.

The drummer, Daniel Fischer, was not an American soldier. He was from Romania, the son of a German father. He spoke very little English, so he shouldn't be blamed for the lyrics.

Scott Farnsworth had a great voice and played a mean bluegrass guitar, but he came to the band sort of late, so he didn't have very many songs to sing before it all ended. On Mama's Man, that's Giff singing the first half and Owen singing the second.

In newer versions of the song, the line "I remember the day it happened" has been changed to "I remember the day he left her" to for clarity's sake.

More Movie Recommendations

2007-06-17T21:34:00.000-05:00

After the Virginia Tech shootings, I read that the shooter was obsessed with a Korean movie called "Oldboy," so naturally, I had to check it out.

Having seen the movie, I don't see how it might have related to the shooter's crimes, but I do see why he liked it. Sort of a Korean Quentin Hitchcock movie. It rates a four pancake stack.

Having liked one of Chan-wook Park’s movies, I thought I'd take a look at his other work. According to Netflix, Oldboy is is the middle installment in Chan-wook Park’s revenge trilogy, the first installment being Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and the last Lady Vengeance. Oldboy's clearly the best of the three, and the only one that merit's an unqualified recommendation. Mr. Vengeance is worth a look, while Lady Vengeance is probably best left to compulsive completests, in my opinion.

But he had another one on Netflix that I signed up for at the same time as the otehrs, and that was Joint Security Area.

I'm not sure that this one rates a full four pancake stack, but it's one that makes you think. Or at least makes me think. Pontius Pilate said, "What is truth?" This one asks, "What's it worth?" Like I needed more to think about. It's an interesting quesion, but I still haven't even worked through Pilate's problem yet.

Is that nasty, or what?

2007-06-15T22:39:00.001-05:00

You may remember that my dog has cancer. More specifically, it was a skin cancer in the nail bed that metastasized and spread to his lungs. He was going to have his toe cut off, but when the x-rays showed that one lung was pretty much gone, the vet recommended against it.

I'm posting this so that if anyone else finds him or her self in a similar position, he or she will go ahead and whack off the toe. It's been a constant source of pain for him, and now it looks like this:

He still hasn't told me that he wants his life to be over, but I think it's getting pretty close. Closer than it might have been if all he had to worry about was a bit of trouble breathing.

A Photo Haiku

2007-06-05T17:34:00.000-05:00

"Ode to an Anole"

June brings anoles.

So many f**kin' lizards.

Where do they come from?

Ron Paul on the Daily Show

2007-06-05T12:36:00.000-05:00

Apocalypto

2007-06-02T01:27:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to watching Apocalypto, I didn't look at my watch once. And that means it was a very well made movie.

But it didn't live up to the hype.

All the reviews I've read portrayed this as about the most gruesome, gross-out, blood-spurting movie you're ever likely to see. Perhaps I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but it's really not too far off. But in actually watching the movie, I didn't find it any more gruesome than Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan or anything Quentin Tarantino ever made, and it doesn't even come close to the graphic gross-out quality of stuff like Hostel or pretty much anything George Romero ever made, to say nothing of Japanese classics like the Lone Wolf and Cub series. I get the feeling that the reviewers felt that they had to find something to complain about the film because it was made by Mel Gibson.

But I've got to admit when I started the "making of" documentary on the special features, for those first few seconds Mel had crazy eyes. Demented and maniacal, he looked. Having said that, I feel like a proper film critic.

I don't know if I'll buy it, but it's definitely worth watching at least once.

More stuff I learned in Vegas

2007-05-25T19:46:00.000-05:00

1) A $600 meal is pretty darned good, but not all that much better than a $30 meal. I ate lots of good and expensive food in Vegas, but it wasn't all that much better than what I could get at home for a much more modest price. Fer instance, the Kobe filet at Shibuya was excellent, but not really any better than what I could get at Tokyo in Beaumont. And this goes triple for wine, sake, and booze in general.

2) There's an exception to every rule.

3) In this case, the exception is the cuisine of Joël Robuchon as served at L'Atelier in the MGM Grand (or at his higher-end restaurant, Joël Robuchon, I'm sure). This is stuff like you don't get elsewhere. I bought the cookbook (Simply French, Patricia Wells Presents the Cuisine of Joël Robuchon) just for the gaspacho recipe.

Hair

2007-05-25T19:11:00.000-05:00

I've noticed that no matter how many times I get it cut, my hair just keeps growing. I'm thinking I ought to just shave it all off this weekend. Whaddayathink? Does it sound like a plan? Should I post before and after pics?

If I knew how to do a poll, I would. but I don't, so I'll just have to rely on the comments.

Edited to add:

I've often thought that a tatoo like this might look good:

How 'bout that Ron Paul?

2007-05-17T19:40:00.000-05:00

Seems like he touched a nerve in that last debate. Poor old Rudy nearly had a seizure when Ron suggested that the 9/11 attacks might have been in response to U.S. foreign policy:

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

MR. GIULIANI: Can I have 30 seconds, please?

MR. : No, no, no, wait a second. Let's -- we'll all get 30 seconds.

(Cross talk.)

MR. GIULIANI: They are coming --

(Cross talk.)

MR. : We all want 30 seconds of time --

[Rudy didn't get his 30 seconds. Instead, they moved on to talk about the really important issue of the day: Whether South Carolina should be free to fly the Confederate flag from state buildings.]

I really find it odd that Giuliani thinks he's never hear that before. And I find that funny because, as you may recall, right after the attacks, Rudy turned down a $10 million donation for disaster relief from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal after the prince suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East contributed to the September 11 attacks. You'd think he'd remember something that angered him so much that he refused $10 million for the widows and orphans.

Anyway, an ABC News poll has Ron Paul down as the winner of the debate by more than 10 to 1 over all the other candidates combined. And he also beat the second place choice (which wasn't a candidate) by more than 10 to 1. Take Ron Paul out, and the entire Republican field combined couldn't beat the second place finisher: "It doesn't matter who won. I wouldn't put America in another Republican's hands." As of this writing, the results are these:

Ron Paul: 21,799

It doesn't matter who won. I wouldn't put America in another Republican's hands: 1,828

Mitt Romney: 376

Rudy Guiliani: 362

None of them. I'm interested in the possibility of new candidates like Fred Thompson: 345

John McCain: 169

Tom Tancredo: 86

Mike Huckabee: 51

Tommy Thompson: 36

Duncan Hunter: 33

Sam Brownback: 25

James Gilmore: 16

Three things I learned in Vegas

2007-05-12T16:42:00.000-05:00

1. In addition to holding the world record for eponymous albums, after forty years in the business, Chicago is still capable of putting on a damned fine show. And I was sort of surprised to see that there are still four guys left in the band from the 1969 Chicago Transit Authority debut album.

2. Although I never thought I could enjoy a Las Vegas show, Cirque du Soleil's production of KA at the MGM Grand is about the most spectacular thing I've ever seen. And the word "about" really has no place in that sentence. It was actually worth the $165 ticket price.

3. A Citation Excel makes the ride home a lot easier. About two hours and forty-five minutes in the air, and no shoe removal, pat-down, or cavity search required. A far more satisfactory experience than last time I blogged about Leaving Las Vegas.

Another place holder.

2007-05-01T17:10:00.000-05:00

You're 1984!

by George Orwell

You have this uncanny feeling that you're always being watched. Thus life has become a bit of a show as you try to portray yourself as much more reputable than you actually are. All around you, people seem to accept an unending stream of lies and propaganda without flinching. Your only hope may be a star-crossed love affair, but pain seems stronger than love. If you have any older brothers, be very wary of them.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Drinks I've Drunk.

2007-04-26T20:35:00.000-05:00

In one of my late-night drinking binges a while back, I got the urge to order some absinthe. Since absinthe is considered something less than kosher by the FDA and cannot be sold in this country, it was necessary to acquire it from foreign sources. God bless the Internet.

One of the ones I ordered was Jade Absinthe Nouvelle-Orléans, which a review I read pegged as "Pretty Damned Good." In fact, all the reviews I read about it contained similar praise. In fact, the Liqueurs de France website (from which I may or may not have bought mine), says that it was the Silver Medal Winner at the 2006 IWSC.

So I guess what I'm going to say now will forever mark me as a Philistine in the absinthe drinking world. And what I'm going to say is that that's some of the nastiest stuff I've ever tasted. I don't think I would have enjoyed it less if it were pure anise extract, which is what it tasted like. Like Sambuca, only a thousand times worse. I can't believe that there are people who actually like this stuff. De gustibus non disputandum est is one thing, but this is quite another. In my opinion.

On gun control....

2007-04-25T16:57:00.000-05:00

Even Penn and Teller get things right sometimes.

(This link was stolen from the Sandmonkey. Gotta love the Sandmonkey.)

Highway 87 is a dangerous place to be....

2007-04-19T23:55:00.000-05:00

Highway 87 is a dangerous place to be
When you pissed off all the local boys
and your back’s against the sea....

But if you're just down there for the Stingaree Music Festival, it's not dangerous at all.

Well, I'm finally about recovered from the Stingaree Music Festival at Crystal Beach (and the broken stitches in my eye and bout with strep throat that followed), and I'd like to thank this man for making it all possible:

And that man is, of course, Hayes Carll, the best thing to happen to Texas music since Garth Brooks retired (I know Brooks is technically from Oklahoma, but I'm pretty sure Oklahoma is just a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth).

I missed the early acts on Friday, but did make it in time to see to of my favorites, Ray Wylie Hubbard:

And Hayes Carll:

Now, outdoors on the Peninsula wasn't the most pleasant place to be weather-wise on Friday afternoon and evening (it was cool-to-cold and raining), so I wasn't too disappointed about missing the other acts. A bit over two hours was just about right.

Weather-wise, Saturday was probably worse that Friday. Although the rain had stopped, the wind had picked up. A lot. So much so that it started pulling up the stakes on the Big Top, so the bands that were supposed to play there moved to the Beer Garden Stage. But somehow with the cold wind blowing and the delay entailed by moving all the equipment from the Big Top Stage to the Beer Garden Stage, it got to seeming like something a little more indoors might be a more pleasant way to spend the evening. If you want to go someplace and come away with an indelible odor of tobacco smoke, Sharky's just can't be beat. And, of course, where there's smoke, there's drinkin', which means a good time was had by all.

By Sunday, the weather had become decidedly more pleasant. The rain was gone, the wind was mild, and the sun was shining. But after a late night at Sharky's, bright sun early in the day has less appeal than you might think, given the weather from the previous couple of days. But by early afternoon, it was shaping up to be a very pleasant day.

Back at the Music Fest, I'm sure the early acts were all very good, but they did not wait for me to get there. But I did get there in time for Sisters Morales, who are very good but seemed just a tad out of place for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I expect the Sisters are at their best whooping it up on a Friday night.

What I really wanted to hear was something more in the folk/Americana vein, like Hayes Carll. And, it being his Music Festival, he obliged, this time with the bass player from the John Evans Band (I think):

And that was about it. except for the extremely entertaining Medicine Show performing on the Tiki Bar Stage on the way out:

And that's all I have to say about that. For more, you can read what Laurie was doing while missing New Orleans, and you can hear more about the weather and see more pictures at the Houston Chronicle Blog.

On another note, Hayes Carll will be performing at the YMBL Rodeo at Ford Arena on May 5, 2007. I'm not crazy about the venue, but I'm sure he'll put on a good show.

I also hear that the John Evans Band occasionally plays at The Vortex. If they come around again, I wouldn't miss them.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T13:51:00.000-05:00

ZZ Top at Ford Park

2007-04-08T18:20:00.000-05:00

This was my second time to see ZZ Top at the spectacularly poorly managed Ford Park. For my thoughts on their idiotic security measures, see my previous post, Why I hate Ford Park: Reason # 23. Reason # 24 is that in the whole damn place, they don't have a single ATM. My son asked me to pick up a T-shirt for him, and after I'd spent $35 on that, I had very little cash left for food and beer, and for a show that's supposed to go from about 5:00 p.m. to midnight where everything's seriously overpriced, that can be a problem. Reason # 25 is that they'll let you leave to find an ATM elsewhere, but if you do, you can't get back in without buying another ticket.

Did I mention that it was about 40 degrees and raining? That part wasn't Ford Park's fault, but the fact that I had to spend at least an hour waiting in line in the 40 degree rain was. That was at least 45 minutes to get through "security," and then at least another 15 minutes waiting for someone to check my ID (I'm only 43 years old after all) so I could get a wristband and stamp that would allow me to buy their over-priced beer. Frickin' over-priced lite beer. Does that even count as beer?

But enough about the venue. Suffice it to say that it is something to be avoided. The bands were another matter altogether.

The first band to play after I got through all the lines was Cross Canadian Ragweed. I don't know if any other bands played before them. I could hear music coming from the pavilion while I was waiting in line, but I couldn't tell whether it was recorded music or a real live band. I wouldn't be surprised if Image 6 did a set early on, it being a Coondog Productions production and all.

I like Cross Canadian Ragweed. I like their music and I liked their show, but I think they need a smaller venue to really be at their best. But then, I think everyone needs a smaller venue to be at their best. At least from my perspective. I'm sure that if I'd been sitting closer or they were playing a smaller room, I'd have more to say. But they weren't and I don't.

After a not too long intermission, Los Lonely Boys took the stage. Although I'd heard of them, I'd never actually heard Los Lonely Boys play before last night. And dang, those guys can play. I'd seen a few people play a guitar one handed before, but I'd never seen a guy play the bass with one hand and the guitar with the other at the same time. They're an amazing act to watch, and the songs aren't bad either.

When Los Lonely Boys were finished, I was really looking forward to not hearing a set by Kid Rock, and he did not disappoint. maybe he closed the show or something after I'd left, but the only thing I saw him do was introduce ZZ Top. I'm not a Kid Rock fan, as you may have guessed.

ZZ Top does a lot of songs that I'm not particularly interested in hearing, and during the first half of the show, about the only song I even recognized was "Nationwide," and it's not one of my favorites. But ZZ Top isn't just a band, it's a show, and there was plenty to look at even though the songs weren't among my favorites.

Then about halfway through, Billy Gibbons started talking about going to the mall and buying jewelry for his girlfriend. (Or was it Dusty Hill? One of the bearded guys, anyway.) Something like that, anyway. The upshot was that she wasn't interested in sparkly things, she just wanted a pearl necklace. And at that point, things started looking up. El Loco came out when I was about 17, and it was my first ZZ Top album. And although I don't consider it to be a particularly good album overall, "Tube Snake Boogie" and especially "Pearl Necklace" have a tremendous adolescent appeal that has never worn off. Not long after that, it was "Gimme All Your Lovin'" segueing into "Sharp Dress Man," and a bunch of other good stuff until they finally switched to their furry guitars for "Legs," after which they left the stage.

But, of course, it wasn't over yet. After a few minutes they came back out and did "Viva Las Vegas" and then "La Grange" (which is really really good live), but at that point, I'd really had enough, and I didn't hang around to find out what, if anything, was next. I'm sure whatever it was was good, but five and a half hour was enough for me.

Incidentally, the boys' beards looked considerably whiter in person than they did in this picture, which was supposedly taken within the past couple months:

Why I hate Ford Park: Reason # 23

2007-04-08T13:02:00.000-05:00

A while back I wrote this about Ford Park:

The first time I went to Ford Park was for a ZZ Top concert a few months back. It was a nightmare. It took more than an hour from the time I exited the freeway to the time I got in the parking lot. And then it was about another hour to clear security. This time, there was no wait for anything. But then, this wasn't ZZ Top and the parking lot wasn't nearly as full. Nor was the pavilion. But there was still a pretty good crowd.

I knew I should have known better, but I guess I never learn.

Anyway, that little ol' band from Texas was back last night, along with Cross Canadian Ragweed and Los Lonley Boys. Kid Rock might have been there too, but if he did anything other than introduce ZZ Top, it was before I got there or after I left. Or maybe while I was waiting in one of their interminable lines. This is not the concert review. This is a rant. If I get around to doing a review, it'll be in a separate post.

I guess it wasn't quite as bad as last time. This time, it only took about half an hour from the time I exited I-10 to the time I got to the parking lot. And then probably only another 45 minutes to clear "security."

"Security" is quotated for a reason.

And that reason is that it has nothing to do with making the place more secure. It's all about the idiots who hold power trying to look like they're doing something to protect us from all those swarthy guys in Iraq who want nothing more than to come to Beaumont and take out a whole bunch of us infidels at a concert. Something like that, anyway.

Anyway, whatever the reason, it seems that one can no longer go to government owned facilities where lots of people congregate without giving up your Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. (They do the same thing, although somewhat more competently, for Texans games at Reliant Stadium, which is owned by Harris County.) But on top of the insult of the search, the morons who run the thing don't hire enough people or buy enough wands or whatever, which means the lines get ridiculously long and the people who are supposed to be doing the searches get more and more careless and perfunctory.

So almost an hour was wasted standing out in a cold rain waiting for the opportunity for someone to run a wand over me in a manner that would not even have detected it if I'd been carrying my Kel-Tec P-3AT in my pocket. I was told by people who arrived a couple hours later that they'd tired of this and just waived people through without treating them like criminals.

I remember back when this was America. Hell, I remember back when this was Texas. Now it's seeming more and more like a pussified wannabe police state. It seems that's what a "Post 9/11 World" is all about. (These intrusive "security" measures are almost invariably blamed on 9/11, after all.)

I am not happy about this.

And I think that if Osama & Company wanted to punish ordinary Americans for our government's officious foreign policy, they've succeeded brilliantly. They had the resources to make one big show, but that was about it. And in response our government has done more to diminish our quality of life than Osama & Company could have ever hoped to achieve.

To put things in perspective, Osama & Company killed about 3000 people on 9/11, an, in this country, we've heard barely a peep out of them since, but you can't get on an airplane without being subjected to all sorts of idiotic, completely pointless "security" measures that don't do one damned thing to make flying safer, but that are enormously annoying and time consuming. Same goes for concerts and football games. On the other hand, doctors and nurses kill about 30 times as many people each year because it's too much trouble to observe proper hygiene between patients. And what do we do about it? Do we round up hospital administrators and the head doctors and ship them off to Gitmo until they learn to wash their hands properly? Hell no! We enact "tort reform" to make sure they aren't held accountable for the damage they do.

* * *

As Judge Wiener observed in his dissenting opinion in U.S. v. Zapata Ibarra, the Fourth Amendment no longer applies within a hundred (or more) miles from the Mexican border because any reason that a law enforcement officer might give for search will be accepted as reasonable by the courts. In one of my favorite pieces of legal writing (which I include here only because I love to quote this passage), Judge Wiener cataloged facts which the Fifth Circuit had, in previous cases, accepted as creating a "reasonable suspicion" justifying vehicle stops that would otherwise offend the Fourth Amendment:

The vehicle was suspiciously dirty and muddy, or the vehicle was suspiciously squeaky-clean;the driver was suspiciously dirty, shabbily dressed and unkempt, or the driver was too clean; the vehicle was suspiciously traveling fast, or was traveling suspiciously slow (or even was traveling suspiciously at precisely the legal speed limit); the [old car, new car, big car, station wagon, camper, oilfield service truck, SUV, van] is the kind of vehicle typically used for smuggling aliens or drugs; the driver would not make eye contact with the agent, or the driver made eye contact too readily; the driver appeared nervous (or the driver even appeared too cool, calm, and collected); the time of day[early morning, mid-morning, late afternoon, early evening, late evening, middle of the night] is when "they" tend to smuggle contraband or aliens; the vehicle was riding suspiciously low (overloaded), or suspiciously high (equipped with heavy duty shocks and springs); the passengers were slumped suspiciously in their seats, presumably to avoid detection, or the passengers were sitting suspiciously ramrod-erect; the vehicle suspiciously slowed when being overtaken by the patrol car traveling at a high rate of speed with its high-beam lights on, or the vehicle suspiciously maintained its same speed and direction despite being overtaken by a patrol car traveling at a high speed with its high-beam lights on; and on and on ad nauseam.

Judge Wiener wrote that back in August of 2000. But that was then, and this is now. In this Post 9/11 World, with Islamofascist Terrorists hiding under every bed and unchecked illegal immigration, are we not all living "on the border" now? How much longer before we have swarms of smartly dressed Homeland Security Officers to greet us on every corner with a cherry, "Papiere, bitte!"? Or to periodically make unannounced home inspections to ensure that there are no undocumented Islamofascist Terrorists living in the spare room? Or to rummage through our garages to make sure we don't have any diesel fuel and fertilizer stashed away?

All this has me in the mood to watch my favorite movie about the day after tomorrow, when it'll feel like we're all living in Brazil.

How 'bout that Billy Joe Shaver?

2007-04-08T12:40:00.000-05:00

Shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die....

Well, maybe it was Lorena rather than Reno, and maybe it was self defense rather than murder, and maybe the other guy didn't actually die but still, I think I hear that whistle blowin'....

Anyway, it seems that one of our favorite performers from Courville's has got himself in a bit of trouble with the law. According to the Houston Chronicle, Billy Joe Shaver shot a man outside Papa Joe's Texas Saloon in Lorena. (Lorena is just down the road a bit from Waco. What is it about Waco that makes people want to shoot each other?) Billy Joe says self defense, the other guy says it was unprovoked.

Note to self, don't heckle Shaver.

And buy his Greatest Hits album.

Since you asked....

2007-03-26T08:51:00.000-05:00

In a comment to the last post, Laurie said:

Off we go. I had at least heard of Kinky Friedman. I am blissfully ignorant when it comes to politics. I'm sure you'll get me up to speed on Ron Paul in no time.

You can read the official bio on the House website, but as a real introduction, I'd recommend Thomas Wood's article, The Revolutionary Candidate. Ron Paul is a Republican Congressman (whose district now includes Galveston) that the party establishment loves to hate because he just won't play ball. And, of course, that makes him a crank, so the media ignores him. But he has a lot of support among the politically disaffected libertarian types. So much support, in fact, that when the neo-con Pajamas Media ran their presidential straw poll, he trounced all the other Republican candidates, pulling in almost as many votes as Giuliani, Romney, and Gingrich, combined. You won't see that on the Pajamas Media website though, because those results were unacceptable. Since he's not a "serious" candidate, he could not be allowed to win, and he was purged from the poll.

Political News: Ron Paul has made it official.

2007-03-14T13:53:00.000-05:00

My favorite politician, Ron Paul, has announced that he's running for President. He's the only person running (or likely to run) that: (1) I actually like, and (2) I don't actively despise.

He's the only one in the race on the Republican side who doesn't think war is a good idea, and, so far as I know, the only candidate from either major party who voted against it before the troops were sent over. That means that, unlike most candidates running, he's smart enough to recognize that any "victory" we might win will be Phyrric, and among the rest, he's the only one who had the backbone to oppose the war when the rest of them were too stupid, spineless, or politically calculating to do what was best for the country. (When I hear Democrats talking about how Bush played on their fears and fooled them into voting for the war, I can't help but wonder why such self-described cowardly fools think they're competent to be President.)

If you have a few bucks sitting around that you don't know what to do with, send 'em here.

Edited to add: Dennis Kucinich voted against the war too. I suppose I overlooked him because I have a hard time taking him seriously.

Fun with advertising.

2007-03-06T18:00:00.000-06:00

This is a Pepsi commercial:

The song is "Ca Plane Pour Moi," performed by The President's of The United States of America. But that's not the version I remember. That tune goes with some very different words. I remember it as "Jet Boy Jet Girl" by Elton Montello.

According to my research (which consisted of consulting this article), Jet Boy Jet Girl is the original, but the lyrics (which can be found here), were a little too colorful for radio play, so an Elton Montello band member came up with alternate lyrics and, under the name Plastic Bertrand, recorded the song with inoffensively meaningless lyrics as "Ca Plane Pour Moi," which became a minor worldwide smash (peaking at 39 on Billboard's Hot 100), and which the Presidents of the United States of America covered on the Pepsi commercial.

You can listen to a snippet of Elton Motello's studio version here. When Elton Montello broke up, the author of this masterpiece, Alan Ward, went on to form the band The Damned (featuring Captain Sensible), whose poorly recorded live version of "Jet Boy Jet Girl" is available on YouTube, and is included here for your amusement:

Someone involved with this commercial had to know where the tune came from, but I expect it wasn't the guys at Pepsi who pull down the big bucks. Now their fine product is firmly linked in my mind with the words:

Jet boy jet girl
I'm gonna take you 'round the world
Jet boy I'm gonna make you penetrate
I'm gonna make you be a girl
Ooooohhhh
He gives me head

I don't know why, but I find stuff like this terribly amusing.

I think I'll have a Coke.

Courville's Wednesday Night

2007-02-17T21:09:00.000-06:00

Strap them kids in
Give 'em a little bit of vodka in a cherry Coke
We're going to Oklahoma to the family reunion for the first time in years
It's up at uncle Slayton's 'cause he's getting on in years
You know he no longer travels but he's still pretty spry
He's not much on talking and he's just too mean to die
And they'll be comin' down from Kansas
and from west Arkansas
It'll be one great big old party like you never saw

Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride
Back in the thickets with his Asian bride
He's got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow
He still makes whiskey 'cause he still knows how
He plats that Choctaw bingo every Friday night
You know he had to leave Texas but he won't say why
He owns a quarter section up by Lake Eufala
Caught a great big ol' blue cat on a driftin' jug line
Sells his hardwood timber to the shipping mill
Cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell
He cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell
You know he likes his money he don't mind the smell

My cousin Roscoe Slayton's oldest boy from his second marriage up in Illinois
He was raised in East St. Louis by his momma's people
Where they do things different
Thought he'd just come on down
He was going to Dallas Texas in a semi truck called from that big McDonald's
You know the one they built up on that great big ol' bridge
Across the Will Rogers Turnpike
Took the Big Cabin exit stopped and bought a couple of cartons of cigarettes
At that Indian Smoke Shop with the big neon smoke rings
In the Cherokee Nation hit Muskogee late that night
Somebody ran a stoplight at the Shawnee Bypass
Roscoe tried to miss 'em but he didn't quite

Bob and Mae come up from little town
Way down by lake Texoma where he coaches football
They were two A champions now for two years running
But he says they won't be this year no they won't be this year
And he stopped off in Tushka at that "Pop's Knife and Gun" place
Bought a SKS rifle and a couple a full cases of that steel core ammo
With the berdan primers from some East bloc nation that no longer needs 'em
And a Desert Eagle that's one great big ol' pistol
I mean .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews
And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton's
Soon as it gets dark we're gonna have us a time
We're gonna have us a time

Ruth Ann and Lynn come down from Baxter Springs
That's one hell raisin' town way up in Southeastern Kansas
Got a biker bar next to the lingerie store
That's got them Rolling Stones lips up there where everyone can see 'em
And they burn all night you know they burn all night you know they burn all night
Ruth Ann and Lynn they wear them cut off britches and those skinny little halters
And they're second cousins to me
Man I don't care I want to get between 'em
With a great big ol' hard on like a old bois d' arc fence post
You could hang a pipe rail gate from
Do some twisted sisters 'til the cows come home
And we'd be havin' us a time

Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride
Back in the thickets with his Asian bride
He's cut that corner pasture into acre lots`
He sells 'em owner financed
Strictly to them that's got no kind of credit
'Cause he knows they're slackers
When they miss that payment
Then he takes it back
He plays that Choctaw Bingo every Friday night
Drinks that Johnny Walker at that Club 69
We're gonna strap them kids in give 'em a little bit o' Benadryl
And a cherry coke we're goin' to Oklahoma
We're gonna have us a time
Gonna have us a time

I guess that pretty well sums it up.

East Texas, I mean, not Courville's on Wednesday night.

The song is Choctaw Bingo. It was written by James McMurtry, but it was sung by Ray Wylie Hubbard.

Did I mentiuon that it was Ray Wylie Hubbard at Courville's last Wednesday?

Well, it was. And, as always, the food was good and the show was better. But this time, it was even better than usual, because Hubbard had the band with him this time, and they're a very good band. Gurf Morlix plays a mean guitar.

Don't forget, Ray Wylie Hubbard and a host of others will be playing at Crystal Beach in April at Hayes Carll's Stingaree Music Festival. You know, we'll have us a time. We're gonna have us a time.

Last Call for Gordon Lightfoot!

2007-02-08T18:42:00.000-06:00

Gordon Lightfoot, one of my all time favorites, will be appearing at Verizon Wireless Theater in Houston on Sunday, June 24, 2007. Tickets are on sale now on Ticketmaster or at the Verizon Theater box office.

I saw him several years ago at the Woodlands. His voice wasn't what it used to be, but it was still a very good show. Definitely worth the drive and the $45 per ticket(plus the $8 for parking and Ticketmaster's $5 "order processing fee" and $10 per ticket "convenience" fee).

Update:

I'll be in Section 102, middle of row B.

Winning the Global War on Terror

2007-02-01T11:15:00.000-06:00

I think I've finally figured out GWB's secret strategy for winning The Global War on Terror.

It was right there in his post 9/11 address to the joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001:

Americans are asking "Why do they hate us?"

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

I don't know why I didn't see it earlier. He's trying to make them love us.

(A note about the picture.)

Boston Legal

2007-02-01T10:18:00.000-06:00

While looking up the Massachusetts statute on "hoax devices," I ran across a few other amusing laws that are still on the books in the Bay State. I think that Boston Legal ought to do a show where a crusading prosecutor brings the lawyers of Crane Poole & Schmidt to justice for the crimes that they commit on a regular basis. For instance, there's a whole lot of this going on:

§ 18. Fornication.

Whoever commits fornication shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than three months or by a fine of not more than thirty dollars.

ALM GL ch. 272, § 18.

And I'm pretty sure there's some of this too (surely someone on that show is married, or seeing someone who's married):

§ 14. Adultery.

A married person who has sexual intercourse with a person not his spouse or an unmarried person who has sexual intercourse with a married person shall be guilty of adultery and shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than three years or in jail for not more than two years or by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars.

ALM GL ch. 272, § 14.

Heck, it appears that under Chapter 272, § 26 of the Massachusetts General Laws, you can go to jail for up to a year for going to a bar with the intent to score.

But here's the one that they'd get Alan Shore with:

§ 36. Blasphemy.

Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.

ALM GL ch. 272, § 36

And they think Texas is backward because we still have the death penalty.

Someone should go to jail for this.

2007-02-01T09:33:00.000-06:00

As I'm sure everyone's heard by now, a terrorist organization known as "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" shut down Boston by placing bombs at major transportation hubs. Fortunately, the ever-vigilant authorities put the city on lock down until the situation could be diffused and the culprits arrested.

When the feds were trying to decide how to reorder things for The Post 9/11 World, my brother, who is an airline pilot, was forced to break the nail file off his nail clippers before he was allowed to take them on the airplane he was flying. Apparently, there was some concern that he might threaten himself with the fearsome, unsharpened inch long blade and force himself to fly the plane to Cuba or into a building or something. Or perhaps the concern was that a hijacker might break into the cabin and wrestle the nail clippers away from him. Whatever the case may be, the authorities in Boston have proved that they can be just as stupid as the feds.

Here's a picture of one of the "bombs":

Here's another:

And here is a video of the planing and execution of the crime:

And here are the perps expressing remorse appropriate to the heinousness of their actions:

As you might notice, these things are actually lighted signs. These signs are about a foot high. That thing at the bottom contains the batteries. You'd think that would be fairly obvious to anyone looking at these things, even from a distance. It should certainly be obvious to the bomb disposal guy who "disarmed" the first one. And having learned that the first one was not a bomb at all but a lighted sign, you might expect that they'd recognize their mistake and call off the bomb scare. But apparently they didn't, deciding instead to err on the side of caution.

Up to this point, the Boston authorities had merely demonstrated their stupidity, but that seems to be par for the course in all levels of governments' responses to the alleged threat of terrorism. But they couldn't content themselves with a bit of posturing about the need for extraordinary caution in The Post 9/11 World. They actually arrested the guys who put up the signs and charged them with a felony--planting "hoax devices."

Since the signs in questions are obviously not bombs and are obviously not intended to appear to be bombs, and are obviously not intended to instill fear in people of normal intelligence not suffering from mental disorders, it seemed impossible to me that hanging them from bridges or buildings or whatever could possibly violate a law against “hoax devices.” But just to be sure, I looked up the law, and here it is:

§ 102A1/2. Possession of Hoax Device.

(a) Whoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

(b) For the purposes of this section, the term "hoax device" shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term "infernal machine" shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, the words "hoax substance" shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both.

(c) This section shall not apply to any law enforcement or public safety officer acting in the lawful discharge of official duties.

(d) The court shall, after a conviction, conduct a hearing to ascertain the extent of costs incurred, damages and financial loss suffered by local, county or state public safety agencies and the amount of property damage caused as a result of the violation of this section. A person found guilty of violating this section shall, in all cases, upon conviction, in addition to any other punishment, be ordered to make restitution to the local, county or state government for any costs incurred, damages and financial loss sustained as a result of the commission of the offense. Restitution shall be imposed in addition to incarceration or fine; however, the court shall consider the defendant's present and future ability to pay in its determinations regarding a fine. In determining the amount, time and method of payment of restitution, the court shall consider the financial resources of the defendant and the burden restitution will impose on the defendant.

ALM GL ch. 266, § 102A1/2

As I see it, there are two insurmountable obstacles to prosecution in this case:

First, there is no reason to believe that the devices were placed with “the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons.” It's not even plausible. These things are signs.

Second, these things don’t remotely qualify as hoax devices. In order to qualify as a hoax device, it would have to be something that “would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine.” The key word there is “reasonably.” The fact that the authorities in Boston chose to behave like a bunch of frightened schoolgirls (with apologies to frightened school girls everywhere) does not mean that a person could reasonably believe that these signs were “infernal machines.”

But, of course, the authorities could not admit that they were guilty of an absurd, hysterical overreaction and they had to blame someone. God forbid that a government official admit that he made a mistake. (Or maybe they just figure they can use the baseless prosecution as leverage to extort money out of Turner Broadcasting or the ad agency.)

But it’s one thing to fume about how the Cartoon Network was irresponsible, and how such things are inappropriate in this Post 9/11 World and all that nonsense. Arresting people and charging them with a felony they clearly didn’t commit is the only real crime here. At a minimum, whoever’s responsible for this gross abuse of power should lose his job.

But if there's any justice, the prosecutor who brought the charges should be disbarred and both he and the police official responsible for ordering the arrest, and whatever other decision-makers were involved in the decision to make the arrest should be fined $5000, spend the next five years in the state prison, and be personally required to pay all the expenses incurred by the city in responding to the "hoax." In other words, those responsible for this malicious abuse of power should receive the maximum sentence for the crime they falsely accused others of committing.

Too bad there's no justice.

Baby

2007-01-24T20:57:00.000-06:00

This is my dog. His name is baby. I don't know why we named him that. I guess someone thought it was funny at the time.

Anyway, few weeks ago, Baby started limping around. I thought he'd cut his paw or something, but when it didn't seem to be getting better, I took him to the vet. The nail bed was infected, so the vet cleaned it out, wrapped it up, and gave me a pain killer and some antibiotics. After a few days, it seemed to be all better.

Then a week or so later, he started limping around again. I took him back to the vet, and this time he removed the claw and took a tissue sample to have it analyzed. A couple days later, he called and said that it was squamous cell carcinoma, which, apparently, is something that Rottweilers are prone to get. Assuming it's caught early enough, the treatment is to remove the digit.

I took him in this morning for the operation along with x-rays and a needle biopsy of the lymph nodes to make sure the cancer hadn't spread. Unfortunately, the dog came home with all his toes intact.

Here's why:

A healthy lung shows black on an x-ray (presumably because there's nothing in it but air). This is a low quality cell phone picture, but that's still pretty much what the x-ray looked like--one lung riddled with cancer.

The vet said he's got maybe two months, maybe six months, and there's really nothing left to do but try to make him as comfortable as possible and treat the pain.

I never wanted a dog. My ex- brought him home about seven years ago, and he stayed when she left. But apart from his annoying tendency to take himself for walks when I was too busy or too tired or whatever (which has resulted in a couple run-ins with the dog catcher), he's been a pretty darned good dog. I really had no idea how attached I'd become to him. I'm sure going to miss him.

Livin' in a Hell Hole

2007-01-22T12:19:00.000-06:00

The house I live in was a fixer-upper when I bought it a bit over 10 years ago, and it seems like for every upper that's gotten fixed a couple downers cropped up to take its place. In particular, age, poor design, and bad plumbing have taken their toll on the kitchens and bathrooms, which are moving into the realm of the just plain disgusting.

In the kitchen, cabinet hardware has deteriorated to the point where some of the cupboard doors have just fallen off, an unnoticed drip from a window air conditioner has rotted out a wall, and if the drains aren't regularly treated with lye, the washing machine backs up and drains onto the kitchen floor (and no, I don't know why they decided that the kitchen was a good place for the washer and dryer hookups).

There are two bathrooms. One of them developed a hole in the floor at the edge of the bathtub, and it's been in the process of getting remodeled for about the last five years. Once the floor got replaced, the tile laid, and the toilet and tub connected, I sort of lost interest. In the other bathroom, the toilet developed a leak where the tank connects, so it's had the water turned off for a couple years. The drain on the sink recently developed a leak too, so it has a bucket under it.

One of these days I'll get around to fixing all that stuff. In the meantime, I think this pretty well sums it up:

Dr. Who

2007-01-21T14:53:00.000-06:00

Strangest thing happened last night. I was watching the second episode on first disc of season two of the new Dr. Who, and it morphed into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Seriously.

Most of the way through the "New Earth" episode, Dr. Who got pixelated and it switched over to a completely different movie. So instead of finding out how the Doctor and Rose were going to get away from the septic zombies and what was going to happen with the Doctor and the Big Giant Head, I saw some guy get his legs cut off with a chainsaw.

I can't believe they let that get by quality control. Don't they know children and people on acid watch that show?

Don't know where I'm goin' but I sure know where I've been....

2007-01-17T11:59:00.000-06:00

create your own personalized map of the USA

create your own visited country map

I need to get out more.

What's the first song you remember liking?

2007-01-13T14:36:00.000-06:00

For me, it's this:

Once You Understand by Think

It's variously been described as "one of the most frightening pieces of recorded music ever" and "the worst hit song of all time."

I understand that a lot of stations wouldn't play it because it was considered too controversial, but that never stopped WJIM.

Anyway, all I know is that it was hugely popular among all the third graders I knew.

Which Sci-Fi Crew Would You Best Fit In?

2007-01-11T06:57:00.000-06:00

You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don't enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)

81%

Serenity (Firefly)

81%

Moya (Farscape)

75%

FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)

63%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)

63%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)

63%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

56%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)

56%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)

50%

SG-1 (Stargate)

50%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)

38%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)

25%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)

created with QuizFarm.com

Boston Legal in New Orleans

2007-01-09T22:02:00.000-06:00

Does anyone in New Orleans really talk like that? Because I've been there lots of time, and I've never heard it. Their judge and DA sounded like they were doing bad imitations of someone from My Cousin Vinny.

Oh, what the hell. Louisiana..., Alabama..., what's the difference? It's all Deliverance country.

Wang's Cookbook: Spa-Peggy and Meatballs!

2007-01-09T18:49:00.000-06:00

Today's recipe is SpaPeggy and Meatballs!

You might think it's just noodles and tomato sauce and balls of meat. But then you add just the right amount of sugar an grated parmigiana cheese.

Thanks to Mrs. Peggy Hill for submitting this recipe.

Believe it or not there really was a reason why I posted this post. And that reason is that the recipe for Spa-Peggy and Meatballs was nowhere to be found on Google.

I was making spaghetti and meatballs this evening, and my son suggested that I kick it up a notch and make SpaPeggy.

As anyone who watches King of the Hill knows, Spa-Peggy is what Peggy Hill calls spaghetti when she makes it with some insignificant changes (changes that don't really deviate from a lot of standard recipes).

Anyway, I thought I'd make it with her insignificant variations, but I couldn't find the recipe online. I had to go back and watch "Peggy's Fan Fair" (season 4, episode 24) to get the recipe. I figured it was my civic duty to post this post so in the future when people want to make Spa-Peggy and Meatballs, they'll be able to find the recipe without having to figure out what episode it was on.

(That's also why I sometimes spell it Spa-Peggy and sometimes SpaPeggy-- so Google will pick it up either way. Spelling variations shouldn't impair people's access to important information like this.)

I'm Time Magazines 2006 "Person of the Year"!!!

2006-12-16T23:59:00.000-06:00

I've just learned that I'm sharing the title of Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year." And I thought all this blogging stuff was a waste of time.

Somebody ought to buy me a drink!

More Interweb Quizzes!

2006-12-16T22:30:00.000-06:00

You scored as Special Ops. Special ops. You're sneaky, tactful, and a loner. You prefer to do your jobs alone, working where you don't come into contact with people. But everyonce in a while you hit it big and are noticed and given fame. Your given the more sensitive problems. You get things done, and do what has to be done.

"VULCAN NECK PINCH!!!"
"owww.......(slump)"

Special Ops

81%

Civilian

75%

Medic

63%

Engineer

63%

Engineer

63%

Combat Infantry

56%

Support Gunner

50%

Artillery/Armor

44%

Officer

31%

Which soldier type are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Mark your calendar!

2006-12-14T21:35:00.000-06:00

Who: Hayes Carll & Friends.

Friends like Todd Snider, Ray Wylie Hubbard, The John Evans Band, The Dedringers and Graham Wilkinson.

What: Stingaree Music Festival.

Hayes Carll is hosting a music festival on the Bolivar Peninsula. Hayes and friends will be performing in a variety of different venues throughout the weekend. There will be beach performances, impromptu beach house concerts and evening shows under the big top.

Where: Crystal Beach.

When: April 13th, 14th & 15th, 2007.

Why: Because it just doesn't get any better than this.

I gotta rent me a beach house for the weekend.

Tickets are $65 and can be purchased here.

Just do it.

2006-12-10T20:54:00.000-06:00

Go here and vote for the Ranting Sandmonkey.

Then bookmark his blog.

Another space taker-upper.

2006-12-10T20:27:00.000-06:00

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Life Imitates Satire

2006-12-07T20:58:00.000-06:00

Not that long ago, I posted A Musing on Gun Control, which ended with this:

In other news, the BBC reports that, in an article published in the British Medical Journal, researchers have determined that long pointy knives have no legitimate culinary purpose and should be banned.

I kid you not.

I thought it was a joke. Or as good as a joke, anyway. But damned if they're not doing it. A couple months ago, A recent article in The Scotsman reports: "SWORDS will be banned from sale in Scotland in a new effort to tackle the country's 'booze and blades' culture." And there's this gem from the Edinburgh Evening News:

A CONSCIENTIOUS collector has handed more than 500 letter openers to police during the national knife amnesty.

The Edinburgh man, who asked to remain anonymous, surrendered his collection, which he told officers had taken him more than 40 years to amass.

He said he wanted police to take possession of the sharp-edged letter openers after he grew concerned they could fall into the wrong hands.

Damn. Imagine the havoc if a criminal gang got their hands on these:

But my favorite is this, from The Sun: Star Trek Blade Seized

THIS five-foot martial arts sword capable of beheading a man was recovered by shocked cops in a house raid.

The terrifying Batleth weapon is identical to one wielded by Klingon aliens in the Star Trek sci-fi films.

Officers seized the three-handled sword — which has huge pointed blades at either end — at a home in Gloucester.

Jiminy Christmas! I'm ascared just looking at that thing! Obviously designed with one purpose in mind--to kill people! Why else would anyone own such a thing?

I can see why that wussy twig boy might be afraid of some Trekkie with a bat'leth hanging on his wall, but the idea of grown up people getting worked up about other people owning knives or swords or guns is something I'll never understand.

While "Scotland Yard said it was encouraged by the good response to the government's five-week national campaign." at the same time,
"knife amnesties fail to reduce crime, despite taking thousands of weapons off the streets, according to a police report."

So let's sum it up: It's stupid. It's useless. It infringes individual liberty. But so what if it doesn't work; somebody's got to do something! And doing stupid, useless things that infringe individual liberty is what governments do best!

I think it all comes down to this: Our British friends have degenerated into such a state of impotent wussiness that they have become a parody of themselves. Once upon a time, there were a few men in England who were man enough to pull a knife on the King at Runnymede when necessary to secure his agreement to respect their rights. Now that they've given up their knives, there's not much chance anything like that will happen again any time soon.

As Ben Franklin is said to have said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." I expect they'll be getting everything they deserve.

At last I understand...

2006-12-05T14:13:00.000-06:00

At last I understand why the Brits are such wussies when it comes to guns. I've never understood why a once free people would decide that they can no longer trust themselves with the right to keep and bear arms. Until now:

ST. LOUIS: Warm beer led to killing, police say

12/04/2006

A St. Louis man was shot to death Sunday night over a warm beer, police said.

St. Louis police say a woman shot her husband, who was about 70 years old, four to five times in the chest after he tried giving her a warm can of Stag beer.

All things considered, it's a wonder the British Isles weren't depopulated centuries ago.

Musings on Economics

2006-11-29T01:23:00.001-06:00

Despite the lack of eye surgery or a broken back, I find myself up at 2:00 a.m. with a glass of Rebel Yell thinking about Things and Stuff.

And this evenings Things and Stuff is savings. More particularly, savings for retirement. And what the heck it all means.

As a traditional right wing/Republican/libertarian/etc., the idea that the people should save for their retirement appeals to me. And as a corollary to that, when the Government, contrary to all good sense, decides to set its self up as our retirement guarantor, it ought to "save" as well. Which is one of the things about Social Security that I find particularly annoying. As anyone who knows anything knows, nothing is saved; the trust fund is nothing more than an accounting gimmick; and at best we have promises from us that we'll tax our children to support us in our old age.

But let's pretend that the Social Security Trust Fund wasn't a colossal fraud. What difference would it make? Suppose, for instance, that instead of "investing" in a fund that will have expended itself long before any of us "young" folks would ever receive benefits, we were allowed to invest in the stock market. How could it make any difference thirty or forty years down the line? There would still be the same amount of natural resources; the same amount of stuff to go around; the same amount of everything. The only difference would be who, on paper, owns what. And what difference does it make whether we shuffle those papers now or later?

Ultimately, we have a limited supply of resources--and that includes renewable resources--and all we can do with them is play with them on paper. There's only so much we can produce, no matter how efficient we get.

Unless, of course, we "invest" elsewhere. But that would require that we actually "invest" elsewhere, which is sort of hard to do when our economy is running off of foreign investment (or at least that portion of the economy that isn't running off the currently bursting housing bubble).

But, of course, that's just if we look at it from a macroeconomic point of view. We can still screw our kids macroeconomically, so long as we take personal responsibility for out own retirement. But to the extent government is involved, it's gonna be pretty damn messy.

If that didn't make any sense, I apologize. Blame it on the Rebel Yell. But just keep in mind that it makes sense to me, and I'm pretty darned smart. Trust me, there's something there. Perhaps I just need to flesh it out a bit more.

The Eye Surgery Collection

2006-11-28T18:40:00.000-06:00

The other night I was talking to someone who had a rare eye condition, and was looking at surgery. As it happened, that condition was keratoconus, and the surgery was a cornea transplant, which are things I have some experience with. So I said I'd do a post collecting my eye surgery posts, which is what this is, and which is what these are:

I guess it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. Looks like it's about time for another cornea transplant.

As sharp sticks in the eye go, that wasn't so bad. Not nearly as bad as what I remembered from the first time.

A word or two about "discomfort." It's uncomfortable.

It's 2:00 a.m..... Things are different when you don't have to go to work in the morning.

And now, a little blasphemy. And this is the judgment, that the light hath come to the world, and men did love the darkness rather than the light, for their eyes were photophobic.

More blasphemy. Still photophobic.

Nothing to see here. Move along now. No news is no news.

Now see here! And a good result is a really good thing.

Another visit to the eye doctor. And another surgery in the works.

A sharp stick in the other eye. We've got a date.

"I've never seen that happen before." What happened when it came time to do the other eye.

What I like best about being off work: Things are different when you don't have to go to work in the morning.

When I think back

2006-11-17T12:39:00.000-06:00

On all the crap I learned in high school....

You paid attention during 100% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
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At least I learned enough to score well on some snotty Internet quiz.

Yup. That sounds about right.

2006-11-17T01:17:00.000-06:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Inland North
The West
The Northeast
Philadelphia
Boston
North Central
The South
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I knew it was gonna say that.

2006-11-15T23:31:00.000-06:00

I looked over on Laurie's blog to see if she'd posted anything about the hootenanny at Courville's this evening. It looks like I beat her to the punch this time. But while I was there, I saw her "What Tarot Card are You?" post, which, for some reason, was also about hoodia.

I don't know why I even bothered.

I knew what it was going to say.

And, of course, I was right.

You are Death

Change, Transformation, Alteration.

People fear this card, but if you want to change your life, this is one of the best indicators for it. Whatever happens, life will be different. Yes, the Death card can signal a death in the right circumstances (a question about a very sick or old relative, for example), but unlike its dramatic presentation in the movies, the Death card is far more likely to signal transformation, passage, change. Scorpio, the sign of this card, has three forms: scorpion, serpent, eagle. The Death card indicates this transition from lower to higher to highest. This is a card of humility, and it may mean you have been brought low, but only so that you can then go higher than ever before. Death "humbles" all, but it also "exults." Always keep in mind that on this card of darkness there is featured a sunrise as well. You could be ready for a change.

I guess it's not so bad when you put it like that.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

It's a Hootenanny!

2006-11-15T23:02:00.000-06:00

They called it a "Big Damn Acoustic Jam," but it was really a good old fashioned hootenanny. Hayes Carll, Jimmy Kaiser, David Lee Kaiser, Roger Marin, Mark Jungers, Ryan James, Josh Langston and Big John Mills all sharing a stage at Courville's. Of course, they weren't really sharing a stage because the stage wasn't big enough to hold them all, so they had to extend it a bit. As Yogi Berra might have said, if you didn't see this show, you really missed it.

Every one of these guys is more than capable of pulling off a whole show by himself, but tonight it was all eight of them, one after another, occasionally accompanying one another--especially the Kaiser brothers accompanying each other and Big John Mills playing along with pretty much everything. When Hayes Carll broke a string in the middle of his unique version of "I've Been Everywhere," Big John had him covered so well that they didn't miss a beat while Carll traded guitars with Roger Marin.

I like Hayes Carll better every time I see him play. I would wish him only the best in his career, but I'm sort of selfish, so I hope everyone else continues to ignore him. If he ever gets the recognition he deserves, I'm afraid he'll be too big for Beaumont, and certainly too big to play the small sort of places that I like to go to listen to live music.

The music was great, the food was good and the drinks were cheap. What more could you ask for on a Wednesday evening in Beaumont? Special thanks to Jimmy Kaiser, who was credited with putting it together, along with Big Rich Courville for bringing this sort of stuff to Beaumont (and although no one mentioned his name, I suspect Donnie Courville had a bit to do with it too) and RadioFreeTexas, who also had something to do with making all this happen.

Edited to add: Read what Laurie Who Misses New Orleans had to say about it here.

Beggin'® Strips vs. Milk Bones®

2006-10-19T23:16:00.000-05:00

In case anyone was wondering, given the choice, the Rottweiler picks Milk Bones® over Beggin'® Strips every time. And it's not even a close call. He'll drop the Beggin'® Strip if he thinks there's even a possibility that he'll get a Milk Bone®. So don't waste your money on the more expensive (and seemingly more attractive) doggie treat.

But, of course, he'll pick hard-boiled eggs over either, and genuine pig ears are preferred over anything and everything.

It must suck to have cameras around all the time.

2006-10-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

The picture is from How To Spot a Dictator. This article does not necessarily represent the opinions of the management or staff of Wang Chi's House of Pancakes. We just like funny pictures.

BIG ACOUSTIC JAM

2006-10-18T10:28:00.000-05:00

The Courville's website says:

NOVEMBER 15, 2006 - WEDNESDAY
BIG ACOUSTIC JAM
Join us for "Big Acoustic Jam" at Courville's on Hwy 90 between Beaumont and China. We will have Hayes Carll, Jimmy Kaiser, David Lee Kaiser, Roger Marin, Mark Jungers, Ryan James, Josh Langston and Big John Mills. Tickets are on sale now for this concert by calling 409-860-9811. Limited number of tickets will be sold.

I've had some pretty good things to say about Hayes Carll's past shows at Courville's, like this from November 2004 and this from January of this year. Those Kaiser boys are pretty good too. Seems like I saw Josh Langston there too, and he didn't suck either. I don't know anything about the rest of them, but I'm pretty sure they'll be pretty good. Donnie Courville knows how to pick his bands.

Don't miss this one.

The Global Warming Collection

2006-10-13T16:22:00.000-05:00

In my continuing project of cataloging my posts on recurring topics, I offer these my Global Warming posts:

In Hot Air on Global Warming, we marvel at the astounding reasoning behind some of the UN's World Meteorological Organization's pronouncements on Global Warming.

In Thoughts on Global Warming we conclude that regardless of the scientific merits of the human induced Global Warming theory, we're all done for.

In What's Up With the Weather? we express our sense of wonder that the much ballyhooed 2006 Atlantic hurricane season seemed to be falling far short of expectations.

In The Weather Revisited we wonder at the marvelous understanding that allows such precise short term projections about the weather, and doubt not that long term projections are only somewhat less reliable.

In A Discordant Convergence Global Warming met MTV.

In An Inconvenient Truth, we examine one of Al Gore's more bizarre assertions--that cigarettes are a significant contributor to global warming--and then digress into musings about the relationship between Global Warming and Peak Oil.

Just Yesterday: An Al Stewart Retrospective

2006-10-13T09:48:00.000-05:00

Laurie over at Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans did a post about Al Stewart in which she suggested that I do a post compiling the links to my Al Stewart concert reviews. On the off chance someone follows her link over here, here it is:

In MY SHOCKING CONFESSION!!!, I let the cat out of the bag regarding my unnatural fondness for Al Stewart's music. And then I proceeded to post reviews that I'd written of some of Al's past shows, like Al Stewart: May 26, 2001, Austin, Texas, and Al Stewart: September 2002, Austin, Texas, and Al Stewart: July 11, 2003, Houston, Texas. Then I felt the need to explain what I'd just posted in my aptly titled post, MY SHOCKING CONFESSION!!! explained. And then a few months later, I saw a couple Al shows in Houston, and I wrote a few words about Al Stewart at the Mucky Duck, September 8, 2005, and Al Stewart at the Mucky Duck, September 9, 2005.

I've also done a few album reviews over the years, and I've decided to include them here in the interest of completeness. Those would be Time Passages Live, Live at the Roxy Los Angeles 1981, and Orange/Past Present Future/Modern Times.

Although I've never gotten around to reviewing them (hence the links to Amazon), Year of the Cat and Time Passages are both great albums, but anyone who was alive during the 1970s should already know that. There's not a bad track on either (although some fans find "Song on the Radio" on Time Passages to be too "commercial").

There are also couple lesser-known albums that I haven't gotten around to reviewing but that I highly recommend. One is Between the Wars, which Al once told me he thought was his best album. I tend to agree:

The other is A Beach Full of Shells, which came out just recently and is really really good:

Finally, anyone who's interested in going a bit deeper would do well to pick up a copy of Just Yesterday from Amazon's UK site. It really is an excellent set, and it contains a lot of good stuff from albums that have been out of print for years. The packaging is about as nice as I've seen too. It's in book form with 70 pages of pictures and text and pockets for the discs.

It's $90 on Amazon.com, or about $60+shipping from some of the other Amazon sellers, but the best way to get it is from Amazon.co.uk (which is where I got mine). For U.S. orders, the total with shipping and after deducting the VAT is £26.03, or just a little under $50. And apart from being cheaper, it's fun to get a package from overseas now and then.

If $50 seems like too much to spend on a set from a guy who hasn't had a hit since the 70s, there's a shorter two disc anthology called Piece of Yesterday: The Anthology that can be had for about $20 on Amazon, or a little less (even with overseas shipping) from Amazon.co.uk.

Time Passages Live

2006-10-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

As the name implies, Time Passages Live is one of Al Stewart's live albums, although it is not, as the name suggests, a live version of his album Time Passages. It's not currently in print, but it appears in full in the highly recommended Just Yesterday box set. For some reason, at one time I felt a need to write a review of it on Amazon. Not much of a review really, but in the interest of completeness, I'm including it here anyway. I said something like this:

This is a CD release of a limited production 1978 promotional LP officially titled "The Live Radio Concert Album" and known among fans as "The Blue Album." It's an excellent performance recorded at the height of Stewart's commercial success. No fan should be without it.

The initial release of this CD had a misprint on the spine of the CD case-- it says "TTIME PASSAGES LIVE." BMG has apparently pulled these from the market causing availability problems.

The track list is: (1) On the Border; (2) Sirens of Titan; (3) Time Passages; (4) Roads to Moscow; (5) Life in Dark Water; (6) Valentina Way; (7) Year of the Cat; (8) Pink Panther Theme; and (9) Song on the Radio.

Live at the Roxy Los Angeles 1981

2006-10-13T09:16:00.000-05:00

Live at the Roxy Los Angeles 1981 is one of Al Stewart's live albums. For some reason, at one time I felt a need to write a review of it on Amazon. And I said something like this:

Live at the Roxy comprises the live tracks from the three-quarters live Indian Summer LP. If you want the studio tracks from Indian Summer on CD, you have two choices, and they're both 24 Carrots. The U.S. Razor and Tie edition of 24 Carrots gives you three bonus tracks ("Indian Summer," "Pandora" and "Here in Angola"), while the U.K. EMI release has all five (adding "Delia's Gone and ""Princess Olivia"). Unfortunately, both versions of 24 Carrots are long out of print and can get pretty pricey.

Al Stewart recorded some truly great studio albums during the 1970s, but he was and is at his best live. And Live at the Roxy contains excellent live versions of all of Al Stewart's commercial hits plus a few others that didn't get played on the radio, but are nonetheless fine songs. The quality of the recordings is excellent and the performances are very lively and tend to surpass the original studio versions. "Running Man," "Soho (Needless to Say)," and "Roads to Moscow" are real standouts in this area.

The only flaw in this otherwise impeccable album is "Clarence Frogman Henry," which is a bit of a shaggy dog story that gives a bit of the flavor of the between-songs banter at Stewart's concerts, but unlike the songs, once you've heard it once, it ceases to be of any interest. But it's short and easy to skip, and the rest of the album is superb.

Orange/Past Present Future/Modern TImes

2006-10-13T09:04:00.000-05:00

Orange/Past Present Future/Modern TImes

This is a budget priced collection of three of Al Stewart's lesser-known albums. For some reason, at one time I felt a need to write a review of it on Amazon. And I said something like this:

Disc one contains the complete "Orange" and "Past, Present & Future" LPs. Disc two starts with the "Swallow Wind" bonus track and then moves on to the complete "Modern Times" album. The only thing that you don't get with this set that you would get if you bought the CDs individually are two bonus tracks from the BGO release of Modern times--the single version of "News From Spain" and "Elvaston Place," which was the B side of "News from Spain." Since the album version of "News Form Spain is included on "Orange," you only give up one song by buying this set rather than the individual CDs, and that song isn't one that anyone is likely to miss.

The set comes nicely packaged with a booklet that contains the lyrics to all the songs, plus an essay about the three albums. I did not notice any difference in sound quality between this release and the other CD versions that I have heard. That may be because there is no difference, or it could just be me.

The three albums in this set represent a transitional between Al Stewart's early albums (collected in the set "To Whom It May Concern") with their folk-rock relationship angst and his more pop-oriented 70s hits "Year of the Cat" and "Time Passages." The albums included in this set are "Orange" (1972), "Past, Present & Future" (1973), and "Modern Times" (1975).

A lot of people think "Orange" is a great album. I am not among them. Fans of Stewart's early work would certainly like it.

A lot of people also think "Past, Present & Future" is a great album. I would have to agree, and it is the one that earns this set most of its stars. It is definitely among Stewart's best work.

"Modern Times" is a bit of a let down from "Past, Present & Future," but still a very good album with some very good songs. This was the first of three Al Stewart albums produced by Alan Parsons--the others being "Year of the Cat" and "Time Passages." It's not as good as the albums that would follow, but still a very respectable effort.

Huh huhuhuh huh. Let's invade Iran. That'd be cool.

2006-10-06T09:31:00.000-05:00

An Inconvenient Truth?

2006-10-01T15:02:00.000-05:00

According to The Drudge Report:

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

I used to think that Al was serious about this stuff. Now I think that he's trying to launch a career as a comedian, playing some sort of clueless straight man who says the most idiotic things with perfect seriousness.

While it's true that every cigarette that gets smoked releases a small amount of carbon dioxide (although certainly not enough, even in the aggregate to constitute a "significant" contribution to atmospheric CO2), something that seems to have escaped Mr. Gore's grasp is the fact that those tobacco plants suck CO2 out of the air in the process of making the noxious weed. You can burn all the leaves you want, but the net effect on atmospheric CO2 will be zero, so long as you grow new leaves to replace the ones you burned. Hasn't this guy ever heard of recycling?

Which leads me to another thought about Global Warming and related Environmental nonsense. And that thought concerns the notion that oil is a fossil fuel. Because if it is, we ought to be able to pump all we want out of the ground, burn it all, and just get back to where we were (atmospherically speaking) before all those dinosaurs died. Certainly we couldn't mess things up to the point that the Earth would become inhospitable to life; the most we could do is restore the balance to the point where life began.

But what if oil isn't a product of the decomposition long buried dead stuff? What if the abiotic theory is right and oil is continuously being manufactured deep in the earth through processes unrelated to long dead dinosaurs? That would mean that all the oil we burn really could increase atmospheric CO2 to levels that the Earth has never seen before. For all we know, that could result in a world of heretofore unimagined fecundity where even areas that are now virtually uninhabitable could be transformed into veritable Edens. Or perhaps it might have the opposite effect. We can only speculate.

But the thing about all this that I find amusing is the political alignments. Political Greenies invariable insist that oil is a fossil fuel because that's a necessary part of their Peak Oil theory. We have to do something, and we have to do it NOW because the oil's running out. (Does anyone else remember the commercial that ran during the 1970s "energy crisis" where the kid was walking on the beach talking about how "they say there may not be any oil left at all when I get big"?)

On the other hand, those on the opposite side of the political debate seem to like the abiotic oil theory (partly, I suspect, because it seems more consistent with the empirical data and partly because of the lack of any evidence to support the fossil fuel theory, but mostly because it's politically expedient). But if the abiotic theory is correct, it is at least plausible that we might do some serious damage to the Earth's ability to sustain life by adding all that extra CO2 to the atmosphere. At a minimum, we'd be taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory, and for all we know, uncharted territory could look sort of like Mars or Venus.

Strikes me as amusing, anyway. But I'm easily amused.

Other thoughts on Global Warming can be found here and here and here and here and here.

Happy (belated) Rita Day!

2006-09-25T18:22:00.000-05:00

A year ago yesterday Rita blew through Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas. I knew the anniversary was coming, but I didn't even notice as it passed. I think it's time for a retrospective:

September 23, 2005: Gettin' the Hell Outta Dodge. Two hundred miles in ten and a half hours.

September 24, 2005: Saturday, September 24, 2005. Planning the return.

September 25, 2005: Where's my damn money? A rant before returning.

September 25, 2005: Still living like a refugee. Watching TV in Tyler.

September 25, 2005: Sunday, September 25, 2005. The long road home.

September 26, 2005: Monday, September 26, 2005. Surveying the damage.

September 27, 2005: Tuesday, September 27, 2005. Gettin' ripped off.

September 28, 2005: Wednesday, September 28, 2005. No news is good news (because it's all bad).

September 29, 2005: Thursday, September 29, 2005. Enjoying the hospital food.

September 30, 2005: Friday, September 30, 2005. An uneventful day.

October 7, 2005: Friday, October 7, 2005. Internet's back on at the office!

October 17, 2005: Monday, October 17, 2005. The power's back on!

October 18, 2005: Price Gouging. The hospital bill came. Ouch! That hurt way more than the fall.

November 4, 2005: What I learned form Rita. Some people just don't think I'm all that funny.

November 14, 2005: Price Gouging--Reprise. Just as I thought.

What's that got to do with the price of gas in China?

2006-09-01T16:26:00.000-05:00

Just a few days ago I mentioned to someone that it was about time for Mr. Bush to have a chat with his Saudi buddies about getting gas prices down for the upcoming elections. And by golly, what do you know-- they're suddenly saying that gas prices could be closer to $2 than $3 come Thanksgiving! I thought that was sort of odd, since a month or two ago they were telling us that $3 gas was pretty much here to stay, what with increased demand from China and India and the trouble in the Middle East and all that. But I guess China and India have decided to go green, we've built a dozen new refineries, that little mess in Iraq has been cleaned up, and they've worked out a deal on the nuclear showdown with Iran. Or maybe it was something else.

Now give us a kiss, Sweety Darling.

A Discordant Convergence

2006-09-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

I've written a few posts in the past about about a particularly virulent strain of political science that goes by the name of "Global Warming." Like this one and this one and this one and this one.

And I've also posted something that touched on the unfortunate decline of MTV from its innovative and creative start into something so wretched that I can't bring myself to watch it long enough to form an adequate description. That would be this post.

So when I saw this, it was just too much to let pass without comment:

Former U.S. vice president Al Gore addresses the audience about global warming at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards in New York August 31, 2006. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn (UNITED STATES)

Could either possibly sink any lower?

The Weather, Revisited

2006-09-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

A little over a month ago, I commented on this year's Atlantic hurricane season falling far short of what was advertised. Last year, we were repeatedly told that Global Warming was to blame for the record hurricane season, and that this year we were in for more of the same.

After anther quiet month and Ernesto's failure to regain hurricane status before hitting Florida, the good folks at Colorado State have revised their predictions, and now say that we can expect a below average Atlantic hurricane season this year. If I remember last year's Talking Heads correctly, the Colorado State crew was not among those hyping the alleged Global Warming connection, so they're not the ones with a whole lot of explaining to do.

But I would like to hear all those who were insisting that Global Warming would bring us an unrelenting hurricane apocalypse admit that they were just blowing hot air. Come on, admit it, guys. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Back when Ernesto was on the other side of Cuba, computer models had it anywhere from New Orleans to Greenland in a week. Here's what the computer models were saying four days ago:

Of course, a couple days before that, they all had it heading straight into the Gulf of Mexico:

Which is a long way from where it's going now:

Obviously, we couldn't get that level of precision without really good data and a very clear understanding of the processes involved. And if our understanding of the weather is such that we can devise computer models that can predict a storm's track over about a week with a margin of error of only a couple thousand miles, just imagine the precision involved in models that predict the weather a few decades down the road.

Movies I've Watched

2006-08-13T00:46:00.000-05:00

This is a post for a movie I watched that didn't quite measure up to a recommendation, but still merited a mention. It was Slaughterhouse Five. An adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five."

Much as I'd like to be able to recommend the movie, It's not good enough. But the book is more than good enough. One of Kurt Vonnegut's top five, without a doubt. And that is to say one of the top five books of the Twentieth Century. But not quite as good as Mother Night (the film version of which I recommended on a previous post).

It's one of those books that made me think enough to think differently about "my country" and the world and how things work.

As everyone knows, Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the bombing of Dresden, Germany at the close of World War II. And, as everyone ought to know, Dresden was a target with no military value, and more people were killed there than in Nagasaki or Hiroshima, and possibly in Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. But what Dresden and Nagasaki and Hiroshima all had in common is that hundreds of thousands of civilians died, and that there was not even an arguable military necessity in killing all those people. In both cases, the war was over except for the fat lady singing, and the bombings were clearly meant more to send a message to our Russian allies than to our defeated enemies.

[I have since learned that the figure Vonnegut uses in the book--130,000 killed, if I recall correctly--is likely a gross exaggeration influenced by Nazi propaganda. The true figure was probably "only" around 30,000. I guess that the danger inherent in taking an eyewitness at his word. Not that that changes anything other than the size of the slaughter relative to Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And although some may claim that Dresden's rail yards were a legitimate military target, they were not targeted during the bombing that ignited the firestorm. They were saved for a daylight precision bombing raid.]

But that's neither her nor there. The movie was okay at best. The book ought to be required reading for every high school student in this country.

Did I mention that I'm not a fan of war?

As far as I can tell. it's going on two hundred years since the United States of America was in a was that could be justified as truly defensive. As I see it, one tip off that a war is something other than in the interest of national defense is that it's fought predominantly on someone else's territory.

On the other hand, after 9/11, I can't really argue with going to Afghanistan as long as they were harboring Al Qaeda. Too bad they seem to be finding refuge with our Pakistani allies these days.

But what the hell. A bunch of Saudi friends hijacked some American airplanes and did very bad things with them, so let's invade Iraq and turn it over to our good friends in Iran. That sure makes sense to me.

I mean, damn. We're kickin' ass all over the place. But are we kickin' the right ass?

Wang Chi's, Nastier than ever.

2006-08-04T19:04:00.000-05:00

Wang Chi's, in pornspeak.

Gibson?

2006-08-01T22:48:00.000-05:00

Everyone else is talking about it, so I might as well toss in my two cents' worth.

A Gibson should be made with Gin and a splash of Vermouth, shaken over ice, strained, and garnished with a cocktail onion.

They should be enjoyed in moderation, except on those occasions when excess seems more appropriate. In no event should they be used as an excuse for abusive behavior.

Something just don't smell right about that Gibson thing. And by "that Gibson thing," I mean Mel's recent unpleasantness. He's supposed to have been battling alcoholism all his adult life. And he gets pulled over with a 0.12 BAC. That's something like one lousey six pack. Someone with as much practice being drunk as he claims to have should barely be feeling it. Sorry, but I just don't buy it. Either they fudged on the BAC in the police report, or alcohol is only a tiny part of Mel's problem.

HAMLET: Ay, sir, what of him?
GUILDENSTERN: Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.
HAMLET: With drink, sir?
GUILDENSTERN: No, my lord, rather with choler.

I've been doing a little experiment this evening. If those charts are accurate, I'm well over 0.12 by now. This ain't nothin'. If I wanted to, I could drive right now without attracting any unwanted attention. It might not be legal, but I wouldn't be giving anyone a reason to pull me over. There's no way in hell I'd be going 87 in a 45 zone. (I'm at home, so I won't be testing that theory.) And Mel's had at least 7 more years practice than I have.

So far, I see three possibilities:

1. Someone fudged the BAC on the police report to make Mel seem less naughty than he really was.
2. Mel is an asshole. Figures he can buy and sell any one of those damned cops, and he can damn well do whatever he pleases, and if they stand in his way, he'll squash them like the bugs they are.
3. Mel has serious emotional problems. Something in his life is so screwed up that. at least for a time, he didn't give a rat's ass about anything.

I'm thinking number 3. The whole package of behavior seems too intentionally self-destructive for it to be anything else.

I feel your pain, Mel.

Phabulous Phishing!

2006-07-30T23:56:00.000-05:00

This superfantastic phishing thing just turned up in my inbox. Although it doesn't show up here, it has all the right eBay graphics and is very professionally done. It almost made me want to click on the link to tell eBay that there must be some mistake. But they lose big time points for failing to pay attention to the listing date. If they're going to tell me that my item has been successfully listed, they ought to try to at least get the month right.

Dear eBay Member,
Your item has been successfully listed on eBay. It may take some time for the item to appear on eBay search results. Here are the listing details:

Akai PDP5006H 50" HD Plasma TV Plasmas TVS
Starting price: $499.00
View item | Go to My eBay |
Ready to List Your Next Item?

Details for item number: 5841168763
Listing URL: http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=262478437&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=5841168763&lk=URL
Start date: Wednesday, June-27-06 11:30:00 PST
End date: Wednesday, June-30-06 11:30:00 PST
Quantity: 1 unit
Duration: 7 days
Listing fees: $12.60 (Insertion fee: $7.40; Photo: $1.75; Listing Designer: $2.10; Gallery: $1.35; )

Marketplace Safety Tip
If you are contacted about buying a similar item outside of eBay, please do not respond. Outside-of-eBay transactions are against eBay policy, and they are not covered by eBay services such as feedback and eBay purchase protection programs.

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BTW-- The link in the post isn't the real link. It's a fake javascript thing. Using the "copy shortcut" feature, I got this:

javascript:ol('http://mujweb.cz/www/updatecreditcard/signineBayISAPI.dllSignIn%26amp;co_partnerId%3d2%26amp;pUserId%3d%26amp;siteid%3d0%26amp;pageType%3d%26amp;pa1%3d%26amp;i1%3d%26amp;bshowgif%3d%26amp;UsingSSL%3d%26amp;ru%3d%26amp;pp%3d%26amp;pa2%3d%26amp;errmsg%3d%26amp;runame%3d%26amp;ruparams%3d%26amp;ruproduct%3d%26amp;sid%3d%26amp;favoritenav%3d%26amp;confirm%3d%26amp;ebxPageType%3d%26amp;existingEma.htm?r%3d1256');

I gotta get me one of these.

2006-07-28T12:46:00.000-05:00

And the best part is when you're not using it to fire the nukes, it doubles as a USB hub.

$62.21 from GeekStuff4U.com

What's up with the weather?

2006-07-26T00:55:00.000-05:00

Last year we kept hearing about global warming and increased surface water temperatures making for more and more powerful hurricanes. Last year at this time, our seventh named Atlantic storm--Gert--was just petering out.

The first half of this year is supposed to have been the hottest on record. And we've had a lousey two named storms. So where the heck are the hurricanes?

Edited to add: Well speak of the Devil.... Here come's Chris now. Click on the link and scroll down to "Another dangerous Loop Current Eddy in 2006" for the good stuff.