coining a phrase

the other mccain via dustbury:

hypodrachmaphobia (n)
The fear that somebody else might be making more money than you, triggering a strong urge to covet, followed next by hate and then a compelling need to get a tax law passed that will help redistribute some of that bad, bad capital your way.

there was also a comment there which read:

I have nothing against Michelle Obama on a personal level – nor do I her husband - but the Michelles of the world justify their arrogance and ease their gnawing sense of empty accomplishment by confiscating and redistributing the product of someone else’s labor, innovation or intellect - not for the benefit of the recipient – but because they are angry, frustrated and/or embarrassed that even with their self-anointed superiority the creation of that wealth is beyond their ability to achieve. They, like the reality-show fans, judge their superiority and worth based not on their true accomplishments (or lack thereof) but based on people they presume to be worth less than themselves.

compare and contrast, yet again

Ann Coulter via Instapundit didn't go far enough...

Herman Cain, African-American:

• facts so far: a couple of vague accusations of sexual misconduct have been made, with little evidence.
• media reaction: histrionic wall-to-wall coverage.

Bill Clinton, Caucasian:

• facts so far: many specific accusations of sexual misconduct have been made.
• media reaction: repeated denials and claims of Republican witchhunt.

Clarence Thomas, African-American:

• facts so far: accusations of sexual misconduct were made, which proved false.
• media reaction: histrionic wall-to-wall coverage.

John Edwards, Caucasian:

• facts so far: had extramarital affair while his wife was fighting cancer.
• media reaction: repeated denials and claims of Republican witchhunt.

The obvious conclusion: the media is racist.

If they object, point out how the label is much more correct in this context than when they slander the tea party with it.

mark of the beast, anyone?

evil
only
advances
when
good
people
do
nothing

less than meets the eye

"It’s ridiculous to think about “Transformers 3” for more than six seconds", but a couple of minutes reading about why it's ridiculous is quite entertaining.

new quotes

i just added a few quotes about freedom to appear in my subheader from this good source.

just in time for valent... er, halloween?

some guys really know how to wooo a lady...

occupy wall street

update 4: today i took a stand that had more actual effect than any of these occupy-ers ever had. when i went to city hall to pay my water bill, i took a good long drink from their water fountain. wooooo stickin it to tha man!

:D

update 3: do i need to draw you a picture?

update 2: dustbury expands on the phenomenon

update & bump: has it occurred to anyone else that we might not be in obama's depression if the "tea party" had gotten the favorable press coverage that the "occupy" is getting?

for fair-and-balanced coverage, the media-infotainment complex needs to come up with a derogatory term for these protestors like they did for the tea party. how about:

• dirt-baggers
• the pot party
• soros-turf
• left-wing lunatics
• the maples
• bloodsucking commies
• chumps
• bitter hobos clinging to drugs and chomsky

that being said, i'm just as against "the looters" as they are - it's just ironic/funny/sad/revolting that their whole scheme is being astroturfed by a bunch of looters.

this is a song of hope

VDH in the House of Eratosthenes:

If in 2004 5.7% unemployment was supposed to mark a “jobless recovery,” what exactly is 9.1% called? If Bush’s average $500 billion deficits over eight years were abhorrent, what must we say of Obama’s average $1.6 trillion over three? Really bad?

a good start

i'm not eating crow yet, maybe just setting the table for it...

dawning on america

a few people get it:

Obama is great at math. He divides the country, subtracts jobs, adds debt and multiplies misery.

Lack of leadership, the first-ever federal credit downgrade, a failed debt deal, unemployment nearing record levels, fresh warnings of a double-dip recession, and the most toxic political climate in Washington history ... can you trust President Obama?

The Solyndra scandal continues to unfold, with half a billion taxpayers’ dollars down the drain. What did President Obama know and when did he know it?

For as this radical leftist’s regime has displayed deep red colors from day one, renewed claims of post-racial harmony, a moderate political agenda or murky, feel-good screeds about hope and change will not sell this time around to any but the most rabid of the Obama base.

Three years ago, mouthing vacuous speeches and making vacant promises, Obama lied, schemed and intimidated his way into the White House while his campaign committee of left wing journalists provided critical cover for personal and political histories which would have doomed the candidate had they seeped through the wall of media silence.

I am so tired of Obama big deal plans for the economy that are so poorly conceived they will never pass Congress. Why does he just stay with what he does best, take an expensive vacation.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told members of the National Restaurant Association on Monday that Americans need to “adjust” their tastes so that they like the kind of food the government believes they should eat and “we have to make sure that what we do is create the appropriate transition.” Can we say “Big Brother” (Moochelle) is “looking out” for our best interests?

post-hurricane

I guess The Muffin Man don't care about white folk.

Letter to a Young Composer

solid (but not easy or popular) advice

blues how-to

UPDATE & BUMP:
this guy, well this guy ain't followin' rulez,
i said
this guy, now this guy ain't followin' rulez.
he say
"spendin' money on a geetar? aw, that's a game for foolz!"

---

Various versions of this list have been on the internet for many years,

HOW TO PLAY AND SING THE BLUES

1. 82% of Blues songs begin with the words "Woke up this morning..."

2. The next most popular first line in a Blues song is about the singer's spouse or girl/boyfriend, like

"Well I got me a woman..."

3. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues unless you stick something nasty in the next line like

"I got a good woman with the meanest face in town."

4. Writing a complete Blues verse is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then write another line that follows and almost rhymes:

"Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. She look like Janet Reno, and she weigh 800 pound."

5. The Blues is not about choice. If you stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch. There ain't no way out.

6. The only cars that may be in the Blues are American-made: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Other forms of Blues transportation are Greyhound bus or a southbound train. The Blues do not travel in Volvos, BMWs, or SUVs. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle.

7. "Fixin' to die" also plays a major part in the Blues, therefore only adults may sing the Blues. In the Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis. Teenagers can not sing the Blues - they ain't fixin' to die yet.

8. Great places to have the Blues include Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. The Blues can also take place in Texas, the Deep South, and occasionally in New York City. The Blues may not be set in Hawaii, Canada, Scotland, or Estonia. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. You cannot have the blues anyplace that don't get rain.

9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall - first off, the lighting is wrong. If your means of travel is restricted, at least go out to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:
a. on a highway
b. in a jailhouse
c. in an empty bed
d. at a crossroads at midnight
e. at the bottom of a whiskey glass

11. Bad places for the Blues:
a. on a golf course
b. at a gallery opening
c. at an Ivy League college
d. on a ski slope
e. at Neiman Marcus

12. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, unless you happen to be an old person, and you slept in it.

13. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?

Yes, if:
a. you older than dirt
b. you blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis
d. you can't be satisfied

No, if:
a. you have all your teeth
b. you earned a Doctorate
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you have a 401K or trust fund

14. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg 'cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chomping on it is.

15. The Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.

16. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. stale black coffee

The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast

17. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.

18. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Ella
c. Big Mama
d. Bessie
e. River Dumpling

19. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie
e. any two initials (preferably the same letter), such as B.B. or J.J.

20. Persons with names like Amber, Jennifer, Tiffany, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

21. If you're having trouble making your own Blues name, try this:
a. Name a physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. Add the name of a fruit (Lemon, Lime, etc..)
c. Add the last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)
Examples: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson.

22. No matter how tragic your life, if you own a computer you cannot sing the blues.

, but I've spotted a flaw in it.

According to rule 21, "Narcoleptic Papaya Roosevelt" is a valid blues singer's name, and that just can't be right...

singing in the rain

i don't like musicals, but a few hours ago i really understood this bit

sparks glow in dim bulbs

last year, president hussein produced a few prophetic gold flakes from this slagheap of words about solyndra:

...through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans...

...many in this community are still reeling from the effects of the recession...

...it was all the more painful and heartbreaking because the factory had been held up as an example of how America could lead in manufacturing.

...there’s a ripple effect. It’s not just localized to this area.

the truth of the matter is, is that when you’re in Washington a lot of times all you’re thinking about or all that’s being talked about is politics -- we end up getting caught up in the moment instead of what is important for the future.

of course it has to be taken out of context to extract the truth ;)

---

also, today the old gray mare got something right about sarah palin for once.

revitalization

now that the freedom tower is nearing completion, maybe we can begin some foundation restoration

it's a free country

isn't it?

rick perry

...states the obvious.

boomer bust

there's still hope

A: absolutely nothing

Q: what caused a week-long lack of posts here?

A: a pinched wire

Q: what caused a week-long internet outage at my house?

A: Yellow Journalism!

Q: What's black and white and not red anymore?

There are those who say that a line of decency has been crossed by Newsweek and Tina Brown's portrayal of Michelle Bachmann, and there are those who say that the sky is made of tangerine gumdrops. I say to both sides today that turnabout is fair play.

he wasn't talking politics...

...but this sure applies (unfortunately):

A gift, at some level, makes you feel indebted to the givers. Some resent the debt. Then they denigrate the giver. Then they tell themselves it was never a gift at all, but something they were owed.

oh goody!

even more debt for us!

even the least of us!

:P

a series of jokes: 11

Two fish are sitting in a tank, and one turns to the other and says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"

a series of jokes: 10

Q: What's green and looks like an iguana?
A: A blue bucket in disguise

it's alive

it's just momentarily ill:

...How far off are the puppet masters pulling the strings of the usurper in the White House and our deaf representatives from both political parities? We have come full circle…we are again but a collection of colonies wanting representation, but not getting it, needing protection from a foreign invasion, but having the invasion aided by those who should, but do not protect our borders.

Our national seat of government is under siege, our country is in dire straits, and we are without a pulse of representation, but the nation’s lifeblood is in her people, and the nation’s heart beats within our own breasts where the Constitution is indelibly written…and there is where it lives on, not in Washington.

read the rest

update: read also

"For years the guys in Washington ducked the tough choices, leaving them for the future to deal with. Now the future is here. The business-as-usual pols in Washington who created the monster say they can save us from it.... If we get out of the current financial jam, the politicians in Washington will drive straight for the next jam as fast as ever they can."

and this...

a series of jokes: 09

Q: What's red and looks like a bucket?
A: A blue bucket in disguise

a series of jokes: 08

Q: What's blue and looks like a bucket?
A: A blue bucket

quote of the weak

to which i say:

The worst six words you can hear at a party are, “Do you watch my talk show?” Talk shows, really, used to be called tantrums, played out by spoiled and fussy narcissists - their faces usually colored in the most lurid hues of red to violet. But now too many people are throwing tantrums, except now they call them talk shows and they’re telling us all how important it is to watch them. It’s like punching you in the eye and then forcing you to say "thanks for showing me all those pretty stars".

Talk shows are the most disgusting, narcissistic, time-wasting developments of the last hundred years (and I’m including the vuvuzela). Everybody ignored your tantrums in 1776, so you never did have the joy of some stranger handing you a cookie.

a series of jokes: 07

Q: What do a grape and a chicken have in common?
A: They're both purple, except for the chicken.

a series of jokes: 06

Two drugged-out hippies are walking along a train track.

One turns to the other and says, "Wow, these steps are really steep, maaan!"

The other hippie replies, "It ain't the steps that bother me, maaan, it's these low handrails!"

The first one interrupts him to say "Watch out maaan, the elevator's coming!"

a series of jokes: 05

Q: What's orange and sounds like a parrot?
A: A carrot

truth in advertising

"you don't bird me, i don't bird you"

a series of jokes: 04

Q: What do you call a fish with no eyes?
A: Fsh.

a series of jokes: 03

Q. What do Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and Jimmy the Greek have in common?
A. Same middle name.

on terror coverage

in the wake of the reports of the motives of the norwegian scum, news coverage of terror attacks clearly now has three mutually-exclusive options:

1. begin reporting on any or all motives of murderous scum, including leftism and islamofascism,
2. refuse to report on any or all motives of murderous scum, including rightism and perversions of christianity, or
3. remain blatantly hypocritical in their anti-american pro-islamist pandering

i expect they'll keep doing #3 as usual

a series of jokes: 02

Q: Why is the sky blue?
A: Because if it were green we wouldn't know where to stop mowing.

a series of jokes: 01

Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?
A: To get to the same side.

a night of detours

i usually just drive home from work via surface streets, but occasionally take i35w (or 820) northbound. tonight i decided to take 35w, not knowing that its onramp from i30 was closed for construction. so i took the commerce street exit, and found a whole lot more construction & dead-ends downtown.

this may or may not have been my route...

sitting in the middle of sylvania (about where that dot is just north of yucca ave) and staring into my headlights was a black cat, to which i did not yell "you're too late buddy!" :D

turning gold into lead

"Reading the Declaration of Independence 235 years after it was written, it’s kidney-punchingly obvious that the United States government has become precisely the sort of bloodsucking tyrant against which the Founding Fathers revolted."

short form and long form

night shopping

if i had to register a domain name for the person behind me at the checkout tonight, it would be www.ChloeSevignyInScoobyDooPajamas.com

:)

i love it when people don't know how pretty they are...

Fairness in Broadcasting

Earlier, there was much ado about the Fairness in Broadcasting Act. I don't see what was so bad about it. It might have actually resulted in some movies where:

• intelligent people live in rural areas, and city dwellers are poor inbred layabouts
• vampires were actually evil, not just misunderstood
• Michael Moore points out the better side of capitalism
• members of the clergy remain faithful and avoid doing evil
• animals do not make wisecracks
• the profits of Big Media were exposed by some plucky young oilfield workers
• characters are not defined by their ethnicity
• neighbors are not wacky
  
• the woman does not fall for the "bad boy"
• fruit carts and glass deliveries are safe from car chases
• the noble American military saves the world from corrupt environmentalists

It would also require the formation of several new cable channels - one to show movies where the husband recovers from the abusive two-timing wife, one to show obedient children and sensible parents, and more than one to show high-budget computer-animated documentaries about Young-Earth Creationism (preferably voiced by Morgan Freeman).

bad pun alert

in the interest of helping dustbury's commentors keep from gagging, i'll make my horrible pun here:

dustbury posted about odd and undescriptive color names - such as the mud-putty-hued "weekend in the country". one commentor said "dead salmon probably is not a popular item", to which i refrained from responding

...

...

...

"dead salmon is a very popular color in a bear market"

lbj

okay, maybe obama isn't the worst president in u.s.history (yet) - lbj created a trifecta of quagmires:

Escalation of the Vietnam War

More than 50,000 Americans and many more Vietnamese died as a result of that policy; our country was bitterly divided in ways that still weaken us today, and the economic cost of the war was immense. It contributed to the wave of inflation that shook the country in the 1970s.

The Medicare/Medicaid complex

These entitlement programs are the biggest single financial problem we face. They dwarf all the Bush-Obama wars; they make TARP look like small change. They not only cost money we don’t have — and are scheduled to cost inexorably more until they literally ruin the nation — they have distorted our entire health system into the world’s most bloated and expensive monstrosity. Thanks to these programs, we have a health system that marries the greed of the private sector to the ineptitude of government.

The War on Poverty

Since the Great Society era of Lyndon Johnson, the country has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into poor urban neighborhoods. The violence and crime generated in these neighborhoods costs hundreds of billions more. And after all this time, all this money and all this energy, the inner city populations are worse off than before. There is more drug addiction and more social and family breakdown among this population than when the Great Society was launched.

inquiring minds want to know

no, not "how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop" - these are questions for the brocko bomber:

How come you haven't made unemployment illegal?

Instead of making cars get 62 mpg, why not 62 million mpg? Also, do something about the gravitational constant.

Are you smart enough to create a problem so big that even you could not solve it?

Is this question racist?

Why do you need permission to be clear, and not need permission to bomb Libya?

When your economic advisors hold policy meetings, do they stuff a towel at the bottom of the door?

and many many more

happy 235th

"We shouldn’t limit our reading or understanding of this document for anniversaries such as today."

update: this should apply internationally...

not just "kind of a..."

...and in related news, mark halperin also apologized to viagra users everywhere, for comparing their... small problem... to the worst president in u.s. history.

...also, our previous president is still waiting for about 3,930,000 apologies.

one flipped beatle

john lennon, republican?!?

i'm back

physically, at least...

great society?

no, grated society.

on the road again

going on another cross-texas trip for the next nine days. so at least that's an excuse for posting sporadically...

a little bit before i leave: parker brothers choppers are building a tron light cycle irl

did i do thaaaaat?

i commented here, and two posts later lileks wrote this sentence:

"it’s not important to know what they mean, but it give a sense of period without saying “everyone wore hats like it was hat day in Hatville. I needed a drink.”

Come to think of it, I like that line."

coincidence?!?

...

...

probably...

and this is sadly funny

read em and weep

now that's sad

one of the few people who looks far better than their online avatar/banner illustration is having trouble finding and/or sorting eggs...

now that's funny

...and by funny, i mean pathetic

Iran's Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh has criticized the regulatory authority over its handling of Japan's nuclear crisis.

“The poor and slow response by the [IAEA] secretariat, and particularly the director general, with regards to the Fukushima nuclear crisis is really disappointing,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA on Wednesday.

...and in related news, an anonymous hatless spokesman stated that “The poor and slow response by the international community with regards to the Iranian nuclear crisis is really disappointing.”

Sharkey's Enforcers

is "to protect and serve" becoming just another ugly face of obama's "transparency in government"?

coronal mass ejection

of course the giant nuclear furnace we are orbiting has nothing to do with global warming

Sharkey's Gang

vdh notices a pattern:

"...Whether Strauss-Kahn or Weiner or Gore (or "U2 not W2" Bono or Geithner or Marie Obamanette or Fannie Frank or Schwarzenegger or Edwards or..., ad nauseam, ed.), the common denominator is arrogance and a sense of exemption from the rules and protocols...

...Collectively, they represent a self-appointed... global elite that oversees, (sanctimoniously) lectures about... the ethical responsibilities of the redistributive state..."

previously, isaiah noticed a similar pattern...

Plessy & Ferguson

instapundit linked to this - i'll link to this:

The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race.

the number "2"

the letter "u"

meaningless book recommendations

from personal experience, i'd recommend that you don't read books about quantum physics right after reading ecclesiastes...

finally, i get it

No, not a promotion. Today I realized that for many years, I have been misunderstanding one particular word.

When reading the sentence "Promotions are performance-based" in our company's policy statement, I assumed that the word "performance" referred to job performance, as in the proficiency in performing the duties and tasks of the position. But the recent promotion of an under-performing suck-up made me realize that in this context, the word "performance" must obviously refer to an acting performance, such as a charade, a patent-medicine sales pitch, or a dog-and-pony show.

it's a conspiracy

IMAO in Pajamas:

"Saying that man didn’t land on the moon, that Bush caused 9/11, or that Obama knows what he’s doing aren’t simply other opinions — they’re false and destructive ideas, and the people who cling to them border on mental illness."

read it all

the persistence of mysticism

via the Jungle Hut:

"If myth is a view of reality invented exclusively by the human mind, then by definition, atheism is a myth."

price gouging?

investigations probably aren't necessary, but if they happen, oil companies shouldn't be first...

forever lame

(i made this free to share. copy it as much as you like, just please don't claim it's your own work)

"april showers bring may flowers"

...but around here, may showers bring tornadic hook echoes on radar. One of those hooks passed directly over my house in north Fort Worth a little before 8pm this evening.

There was no tornado or hail at my house, just some weird start-stop-start rain and winds, and a great opportunity to video several layers of clouds going in every direction simultaneously.

Others were not so lucky; some nearby, some farther away.

"after a while he began to go mad"

lileks:

It’s said that the problems of humanity can be traced by the inability of man to sit alone in a room with his own thoughts; in my case it’s always been my inability to sit in an office for any protracted period of time, particularly if there’s a poster on the wall of a kitten depending from a branch: Hang In There ‘Til Friday. No! I will not! I reject your calendrical bromides intended to give the worker drones a cheap palliative and make them concentrate their life towards the moment when the obligation to produce ceases.

!!

unfortunate

at the restaurant yesterday, my cookie should have read "if incense is the only thing you smell here, suspect a cover-up."

let them eat arugula!

it's funny because it's true

Mike Rowe calls 'em

getting America back to work

(and maybe some of his words will not go ignored inside the beltway...)

transparency in government

...equals opacity as usual

offensive to moose limbs

(very very nsfw)

so i pulled down my post about the death of osama bin laden, thinking it might have been to offensive. iowahawk more than made up for that with these three posts.

unreasonable search and seizure

updates via makezine blog:

sony's database was hacked, again.

tomtom sells gps data to cops.

---

michigan police can scan your phone without your consent.

iphones & ipads track you automatically.

two more reasons i will never own any of those products.

"king of the world!"

not in the dicaprio sense, but in the cagney sense...

compare and contrast

something i have in common with lileks sr.:

"he’d rather drive. Really: he’s never happier. A wheel, an engine, a road..."

something i do not have in common with lileks sr.

"There’s not a moment in his day he thinks “I could be on a computer, doing things.” Because he’s out, doing things."

dreamland 2

last night i dreamed i had to go back in time to rescue some artifacts from the early history of electronic music, including an analog sequencer and a laserdisc of wendy carlos' soundtrack to tron.

when i got to work today, bill and ted's excellent adventure was on tv, and an amazon order had been delivered to my desk, which included a dvd of both tron movies.

coincidence?
.
.
.
.
yes.

not stuck in an closet with vanna white*

I try not to dream-blog much, and I wouldn't have blogged last night's dream except for the way it... ended... you'll see...

---

At the beginning of last night's dream, my sister called me to explain that she and her husband had needed to fly to England suddenly for some emergency. She was in too much of a hurry to explain; she just wanted me to take her minivan to go pick up my nieces and drive to meet them there.

So I drove my car over to their house, but their van wasn't there. It also wasn't at any of the other usual places like their office, church, or anywhere else I could think of. After looking around town a little more, I stopped at a convenience store to use a pay phone. Just as I got out, their minivan pulled up beside the building and honked. My nieces and another girl were in the back, and Zooey Deschanel* was driving.

She had already picked up my nieces from school, so I got in the front passenger's side. As she drove, she told me that my sister had called and explained the situation: an anonymous call had been made to my sister pleading with her to mediate a crisis at a Unitarian church in Hirtshireville (not a real town as far as i know), England.

We drove for a long long time - through Bryan TX, Houston TX, Memphis TN, and Washington DC. The kids got very restless on the way, and we had to stop often.

(Of course, all of you know as I do that it would be impossible to get from north Texas to central England only by driving. My subconscious placed the town in an imaginary England vaguely in the vicinity of Newfoundland.)

When we arrived in the cathedral parking lot, my sister was just leaving, so my nieces went with her while Zooey and I walked in to meet with the assistant bishop. In a small office in the back, he explained to us that the previous bishop had retired, and one particular bishop wanted to take over the cathedral without any discussion, but the assistant wanted to confront him and force him to call for an election. Somehow, Zooey knew of a legal loophole to fix everybody's problems, but couldn't explain it to us (for our own safety) - we just had to hide out in the back while she fixed the problem. She walked out and the assistant locked the door and blocked it with a chair.


Then I woke up...


and went back to sleep...


and dreamed the entire trip again...


except...


...at various moments during the second trip, we discussed ways for us to improve the course of events for everyone involved. We remembered to pick up more games for the kids, we avoided a traffic jam in Memphis, we helped the assistant maintain his anonymity better, etc...

?!?!?!?!

---

* Weird Al is partially to blame for the title of this post. Dustbury's Zooeypaloozas are partially to blame for the dream ;)

p.s. the whole thing was g-rated

hijacked email

update: i just set up another email for comments from here. so i'm un-top-posting this.

---

somebody has been sending out spam using the email address i use for comments here, and hotmail has now blocked the account (frustrating but understandable).

1) i apologize if you get a spam with my address.

2) i won't be reopening that address, so if you sent anything since march i probably didn't receive it. please use comments here until i set up another address for hatless in hattiesburg.

3) this is not near as frustrating as a previous hijacking...

stating the obvious...

...in a world not inclined to hear such things:

Pastor Jones (notorious koran burner) lives in the United States, not Afghanistan; that we enjoy the protection of the First Amendment... it is not Pastor Jones’ fault that Muslims are so frickin’ deranged as to go all apesquat over the burning of a copy of the Koran and that their doing so pretty much proves his point.

update: see also

abu ghraib redux

the sequel is worse

changing meds

the black dog
got lost in the fog
and slept like a log

---

will try to resume regular posting when things stabilize...

chiropractic care

i have now personally seen chiropractors who believe in their profession at five levels. the numbers i assigned are according to hierarchy of belief, but are arranged for effect, not in chronological or numerical order.

4) the skeletal system should be aligned so that the body can move properly

3) nerves pinched by a misaligned spine can cause pain (plus #4)

2) nerves pinched by a misaligned spine will prevent the body from healing itself properly (plus #3 & #4)

1) the *only* cause of *all* physical disease is nerves pinched between misaligned vertebrae (plus #2, #3, & #4)

5) skeletal system pain is a source of steady income (assisted by insurance, workers comp, and pamphlets about the other four)

can you fix a cfl?

this site suggests (in slightly-broken english) it is sometimes possible to fix a compact fluorescent lightbulb (via makezine)

Libyan No-Fly / Police Action / War / Airshow / ...?

so is this a bad time to bring up the phrases:

"warmongering cowboy"
"no blood for oil"
"dissent is patriotic"

?

at least when bush mobilized the armed forces, he had a goal in mind...

common ground

it's not often i agree with a leftist-socialist-labor site, but this is one: stop rfid.

and this post brings up problems surrounding "who owns science".

things to remember

two quotes from many via the jakarta globe:

"The timing is not right for political decisions and the spreading of panic," Slovenia's President Danilo Turk told reporters while on a visit to the Czech capital Prague.

"Please don't forget that there are people who are working to protect everyone's lives in exchange for their own lives," said one post on Japanese social networking site Mixi.

Japan Earthquake

Here's the "one-page" of information from USGS, more information on tabs, and a preliminary cross-section.

Here's graphics of the tsunami waves fom NOAA, and one high resolution map of the wave heights.

just raised that way

Viewpoint:

"Most people... agree that the behavior and views of Mr. Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church are contemptible and not deserving of the respect of decent people. Many commentators and cartoonists have reviled and mocked them in print, not just for their awful behavior at funerals, but for the beliefs they hold about homosexuality and American decadence.

But here's an interesting thing. The Westboro baptists are on the fringe of American Christianity, but they're roundly condemned for holding views that are actually in the mainstream of American Islam.

Whether it's their conviction that God hates homosexuals, or that God rejoices in the deaths of American soldiers, or that America is a fundamentally decadent society which deserves to be destroyed, there are a lot of devout Muslims in this country who would fervently assent to all of these."

just born that way*

There's a popular claim that homosexuals should not be ridiculed because they were "just made that way" and had no choice of their sexual preference. So why aren't homophobes accorded the same courtesy, since they were also "just made that way" and had no choice of their sexual aversions?

(*according to the world. some of us were taught better.)

the fall of civilization

maybe:

"The Unanswered Question remains "Why did this cultural collapse happen?" We know that it did, we know that the leaders of Western countries completely lacked foresight, insight, patriotism and concern for their national identities. We know they were willing to open wide the borders of their countries to allow in the hordes. We know all of this, and much more. But we don't know WHY. If the West hates itself, where did this self-hatred come from, what is its source? Was it the shattering events of '68 that brought about an irreversible rupture with the past? Yes it was, but we still don't know why the leaders and the people let it happen. We went to bed one night with our traditions still strong, our values seemingly imperishable. And we woke up in a totally transformed world, the world upside down as some call it."

or maybe not...

another video

...and the winner of the "best use of stock photos in support of environmentalism" category is...

fred vs paul

love vs hate

3/4 time in a bottle

at a chinese buffet today which i do not frequently... um... frequent, the background music was in a style i call "mantovani strings". that may be an incorrect name, but i associate those lush orchestrations of the soundtracks of the fifties through seventies with dad's easy-listening am-fm stations and eight-track tapes back when i was young. of the few oldies i recognized were "tammy's in love", "sound of music", something like "those magnificent men in their flying machines" and some french-sounding filler music that could have been from the 1956 "around the world in eighty days".

there were a few new additions though. in that same easy style were "the rose", "for your eyes only", some nondescript sitcom theme from the seventies, and chicago's "glory of love". but then there was the beatle's "hey jude" and berlin's "take my breath away" - both of which lost a lot in translation.

those reminded me of an ongoing expectation of mine: to someday hear ozzy ozbourne's "no more tears" in a commercial for johnson's baby shampoo, soundgarden's "i awake" for some motel chain's commercial, and nin's "down in it" in a department store elevator.

The Thin Chalk Line

One of the polite quotes from this article is:

"Instead of chanting slogans in Madison, maybe it's time for Wisconsin teachers to take refresher lessons from their non-union counterparts in the Lone Star State."

A less-polite question is: "Why do union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?"

March 2nd

Happy 175th Birthday Republic of Texas!

i also declared independence exactly ten years ago, and that had mixed results too...

the downward spiral

in which i ask two questions that are answered at zomblog:

1) when will we realize that the militant left has no sense of decency?

2) where's all the people who shout "separation of church and state"?

driving me crazy

this is funnier than this

remind me...

why are we supposed to care more about lindsay lohan's and charlies sheen's... misadventures... than about the problems of some guy that lives downtown in an abandoned entryway behind a bus stop?