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Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
REDIRECT ALERT! (Scroll down past this mess if you're trying to read an archived post. Thanks. No, really, thanks.) Due to my inability to control my temper and complacently accept continued silliness with not-quite-as-reliable-as-it-ought-to-be Blogger/Blogspot, your beloved Possumblog will now waddle across the Information Dirt Road and park its prehensile tail at http://possumblog.mu.nu. This site will remain in place as a backup in case Munuvia gets hit by a bus or something, but I don't think they have as much trouble with this as some places do. ::cough::blogspot::cough:: So click here and adjust your links. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's one of those things. Friday, March 21, 2003
Moving at top speed across the desert to the mythic land of Weekendia!!
Lots to do this weekend--Littlest Girl has soccer practice tonight, Oldest has her Jungle Book, then tomorrow we have three soccer games and a Jungle Book, then Sunday we have church and the FINAL matinee of Jungle Book. (Hooray!) In amongst all that, there is the normal stuff you have to do when you have four kids--chanting, laundry, ritual sacrifice, rewinding Pocohantas for the fifty millionth time (they can operate any known electronic machine ever invented, yet they won't rewind the tape if they stop it before it finishes). AND, my car is finally fixed--final tab is a whopping $1,448.49. Once more with the shock and awe. I SURRENDER already!! Anyway, also in among all this other stuff we're supposed to go test drive this on Saturday. (And yes, Cletus, I know it won't be near as good as your new truck, but it's not for me, it's for my wife, and surely you know how picky wives can be. Hmm. Then again, if she married me, how picky can she be?) So then, we crank closed the windows on the Possumblog Broadcast Trailer and head for the house. All of you have a good weekend, have a Happy Vernal Equinox, and I'll see you on Monday.
I got yer Shock and Awe right here...Auburn Holds Off Saint Joseph's in OT By FRED GOODALL, AP Sports WriterWar Eagle!! (Not that basketball is a real sport or anything--you know, like football--but as long as Auburn's whupping somebody, I'll be acting like I'm a big roundball fan.) [Before you start writing in, I consider anything where the players get to wear jewelry not to be a real sport.]
Mindlessness On Parade
Nice photo here of a young fellow demonstrating his throwing ability and a well-honed sense of irony. You know, our ignorant friend might like to read The New Colossus--then again, the author was one of those horrid J-E-W-S, so he might not like it. In any event, here it is: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fameHmm. Let's see what might be offensive about Miss Liberty...'mighty woman'--ooooh, offends certain burqa-loving types, and we wouldn't want to inflame the Arab Street over THAT...'ancient lands, your storied pomp'--why that witch is cracking on Old Europe!! What sort of signal does that send about working within the framework of nations!!...Tired, poor, huddled masses of oppressed people--good grief, the absolute HORROR that the most powerful nation on earth was built and is managed by EVERYBODY ELSE'S DREGS!! How utterly humiliating--no wonder he's throwing eggs at her. (By the way, what would PETA say about exploiting poor unborn chickens in such a way?)
Of course, being an imbedded reporter doesn't necessarily mean you're the sharpest dart on the board...Tough battle for Umm Qasr The BBC's Adam Mynott sent this report for News Online from the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Many of the young US Marines aged between 19-24 had been told to expect fairly light resistance from Iraqi forces as they crossed the border with the intention of taking the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Huh? "Many" of the redundantly young 19-24 Marines were told? Not all? How many? What about the 18 year olds? What about all the old farts? Did they get told something else? Nothing? But when they crossed, shortly after dawn, through the wide gap cut in the sand reinforcement by 26 Armoured Engineer Squadron of British soldiers, they encountered much stiffer opposition than they had been expecting.Uh-huh. When you're running away as fast as you can, just about everything looks like hurried chaos. The US Marines regrouped and Captain Crevier also called forward two M1-Abraham American tanks to try to help punch a hole through the Iraqi resistance."Abrams", you twit. M-1 Abrams. And I really REALLY don't think it was going to have to "try" too very hard to punch this hole you speak of. The armoured convoy eventually got moving after three or four hours and made its way towards the port of Umm Qasr.Hopefully the three or four hours was long enough for you to turn around and run the right way. Umm Qasr remains in a state of some flux.Isn't "some flux" something like being a little pregnant? Anyway, the tone still suggests a dejected defeatism that would probably lead Adam to opine that World War II was still going on because there is a very lonely Japanese guy on New Guinea who didn't surrender in 1945. The new port is vital in the coalition's plans to bring humanitarian aid into the country.Adam, I doubt "fear" is the correct adjective to use right after US Marines. And yes, you are so very right--if there are mines, they will have to be cleared first before anyone can bring in the pointy-ended, floaty things. It's very dangerous. Maybe you should run away. Umm Qasr is the only deep-water port in Iraq.Luckily, there are those red lines on your map--they are called "roads' and they lead from several of the countries around Iraq, and then there are those things on your map that look like little airplanes--they are called "aerodromes" and great big flying things can land there, so just in case Umm Qasr is mined, and it takes a week or so to get it unclogged, there ARE alternatives. Anyway, good luck, Adam, and please don't bother the nice men while they work.
I just love Rooters...Rumsfeld Says Saddam's 'Regime' Losing Control
Why the quote marks around "regime"? My crappy little dictionary says it means a "system of administration or government." Was Rummy up there at the podium making air quotes with his fingers? Is Saddam's dictatorial oligarchy not a regime? Have all of Reuters' headline "writers" been instructed to call into question everything said by anyone in charge? "Morons" CORRECTION NOTICE: Regular reader and denizen of the Kudzu Patch, Larry Anderson writes in to the Possumblog Editorial Office: I think that the use of quotes around the word "Morons" in the context in which you used it is incorrect. It is not a quote nor do you need to set it apart as something your reader needs to understand may not be exactly accurate.The Possumblog Web Log Editorial Department and staff deeply regret any misunderstanding which may have arisen by the (mis)use of the word "moron" in quotation marks in the above post. As always, we will make every effort to correct errors of a substantive nature as quickly as possible. To that end, we ask that the following be considered as such a corrective action: Morons. Thank you for reading and responding.
CNN Ordered Out of Baghdad BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq ordered Cable News Network (CNN), the U.S. television news channel, to leave Iraq on Friday and accused it of being a propaganda machine.Considering the news reports, instead of having to drive to Jordan, you fellows might be able to ask the nice man in the Humvee downstairs for a ride to the airport, if you can hang around for a day or so.
How to get well...
Well, let me tell you...going straight to the soccer park after work, without the benefit of the amoxicillin your doctorbabe called in to the pharmacy for you, and standing out there in the nice damp breeze for an hour and a half doesn't do too much for you. Got home last night afterwards and my throat felt like it was full of angry fire ants. Which made swallowing my pill a bit of a chore, even moreso given the immense size of these babies--each one is about the size of a canteloupe. I have now had two of them, and my throat feels a bit better, and I am, of course, back at work, spewing my filthy germs everywhere. But doggone it, it's payday, and I have to be here to pick up my check. My prediction about what my lot would have been like had I gone home yesterday was remarkably prescient--while fixing supper, Reba managed to get some dirty water up on the the curtains over the kitchen sink. This required that she remove ALL the curtains (and ALL their niggly little rods) from ALL the windows in the kitchen and put them in the washing machine, and then to add to the confusion she managed to knock a vase full of tulips off the counter and spread glass all over the kitchen floor, requiring the employment of the incredibly loud vacuum cleaner which got up 99.99% of the glass shards, except for one tiny piece that lodged itself into the chubby little foot of Catherine when she got home from school, causing her to limp and whine around the house the rest of the afternoon. Hmmm. Yep, staying at work was a better idea. After supper, time to get the kiddies scrubbed down, then to bed, and I lay all sprawled on the bed watching the NBC and FOX News reports out of Iraq. I don't know, but it seems like the idea of 'embedding' reporters with the troops is working better than anyone anticipated--I think the biggest reason is that guys are big kids when it comes to blowey-uppy stuff, and the reporters get to act all macho and use words like "klicks" for kilometers. And "Boots on the ground!" Over and over again. PLEASE stop it. Just talk normal, please. You don't have to use jargon. It just makes you sound silly. And another thing--don't bother the guys while they are WORKING! David Bloom was on the Today show this morning riding on an M-88 across the desert and decided that he would do an impromptu demonstration during a stop to show what the food was like. "Hey, would you hand me one of those MREs over there?" The trooper was very kind and handed it to him, although I'm sure I was thinking "Look, jackhole, I'm busy and you're ***king arms ain't broke." Dave blabbered about how good the MRE is to eat (which I'm sure will endear him to grunts everywhere) and then decided he was going to open the pack. Why? Who knows. He tugged and pulled for a second, and then had the nerve to ask "Hey, do either of you guys have a knife to open this with?" What a prissy little buffoon. Being a nice man, the patient sergeant who was also on the back of the vehicle stopped what he was doing, dug under his body armor and pulled out a multitool, took the package from him, and neatly sliced it open, and went back to work, again all the while probably comparing Dave to a certain part of the female anatomy. (Find you a knife, Dave baby.) Dave then proceded to pull all the stuff out of the pack and throw it all around him as he sat there describing it. And then worried that he might have lost his sunglasses. BUT, the one thing is that the reporting itself, not just from Mr. Bloom but from all the dopey reporters, is positive. Having to rely on someone else for your survival tends to do that, I suppose. And it shows that despite what comes out of the mouths of the citizens of Bizarro World, American troops are professional, capable, tough, smart, and compassionate men and women who do what they do not because they were coerced, nor out of psychotic blood lust. They do it because there still is such a thing as duty and honor. My thanks to all of you. Thursday, March 20, 2003
POSITIVE
I am a walking Petri dish of horrifyingly icky streptococci. Which is why I came back to work. I figure if I make everyone sick here, I'll have the place all to myself next week. Janis Gore suggested that the smart course of action would be to go home and go to bed, which would work fine if I wasn't so danged lazy (or if I was smart). As it is, if I go home, I will be sharing the house with Oldest Daughter, who fell ill at school and had to be taken home by Wife, who will also be there. Meaning, that were I to show up at home, I would be greeted by Wife with a list of things that we could do around the house. Of course, she would sigh and say I should go on and get in the bed, but the rest of the afternoon would be spent listening to her uuumph-ing boxes around, and errrrrughhh-ing stacks of books off the floor, and CLANG/CLATTERING-ing dishes out of the dishwasher, and turning on the television in the bedroom so she can hear it while she works out in the hallway, and sometime in there Oldest will decide to that, hey, she feels just fine now and will get out her clarinet and start practicing the best way to make it squeak loudly, and then the phone will ring and someone will ask for Terr-uey O... O... Og... Ogu... Ogusl... Ogrigsboy, and I will have to patiently tell them if they don't hang up I'll have to come all the way to Bangalore and rip their hemmorhoids right out through their nose, and then it will be time to go get the other kids from school, and they will come home and re-enact the first twelve hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom at top volume. So, I think I might just stay here, where it is quiet. As for the doctor trip, it went very nicely. She was very impressed that I had lost weight since the last visit (15 pounds), and she treated me like the gigantic big fat wimpy baby I am. Which comes across much better coming from an attractive young female doctor, rather than a crusty-but-lovable old man doctor. Sadly, just as there was with my former crusty-but-lovable old man doctor, there is the issue of the horrid exam room artwork (see earlier posts dealing with Lewitt-Him artwork). And as before, the "artwork" is fish related. AAARGHHH!! Make it STOP!! One wall had a slick cardboard print of Van Gogh's Purty Colored Fla'rs in a cheapie gold frame, which wasn't so bad, but the other wall...O! the other wall. Overall composition approximately 24 real live English inches wide by 18 high, in the "Old Man and the Sea"ish genre--guy in a slicker, sitting in a dinghy, battling a marlinesque-sorta looking fish, all done in that peculiar mid-1970s angular mosaic style of rough wood strips of the sort one finds at the best head shops and sea shell emporiums along the Miracle Mile at Panama City Beach. Each strip of wood had been carefully cut and nailed into place (them's REAL nails!), and each little tortured hunk of timber was apparently lovingly salvaged from old fruit boxes. I imagine it was probably constructed by an earnest young artist struggling to break into the big time realm of rumpus room and doctor's office artwork. "If I can only get just one on The Brady Bunch, I'm set!!" Each strip was painted in the appropriate washed out green and blue and gray colors, and in the corner the proud artist woodburned (another of those fun 1970s craft activities involving possible skin damage) his or her name onto the wood..."degroot". The Great, eh? Oh well, then--who am I to argue?
Study: Female rats are better multitaskers
In a related event, Blogger has announced the expansion of its technical staff to include forty female lab rats. "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" "Uh, I think so, Brain, but culottes have a tendancy to ride up so."
Ouch.
I'm fixing to leave to go see the doctor--the uncomfortable feeling in the back of my throat last night has bloomed into what appears to be a raging case of strep throat. Can't swallow without screaming, the inside of my swallow-thingy looks as red as a monkey's butt, my head's full of lukewarm aquarium gravel, my eyes feel like they're going to pop out like hull rivets in one of those old submarine movies...Ick. So, off to have another of my bodily orifices probed. Oh well, at least she's a she. And the hole IS topside. Be back after while--while I'm gone, be sure to check out EVERYone in the blogroll above--you won't be disappointed.
Monica Fills The Bill for Fox
And Bill fills th...never mind. Anyway, in this hard-hitting WaPo piece by Lisa de Moraes, we find that... [...] Monica Lewinsky, the former presidential mistress who alternately runs from and toward celebrity, has signed to host Fox's next reality series, "Mr. Personality."Meow.
Arabs Angry Over U.S. Attack on Iraq
WOW!! What are the odds of THAT happening!! In related news, Arabs are also angry that the whole world is not Muslim, that Jews still exist, that a giant genie has not destroyed George Bush, that they can't get the VCR to quit flashing 12:00, that Wal-Mart doesn't carry Semtex, and that Pete Rose is still not in the Hall of Fame.
Holy crapalooie!!
Due to the effect of both a Blairalanche AND a Yourishalanche, this pitiful site managed to get 1,745 hits yesterday!! (Admittedly, about 1,500 were me sitting here hitting reload, but hey...) In any event, for the rest of the hits which came from people who dropped by, the Possumblog Editorial Board and Snack Fund wish to offer their sincere regrets for any disappointment which may have arisen by following the links from Mr. Blair and Ms. Yourish to this site. Those experiencing light-headedness, a hollow ringing in the ears, constipation, or involuntary small motor twitches are advised to seek immediate medical assistance. Anyone not experiencing deleterious effects due to exposure to Possumblog will receive a door prize of a box of six Cornatees™, the cornbread battered and deep fried manatee treat on a stick. Wednesday, March 19, 2003
The Wednesday Lileks' Newhouse Column--In Praise of America's Fighting Men and Women [...] My father, like the men and women in the Gulf today, volunteered. Keep that in mind, because to hear the protesters you'd think that once again Fascist Amerika has rounded up the poor and the dark, manacled them in troop ships and sent them off to be flung against cannon fire in futile waves. No: These people volunteered for this job.In peace, vigilance. In battle, valor. In victory, compassion. Godspeed to the men and women who stand upon the ramparts.
And now for something compleatly different...
We bring you the Magnificent Llama Drivers of the South!! And not only that, but another excerpt in our ongoing series of excerpts from Everybody's Writing Desk Book (1903 edition), written by Charles Nisbet and Don Lemon. Today's topic... 5. WRONG USE OF WORDS.A couple of the books mentioned in the article include Longman’s Magazine, copies of which can be found at B&N (although I can’t quite put my finger on poor Prof. Freeman), and there is Hodgson’s Errors in the Use of English also available from Barnes and Noble.
From the Referrer Logs...
Obviously my fame has now gone far and wide in the last year of so of rambling, so much so that I get requests like this: trouble shoot leaky toilet tank Well, now, the best thing to do if there's trouble is to shoot the intruder, not the leaky toilet tank. If you shoot the tank, it'll just be even more leaky. Glad to be of help.
Via Weevilite Ministress to the Sportsman's Paradise, Janis Gore, who received it via Rand Simberg, the heartwarming story of passion and bolt cutters:
Protester picks wrong spot to lock himself SCOTT GUTIERREZ THE OLYMPIAN The Olympian OnlineUh-huh...and just what do all those so-called "rural" exploiters of farm animals use to grow their pesticide-laden poisons and their freakish genetically-modified cows? THAT'S RIGHT!! OOOIIIIILLLLLLLL!! They had it comin', that's for sure!! FIGHT THE POWER!! "I don't think that's ever happened before," said Larry Clark, Grange communications director.SEE!! SEE the violence inherent in the system!! Oh no, can't just use normal bold cutters--oh no, we have to haul out the military/industrial-complex approved HEAVY DUTY bolt cutters, wielded, no doubt by jack-booted racist THUGS!! STIFLING DISSENT!! HELP!! HELP!! "He asked for help because he didn't have the key," Olympia police Cmdr. Steve Nelson said.SURRRE he asked for help--TO STOP THIS WAR!!! Mason wasn't arrested and won't face any charges. Officers let him go and didn't take his name, Nelson said.I DEMAND HE BE CHARGED!! SUCH LACK OF CRUSHING OF DISSENT MUST NOT BE TOLERATED!! "He was our first protester since President Bush's speech," Nelson said.HE WON'T BE THE LAST!! Fight the Grange!! FARMERS KILL BABY ANIMALS!! THEY POLLUTE OUR ATMOSPHERE!! RURAL LIFE CONTRIBUTES TO SPRAWL! Mason, who identified himself to a photographer, said he had looked up the Department of Energy in the phone book. The phone book, under the Department of Energy, lists a Bonneville Power Administration Office at 924 Capitol Way S.Just another ploy to hide from the PEOPLE, man!! What a schmoo.
Possums in service to Her Majesty! Queen's guards could soon be wearing possumIndeed they could, Jonny!! Southland's environmentally friendly fur, from pest possums trapped in the name of conservation, was already gracing catwalks in Germany and Italy and it was worth making some calls to England, Mr Hazlett said today.Wherever there is conflict in the world, whenever there is a need to see that Freedom's defenders are properly arrayed and equipped, you can be sure that a POSSUM will be there, doing what it does best--being completely and totally dead.
SEC Charges HealthSouth, CEO with Fraud WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that it has charged healthcare services group HealthSouth Corp. and Chief Executive Richard Scrushy with "a massive accounting fraud."Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow. Talk about being seduced by hubris. In any event, there were breathless, but non-specific, reports last night at the beginning of the early-late evening news on the local FOX station (With no network programming, they are REAL heavy into local news--5, 5:30, 6, 9, 10) that the FBI had the HealthSouth complex surrounded. No word at first why (you know, so you'll stay tuned), and with the tension about the coming invasion of Iraq, it could have been any sort of Bad Thing going on--gunmen, bogeymen, bong sellers. I joked to Reba that they were probably after poor Dick, and he was probably locked in an office with a shredder. Come to find out, when the reporter finally did do her report, they indeed where there carrying out a search warrant in conjunction with an SEC investigation. Dick wasn't really there, though. Oh well. If nothing else, the lusciously zaftig Nikki Preede was doing the story--she's my local equivalent to the Pride of Wheeling.
Foreign ministers meeting at U.N. in symbolic, likely ineffective war protest
Symbolic. Ineffectual. Well, you know what they say--go with your strengths.
U.S. Homeland Security Chief Tries to Calm Public
Cookies, Warm Milk Seem To Be Working--Officials Say Some "Might Need Bedtime Story of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel"
Hey, Cool!! A Tim Blairalanche!!
But, as always, stupid STUPID Blogger just sorta dumps you off at the top of the page here and you can't quite figure out what the reference is about. Well, just scroll down to the story about the aptly named Dick Smothers. Or you could go and read this and get a similar titter.
Too Many Parents Leave Children Alone in Bathtub
Look, I'm a big guy and there just isn't ROOM for me and a kid...hmm? What? Oh. Never mind.
France Snaps at British Jibes, Clarifies Help Offer [...] France's ambassador in Washington, Jean-David Levitte, appeared to offer an olive branch to the United States on Tuesday when he told CNN that France could help the U.S.-led military coalition if Baghdad used biological or chemical arms.I think one thing we've learned is that there is quite a difference in the definition of "obvious" when dealing with the French... we wouldn't sit back and not help if there was a chemical attack.Oh really?! But what we are talking about is medical assistance," one said. [...]Oh. Really. Here--here's a buck...go play in traffic.
Alliteration Day! Barbecue Big Biz in BHM--Brought to you by the letter B and the Birmingham Business Journal...--Barbecue bests recession in Birmingham in 2002 Leave it to barbecue to beat the economic slump.Mmm. Meat. I am proud to say that the smoked pork industry can thank my family and me for the largest portion of their success. Say, I wonder what the boys at the BBQ Emporium think about this news? (They seem to be getting awfully high-tone now that they got international recognition from that English fellow.)
Hey!! Hometown News Alert...Jeffco to replace bridge on South Chalkville Road ANITA DEBRORight down the hill from Casa De Possum, you know. And some of you probably thought I was joshing about the name of the creek--it is indeed Pinchgut, and as I have mentioned before, the one further up the Cahaba is Stinking Creek. Horrible sounding names, but both of them, as well as the Cahaba, are actually pretty little streams. In a way it's a shame they are going to replace the bridge. The old one is narrow and has the short concrete rails with large openings between the columns, so you can actually see down into the creek as you cross over. Go slow enough and little passengers with keen eyes can see fishies and a crafty old heron that lurks in the shadow and snatches one up every so often. I know the new one will look just like all other new bridges--blinding white concrete, 80 feet wide (wider than it is long), with 4 foot high Jersey barrier rails on either side. No more looking at the fish. 'Progress' my eye teeth. Tuesday, March 18, 2003
OKAY, now—here is another version of what happened this weekend. I tell you, though, the original post was much, MUCH funnier and poignant and thought provoking and warmly familiar and action packed and it had several guest star cameos (golly, you know that Nipsey Russell is a SCREAM!) and a band and lots of other good stuff that went right down the floor drain in Blogspotlandia.
Not that I’m bitter or nuthin’. And to the folks who wrote in and told me that I should do this in Word then cut and paste—sometimes I do that (like in this post) but I was at first just going to do a short post and it kept getting longer and longer, and I was typing fast and hot and had several links, which is ONE thing I will give to stupid STUPID Blogger— it has three little buttons that you can click that will automatically insert the proper tags for bolding and italics and links. When you’re typing, it slows things down to have to manually type in all the pointy brackets and a href stuff and remember to close the tags and if you have “smart quotes” turned on it doesn’t work right with the tags and it all just becomes a great big bother. A bother, that is, until two hours worth of work suddenly vanishes like an Iraqi dissident. THEN you sorta wish you had just taken a second or two to copy the stuff in Blogger to the clipboard, JUST IN CASE. Ah well, such is life lived upon the edge, eh? To start—Friday night was the premiere of The Jungle Book, and it went surprisingly well. No major flubs and everything went off pretty smoothly with the scenery changes and all. It was also marked by an appreciative audience, who in some cases made even more noise than the actors. Lots of coughing and talking and passing babies back and forth—in some ways it reminded me of the descriptions of Billy Wigglestick’s Globe audiences. I suppose I should be happy someone didn’t leap up out of the front row and try to chop Kaa the Snake’s head off with a hoe when she came onstage. To make it even worse, the long tall schmuck who was sitting at the end of the row in front of us decided to improve his seating position during intermission. He plopped down right in front of Jonathan, who sort of whimpered at me and looked up with those great big puppy dog eyes. In my best stage whisper, I leaned over to him and said, “I guess you can see REAL good, now!” Oblivious Man didn’t budge. Until a few seconds later when he hopped up again and moved all the way down to the end of the row. Right in front of Catherine. Who isn’t nearly as civilized as her father. “MAMA!! That MAN setted in front of me and I CAN’T SEE NOTHIN!!” He heard THAT! by golly. He scrunched his sticklike frame further down in the seat until he was quite uncomfortable. Heh. Back home, then to bed, then up again Saturday. Middle Girl’s game got cancelled due to most of the other team being preoccupied with some sort of non-cookie-related Girl Scout deal, so they had to forfeit. So, her and Mom went up to church to work on scrapbook stuff, while Dad stayed and Dealt Harshly with misbehaving nonadults who did not wish to play nicely with the computer. I also did laundry and dishes….I always forget which one it is you’re supposed to bash on rocks at the creek. Oh well. They got back late, then it was time to go to Boy’s soccer game. They played pretty well, and wound up kissing their sister from Clay to the tune of 1-1. Jonathan didn’t get to play a whole lot—poor little fellow is as slow as Christmas. But he has fun. Afterwards, it was time to start the slow descent into madness known as car shopping. We had decided to sell the Oldsmobooger when it gets out of the shop, and I had figured we would get something else—used, but somewhat newer, in the same appliance-type sort of car. (As a bothersome and distracting side note, it had been awfully odd having an Olds and a Plymouth in the driveway. Both of them have been sent to the pasture by their parent corporations, so it’s a bit like walking out and finding an Oakland and a DeSoto parked there. You car guys know what I mean.) Anyway, I had found a ’96 Taurus wagon that looked okay (yes, I know—but with six in the family and an artillery division’s amount of crap to carry around, our choices are kinda limited. And I really don’t think Reba would have appreciated me showing up with this). She got out and started looking at the new stuff, particularly a Silhouette with the child-pacification (i.e. DVD) system. Too ‘spensive. Until. Later that day as we were doing something, she came up with an idea. Sell the Olds, keep the old van for me to drive, and get something newer she could drive which didn’t have a CHECK ENGINE light that comes on after ten minutes worth of driving. All of which would require the use of The Untouchable Fund of Money That Must Never Be Touched, Ever. But, since it was her idea, I think it was much more palatable. So, okay by me, and it will be nice to have something that won’t leave us stranded on the side of I-65 beside the carcass of a dead armadillo during our next long trip. (And if I squint my eyes real tight, I can pretend the Plymouth has a 340 Six-Pack just like an AAR ‘Cuda. Well, kinda.) So, starts the search for something nicer. I’ll fill you in on that later on, but as I wrote this morning, Homer would be proud. TELL ME, O MUSE, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Trussville. Many cities did he visit, and many were the car dealers with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by Interstate while trying to save a few bucks and bring his load of screaming children safely home; but do what he might he could not save his children, for they had great gastric distress through their own sheer folly in eating the Twinkies which had been left to the mercy of the Sun-god Hyperion in the rear storage box…(Not really—just throwed that in for dramatic effect.) SPEAKING OF WHICH, after we figured that car mess out, sometime in there it was time to use our other currently operating vehicle to transport daughter back to the theater for Saturday night’s performance, which caused daughter, who had to ride in the shotgun seat of said vehicle, no small amount of agony for the indignity of having to be seen in such a…a…pile of rust! We pulled up and she nearly shot out of the cab, and would have except no one was there yet. So we waited as more and more kids and parents showed up with their sparkly SUVs and there we sat in the creaky old pickup until she was nearly beside herself with pent-up embarrassment. HEY! Get used to it, chick! Your old man is going to be a source of constant consternation for years to come. (And for what it’s worth, I would stack up stinky ol’ Franklin against Baloo’s mom’s new H2 any day of the week!) They finally opened the door and she ran in like I was a kidnapper, and I came on in and stayed backstage during the play, which, of course, caused her great gobs of additional embarrassment. As I said, get used to it, sugar! I did get to prove my manliness, however, when the director needed a pocketknife to fix something. And I was the ONLY MAN IN THE ROOM with a pocketknife. Sheesh, what’s wrong with you guys! The play went well again as it did the night before, and then it was back home, some supper, a shower, and in the bed. Sunday, up early, off to church, where I remembered that I had forgotten that I was supposed to substitute for the 3rd and 4th grade teacher. Oops. Luckily, it’s a good class, and I’m not saying that because two of the kids are mine. It really is a good bunch of kids and they listen very well—the lesson was a survey of Esther, which is near ‘bout impossible to adequately cover in 40 minutes, but I managed it and even got in a reference to Joe Millionaire. I asked Rebecca and Jonathan later at lunch some questions about it, and they got them all right, so I guess some of it took. After class, worship, after worship, home for a quick lunch, after quick lunch it was time for Mom to go sit with Wolf for her afternoon matinee, while I read the paper and refereed the inevitable he-said—she-said; he-pooted—she’s-a-snothead exchanges that always happen when children are freed from working 16 hours shifts in textile mills. Reba and Ashley home, then time to head right back up to the church building for the girls to do their song-leading lessons while the rest of us went to Wal-Mart. (Because no weekend post of mine is complete without an obligatory Wal-Mart reference, and we really did need stuff.) Then back for evening services, then home for supper, then to bed, then I got to work Monday and Dogger ate my homework, so I did some actual work and fumed and fussed. So there, now. That’s the bones of what I put down Monday, without any of the hilarity or the guest stars (except for John Tesh, and he won’t leave) or all the other stuff.
Blix Says Unlikely Iraq Will Use Chemical Weapons UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix said on Tuesday he doubted Iraq would use chemical or biological weapons in a war with a U.S.-led coalition because world opinion would turn against Baghdad if such weapons were used. [...]I thought Saddam said they didn't have any. Surely he wasn't lying.
Well, well, well...so it's FINALLY back up and running. And you folks thought you had missed something!! Nope, same old crap, just done on another day.
Let's see here...1:00 p.m. and my posts are STILL not showing up. Thanks Error 203:java.lang. NumberFormatException: (server:page)[more info]--nice doing business with you.
Golly, could there be a reason that "gall" and "Gaul" sound alike? Report: France Could Aid Coalition Against Iraq WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite its opposition to a war in Iraq France could assist any U.S.-led military coalition if Iraq uses biological and chemical weapons, the French ambassador to the United States told CNN on Tuesday.Which he, of course you know, does not have... this would change the situation completely and immediately for the French government," Jean-David Levitte told CNN.'Oui, the type of the white cotton cloths we use upon our surrender flags upon the sticks, she is very good for holding across the nose to block the vapours.' Hey, thanks, but no thanks, French dudes.
You see all the posts below for Tuesday? I started posting them at 8:01. As of right now at 8:30 (and I checked once again at 9:30, then at 10:00, then at 11:00), not a single one has shown up on my page.
Blogger--it's free, and it shows!
Weevils Doing Our Part...
In fighting the War on Jon Arbuckle! Thanks to fellow Weevilite Alan K. Henderson over at the inventively named Alan K. Henderson's Weblog.
Some Iraqi Units May Surrender Quickly, U.S. Says
REALLY?! Wow, that's just AMAZING!! How are reporters able to find out stuff like this!?!
Maguire Questionable for 'Spider-Man' Sequel
Ummm...who cares? As long as Kirsten Dunst is a go, nothing else really matters.
Comedian Dick Smothers' Son Launches Porn Career [...] Late last year, Dick Smothers Jr., 38, shocked his father by embarking on a career path that so far has included acting in several porn films, developing a Web-based X-rated game show and launching an adult entertainment Web site.[...]Well, you gotta hand it to him--he certainly has the right name for this type of career. AND IN A SIMILAR STORY... Tenn. Senate Acts Against Porn in Cars NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Porn and driving don't mix — at least not in Tennessee.HEY!! How come Alabama wasn't first with this?!
So...
...what was the deal yesterday? Well, let me tell you--I got so angry at having my long-winded weekend drivel consumed by the angry Moloch of Blogger that it put me in a funk all day and I just couldn't work up the necessary brainwaves to retype it. Stupid STUPID Blogger. Of course, it does no good to say what it was like, but it was pretty good and had all sorts of links and stuff and took a while to write and then PIFF, gone. Sorta like you and your spouse dressing up, going out to a swanky restaurant, then to the opera, then back home to a nice quiet house because the kids are all gone to grandma's house, slipping into something comfortable and starting a fire in the fireplace, putting on a little music, start with all the fondling and groping and then BAM!! The next-door neighbor's slacker moron teenager comes home drunk and misses their garage and slams into the side of your house. Just sort of ruins the mood, don't you know. Stupid STUPID slacker moron teenager. Anyway, I've still got some work to finish up, but I'm almost not quite angry anymore, so I will attempt to reconstruct the events of the weekend, as well as something special...THE ODYSSEY. Yes, that's right! Rich literary goodness and jewel-like Honda quality. (If I'm buying an Odyssey, does that make me Homer? 'Mmmm!! Does the doughnut under the seat come with the van?') Now, let's see if THIS will post... UPDATE: NO!! Just tried it and get the world-famous Error 203:java.lang.NumberFormalException: [server:page] error message. Thanks, Blogger Boys!! Monday, March 17, 2003
I just posted a typically long blah-blah about my weekend, and stupid STUPID Blogger ate it all gone. If you were one of the six people anxiously waiting for it, sorry, but it'll have to come later on today.
I hate stupid STUPID Blogger. Friday, March 14, 2003
Weekend? Youbetcha!
Tonight, opening night of play, the start of which will happen mere minutes after Tiny Girl finishes her soccer practice. (Tonight's my night at the park since it's just one kid--everyone else will wait for us at the theater.) Tomorrow, two soccer games for the middle two, then Saturday evening performance. Day after tomorrow, church, then Sunday matinee performance, then church. In between each of these events will be adventures in laundry; the exciting spraying of the lush, verdant carpet of yard weeds with herbicide; looking around for potential future Possumobile (it'll probably be front wheel drive again, but I suggested to Larry Anderson that I was going to get one of these instead of anything wimpy); the horrifying, yet comical, running of nasty soccer children through the automatic car wash; and Other Stuff. As with all weekends, survival is by no means guaranteed--tune in Monday for our next installment of mundane, yet fascinatingly ordinary tales from Paradise Along the Pinchgut.
Fun with Referrer Logs
Just had a friendly Canuck ask the following of the Oracle of Google: what the heck is a pectopah Might help to remember that the Cyrillic letter P sounds like the English R, and the C sounds like an S, and what looks like a capital H sounds like an N--put them all together and you have a "restoran"--one of those places where you sit down and order a meal. (I have to know these things for when Possumblog Kitchens starts exporting the Cornatee™ line to the Russkies.)
It's ALIIIIIIIVVVE!!
BEHOLD!! Franklinstein LIIIIIIVVVES!! An apparent misdiagnosis this morning about my truck--with the temp needle breaking off over on the hot end, I managed to zip into a gas station close to work and pick up a jug of antifreeze, figuring I just needed some juice in it. When I popped the hood, I spied some coolant that had sprayed around over by the heater hoses, and just assumed I had a hose go south on me, and it was too hot to add any coolant anyway, so I just closed him back up and went on to work. (But before I closed the hood, I also received another surprise in the form of a twelve-hole dirt dauber nest right under the carb, with a very angry looking dirt dauber on top of it. Eek!) I debated whether to take it on over to the Ford place, but the LAST thing I needed now was A) ANOTHER vehicle stuck in the shop, and 2) ANOTHER bill. I figured I would fill it up at lunchtime with some water and glycol and try to make it all the way back home. Before we go on, first a word for all of you who drive vehicles on the margins of reliability--always carry a few essentials with you: a fire extinguisher, a jug of antifreeze/water mixture, rope, and a large wooden wedge for placing behind the tires. Anyway, I just went out during lunch to the parking deck and opened up the radiator, which was as dry and hollow as Strom Thurmond. Hmm. I drove thirty some miles with no coolant. And probably have been driving for even more, seeing as how I ignore the gauges as much as possible. Darned thing's built like an anvil! Poured my jug in and set off to find a water spigot. (And yes, I do think it rather odd that I had enough confidence that I could find a handy water tap within walking distance, but hey, I'm an optimist.) Rode down on the elevator and went to the security office, ducked my head in and asked the guard if there was a place I could get water close by, and he led me all the way to the door next to his where the janitor's room was. (Yes, parking decks have janitors. Who do you think empties the ashtrays and trashcans? Who mops disgusting things out of the elevators after City Stages? Who do you think washes the glass on the ticket booth? JANITORS, my friends, that's who! And who do you think just happened to have a slop sink with the water running and ready? That's right! See? It pays to be an optimist.) I filled up and told the lady I might need to come back and get some more, and she said that would be just fine and she even gave me a rag to take with me. Filled it up, cranked it, put it in Neutral (after first employing my handy wood wedge emergency brake--it does have real emergency brakes, but I trust that hunk of oak a bit more) and took a look--no leaks visible, temp gauge normal. I finished filling the radiator and needed a bit more, so did the elevator trip again and topped it off. Good as new! (If your definition of new includes things which, if they were a people, would be old enough to legally buy liquor in all fifty states.) So, a few more miles to go before Franklin is ready to cash out. And the real miracle is that I managed to do all this without getting ANY dirt or grease on my nice white dress shirt!
U.S. Life Expectancy Tops 77 Years
...Democrats Blame Bush for Blocking Legislation to Provide Universal Immortality--Say Children, Women, Minorities Hardest Hit
Study: Spell-Check Can Make Writing Worse
Wail, I cant under stand wye this wood bee!! I jest glade I never has to worry abut it, sense I aim such a god speller.
That was way yonder more excitement than I reckoned on. Got to the park yesterday right on time at 5:30--black flag up due to a tiny bit of rain, which meant the fields were closed, but worse--no Mom, no vanload of children. They finally came in about 5:45, because for some reason a certain Jungle Book cast member had neglected to place the satchel with her costume in the van, which necessitated a trip by Mom and vanload of children back to our humble abode from school, then back to the park. With them also came word that Middle Girl was going to be practicing at the elementary school gym. Little Boy was going to be practicing somewhere else, but at the time, we didn't know where. And of course, Tiny Girl had to pee. Heavy sigh.
I bundled up Bec and Wolfgirl and left Reba with the other two--dropped Ashley at the theater since she was already running behind, went back up the hill and dropped Soccergirl at the gym with the instruction that Mommy would be back for her later, then BACK down the hill back to the theater for the start of the first act's final rehearsal. (I found out later that Boy's soccer team practiced in the gravel parking lot across the street from the park. For about 30 minutes. Prompting me to silently ask myself after this was all over--"WHY BOTHER!!") Anyway, the rehearsal would have been pretty good, if it had been the first dress rehearsal, and had taken place two weeks ago--as it was, it was frightening that tonight is the opening. Everyone still blundering through their lines, fidgeting with their clothes, still trying to figure out what to do with those weird flappy long dangly things that hang off either side of their shoulders--and then, right in the middle of a scene, the boy playing Akela stopped and told the director that it was time to go to the band concert. Which was nice of him to remember, except he was off by about twenty minutes and managed to bring the whole shebang to a screeching halt. They finished up that scene, after a couple of fits and starts, then Ashley came offstage and began changing into her nice clothes. I walked backstage and was surprised at how full of trip hazards it was and how much head bonking stuff was around--I don't see how anyone manages to get on stage! Anyway, after nearly killing myself on two different sets of carefully concealed, black painted steps, I stepped back into the meeting room part of the Chamber of Commerce building and waited for her to come out, which didn't take long at all, thank goodness. She went ahead and slapped her clarinet together and took off out the door and very nearly took a header on the wet grass, which prompted all sorts of Dadly advice about the dire consequences of falling and hurting...THAT CLARINET! Derned thing cost as much as a GM remanufactured automatic transaxle! Anyway, she did her best to ignore me and did the quick, stiff-arm-stomp-walk she likes to do and stomp-walked next door and went and joined up with the rest of the band. Excellent concert, by the way. No program this time, so I can't even begin to tell you what they played, but you could tell they had been drilled hard. No obvious clinkers, everybody playing just right. The younger group of sixth graders had really made noticeable progress since their Christmas concert--then they had played a simple rhythm sort of thing that sounded like a dirge played by an oompah band, but last night they had picked up the tempo quite a bit as well as the complexity. Ashley's group of seventh graders was impressive as always. Their band teacher is a real sweetheart, although all the kids talk about how much they hate her (along with some really cruel stuff about her (admittedly Rubenesque) butt) and how much she hates them. However, as Doc Weevil will tell you, this age group is the hardest to teach, and require a very firm hand, which she definitely gives them. But, the results show. They may not act like they like her, but these kids have learned how to play, and play well. (And they really DO like her, even if they bitch and moan. It's just cool to complain. Sorta like the U.N.) Anyway, I know I like her (and not just because she's cute) and hope she continues to do her thing--we need more teachers like her. Although I would ask her to lose the chunky light blonde highlights. Concert over around 7:20, hugs to grandparents, then dash back to the theater (with yet another admonition to QUIT RUNNING) to change clothes again. I walked back through and sat down in the last row and the director had them start it all over from the top again. (There were probably six or so kids who were also in the concert, so when they left there were too many gaps in the cast to proceed.) The entire run-through was still rough, and afterwards, the poor director was just beside herself with actorly agony as she went through her notes. Big problems continued to be fiddling with costumes, breaking out of character, forgetting lines, laughing, off stage noise, yanking on the curtains when they come on or leave. ::sigh:: Back home at 9, find Boy asleep, Tiny Girl playing in bed, Middle Girl bathing, Wife folding clothes with that dead-eyed vigor that means only one thing--something is all my fault. Yikes. Rest of story that I missed by being somewhere else is that after Boy's pointless gravel practice they went to get Rebecca, who wasn't near finished with her practice, which required they stay at the gym, where the Liquid Terror and the Boy managed to run around like feral cats and get in everybody's way, which caused much consternation for their mom, who has had a sinus infection AND was missing her other daughter's concert due to having to wrassle these boisterous children, and who later went home and found that Catherine had brought home YET ANOTHER note from her (substitute) teacher that she had TALKED DURING LUNCHTIME QUIET TIME, and who was already depressed about the prospect of having to get another vehicle, which will not be a new Honda Pilot, and who decided to get the clothes out of the dryer and fold them, only to find out the lummox she married had forgotten to take the clothes out of the washing machine the night before and put them in the dryer, which COULD POSSIBLY have caused them to sour (although, in fact, they were simply wet--but the mere potential for disaster was much more compelling than the actual outcome. Again, like the U.N.), THUS creating a large rainy cloud of dismay. BUT, if there is one person in this world who can take away large rainy clouds of dismay, it is YOURS TRU... well, there probably are a couple more out there, but Tom Selleck was busy and I was available. After much attention and effort, the clouds lifted a bit and the rain stopped and the clothes got all folded, and we went to sleep. This morning, everyone off to school with Mom, and I on my way to work in old faithful Franklin. Who decided to take today to fart out a heater hose and lose all of his coolant. OVERTURE, CURTAIN, LIGHTS! This is it, the night of nights. No more rehearsing and nursing our part, We know every part by heart. Overture, curtain, lights! This is it, we'll hit the heights. And oh, what heights we'll hit-- On with the show, this is it! Thursday, March 13, 2003
Hey, try this one on...
Tonight's schedule reads like this: Reba leaves right now and picks up all the kids from school and takes them to the park, where three of them change into their practice clothes and cleats in the van. I leave at 5, meet them at the park at around 5:30, pick up Oldest, her wolf costume, her concert clothes, and her bass clarinet. Mom stays at park with kids and I go back to the theater with Wolf #8 before the clock chimes 6. (See, Mom has to stay at the park because she's driving the van, which is the only thing all the kids can fit into at the moment, since the Oldsmo'money is in the shop and I'm driving the pickup. And she can't drive the truck since it has a manual transmission. A very distinct cautionary tale for any of you who don't know how to row. Learn how immediately.) Wolf changes into costume at theater, rehearses for exactly 38 minutes, after which she must come off stage and change into her nice somber band concert clothes and run next door to the middle school gym and be in position not a minute past 6:50. She will then play an exciting medley of tunes, and after expending a great deal of energy, will then rush back out of the gym to the theater and change once more into her lupine duds. During this time, Mom will have gathered the other children back into the van, and either decided they REALLY need to go home and bathe, or decided that she wants to see the concert. If the former, they will head home and eat supper, if the latter, she will circle the Mall for 15 minutes until she finds a parking space, then haul the grimy little buggers inside for about five minutes worth of music. I personally hope she just heads on to the house. Anyway, after Oldest and I get back to the theater, she will proceed to deliver her stunning line: "But THAT was TEN YEARS AGO!!" The other players will continue to chew on the scenery for another hour or so and then it will be time to head home, let her get HER bath, get all of us into our beds, snore loudly, then get up and do something similar tomorrow. Except tomorrow is...OPENING NIGHT!! Whee.
As usual stupid STUPID Blogger is conspiring to make me look even less bright than normal--the post below had several odd bits of malanguagia and I corrected what misspellings and stupid sentences I could find in the first couple of minutes after I posted it, but the updates won't post and so this stuff hung out there FOREVER before finally changing. Sure, we could all use an editor, but I would really like AN ERASER THAT WORKED AS SOON AS I USED IT!!
Guys, I hear there's twenty four escaped lab monkeys down in Louisiana--why don't you give them a call.
I have been remiss… A week ago, Tarheel Marc Velazquez over at Spudlets suggested that all of his writing buddies share a bit of their church’s (or temple’s, or synagogue’s) sermon this week. Marc has gotten a bit down about it—I don’t think he got the response he had hoped for. I fully intended to do this on Monday morning, but of course, managed to get all sidetracked on other silly stuff. But, I figure better late than never. First, I don’t usually do a lot of very specific posts about Christianity—I’m just one guy, and this being the Internet, for every sincere person who truly wants to find out more about my faith, there are 100,000 trolls out there just itching to get in a flame war with me about it— I just don’t have the necessary patience to deal with them all. The bit about casting pearls before swine sorta comes into play here. Second, even for those who profess Christianity, my beliefs might be a bit hard to handle—in Constitutional terms, I believe God to be a strict constructionist, and when it comes to the particular Constitution of God’s Word, I don’t believe I (or anyone else, for that matter) have authority to pass any sort of amendments. You pretty much have to take It like It is, or don’t take It at all. Third, religion of any sort is serious business, more so than politics or law or finance or anything else, and Possumblog has always been about as unserious as it comes. Somehow, I think whatever positive message of faith I might have would get lost when you scroll down and read about escaped lab monkeys or how hot Julie Chen is. Finally, it’s pretty obvious that I’m not a very good example. The last thing God needs is people looking at ME as being what the Gospel is all about. I try my best, but I fail with alarming regularity. (Thankfully, my failings don’t negate the truth of God’s Word.) HAVING SAID ALL THAT, this post is still not going to get around to the meat of what our preacher talked about Sunday—the subject was benevolence, which is a part of an ongoing series he has been conducting on the work of the church. Not that it’s not a great topic, nor that he didn’t do a good job, nor that I might not listened as well as I should have due to wrestling with a demon in the form of a wiggly six year old (although that sure didn’t help)--it is a great topic. But the two sermons he presented made my mind wander to thinking about the great material wealth we take for granted here in this country. Yet, we still complain about not having more. I have been teaching a Wednesday night class for seventh and eighth graders on the book of James this quarter, and the discussion a few weeks ago turned to how sometimes we can start belonging to our belongings; that having the newest and best sometimes becomes more important than acknowledging where those things actually came from. Further into it, I pointed out that whether they believed it or not, the fact that they had closets full of clothes and shoes, and rooms full of electronic doodads, and good health, and parents who made sure they had a good meal on the table every day, made them incredibly, unbelievably wealthy in the eyes most of the rest of the world. After a while and a few more examples you could see, despite all the carefully cultivated early-teen ennui, that they understood they had it pretty sweet—more to the point, that they had an obligation, even at twelve or thirteen, to think about how they used what God has blessed them with. The best example I used was one of our missionaries, a young Russian man who sends us regular updates from a small village in the Volgograd region. Some of our men go visit there every year, and come back with some incredible slide shows and talks of the conditions this preacher and the small group of Christians he’s teaching have to put up with. You all know how bad it is (or you should) but until the kids really started thinking about it—that the $20 they spent on a DVD and the $80 they spent on a pair of sneakers is equal to his salary for a month, it didn’t really hit home. But beside the obvious difference in the cost of living, there is also the idea of being satisfied with what you’ve been given, and the idea that some things are more important than the latest Nikes or Avril Lavigne CD. I read them the latest e-mail we got from him. (Names omitted for privacy—spelling and grammar as transmitted): This is a report from A— S— for the January 2003!We keep these updates posted on our bulletin board, but I don’t think the kids had ever taken a moment to read them. Maybe they’ll read the next one, and maybe they’ll come to understand that their benevolence to others is a bit more than chunking a dollar their parents gave them into the collection plate. So, Marc, there you go.
The Pain,
In Maine, Falls Mainly On Francesca Watson Yet again, one of my blogchildren has to respond to someone who disagrees with her, and goes on to put her foot down about folks who wish to have their objections taken seriously: [...] Why do I bring this up? Because given the size of my readership, I spend a disproportionate amount of time responding to this kind of nonsense. And it irks me. From now on, all such e-mails will be responded to publicly, if at all. Sign your name, or don't write -- I will not respond to anyone who doesn't have the common courtesy to introduce themselves if they're going to speak up. If you do write, be prepared to have your words posted here -- anything you e-mail to me is mine to do with as I see fit (with proper attribution to authors where appropriate). And don't just wail and wave your arms around; make a coherent, persuasive argument. I do not care how many brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or whatever you have in a given profession -- it doesn't make you an expert. Give me facts, links, sources, something concrete. [...]Sound advice. I suppose I should quit sending her all those unsigned e-mails about the Bilderbergers and the Illuminati, and how the Trilateral Commission is using her as its puppet. And the one about being the manager of a bank in Lagos with $10,000,000,000 to give her. Oh well.
Hello!
"Hey, honey--that large, avuncular, jocose, garrulous guy is back." "Tell him to go away, he makes me nervous!" HAH!! Not so easy! Anyway, yesterday's trip to the tooth torturer was actually very, VERY, nice. First of all, yesterday afternoon was absolutely gorgeous, so it was nice to get out. Got to the office, was taken right back to the chair that faces out the window to the bird feeder, which was nice and relaxing. (Although the feeder didn't have real birds, but those fat flying rats known as doves. Big messy moochers hog the whole thing--one of them was just lying down in the tray gobbling up seeds.) Anyway, Doc Nancy came in and I started screaming and crying and moaning and acting like a little baby as I begged her not to hurt me. She said she could give me a shot, but it really would hurt worse than what she was going to do. "Well, okay, but you know I'm just..." "A great big wuss?" "Yes, ma'am, I'm a great big wuss." She patted me on the shoulder and started to work--off with the plastic crown, clean the glue out--"Hay! Ooo nah' ganna blah 'at air uhcos my 'oot, ah u?!"--"No, no--just going to use some gauze. It'll be okay." Then some fiddling around with the new one--pop on, pop off, pop on, check margin, pop off, pop on, check bite, bit high, do some grinding, pop on, fits fine, pop off, spread on some stinky bonding agent that smelled like burning tires and moth balls, squirt of some cee-ment (pronounce it like Jed Clampett for the full effect) and the final pop on, bite some cotton rolls, slobber uncontrollably for five minutes, and then I'm done! Took all of fifteen minutes and NO PAIN!! Halleluiah. The pain comes in here with the final outcome on the Oldsmobiteme--as you recall from yesterday's thrilling post, a remanufactured GM transaxle was going to set me back almost two and a half big ones. (Which for me is anything over $2.50, but in this case was up in the two-point-four-five thousands) Before I left for the day, Don called with the news that they had found a used tranny from a wrecking yard with 78,000 miles on it, and the price would drop down a grand. But no warranty. ::sigh:: Oh well, it's only money. I figure if I pay myself twenty bucks a week for cutting my grass, I should be able to get it paid off in about three years. Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Well, if it's Wednesday, it must be Lileks' Newhouse Day--Taking Your Allies Where You Find Them [...] Now let's examine the statements of presidential hopeful John Kerry. Sour, dour, determined to wake America to the need to get Syrian blessing for the war on Iraq, Kerry blasted our allies with the following characterization:Kerry is another one of those who seemed quite willing to allow Mr. Clinton to do his bidness on Yugoslavia and on Iraq without too much in the way of moral outrage--from The Weekly Standard of September, 2002: [...] John Kerry was equally hawkish [about Iraq]: "If there is not unfettered, unrestricted, unlimited access per the U.N. resolution for inspections, and UNSCOM cannot in our judgment appropriately perform its functions, then we obviously reserve the rights to press that case internationally and to do what we need to do as a nation in order to be able to enforce those rights," Kerry said back on February 23, 1998. "Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East." [...]As a refresher, it might be good to read the quotes from Mr. Clinton at the bottom of this same article: [...] "Just consider the facts," Bill Clinton urged.Those of you who think Bush = Hitler, that This War Is All About Oil--where were you back when this was being said? Where were all the giant papier mache heads? Where were all the sweaty, spittle-dripping, drum-banging peace marchers? Either you didn't care then because you thought he was right, or you knew Mr. Clinton wasn't really serious in the first place. Either way, your moral high ground wouldn't make a decent pitcher's mound.
Polish Nobel Peace laureate Walesa urges backing for U.S.-led strike on Iraq WARSAW, Poland - Former Polish President Lech Walesa, the winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, on Wednesday urged the U.N. Security Council to back a U.S.-led war on Iraq and criticized the United Nations' "ineffectiveness" so far. [...]Walesa went on to offer to dopeslap former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in the back of the head and take his Nobel away from him. Administration officials are considering the offer.
Two Dozen Monkeys Flee Research Center
Set Up Group Blog, Receive Link From Glenn Reynolds-- Initial Exposure Leads to Formation of U.S. Fastest Growing Marketing Firm COVINGTON, La. - Two dozen monkeys escaped from a research center and holed up in a forest, where animal-control workers used bananas and oranges to try to lure them out. The leader of the troupe, 768-H (who prefers to be called Mr. Binky), stated that the bananas and oranges were tempting, but the opportunity to explore new marketplace synergies related to the post-Internet boom economy of the late-20th century was too much to pass up. "With the decentralized nature of running a group blog, we hoped to be able to maximize our exposure and gain some exciting insights on processes and interactions." (A "blog" is an online computerized journal, short for "web log". Most of these "websites" are operated by people who don't have journalism degrees, and few of them even have editors. They are not to be trusted, because they are biased. Unlike real journalism.) Using a variety of hardware they managed to sneak out of the secure facility, the monkeys quickly gained access to the Internet using a phone jack in the rear of a Chevron station and free AOL 8.0 discs they found discarded in a dumpster. "Yeah, we had about two thousand discs--we figured we had access covered for a long time!" stated a monkey who identified herself only as Keekee. The successful evasion and escape from authorities was even more striking once their group's "blog" received a congratulatory "hyperlink" (a type of point-and-click technology which allows readers to quickly jump to another website) from noted online personality and professor, Glenn Reynolds. Mr. Binky stated, "Once we got that link from Glenn, the proverbial Instalanche hit, and all of us were just hooting like...well, like a bunch of monkeys. We got over 50,000 hits that day alone, and managed to impress a couple of folks who had cashed out short and had a bit of walking around money. They were very interested in what we were proposing for business growth strategies during the mid- to late-Oughts. One thing led to another and boom, here we are." "Here" happens to be a lush, comfortable campus-type office building in a suburban office park outside of New Orleans were the monkeys have established a more permanent, though hardly traditional, marketing practice. "We love it here," said Sally, a stylishly dressed rhesus macaque, "you know, the phones just drive you crazy all day, but we have time when we can go to the coffee bar or the tire swing, and Wednesdays are ALWAYS find-a-melon day!" That atmosphere has also contributed to Twenty-Four Escaped Monkees, PC's incredible success as one of the fastest growing marketing firms in the nation. One monkey, who while in captivity was known as 998-UY and who now goes by Peanuts, sat relaxing at his desk and reflected on their incredible story, "Only in America, dude."
That was fun. For an idea of just how much fun, let me just ask you to imagine an entire building painted vivid purple, with lime green trim. There now.
In any event, I will now be backed up the rest of the day clearing all the mess off my desk and typing up meeting minutes, as well as trying to recover from the shock of learning just how much General Motors loves their rebuilt automatic (with overdrive) transaxles. $2,400. But that price does include labor. And shop supplies. Quite frankly, I believe I would do better to cut a hole in the floor and do the Fred Flintstone thing. Anyway, things to get done, so I will see you later. Oh yeah--I forgot about MORE fun in amidst all the fun of this morning. This afternoon I get to go back to the dentist again for the (I hope) final fitting of my crown. Gosh, I bet that won't hurt a bit.
No blogging this morning (well, you know, aside from this post) due to the interference of dumb old work stuff. Off now to keep the city safe from bad taste. See you in a bit. Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Well, now...
Since this seems to be an auto-oriented sort of blogday, it would behoove you all to go over to the BBQ Emporium and find out about rocket scientists, Luther, Bobby, Formula Fords, open-headered 327s, police, and other valuable stuff.
As promised, the Yorkieversion of Deconstructing Jimmah has been posted--a sample: [...] As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. The arrogance of this statement is breathtaking. There are hundreds of men and women in this country alone whose sole focus in life is to discuss and study the principles of a just war, and it is far from clear to them whether this situation meets the standard. The Ethics and Public Policy Center, whose sole raison d'etre is to study the nexus between faith and politics/policy (read more here), held a forum in February to discuss the just war issue. The transcript is not yet available (I am told it will be by the end of the week), but you can read the summary of the event here, which demonstrates that there are lots of serious thinkers in the just war camp who cannot agree. (Read George Wiegel's interview about the moral justification of pre-emptive action under the just war theory here. This is also an excellent non-partisan discussion of the history of just war theory and its application.) [...]Hey, maybe I'm wrong, but I think Jimmah might have a less than altruistic motivation in his recent pronouncements of mealy-mouthed dudgeon. I don't seem to recall that Righteous Jimmah had similar words for Br'er Willie when he unleashed the Arsenal of Democracy against po' ol' Slob Milosevic and the good people of Yugoslavia (after all, you know, there was no evidence Yugoslavia was a threat to us, it had not provoked us, we had not exhausted all peaceful means, we did it in despite world opposition, the population of Yugoslavia was even more defenseless than Iraq's, it was disproportionately violent...on and on), nor do I seem to recall any words of shock and horror when same Br'er Willie zipped up his pants long enough to order the bombing of Mustache Man's hangout way back there in 1999. And what of Bill's and Maddie's sternly worded warnings and constant calls for a regime change in Iraq? What say, Jimmah--was it a memory lapse? Dementia? Or are you just living up to the old appellation of "yellow dog Democrat". If the latter, I must ask that at the very least you apologize to dogs everywhere. From "national malaise" to malarkey, Jim, you seem to have the bases covered. By the way, tell Fidel I said hey.
Yes, I know...
Big stupid misspelling in the post below, but I PROMISE I changed it the second I read it. It just take Booger FOREVER to fix stuff like that. So very sorry.
The World's Best Peugeot Advertisement
Got home last night and was tickled to see I had gotten my latest Automobile magazine in the mail--hooray!! After everything settled down last night and it was close to bedtime, I managed to get a few minutes and thumb through it. A particular ad caught my eye (ouch!)--it was for Peugeot. Hmm--that's odd, because Peugeot hasn't been around for a while, having announced a temporary suspension of U.S. sales in 1991. (They continue to make regular announcements that discussions continue about the timing of a return to the U.S. market.) Well, now, maybe they're doing something...big, full page, two color ad with the Peugeot rampant lion dead center, holding an olive branch--40 point all cap type across the top: BOURGEOIS PIGS. Then on to the two columns of small type under the logo: It is not for us to hold the grudge--not even against ignorant swine.. And so we come back to America, where you think your replacement starter should come as fast as your cherished McNuggets. A starter is not a McNugget. It is a creation wrenched from the mind of man. It is a symbol. It is art.::snicker::chortle::snort:: Hey, these guys are a hoot--cheeky, irreverent, poking fun at themselves--say, maybe Peugeot CAN make a comeback...then I noticed at the verrrry bottom of the page: April Fool 2003 by Jay Lamm
Aww--sucker punched on that one--I turned the mag over and sure enough, it's the April issue. Silly jokers--by the way, Jay Lamm is an automotive writer, editor, and author. His well-known book, How to Restore British Sports Cars, is one of the few on repairing British sports cars which does not recommend draining the fuel from the tank, splashing it about the cockpit, and throwing a match on it.
You know...
I come up with some really great inventions, especially when it comes to food service items. I was just conversating with Francesca Watson over at Yorkie Blog, who has been contemplating posting a sound flaying of Br'er Jimmah's NYTimes op-ed from the past weekend. Even though she said it had already been fisked to death, I thought it was a good idea for her to go ahead and heap as much scorn on it as possible. Which is when I had my great epiphany... S'CORN!! The great new salty, spicy corn snack just right for when you are itching to bloviate!! They are addictive, yet irritating...satisfying, yet, unfulfilling...fun to consume, yet hard to digest. S'Corn™!! Ask for it by name! From Possumblog Kitchens, makers of Tormints™, the candy for those in agony; and the makers of the Cornatee™, the Cornguin™, and the Cornutria™--delicious, nutritious cornbread-battered deep-fried treats on a stick!
Hooptie Nation
Got home yesterday and waited a bit for Reba to get home with the kids so we could go pick up the van. Last night was Oldest's first dress rehearsal, and the plan, Pre-Replace Defective Mopar Speed Sensor, was to let her change at the house. Well, Reba was late getting off from work yesterday, and with having to go get the vehicle from the shop, there just wasn't time for stopping. I grabbed Ashley's costume and stood at the end of the driveway and waited. Waiting outside was planned as a way to keep certain tiny bladdered ones from wanting to get out and go inside, thus wasting precious seconds--if the car kept rolling and I executed one of those neat Starsky and Hutch/Dukes of Hazzard running-and-jumping-through-the-window ingresses, everything would be okay. Reba drove up and I managed to shove my large but lovable self and the bulky costume in the front seat with Ashley and her backpack and Mom and Mom's gigantic purse. Took Oldest on to the theater, waited a bit to get her street clothes, then back in the car to run to the shop. (It is a significant signal of trust that I am now well-known enough to the boys that they just told me to slide the check under the door if they weren't there.) They were there after all, so as Reba went on back to the house, I settled up and shot the breeze a bit. Talked trucks, asked about the nice, straight-looking Nova they had on the rack, told them I sure hoped I didn't see them again for a LONG time, told them the Olds was running fine SO FAR, then went on back to listen to the rest of rehearsal. (The van ran fine, by the way.) O Rehearsal! As I said, this was the first dress rehearsal, so costumes were a bit iffy. The little boy playing the elephant had ears that hung off his head like dog ears, Baloo was constantly adjusting his bulk and trying desperately to do SOMETHING with his hands. It's looking and sounding better, but there are still a LOT of odd pauses and INFLECtions as well...As. Some. Problemswithtiming. Back home later (much later) and finished off a cold taco salad. Here's a tip--never eat a large taco salad with lots of black beans an hour before bedtime. (Unless you really intend for that wallpaper to peel off, or to set off the smoke alarm.) Up this morning and ready to roll once more. Put all the tapes and junk we carry back into the van, load up the kid's soccer stuff and Ashley's costume, sling some breakfast at them, send Reba out the door to go to work, then get jackets and backpacks divvied up, kick 'em all out the door, load the trunk of the car with bass clarinet and gigantic overweight middle-school backpack (when exactly did it become necessary to tote lead bars in your book bag?), got everyone buckled, waved as Mommy made the turn at the end of the street, turned ignition, back out of driveway, shift to D, press accelerator, engine races a bit. Hmm. Press harder. Noise only, but no forward motion. Oh. Crap. Reba is gone and her phone is not on. The car is not working. Walking to school would take nearly an hour. Race engine again. Nothing. Try 3rd gear. Nothing. Try 2nd gear. Nothing. Try 1st gear. Motion!! "I don't wanna walk to school, Daddy!!" "Hey, Daddy doesn't either, squirrel. If it'll go far enough in first gear, we'll be okay." Off we went. Made it down the hill fine, up and over the bridge, turned at the light onto Main, then had to stop at Chalkville Road. Crap. As long as I had some momentum, I figured things would be okay. Light changed and sure enough, po' Olds had to build up quite a head of steam before moving. This is not turning out to be A Good Thing. Made the turn onto Parkway--thankfully there was no oncoming traffic so I didn't have to slow down--then down toward the school. The stop sign at the library was taken at a crawl, but I dared not fulfill the letter of the law or else it might not have gone any further. Turned right into the Mall, did the loop in front of the middle school and dropped off Oldest. Whew. One down, three to go. Got going, trying not to make a teenager-embarrassing amount of engine racing noise as I left her there at the band room, then made the right back out onto Parkway. Down to the next stop and turned right onto Cherokee, where I got behind a charming old gent who apparently only gets out during the school rush, and then drives only 2 miles per hour. Grr. I let him get as far ahead as possible, because I really, REALLY needed some momentum to get up the hill and there were TWO stop signs on the way up that I was going to have to run. Down Cherokee, over the river bridge, roll through the stop at the senior citizen's center and catch up too quickly with the confounded fellow exercising his driving privilege. Almost made it to the second stop, but the hill was too much. Race engine--nothing. ::sigh:: I backed down the shoulder a bit to the driveway of the house at the corner, at first thinking I could get up enough forwardosity to get in their driveway. No dice, Hooptie Boy. I let it roll back onto the shoulder, such as it is there and announced that we were gone as far as we were going. "Come on, crew, I've got you this far, the rest of the way is feetses." I figured I should let the people know why a car was parked on the street in front of their house, so all of us tromped through their yard and I knocked on the door. No answer. Oh well, "Come on, kids." I turned and the kids yelled that someone had come to the door. Poor lady--hair a mess, yawning, in her pajamas, bewildered look--I explained that I had to leave the car for a bit and walk the kids the rest of the way up the hill, but I would be back shortly, and that I was EXTREMELY sorry for waking her up. "No problem--I was awake...I just wasn't ::yaaaaaawwwn:: ...you know.." She looked at me, "Awake?" "Yeah, I wasn't awake." I thanked her again and we set off up the hill--that second stop sign was soooo close to our final destination. From Sleepy Lady's driveway, it was probably only about an eighth of a mile up to the school, so we were there in no time and the little troopers went on in the gym. Now to go back and figure out the car deal. I thought that maybe it might possibly with great prayer just need fluid, so I figured I would back it down the hill and turn into the senior center and check it. By this time, the school traffic was really starting to pick up, so I had to very carefully back down--the shoulder is narrow and there's that annoying ditch RIGHT THERE!! but I picked my way back down and swung backwards into the driveway. Popped the hood, checked the trans fluid--Full. Hmm. I got back in and tried one more time to see if I could make any forward motion. Nope. I wondered (because I am not bright)..."Since it will go in Reverse, I wonder if I could make it all the way to the shop and not have to call a tow truck." I looked at the line of cars on the street in front of me, going and coming from the school. Hmm. Driving backwards through all of that might not be the best thing to do. I walked over the river bridge and over to the office at the middle school and used their phone to call a tow truck. Went back, listened to the radio for a while, and a nice fellow from ABC came and pulled in front of me. You know, wrecker guys REALLY know their stuff. Five minutes and we were ready to roll. Back down Cherokee, back down Parkway, back down Main, drop it at Gray's. The guys couldn't believe I was back. Few minutes of consulation with Benny, whose face betrayed a feeling of deep concern and gravity about his patient's condition. "How many's it got on it, one-thirty or so?" "One thirty eight." Lines of worry creased his forehead. He didn't want to say it, but I knew what he was thinking...transplant. "Well, they get up one-thirty, one-forty-thou and the transmission just starts to go--but I'll check it and make sure before we do anything." I'm putting on a brave face, but I know the odds here. And the ever-loving COST of yanking the tranny out. ::sigh:: Got Don to run me back up to the top of the hill, went inside and got the keys to Franklin and got here. Tonight? Three kids soccering; one kid rehearsaling; two adults casting sneaky, sidelong glances at four large piggy banks in children's bedrooms. What a day! Monday, March 10, 2003
Often wrong, never in doubt
In light of my earlier grousing about the "Bill, you ignorant slut" line, I am humbled to find that Betsy Newmark, history and civics teacher in Raleigh, NC, posted the exact same thing at 6:52 A.M. Eastern Time last Thursday--a full 3 hours and 59 minutes ahead of me. Darn that broken time machine!!
You know...
I sure get a lot of visitors from folks stumbling in because Google or Yahoo told them to look here. An example is this one which just came in: celine dion cutting off her curly hair. Don't do it, Celine--I hear tell it itches like crazy unless you keep it cut off. Then there's this, for whatever reason: +"she sounds horrible" cough. Actually, I don't think she sounds that bad--I think it's just the razor burn.
One hundred forty seven and 24/100 Dollars
Don just called and that's the tab for one vehicle speed sensor. Seems the old one did a Lucas on me, and the van went into what's called the "limp mode", in which it drives but won't shift, because it needs to know how fast it's going in order to shift, and without a speed sensor, it can't sense its speed and know when to shift. Also called limp mode to indicate the effect to checkbook of said repair . Oh well, it's lot cheaper than a car payment.
Irene Adler takes a trip to New Yawk! [...] Still, I did manage to obtain some culture. We spent all Sunday in the Met, and at least half that time was in getting into the da Vinci exhibit. Stunning stuff. I don’t think I could put it any better than Gaudior did when she emerged, did that thing with her hands that she does, and said, “People have muscles.” [...]They do indeed.
Not one to brag or nothing...
But today's OpinionJournal has the following bit: You Heard It Here First--IIWell, now, let me just say this--I'm not one of those ivory-tower entertainment/media sorts, intent on going around tooting my own horn, but let us just remember that I posted the same thing at 9:51 A.M. Thursday. Taranto knows it, Aykroyd knows it, Hammond knows it, and now America knows it. Anyone want to disagree with Terry Oglesby on this is welcome to it, but let me just say, that Terry Oglesby is a good American, and if any of these other johnnies-come-lately want to mix it up, then I'll leap across this computer and cram this pen I'm holding RIGHT into your smirking, post-ironic, liberal...whew, sorry. Having a Bob Dole moment there. Britney! Go get me a Viagra and a Pepsi.
For all of you...
Who thought you were soooo clever to joke about what you were supposed to use duct tape for, Quana Jones has a very timely and informative post which was sent along by one of her readers. Read it, and learn how to respond to emergencies.
Well, that was fun as always
Just now back from lunch, which was very enjoyable and sure to produce much gassiness! Jeff and I ate at a small Chinese buffet right in downtown Cahaba Heights (or New Merkle to you old-timers) and it was okay. Much better than the old place that was there before, although they still seem to have problems making sure the buffet line is clean. Eww. And the hot and sweaty soup isn't that great--not enough pepper, too much tofu, a little heavy on the cornstarch. Whatever. It was good to see him again. We talked about fixing up houses and selling them; him seeing one of our old co-workers at church of all places; stupid people; minivans v. SUVs (minivans for hauling cargo + people without having to also haul around a gasoline tanker); vasectomies; the precise time we became such a couple of raging old farts (happened several children back, around 4:16 on a Monday); another former co-worker who could be the model for Kramer on Seinfeld, and who was recently declared redundant at The Bad Place We Used To Work, and who has decided to go to the Bahamas and work on a charter boat for minimum wage; Jeff's brother who is an F-16 jockey somewhere in a very hot and dusty place; work; the bad thing about having a truck with a bad backfire problem (I would like to publicly apologize to the very professional-looking blonde in the black Lexus LX-450 who happened to be alongside of me at a very inopportune moment, and to the good men and women of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department assigned to guarding the Birmingham Water Works Shades Mountain Filter Plant--so sorry about the noise); and the newest snafu with our van. Headed home from church last night, felt a shudder, the speedo and odometer went dead and it wouldn't shift out of first gear. ::sigh:: So we went on and had supper, then went home, got the car and went ahead and dropped the van off at the shop. I told Jeff I left it running with the keys in it. I didn't really. I would hate for someone to steal it and get stuck out somewhere on the side of the road. Anyway, probably will only cost a huge amount of money to fix, so no problems. And, as always, there is good old Franklin the F-100 to fall back on. 255,000 miles and still going. Today I even had a passenger--if you recall from the late summer, meeses had invaded my lovely plastic not-a-storage-shed and I had put out glue traps for them. Never caught a blasted thing. Saturday was beautiful and Cat and Rebecca wanted to ride their bicycles, so I opened up the doors and started Hard to describe the sight of two nicely dressed, fully-grown men standing in a parking lot outside of a Chinese restaurant in Cahaba Heights, both carefully examining a dead mouse in a sticky paper tent. I guess it's good we had already eaten. Anyway, we swapped car magazines, and it was time to head back to work, where I had a nice e-mail from Nate McCord who informed me that the compositing of this morning's post resulted in a rather large number of typographical errors. The editorial staff sends along its supreme apologies. We just waxed the floor in the typeroom, and the boy carrying the boxes of type slipped and fell with a great thud. The hasty resetting of the page contributed to the more-than-usual amount of errors and omissions. Again, we apologize, and the boy has been given the sack, and a sound thrashing to boot.
Bellicose Woman, or…
Of course you know, this means war. Well, now, before I get all started on this—good morning! Springtime is busting out everywhere and the past three days have been absolutely gorgeous. Now then, enough Mr. Nice Guy! [Warning. The post below contains a gratutious negative stereotype of members of the legal profession. Readers should use caution when consuming this product.] Well, wait a minute—not quite so fast. Since the first part of this story is actually the telling of my wife, I have to stop here and pay her a compliment of sorts. First, I love her. And I like her a whole lot, too. However, sometimes my mind has a tendency to wander, and she happens to be a very verbal person. In telling me of Important Things, she has a tendency to add in small, tiny bits of material that, although Quite Interesting and probably Necessary, to my feeble acorn-sized brain they contribute nothing to keeping my attention. I will admit right now (out of sheer terror) that this is ENTIRELY a character flaw in my own constitution. My inability to stay with the telling of What Terry Needs To Get At The Store (for example) is clouded by my own disinterest about the color of the package, why we need more than one, what her co-worker’s recipe turned out like, the friend of the co-worker who is getting married, the type of veil she picked out, the location of the reception, oh—and get a loaf of bread, the last time someone had a reception and the menu of it, the nubby texture of the napkins, etc., etc. Information, I will freely admit, which must be of some interest but I am too impatient to find out what. As you can understand, occasional prompting on my part is required to get the list completed and get back from the store, but that is really minor compared to a week later when I am expected to remember the name of the co-worker’s friend’s husband. “Don’t you remember? I told you about him last week!” Uh. No. It is my fault, and I accept that. Another artifact of my short (although, at least to me, rather normal) attention span is that CRUCIAL information is often delayed—in telling of supposed insults and slights to the honor of my kith and kin, I often leap toward conclusions, which, were I to patiently consume all that is being told me (including information about various sales on garden items and the telephone message that was a wrong number) would turn out to be only inconsequential. I am then scolded for being such a hothead—“Just let me tell you what happens and don’t get so mad!” “BUT!!…” “Let me finish…” Okay. Then I am left to wonder if it was no big deal, why was it prefaced with, “Don’t get mad.” Yes, I know—best not to question such things. IN ANY EVENT, the reason for my own verbosity is to stand as an example of the stark difference in the way Miss Reba usually conducts her conversation, and the way in which she told her story of Friday. The story itself is one of ANGER and BETRAYAL, and it was told to me with a fury and directness that left me no time to grow angry or interrupt or ask that the subject be returned to. My weakness of attention was obliterated with sharp, deft verbal jabs that kept me fully involved and in the end applauding and cheering for more. The point being—screwing around with my kids is the surest way to bring down a load of highly focused estrogen on top of you. After it’s over, don’t be surprised to wake up like Sisera, with Jael standing over you with a hammer and your head nailed to the ground. ONWARDS, then. As you recall, I was gloating Friday about teaching Little Boy the finer points of capitalism. I got in the car and headed home, ready for another long but too short weekend. Got in the back door and met up with a Very Angry Reba coming out of the den. Oldest was in there on the computer, and I figured something had gone amiss, but got the following: “Went to pick up the kids, and Jonathan said two boys had come up to him in the amphitheater and took his box of pins, and when he got it back, all of his money was gone.” Rebecca had been there the day before to help cut down on such foolishness, but wasn’t with him Friday. She told us that one day a bunch of money had gone missing in the office, too, and the suspicion was a couple of kids who knew where it was scooped it up. Anyway, as I said, this is usually where I start flying off the handle, but I didn’t even get a second… “So, I asked him what they looked like and couldn’t really get a good answer, so I left them all there in the gym and I went right up there to the office. The custodian was there and I told him I wanted to speak to someone right now. He called around the corner to the assistant principal—‘Ms. --, you have a PARENT out here!’ She came out and I told her my son had been selling the rest of his pins and two boys had taken his money and I wanted to know what was going to be done about it. I told her that we didn’t send our kids up there to be picked on and have their money taken and that I wanted that money back NOW. She asked if I knew who took it and I told her I didn’t, and Jonathan didn’t know who they were either, but if we had to get every kid in afterschool care to line up, we were gonna do it.” Wow. She’s on a roll! “She said she would find out what was going on and wondered if it could have been some of the other RLC students, and I told her that I didn’t know, but for her to fix it and get him his money back. So, I got them all back in the car, and got home, and the phone rang and it was his RLC teacher.” Now, this is where is really gets good… “So she says she heard Jonathan had a problem, and I told her yes, that some boys had taken all of his money out of his box, and you know what she said? ‘Oh, those were some of my boys. I had them go around and collect everyone’s money.’ And I told her that Jonathan didn’t MAKE any money, that he had a loss, and that the $16 in his box was our money. She wanted to know how much we had spent and I told her nearly $30, and she had this funny little ‘oh’, and said something like, ‘oh, I guess he didn’t make any money,’ and I said, ‘You’re doggone right he didn’t and I want that money back on Monday.’ She said she had already deposited it in their account, which I KNOW is a bunch of BS, but I told her that I guessed she could get it right back out and anything else that he made that afternoon, too, and send it home with him.” She was in full swing now and ready to daintily yank a certain teacher’s head off and crap down her neck hole. “And THEN you know what?” I shook my head no. “Then she said something about trying to help him sell more by marking the prices down!! He wasn’t making anything to begin with, and then she comes in and marks them down so he’ll make even less, and THEN comes in there like she’s not only going to take the profits, BUT ALL THE MONEY! It’s bad enough that they want ALL the profits, but they want to take EVERYTHING! Well, they never had to deal with ME. You don’t mess with my boy!” As I said Friday, I was gloating about that they needed to look at the show biz model and ask for a cut of the gross. They bypassed THAT completely and just started grabbing cash like a bunch of …SHOW BIZNESS LAWYERS!! Eeek! Anyway, by this time I had moved past how mad I was at this Commie ne’er-do-well teacher, and had gone on to admiring the beautiful blue of my wife’s flashing eyes, and the touch of color upon her cheeks. And the sincere relief that I was on her side. “There now, I didn’t give you a chance to interrupt. How’d you like THAT!” Quite well, m’dear. Quite well, indeed. More weekend stuff to come, but right now I have to go have lunch with My Friend Jeff™ and swap car magazines. See you in a bit.
Mr. Lileks tells us about his weekend and gives us a movie review [...] In “We Were Soldiers,” as the troops board the choppers to the sound of a wavering Oirish voice singing some ancient plaint: oh lay me in the col’ col’ groun’. Utterly irrelevant to the nationality of the fighting men, the location, the geopolitics, the century. It’s the movie’s way of saying this is not the battle of history, but it is a battle, and in the end all battles are the battle - both for the living and the dead. [...]Actually, there is a bit of a story behind the wavering Irish voice--the 7th Cav go by the nickname "Garryowen", taken from an old Irish drinking song of the same name, and one which they use as their regimental air. A good concise history of the song and of the 7th Cav can be found here, which has the original lyrics to the song and the 1905 version written for the 7th Cav, as well as a couple of MIDI versions to listen to. (As I've mentioned before, General Moore and his wife live part of the year in Auburn, where he is a regular speaker at University events.) Friday, March 07, 2003
Well, Mr. Possumblogger…
…where have YOU been today? Thank you for asking—I have been up to my chin with stuff to get done. Sometimes it just gets like that. So no time for playing. EXCEPT, for a quick tour of the blogroll and a look at the referrer log, where I was SHOCKED to find the following: reba's revealing red dress. You oughta be ASHAMED of yourself!! My dear wife has NO such revealing red dress, although…yesterday she did wear her big knit sweater that has little tiny open squares across the upper torso area which, when the angle is just right, provide a nice vie…ahh, ahem, hmm…well, nothing. Forget I said anything. She ain’t got no revealing red dress, although I know where she can get one. Last night was a killer—Middle Girl had soccer practice (at the elementary school gym—it was raining), and Oldest had another rehearsal for The Jungle Book, the opening of which is mere days away. Oh me. Such…such, energy these kids have. Unfortunately, none of it seems directed toward any recognizable tasks such as learning lines or places. Most of it goes into some sort of parallel production they must be working on, “Tourette’s!!”, or maybe “St. Vitus—The Dance”. Ashley knows her lines and positions, but most of the rest of the kids are working on their endorsement deal with the makers of Sugar-Coated X-Treem Ritalin Puffs. And the poor adult cast members. Poor, poor adults on stage. I have come to the conclusion from enduring these rehearsals that 95.36% of successful acting is knowing what to do with your hands. Ah well. At least it’s not me up there. In other news, you may recall a month or so ago that Boy’s Future Egghead Class was busily preparing to learn the ins-and-outs of capitalism. He and his little smart friends were instructed to think of something they could make and sell—little small stuff like cookies or necklaces or other junk. They were instructed to get Parental Support™ to assist them in this little endeavor, which according to the instructions meant we were supposed to loan them some venture capital, charge them “rent” on their “workspace”, and assorted other evil capitalistic things like helping with the marketing plan. Again, as you recall, the real kick in the jewels was the requirement that when they did their little afterschool marketplace to sell this junk to the other kids, they were going to have to give ALL their profits back to the RLC program. Not some, not a percentage. All. As in all. To which I replied, “in your sweetest socialist scum dreams, sweetheart.” If you think you’re gonna teach my kids that capitalism is a non-representative government taking all your hard-earned money away from you—even if it’s for The Children™—you have misunderestimated who you’re up against. (For the record, I don’t mind giving extra money to this program—they do a lot of cool stuff with the kids, and Jonathan enjoys it immensely. I’ll give ‘em money if they ask for it honestly. But they aren’t going to shake down my kid.) So then, on to the lesson in how to cook the books. First, Boy and Mom decided the product was to be little foam flower pins. My wife does craft stuff all the time for the kids at church, so we had some of this stuff, but she went ahead and bought two big clear plastic cylinders full of little cutout foam flower pieces. Each container cost about five bucks. 10 bucks total. With about a billion pieces in each container, the per piece cost was about equal in value to one dinar. BUT, we still had to add that excess inventory cost on the books. We had to get some pin backs, which ran us about 4 bucks. Each one probably cost a dime. We used all of those. Then there was the money for the workspace. Our house is worth a LOT of money, especially when it comes to people wanting to use it for commercial purposes. We figured we would charge $15,000 for that. (Not really—it was some small amount, 5 or 10 bucks.) Reba made the pins for him, which required that she use some hot glue. The bag of glue sticks cost $5, and just because she used maybe a dollar’s worth didn’t mean we didn’t have to pay for them—we had to stack THEM over in inventory, too, you know. The final result was 62 brightly colored foam Pinny Pals™, 12 little ones, 50 big ones, which were given a right reasonable price of $0.25 for the Mini Pinnies, and $0.50 for the Maxi Pinnies. Now if you do the math on that, you will see that the maximum expected revenue will be $28. Total spent on producing these babies—about $29. Ohhhhh. Man, a loss. How sad for our little company! It won’t even break even! Wow—it’s just like being in the motion picture industry!! Poor Smart Kid Program should have asked for a cut of the gross!! Schmucks. Anyway, yesterday, all the kids got to set up shop after school—Jonathan sold about $16 worth—yikes, an even bigger loss than anticipated! Rebecca came by after school to help him sell stuff and make sure no one tried to swindle him on making change, and at some point in there, a little girl in her grade came up to Jonathan and quietly told him that she did the sale last year and didn’t make anything—then she sorta winked and said, “But, it’s Oooooo-kay.” Heee. Apparently I’m not the only heartless capitalist pig parent at school. THEN, there is the weekend—tonight is another rehearsal, this time the whole shebang, all the way through. I can barely contain my glee!! (Not really—I was merely…Acting!) And then again tomorrow (but thankfully no more horseback riding), and there’s laundry and housecleaning and finishing up my unified field theory and then there’s church and Bible Bowl on Sunday and then there’s probably a long list of stuff some person has decided that I need to finish since it is now springtime outside and the weeds are in furious bloom. AND FINALLY, a big public thank you to Nate McCord over at Wasted Electrons who went to an inordinate amount of trouble to come up with a nice linky button for Possumblog for those of you who use linky buttons. Just be sure to copy the image to your server, so you’re not using up his bandwidth--  Anyway, that’s all for now. See you all Monday! Thursday, March 06, 2003
Virginia Police Recover Missing Cher Wig RICHMOND, Va. - Police have recovered the teal-and-black wig that was reported stolen from Cher's concert tour.Another stunning victory in the War on Cherorism.
Hey Cool!!
Mac Thomason sends along a link to a very interesting site, ArchNet, which is devoted primarily to Islamic architecture, both historic and modern. Lots of good documentation, discussion, and resources on the art and science part of the profession, and as a special treat for those of us who just like to look at the pictures, a HUGE digital library of photographs of buildings from around the world. Fascinating stuff.
What the world has been crying out for, Part II--Irish fans to attempt karaoke record DUBLIN (Reuters) - Their efforts may not turn out to be pretty, but the massed voices of 50,000 Irish rugby fans could earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records on Saturday for singing in the world's largest karaoke session. [...]Somehow, I think more than one sort of Guinness will be involved.
Clinton, Dole to Debate on '60 Minutes' NEW YORK - Former President Clinton (news - web sites) and his 1996 election opponent Bob Dole are joining the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes" for weekly debates on national issues in the show's old "Point-Counterpoint" style. [...]Actually, I think it would be much better if they did it like Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live--"Bill, you ignorant slut!" (And I even beat Opinions Journal's Best of the Web with that snappy bit of repartee!)
Interesting search request from yesterday--How are tax dollars spent in Alabama?
Vigorously, with little regard for the source. Here is the General Fund budget for this year. Lots of boards and agencies and all nice sounding things--but the one thing you don't see is where the money goes after it goes into those boards and agencies and councils. I wouldn't call it money laundering--that's illegal, and all those little line items are all perfectly legal (and some probably even serve an actual need)--anyway, let's just call it "helping out our good, influential friends." That's much nicer, now isn't it?
Skakel complains about prison treatment in letters to cousin, paper reports CHESHIRE, Conn. (AP) -- Michael Skakel, serving 20 years to life for the 1975 murder of his teen-age neighbor, has complained in letters to a cousin that he is receiving harsher treatment in prison than other inmates.Hmm, you know, Mike, I'm really not feeling any sort of sympathy here.
From Nate McCord, who has MUCH too much time on his hands, this site devoted to the majestic Didelphis virginiana, which includes a fascinating page of Possum Politics, and a legal defense of the noble beast.
(And of course, Snopes has all sorts of good information about possum urban legends.)
Madison County leads Alabama in retaining workers [...] Madison County has a higher percentage of residents who commute to work within their home county than anywhere else in Alabama, according to Census Bureau statistics released Thursday.Frankly, I believe this is statistic is the result of the presence of The Barbecue Emporium.
Here's one for Mac Thomason, Icthypundit...
AU RESEARCH TO AID IN RECOVERY OF HIGHLY ENDANGERED FISH AUBURN -- A century ago, Alabama sturgeon were abundant in the swiftly flowing waters of the Mobile River Basin. So plentiful were these long, slender, ancient-looking fish that they were freely harvested and sold commercially for food, their prized roe processed and retailed in high-end markets as caviar.See, there is more to Auburn University than just cows! Additional information about this lovely fish can be found at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website, along with this interesting article from back in 1999, about the Marion Fish Hatchery. Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Enraged Computer Owner Shoots Up Machine [...] In police reports, Doughty said that he realized afterward that he shouldn't have shot his computer but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. [...]Who among us hasn't harbored the same thoughts?
Two brothers serving in the Army take different views on a possible war with Iraq By JOHN GEROMEWell, whatever you say, but that really only works if one of the boys IS ON THE OTHER SIDE! Travis describes himself as a pacifist. In high school, he was kidded about being not aggressive enough for sports. During basic training, he refused to chant "kill" with the other soldiers. More recently, he marched in anti-war protests and spoke openly about his objections.Let's stop here for a moment. Our armed forces are voluntary. No one is compelled against his or her will to enlist. The Army doesn't really make a big secret out of the fact that it has big, big numbers of guys carrying real rifles which shoot real bullets, and helicopters, and tanks, and mortars, and mines, and cannons, and rockets, and grenades, and $500 hammers, and all sorts of other stuff that are intended to be used with the express purpose of agressively and collectively destroying another human life. (What a shock!) With this, why would someone who is a conscientious objector enlist in the first place? In joining the military, the two men followed the example set by their father, Jeff, and oldest brother, Preston. They enlisted in peacetime to earn money for college, gain discipline and see the world.Hmm. But the Coast Guard had a 22-month waiting list and Travis was impatient. He signed up for a five-year hitch with the Army and is now assigned to the 10th Mountain Division as a photojournalist.Ah, the Clinton Administration. Nuff said, I suppose. In any event, Travis, they probably didn't mention anything about war, enemy, shooting, or death since the sergeant assumed that as you walked in under your own power and could carry on a conversation, you could probably figure out THAT STUFF WAS SELF-EVIDENT!! (And for what it's worth, in 1999 when dain-bramaged Recruit Burnham mustered in, the Army was engaged in some sort of activity somewhere called Kosovo. I think there might have been something about it on TV or something, but I guess he missed it. You know, the economy was so good and all...) [...] The Army is investigating [Travis'] conscientious objector application. The process involves 26 steps and usually takes at least 90 days. Travis has already been interviewed by a chaplain and a psychiatrist.Just a tip here, folks. If the only reason you are enlisting in the army is to get free college money and snappy berets and a pass to the PX, AND you think it's really, like, mean to have an army that might actually use all the heavy ordnance lying about, then it might not be the best idea to sign up.
Human Shield Buses Stuck in Beirut, Seek Fare Home BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two red double decker buses and a white London taxi that ferried anti-war activists to Baghdad to serve as "human shields" are stranded in Beirut with their owner short of the $5,500 it costs to ship them home.Joe, I'd like you to meet someone I call Charlie Foxtrot... [...] "We were taken to see some of the installations that the Iraqis thought were suitable for protection," he said, adding that he had feared a bombing campaign could start at any time.That was nice to identify yourselve, but I'm sure your Iraqi minders didn't care where you were from. Some 50 other Swedish anti-war human shield activists who had traveled to Iraq began to leave on Monday, saying they had wanted to protect hospitals and schools but had been forced out to refineries, power plants and water works.You know, the stuff that might actually GET HIT. Letts said about 200 human shields, including many who traveled on his bus, remained in Baghdad when he left. But he said that although he stayed on as a shield for a week, he had no intention of staying in Baghdad for the duration of a war.Of the others on the trip, several noted that they had forgotten to turn off their stoves, let the cat out, or forgotten they had an overdue book from the library. One man said he thought the bus was on a holiday excursion to Dover, and was very angry at having missed several episodes of Kilroy. When he left London, he thought he had enough money to pay to ship the buses home, but ended up spending his personal finances to help pay for the trip.(Scene opens--Michael Palin (or Terry Gilliam) dressed in wig and floral housedress, screaming into cell phone...) JOE!? JOE!! You silly git, why did you take the buses!! I can't get to market without the bloody bleedin' BUS, now can I?! An' we were supposed to go see my MUM on Friday! Anything to get out of going to Bristol--SHE was right--you ARE a smelly twit!! DID YOU HANG UP ON ME!?
Thai mystics predict start of Iraq war
Golly, guys, would you stop giving away our se...oops, used that one already. BANGKOK (Reuters) - After thumbing charts and calculating planetary positions, Thailand's top mystics have settled on April 8 as the last possible date for the launch of a U.S.-led war on Iraq.Wow--Mars need OOOIIIILLLLL!! At least now we can start blaming it all on this guy, or maybe this guy. (Note the strong similarity to this picture and the one in the post below.) Mars would be at its closest point to earth on April 8, but war could start as soon as the end of March because Uranus was in Aquarius, Pinyo Phongcharoen, president of the 6,000-member National Astrological Association of Thailand, told Reuters Television. [...]Man, I just HATE it when Uranus gets into Aquarius. [...] "There can be long-lasting peace afterwards, with Jupiter entering the orbit of Uranus."Whew, that's a relief. It goes without saying that this story is great fun for the juvenile schoolboy in all of us as we contemplate the question, "Hey, Saddam! Guess where the one of those BLU-82s is gonna hit? URANUS!!"
U.S. Plans Heavy Bombing Campaign in Iraq
Golly, guys, would you quit giving away all of our secrets!! Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Now here's somebody with the proper sense of what Mardi Gras is all about--one inventive searcher dropped in here looking for Krewe of Homeland Security! Janis Gore is the Axis of Weevil Krewe Coordinator, and I am at this very moment placing this in her inbox to investigate. Our float this year didn't quite turn out as well as planned, but with this idea, we should do very well next year.
UPDATE!! Wow, that's service! No sooner do I post this than I receive a link from Miss Janis to a story in which the Krewe of Homeland Security is prominently featured-- Hon,(I love it when she calls me hon.) Anyway, here is the pertinent excerpt: [...] A dozen maskers calling themselves the Krewe of Homeland Security wore plastic drapes and duct tape, with colored dots representing smallpox. They handed out Mardi Gras Alerts, declaring the security status as purple, green and gold, the traditional Carnival colors.THAT'S the spirit, Jane!! Many thanks, Janis. Keep calling Condi--maybe she can work us in next year.
The Real McCoy (or one of them, at least)
Just had a visitor stumble in here via Google who searched for an american expression meaning the real thing came from an invention of this rail road worker. I must admit I was going to do a quick bit of silliness and move on, but my curiosity got the better of me and I started doing my own little bit of Googling. After a couple of quick edits of the search string, I punched in "american expression," "real thing," and "railroad," and found out a little something about Elijah McCoy, inventor of an automatic oiler (among other things) for rail stock. (As for the expression, "the real McCoy," there are several theories, as with most slang phrases.)
PLEASE!! PUT DOWN ALL LIQUID CONTAINERS AND BEVERAGES!!
John Hawkins the HolyWarrior ICQs a Brazilian. Remember, you were warned...
Victory?
Those of you who've been following my house travails were last left with the information that my homebuilder guy was supposed to call me back Friday. Guess what? No call. I wasn't really surprised--I figured they were either trying to remount and reload, or trying to find the cheapest illegal alien labor they could find to fix it. I could wait the weekend to find out. Then, yesterday--no call. Hmm. Well, this might be a bit toward the Not Good side of the ledger. I furrowed my brow, like this. Oh, wait, no X-10 cam. Imagine a husky man who looks constipated. Today, I figured if I didn't hear anything it would be time to start issuing ammo and grenades, so imagine my surprise when I checked my messages at home (he never will call me and talk to me at work--always leaves messages. Contractors...) and he apologized for not getting back in touch Friday. He did have a pretty good excuse, a death in his wife's family (and yes, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one) and said he had "talked to the people he needed to talk to" about the problem. I really wish he would just say "his boss," or "the insurance adjuster"; whenever he's deliberately vague, it sounds like he's working for Don Corleone. (If there's a horse head in my bed in the morning, I promise I'll scream like a little girl.) Anyway, he said he was going to get their siding installer out there to get it fixed, and would call back and set up a time. Well, now. That sounds promising. If nothing else, it's a lot better than him saying it's my fault--BUT...these are contractors. I won't believe it until it's done.
Magazine: Michael Jackson Put 'Curse' on Spielberg LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Embattled pop star Michael Jackson (news) wears a prosthetic nose and once paid $150,000 for a "voodoo curse" to kill director Steven Spielberg (news) despite being deep in debt, Vanity Fair magazine reported on Monday. [...]And people have the nerve to call him a freak...
Hey, don't mess with us--we got us some rockets...
Decatur gets Boeing rockets KENT FAULKWow, looks like I'm going to have to get a bigger gun rack for Franklin...
For those keeping score--U.S. arrests 3 Rwanda rebels in 1999 murders of tourists in Africa By CURT ANDERSONNo quarter.
Code Duello Redux--White House and Democrats offer dueling plan for Medicare drug plan
Well, this will never work--old people having to fight duels just to get discounted prescription drugs!? If it's competition they want, a better, more benign, contest would surely be to have an electric scooter drag race.
A big drivel of mendacious tripe!!
Mr. Lileks has a playgroup day: [...] In all fairness: I raised the issue with the group’s facilitator, just as I did the last semester when the Earth Pledge, Million-Mom-March and the March for Peace fliers were included in the big binder. As before, I didn’t object to the material’s inclusion, just the lack of balance. As before, the facilitator grasped my objection in a trice, and even though I sense that she’s inclined to side with the material, she gets it. This is tripe. This is mendacious drivel. Failing to teach children that the United States is more important to their lives than the United Nations and the World Court is educational malpractice. [...]Man, are the Belgians ever gonna be steamed to hear THAT!
Po', po' possum...
A haunting elegy for a tragic occurence on Hickman Street, from the ever observant Fritz Schranck: [...] A large, fully mature turkey buzzard calmly stood near the semi-flattened marsupial, picking at a fine morsel or two as I approached. (Fine for the buzzard, that is. Raw possum is not my idea of lunch.)Ah, yes, a bitter, bitter end. Such is the way of the passing of many of my less speedy brethren. Speaking of carrion-eating avian scavengers, (and a story that should give Chuck a chuckle) a couple of weeks ago when I was taking Catherine for her pony lesson, just near the front entrance to Camp Coleman I caught a glimpse of a dark shadow moving through the underbrush down toward the river. "Catherine!! You know what?" "What, Daddy?" "I think I just saw...A TURKEY!!" She was unimpressed. "Where?" "Back down the hill there!" I was going along at a pretty good clip since I was going to go in the back gate, but halfway up the hill I had already decided to go back and see what I could see. Got to the top and turned around, "Where we going, Daddy?" "We gonna go see us that turkey, little girl!" "Okay." She wasn't really very excited. Got back to the lower road, and pulled off. No bird. "Cat, I think it's done gone home." "You not see it?" "No, swee...HEY! Look over yonder!" "WHERE?!" Right over there under the low hanging branches, a long, low, carefully walking black shadow...I was so surprised to see one anywhere close to houses and stuff--but their reputation is for being so smart that they can read the hunting schedule and know that he was still safe for another month. I rolled down the window, "What you gonna DO, Daddy?!" I gave a few little hen turkey squawks, and all a sudden the magnificent bird took flight! "OOHH!! DADDY!! It flews up! What a pretty turkey!" "Ahh, no sugar--daddy just called up a big buzzard." "Oh." Oh well.
Plundering the Referrer Logs
Don't look at me like that--everyone does it. Anyway, first from the ever formal Jeeves, a querist wishes to know what qualities do people look for in their majority leader? I always look inside and make sure they have all their internal organs. But that's just me. Next, one youngster wants to know how can i learn to build a bong off of the internet? WHY, these kids today! Back in my day, we didn't need no fancy computerized thingamajig to learn how to build a bong. That was just all part of growing up--mothers would teach their daughters, and daddies would teach their sons, just like they taught them milking and sewing and slopping the hogs. OH, but now parents are too consarned BUSY to teach their kids how to build a bong, and kids ain't got no sense of inventiveness since the television done sucked all their creativity out of them. Humph! Third up to the plate, "James Watson" concept soul crap. Don't quite know what to say about that. Other than I am very proud that somehow Possumblog was a search result. Next up in our cavalcade of mystery, we have this one: Love Quote For A Guy. Simple is better--go with something like "Hey, you're okay, guy." Then, we have a visitor with a chilling and frightening bit of stuff: "mr. mcfeeley" and "hose". (A darkened room in KING FRIDAY'S castle. A small Domestic Shorthair puppet sits strapped into a chair with a blinding light shining in her eyes. A bespectacled man in uniform quickly approaches, nervously slapping a short length of rubber hose in his hand...) McFEELEY: Time to talk! Time to talk! Must be hurrying along, now!! HENRIETTA PUSSYCAT: But meow don't know anything! Meow, please, meow! McFEELEY: ENOUGH LIES, PUSSYCAT! We can play this hard, or we can play this easy--NOW TELL US WHAT LADY ELAINE SAID TO X THE OWL!! (Strikes HENRIETTA severely about head and neck with hose) HENRIETTA PUSSYCAT: MEOW meow will meow talk, meow! (Iris Close to black--Iris Open to very shocked MR. ROGERS.) Next, an interested person who climbed up the persimmon tree to find a "Soccer poem" Here's one for you-- Roses are red, Violets are blue, When Mia Hamm yanked off her shirt, That was, like, really cool. As most of you know, the Possumblog Internet Ambulatory Care Center is one of the finest places to go for information of a medical nature. That's probably why we had a recent visitor searching for information on breastfeeding carpal tunnel loose joints. Let me just say that if any of these things are connected, somebody's doing SOMETHING completely wrong. And finally, something that the editorial staff here at Possumblog has a great deal of experience in--get paid for typing and sending by e-mail no monye to start. In over a year of work, we have amassed a small fortune by typing and sending by e-mail--at this very moment, I have a quarter I found in the Coke machine downstairs, and a button, and a free pen from Amoco! Riches such as this can be yours too!! And it require no monye to start!! Thank you, and that's all for now. Monday, March 03, 2003
Made it!
But the story of it will have to wait until I finish typing up the stuff I was supposed to type last week, so check back in this afternoon for wondrous yarns of Bitter Cold, Mud, Defeat, Unexpected Horses, Mud, Defeat, Bitter Cold, Rebecca Kicks the Ball, and The Jet Propelled Six Year Old. Friday, February 28, 2003
Getting about that time
Time to set the autopilot for T'ville and take a nice, long, relaxing...well, nothing. Entire weekend is jam-packed with stuff to do other than sit still for five minutes and vegetate. Soccer tournament tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday for Middle Girl and for Boy. Pain and woe for all sure to follow. Homebuilder Guy has not called. Pain and woe for SOMEBODY sure to follow. NO horseback riding lessons, thank goodness. No Ol' Paint and no whoa to follow. Laundry MUST be done. Pants and...something-clever-that-rhymes-with-woe-and-has-something-to-do-with-clothes...sure to follow. (Although, on the good side, I might find a penny. Or some popcorn. Or a Pez.) Church on Sunday and I get to sub for the 8th grade teacher AND do announcements. BUT, no pain nor woe, only a serene peacefulness that makes staying awake the most difficult task known to man. Fortunately, The Tiny Wrecking Ball will keep me awake by either a) deciding to sing I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow, b) talking in her patented "I learned to whisper in a sawmill" whisper, c) deciding to cry about...something, ANYTHING, d) walking all the way down the pew cushion, or e) getting up five times to go pee or drink some more water. All of which explains why I never answer e-mail or blog during the weekend. But come Monday morning...whooo-BOY! are you folks gonna get it!! You have been warned. See you Monday, and have a good weekend yourselves!
Once again--this time with gusto...
Stupid, STUPID Blogger! Post below--instead of 'with', I type 'wit', try to fix it immediately, and it hangs out there h-lessly for agonizing minutes. BAH!!
How to Write
THE NEXT INSTALLMENT of my ongoing series of lifting material from a long out of print book in order to provide content for my blog--as always, this is from Everybody’s Writing-Desk Book, published in 1903 and written by Charles Nisbet and Don Lemon, and given to me by my sweet wife as a Christmas present. Enough! On to today’s topic— No Embellishments.—All ornament of the person, such as jewelry, flowers, feathers, etc., is vulgar so far as not constitutional, i.e., the due expression of the entire person—and of the unseen character whereof the visible person is itself expression. So, likewise, is all ornament of literary style vulgar so far as it is other than the natural expression of the writer’s thought. No dress is ever beautiful of itself, but only in relation to the wearer. A man or woman is best dressed when the dress least diverts the eye of the spectator to itself, and only serves all that is in the power of dress to illustrate, the character of the wearer. A beautiful person transcends and subordinates beautiful parts, nor suffers the eye of beholder to do it so much dishonor as to take note of single parts. It is disparagement to count dainty hands, shapely arms, pure eyes, classic nose, fine cut lips, clear tones, etc., whose proper value is only their collective expression of an integral beauty transcending all partial expressions.
Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer
Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured.This is an outrage!! That tiny lower 10% of the population provides 98% of all humor in the world! (The part about making all girls pretty is okay, though.)
WORK!!
Huuuuh!! What is it goo-ood for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN'! Except for, like, being able to pay the mortgage and not having to come home to find the sheriff has put all our belongings out on the curb, and having health insurance, and dental insurance, and money to buy clothes and food, and stuff like that. WHICH MEANS, that Work is a Very Good Thing, and I must do some of it right now! or run the risk being sent to time out. I should be back after while. Thursday, February 27, 2003
You know, this little deal Blogger has where it waits an hour to post stuff is driving me bonkers--there were several typos in the post below that I have been trying to get fixed and the whole thing is a mess and people are coming by from Meryl's house and from Floyd County, Virginia and it looks like a train wreck around here and you can't read this that I'm typing now because IT probably won't post for another HOUR or more and all the other goofish misspellings will just hang out there tormenting me...hey, wait a minute...wouldn't it be neat if there was a candy just for when you're all worked up and angry--it would be called Tor-mints...anyway, so all this crap is messed up and the Blogger boys are sitting around smoking big ceegars and picking out a new Jag.
Hmph.
I get a letter!
From Tater Spud Man Marc Velazquez up in the frozen North of Carolina: Curious to hear your take on the "winning" design on the new World Trade Center.(Yes, there was more to the letter than that, but it was just stuff about Bill Clinton and pain and kneecaps and bosomosity--nothing you need to know about) Anyway, in a semi-serious vein, back to the question. First, my biases--I think that it is impossible to design any great artwork--building, painting, sculpture, book--based upon a committee decision. The greatest works of literature or art or music or architecture are the distillation of a singular vision, either by the maker or the patron. Strength, vigor, timelessness are the result of a single-mindedness of purpose or outlook. This is not to say that some very good design decisions cannot come through collaboration, but that collaboration must not come at the expense of the central idea. In too many cases, the desire to please everyone leads to solutions that filter out uncomfortable genius in favor of a more palatable design that offends no one, but one which also one which inspires no one. I don't think all ideas are equivalent in their greatness. Despite our deep respect for the idea of democracy and making sure everyone has a voice, in the end we must realize some ideas are just plain dumb, and some of those voices are to be heard only inside of someone's head. A process that does not rightly discard the ill-thought and ignorant is doomed to produce a mess. This CNN site has tons of designs submitted by folks all over the world--each person who submitted something was intensely earnest about the value of their solution, but in the end 98% of them are just mindless drivel. And that includes most of the ones which were obviously produced by architects. Swiss Army knives aren't very good at anything. Applying that concept to the built environment works about as well. The desire to load the emotions of this site into one design is nearly impossible to do and still maintain the integrity of any of the individual parts--it is a unique battlefield/ subway stop/ cemetary/ workplace/ memorial/ marketplace /visual anchor /symbol of New York /symbol of America place which calls for both exuberance and solemnity, pride and humbleness, reason and passion, love and hate. I don't think that this is insoluable, but expecting one thing to do all things equally well is probably too much. Again, it is impossible to please everyone, and attempting to give equal weight to all possible viewpoints damps down the overall level of utility to the point where the saw blade is too dull, the knife blade is too short, the tweezers are too springy, the magnifying glass is too tiny, and the whole thing is too big and bulky to fit in your pants pocket. Last bias--my own ideas about what I value in architecture. I detest novelty for the sake of novelty; I prefer clearly visible design intent with a minimum of mumbo-jumbo and hand-waving; I prefer whittling away the unessential to adding layer upon layer of philosophy; I prefer a design with strength and unity of purpose (even if some might find it disagreeable) to something inoffensive, weak and dissipated. But, that's just me--I am not, and never will be the world's greatest architect (or anything else, for that matter). But I know good when I see it. HAVING SAID ALL THAT, on to the design itself, which can be seen here. Whatever. It's the Port Authority's money; if that's what they want to spend it on, I say go for it. To me, it has too much of the wacky, folded-glass-origami-and-odd-intersected-lines vernacular that is all the rage with Serious Architects, and none of the muscular vitality of Lower Manhattan. The tallest tower is meant to house a "virtual Windows on the World," while the tops of the buildings all bow toward Ground Zero (which is intruded upon by more glass and sticks), to which I say, "Nuts!" I want me a real, live, restaurant on top of the place, and I want the whole building complex to stand there with its sleeves rolled up and its hands on its hips. The site deserves a place to remember, and a place to look forward. The jumbled shards and angles and swoops and blips and chirps prohibit any sort of dignified sense of grief down at ground level, while the surrounding buildings simultaneously interfere with our ability to get up off our knees and go on with civic life--in this case, a historically vital civic life that gave us the "New York minute" and the "New York alphabet." But, that's just my opinion. That and buck will get you a cup of coffee.
I know this is wrong...
By now most of you know that Fred Rogers, host of the long-running PBS show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, has passed away. I watched the show from just about the time it first aired in 1968--I always like it (although my mom thought he was just a little...odd) because he seemed like such a nice man, and because there were only four channels on TV, and one of them was the crappy CBS station that only came in good if you held on to the antenna while you watched (so much for Captain Kangaroo). Anyway, I did enjoy his show, and of all the episodes, one which has always stuck out a bit in my mind is the one where he comes by to feed the fish, and discovers a floater. Poor fish. The fish has died. Mr. Rogers gently scooped up the little fish and set him unobtrusively on the counter while talking about life and the feelings you might have if a pet dies and some things to do to make it better. He said that maybe we should give Mr. Fish a nice burial. A handy shoebox was found, and the fish and its paper towel were ever so gently placed into the box. Mr. Rogers then found a small piece of wood--pentagonal in shape, if I remember correctly--on a little stick. He carefully used a big black marker and wrote "f i s h." "Fish," he said. He quietly gathered up his things and went outside to the artificial back yard, where he knelt down and dug a shoebox sized hole in the floor of the studio, inserted the box, covered it, and placed the simple marker. The rest of the show I don't recall, although I'm sure there was a discussion in a similar vein over in the Neighborhood of Make Believe, and Mr. McFeeley probably had some words of comfort. Now that Mr. Rogers has passed along, despite my best intentions, all I can imagine is a neat, clean, quiet man in a cardigan and deck shoes, lying in a large shoebox with a small sign above him reading "f r e d."
Annnd, once again, Blogger is acting the fool, and won't update posts. It really irks me when I catch a mistake and try to fix it quickly, then am jackhammered by a stupid bunch of electrons. If there was ever any question about Google changing the way Blogger operates, I think it has been answered quite completely.
Indigo has an Insight on this from yesterday, as well (scroll down a bit).
Hey, I may be crazy, but I ain't stupid
Mental hospitals eyed to house state inmates MONTGOMERY Gov. Bob Riley is considering the idea of closing one or more of the state's mental hospitals and using the facilities to house female convicts, he said Wednesday.If only we didn't have the luxury of a Legislature. Somehow, though, they manage to survive quite well. Funny, huh?
I Am Not Yet King, and Hardhead Bad, Hardhead Good
What a day. AS YOU MAY RECALL, our hero had a dental appointment yesterafternoon, and a meeting with the home builder guy at 3:30. I had thought that I was going to get my permanent crown yesterday, so you can imagine my utter disappointment when my pain administration specialist said she was just going to check the tooth and make sure she didn't have to grind anymore off. I vaguely remember the last time two weeks ago when she said that the gum was so "angry" that she really wasn't sure that she had ground away all she needed to and might need to do some more later. At the time, I thought this meant "later, but only moments before I cement in your permanent crown." Actually, this meant that she might do some, and then wait some more to put the crown in. ::sigh:: Well, crap. She told me she was going to lift up the temp and have a look, and I thought this might sting a bit, but no big deal. I was, of course, wrong. Had to have more injections into my now famously hard head. This time though, she started out with the big guns, three jabs with giant cylinders of go-numb juice. Ow. Ow. Ow. She then told me that she was quite sure the problem last time was due to my extreme bone density--she said with some folks she can even feel the needletip penetrate into the jawbone a bit [insert full body shiver here] but that when she gave me my shots, it was just like the needle hit a rock. "Why thank you--you know, that's probably because I have an uncle on my dad's side who was an Australopithecus robustus." Which actually came out more as, "Uhmph uu gah dahg bahm." Anyway, off she went to yank on someone else's teeth, and I sat there trying to remember the lyrics to Comfortably Numb. It seemed the stuff was working quicker this time, thank goodness, and after just a few minutes the tell-tale rubberface feeling had set in. She came back to check on me, and I told her it seemed like I was ready to go. She got her assistant in and they started to work. She worked the little pointy gum jabber thing under my temp and pulled it off, I guess, and was suitably impressed with the lack of any angriness on the part of my gum tissue, and as a reward I was treated to a shot of air across the raw tooth. This was painful. Pain of a painosity so painish that mere painjectives cannot adequately describe the sense of sheer pain and pain that painfully radiated painfully throughout my pain-wracked body and penetrated to the very painful pit of my pain-twisted guts. "Sorry, hon, but we have to get it dried off a bit to make an impression." "UUH!! OOH! AaccAchagga u ow oh i itwou!!" "I know, sugar." I don't think you do! They finished up with the Blast-O'-Air torturefun and they then put a wad of caulking in my gaping painhole, which I got to clamp down on for a bit. That set, she popped it off and very carefully examined the impression to make sure that there were no voids or defects. There were. "Open wide, sweetie, I think we're gonna need to get another one--this one has a tiny little void on the edge." SO?! I have a tiny void in my head, and you don't see me filling it with a caulk gun! I opened up, and guess what? They had to dry my tooth off again. It hurt. I became the cartoonist's model for use in drawing visible radiating pain waves. They projected out in a giant cloud, reflecting off of the walls and the ceiling, yet strangely they seemed to have no effect on my two Serbian interrogators. "Just a bit, hon, and it'll all be over." And it will be lovely, with all sorts of smelly flowers, and all sorts of nice people signing the guest book and commenting on how peaceful and lifelike I looked. "He looks like he's just a'sleeping away, don't he?" Finally through with the Airgun of Joy, and another impression, which this time impressed the good doc with how finely made it was. Thus suitably satisfied, it was time to button me back up and send me home to meet the contractor. The assistant set about regluing my temp. In order to make me powerless to resist coming back again, she had to reach over me to get something off the tray on the other side, thus insuring that her full breastal region contacted my person. "'Scuse my reach, Terry." ::sigh:: "Thath kay." Got through in only thirty minutes, which seemed like only four or five days, but in any event, I had time to go grab a bite to eat and run home. Got my fast food and got back to the house with plenty of time to spare. Before I sat down to eat, I had the foresight to run around upstairs closing off the bedroom doors to keep our slovenly habits from becoming more widely known and was just coming down the steps when I saw someone at the door. Huh? I glanced at my watch--3:00 p.m. I told him 3:30. Ah. AH! Sneaky contractor trick. 'I showed up and waited a while and you weren't there' deal. Not this time, bucko. I went on down and let him in and cordially invited him in, "Hey, come on in. You doing alright? Good. Hey, lemme ask you--did we say 3 or 3:30?" "Uh, well, 3...3:30, sometime around in there." Uh-huh. Jackhole. "Oh well, I guess it's a good thing they got me out ahead of time--come on in and let's go upstairs and let me show you what I think I've found." It might be good to remind you, gentle reader, that until now, I have not disclosed to these folks my educational or professional background--for all they know, I'm just some big fat dude with a complaint. Rebecca asked me last night why I didn't tell them I was an architect, and as I explained to her, I wanted to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and give them every opportunity possible to do the right thing and act in good faith without resorting to acting like I was expecting better treatment than everyone else. Just because I'm in the trade doesn't mean I should get preferential treatment. And, as I told her, I could be wrong about the problem. Not bloody likely, but still within the realm of possibility. I reassured her though, that if the people decided to still say that this was her Daddy's fault, that I would begin by rolling out the diplomas and the resume, and if that didn't work, the mention of our local TV ombudsgadfly, and then the phone number of the lawyer I know who is feared by every contractor in town. Measured response, mailed fist/velvet glove--that crap. She seemed to understand and was quite excited about the possibility of Daddy going nuclear. Anyway, I led him up to the attic and we tiptoed over to the chimney. "Okay, now this is what I'm seeing," as I pointed with the flashlight, "--you see that round white bloom of mold there? That's coming from that nail. That nail is right where that little bit of roof slopes down and intersects with the wall of the chimney. Now, the way I figure it, that nail is through the flashing, and it has been leaking little by little since the house was built, and it eventually saturated all this sheathing here--which you can see has turned black and has little moldy things growing off of it--and finally the water made its way allll the way downstairs. When the sheathing got all saturated, it swelled up, and that's what caused the caulk joint outside to open up. If you remember, the other joint over here on this side is still tight, and all the other joints are tight, too. And you can see up top there that there is no water line above the nail, only below." He got his flashlight and stepped over. Shone it up. Looked. Looked. Shone it slowly down. Up. Down. Uppppp. Dowwwwwn. OVER. Dowwwwn. Stepped to the side and looked out the gable vent at where the roof comes into the chimney. Looked back in chimney. Light up. Down. Felt of sheathing. Wet. Ovvvvvver. Down. Stepped back and looked outside. Back over, looked back in chimney. Up. Up way up. Dowwwn. "Okay." He turned around and started walking back to the attic stairs. Retreat, or tactical withdrawal? No comments. He started getting the insulation fuzz off his shoes--"Oh, that's alright, I'll get that up later," I said sweetly. I closed up the stairs and went downstairs, and he was back over at the fireplace, studying the big crack and stain. "Yeah, it really came in...what was it?...Sunday?...Saturday night when we got all that rain? It ran all over the top of the mantlepiece." He went outside. Slow rain. He looked up. Studied hard for a few minutes. "You see here? This is what I was saying about all the caulk joints being tight except that one." He looked. Finally, "Well, okay. I'm gonna have to get with some folks I need to talk to, and I'll have to get back with you." "Oh, that's great! Do you have an idea when they will have an answer for you?" I said brightly. "Uh, well, umh, I should hear back by Friday." "Okay, then, I look forward to hearing from you Friday, and listen, I REALLY appreciate you coming back out here like this. It's such a messy, dreary old day--so thanks!' I shoved my hand out and shook his, and he slowly walked to his truck and I went back in the house and ate my lunch. It tasted very good. Sometimes it pays to have a hard head. ALTHOUGH... They being contractors, I will not claim that I have won the war here. This was a minor skirmish, and though won decisively, there is still the possibility of further counterattacks or prolonged negotiations to sue for more favorable terms. Unconditional surrender, my friends. Unconditional surrender. Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
All for now, lovers of gristly Possumosity--tomorrow will be post-deficient due to my biweekly bureaucratic exercise regimen, and then later on tomorrow, I will be having my permanent crown fitted (I proclaim myself Permanent World Monarch) at the dentist, and then after that I will be meeting ONE LAST TIME with my contractor's warranty rep.
All in all, a day full of excrutiating excitement. Whee.
Adjust Your Permalinks!
Ron Bailey has moved to a new domain, and has started blogging again--his new URL is http://troutstream.org/, and it's now entitled The Riverkeeper. On Sunday, Ron noted that he was giving the blog thing one more try-- [...] Up till now, I have always had sort of a scattergun approach to the whole thing. "Give yourself plenty of leeway, don't paint yourself into a corner, keep everthing wide open" I would tell myself. Problem is, after two weeks of working at it, I would always look back and see, well, a rambling, unfocused mess. Which is NOT what I wanted. [...]Darned right, bucko! There's only room for one rambling, unfocused mess around here, and that's Possumblog!! (Ron also told me that he went and saw a new Honda Pilot this morning, although the one he saw did not come equipped with the optional Breastfeeding Soccer Mom like the one I saw. Just keep looking, Ron--there are bound to be more out there.)
Is it just me, or does fifteen minutes seem a lot shorter than it used to be? (AP) MSNBC fired Phil Donahue on Tuesday, abruptly ending the veteran talk show host's return to television after six months of poor ratings.Well, you know, the number of lobotomized research primates has declined markedly in the past few years. [...] The show's failure is "a footnote" to Donahue's career, [television news consulting firm ADT Research head Andrew] Tyndall said. "His legacy is unharmed," he said. "He invented an entire genre of television."Yes, I believe that was the one that gave rise to the term "vast wasteland." Buh-bye, Phil.
Despite my earlier post...
I really do love the information on the Internet. You can find just about anything, such as a 1936 Walker Evans photograph of a Birmingham, Alabama shop window full of penny portraits, or this Marion Post Wolcott picture showing what a 1939 Birmingham steel mill and worker housing looked like. Both of these came from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, one of the few websites you could look at all day long and not think you're just wasting time.
You know...
As one of the most highly rated marsupial bloggers in the Metro Birmingham area, I am often called upon to answer questions both great and small. One intrepid reader happened upon Possumblog after asking that nice Jeeves fellow Describe what a blog is. Jeeves ever so politely sent our visitor to several sites, but obviously not finding an answer to his liking (even though Aussie Tim Cobber Mate was the first stop!), he came here. Well, now, let me begin by saying that I am by no means an expert on computational engines and their various paraphernalia, but this subject should lend itself well to my poor skills. First, the word "blog" itself is an abbreviated compound word, derived from the combination of "barouche," a four-wheeled cart with a folding top over the rear seat, "loach," a carplike freshwater fish, and "soubrette," a minor female part in a comedy, or any flirtatious girl in general. (Do note that they make "blob," not "blog." The "g" was inadvertently inverted by mistake, and was allowed to remain uncorrected.) These particular words were first sectioned then sewn together and used in 1965, as part of a top secret CIA experiment in distance viewing, wherein a team of 35 subjects were each locked into a room with a primitive keyboard device and urged to type recipes, random opinions of world affairs, movie reviews, humorous anecdotes, and pithy comments about the other test subjects. Over the course of many months, a pattern developed in which researchers noted that the three words never used by any of the test subjects were those above--barouch, loach, and soubrette--which analysts were able to conclude were coordinates of six different Russian missile sites along the Kamchatka Peninsula, as well as the possible plot of an Ingmar Bergman film. Records indicate that the test subjects were allowed to continue their work, and after a period of approximately 14 months, they all went mad and were institutionalized. The project was intended to remain locked within the intelligence community, but with the development of ARPANET, it was clear that the information security was compromised, or more shockingly, that the original test subjects had found a way to continue their previous activities. The network was continually inundated with texts of various ribald jokes, ASCII pictures of cats, accounts of trips to Woolworth's for batteries, and comments about Raquel Welch's breasts. Unable to control the seeping flood of inanity, various methods were attempted to keep the "blog" phenomenon from reaching the general population. Working node by node, agents were making progress with eliminating the more prolific practitioners of the science, but their efforts came to naught when in 1988, a then-senator from Tennesse named Albert Gore, Jr. began promoting the "Inter-Net" as a way of making an army of zombies. Thus throwing open the technological door, legions of users began clogging the electronic arteries of the country with yet more "bloggage," until a critical number was reached in 1998, and somebody said there were large amounts of money to be earned from zombies. Huge piles of "Dot Com" money was lavished upon tiny companies, who used it to develop ever more efficient software and purchase Aeron chairs. The boom continued, with ever greater numbers of the population signing on to various services, until one day, someone figured out that zombies aren't the best credit risk. All the companies went bankrupt, except those dealing in used office furniture, and one run by a young man named Ev, who managed to survive by gluing labels on shoe polish bottles. One day he was found on a curb by a kindly gentleman named Mr. Google, took him in and fed him, and saved him from a life on the streets. And that's what a blog is.
Does this mean that Cletus's political ambitions are now toast? Will the good citizens of Madison County elect a man to the County Commission who by his own admission, and by his own volition, took a test which proved him to be an Aaron Sorkin Big-L Liberal?
NO! Of course not--the folks that would vote for Cletus ain't got no use for that Internet foolishness.
Understatement
Well, you've probably already read stories about the shooting up in Huntsville this morning, but here is the latest: Standoff After Deadly Alabama Shooting [...] Police said the shooting occurred about 6:30 a.m. in the lobby of Labor Ready, where as many as 15 people were gathered waiting for work."Very unstable," eh? I would say so.
Why won't Blogger display my posts? Because it's all part of the new strategy of offering maximum consternation for the lowest possible price, that's why!! But how do they make any money on this? VOLUME, my friend!!
No sooner am I dumbstruck by the hilarity of a Nigerian e-mail scammer writing a letter to the Tooth Fairy, than I am further astonished to see that Mistress Ariaad has received YET ANOTHER letter, this one purporting to be from Mr. Ademola Williams, Bank Of The North, Lagos, Nigeria.
Things must be getting pretty difficult for these poor guys. Maybe they should just set up a PayPal account.
Nathan Lott Goes to Court...
And reads a very interesting book! Hamlin's Architecture Through the Ages, to be precise, in which Nathan notes that Hamlin's view of the growth of the Republic, and later Empire, of Rome is much less scathing than many of today's pseudosophisticates who think "Pax Americana" is an epithet. Hamlin notes that Rome's growth could not have come about without a high level of tolerance and acceptance of diversity among her citizens, coupled with a network of efficient commerce and a flair for organization. These qualities were made tangible in the built form of Roman architecture, which likewise showed a great flair for adaptation, innovation, functionality. The relative permanence of architecture, in contrast to the more transitory nature of other arts, was an impressive visible reminder of Rome's power throughout its realm, especially considering that the majority of all construction was done from public funds. Private property did exist, but generally the bases of power--markets, forums, temples, courts, coliseums, theaters, baths, aqueducts, roads, bridges, shipyards, docks--were built and maintained by the government. An architectural parallel of America's influence is much harder to find--obviously, the skyscraper is one of America's most visible innovations of form, but these are mainly constructed for profit by private groups, not as means to remind people of America's hegemony. The single family detached house, likewise, is a form more peculiar to America--which has long valued individualism, the sanctity of private property, and mobility for all its citizens, not simply a landed gentry. Again, however, as with the skyscraper, the 3BR 2BA Colonial w/ESIK, frml LR/DR, den w/FP, clg fans all rooms, is not really a very good symbol of a brutal American jackboot on the throat of the world. The closest thing to a formal architectural statement of power abroad would probably be our embassies, but even then, the federal government goes out of its way to insure that local architects and builders are employed in their construction, and the local building vernacular is respected. We don't plop down the White House in every country (although given some of our incredibly horrendous embassies, that might not be such a bad thing). If anything, our military bases are probably the closest thing to an architecture of power, but their form is intensely utilitarian. Although they can be seen as a symbol of power or greed or whatever (if you squint hard enough), they aren't meant to be a political statement in built form--they're just a place to take-off and land. The power of America's architecture, along with the rest of American culture, is not the result of our forcing it on everyone. Its power is that it is seen as useful and desireable by other people. There is not some bureacrat in Washington trying to make sure everyone in France speaks English, or that Britney Spears is in every record store in Madrid, or that every new building in Hong Kong is a glass box skyscraper. Free people create things, and free people are able to decide if they want to have those things. Maybe freedom, then, is the architecture of America. The world could do a lot worse. (Oh, and Nathan, Sophia's Deli has really good food--I always get the Howard Special--with slaw instead of potato salad.) Monday, February 24, 2003
As some of you know...
...I have a GeoCities site that I began a while ago B.B. (Before Blogger)--it has some stories about my dad's Navy service, and some links, and some silly stories similar to what I now pump out here. One of those stories is a recap of some letters my oldest daughter wrote to the Tooth Fairy a couple of years back. Little did she know that the Tooth Fairy has her own Yahoo e-mail acccount! Oldest wrote a flurry of letters back and forth to the Tooth Fairy (whose actual name is Ariaad Branwen Clyym de Arianrhod, by the way) and she was regaled with tales of Middle Earth and the exciting and profitable world of dental exchange. (It's not Multi-Level Marketing! It's not Illegal! And you can retire within 5 YEARS!!) Her excitement dimmed a bit when she told some kids at school about her experience, and I think she figured out from their reaction that something was amiss and after a couple more letters, she stopped. (Silly brats.) Anyway, I...I mean, Ariaad has kept the account open since then, and over the past year or two, the account has received a couple of messages--hard to tell if they were from actual kids or older folks being silly, but I...dang it, SHE answered them anyway. There was one letter from an older kid in Australia who acted a bit snotty, but the others have been generally benign. Until today. Because today, the e-mail account belonging to Mistress Ariaad Branwen Clyym de Arianrhod, Warrior of Caer Ibormeith, Gatekeeper of Dara, The Original Tooth Fairy, received the following: FROM:MRS.MARIAM ABACHACan there be anything sweeter than a Nigerian e-mail scammer sending something to THE TOOTH FAIRY!? Why yes, there can--a reply FROM the Tooth Fairy! Having pushed Mrs. Hanji Sal to the brink of sanity, it is now time to let loose the Wee Folk upon the Abacha family! Here is my reply: Dear Mrs. Abacha:Well, now, let's see what happens...
Well, hello there!
Come with me now as we hear the wondrous sounds of Happy Birthday; Rain; Sweet Home Alabama; Four Whiny Children; An Odd Clang; and Backfiring; otherwise known as My Weekend. Friday evening was blessedly free of having to haul anyone anywhere, so we got to stay home and do the normal week’s wrap-up of gathering up the laundry, and getting the kids ready for all their stuff Saturday, and the real big event, Little Girl birthday cake! Shoklit cake an shocklit icin, with blue flowahs, and six glitter sparkle candles AND a big candle with an electronic base having a flashing number 6 that we have had for years and always forgot about until when I changed the microwave several weeks back and had to clean out the cabinet. (I think this might have needed to be two or three sentences. Oh well) Anyway, we sang and Cat beamed with pride and blew out her candles and immediately started yanking them off, “I wanna lick the candles!!” An entire cake full of sugar and shortening, but PLEASE, some things are more important! We got through and it was off to bed for them and it was time for the parents to watch a movie. “I got this the other day—you want to watch it?” Sweet Home Alabama. The thought of plowing through YET ANOTHER chick flick, and this one with the added craptitude of Hollywood’s vision of my home, was almost too much to bear, even if it was on DVD. “Sure! Come on, and we’ll make some popcorn, too!” Remember fellows, if mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. So I sat there and watched it. Including the outtakes. And the alternate ending. What a dumb movie—can’t decide whether to Make A Statement or be A Lighthearted Spoof, and in the end fails to do either. If the whole movie had been as good as the scene where Reese cold-cocks Murphy Brown, it would have been okay. It does have one thing going for it, Rhona Mitra as one of the fashion model hangers-on/Friend of Reese. Wow. But, no matter—I got to spend an hour and a half snuggled up with Miss Reba listening to the rain. That manages to cover a multitude of crappy movies. Although the sound of the rain wasn’t quite as dreamy as it should have been. Seems our chimney leak has gotten more pronounced—I could hear drops hitting the top of the fireplace insert. Not good. Saturday was going to be investigation day. But, before the forensic fun, there was getting the kids to their final horseback riding lesson. Up early Saturday, got dressed, answered some e-mail, ate breakfast, and rounded the three older ones up to go. I was really, REALLY hoping they would get a break, and figured with all the rain the night before that they wouldn’t have to ride. I called the barn and some woman answered and said she thought the lessons were going to be cancelled because they were going to a horse show. Hmm. I don’t mind being put off due to weather, but Another Commitment sorta irked me. Anyway, off to the camp and found out that, at least according to the instructor, the wind was too strong and it kept blowing deadwood out of the trees in the woods up the hill and was spooking the horses. No riding. Obviously, I didn’t want the kids on the back of a spooky horse, but after having had the earlier conversation, I was a bit dubious about the real reason. Not that I said anything—I had other things to do anyway, and there was also the matter of the lunchtime Chinese dinner for Cat’s birthday, and seeing what I could find in the attic. Back home, kids out of their horse clothes and into something—ANYthing—else to wear. And I got me a hammer. As you recall, the homebuilder came out last week and pronounced that our water troubles were all the fault of missing caulk on the corner boards. Remember, homeowners, corner boards are meant to be trimwork, not part of the building envelope, and that absence of caulk should have no effect on the watertightness of the exterior. He was convinced, however, that since there was flashing at the roof and at the small bumped out sections of the chimney, that they had done all they were supposed to do. Some things he should have noted in his “thorough” inspection— 1) The trim had separated only on one corner of the chimney. All other caulking was intact. 2) The interior damage was not of a type which would typically occur if their was a leak at the corner. 3) The mere presence of flashing does not mean that it was installed properly, nor that it is watertight. 4) He didn’t do any sort of hose test to ascertain at what point the water might be infiltrating. SO, then, mystery fans, come with me up to the attic. Watch your step and don’t go through the ceiling, please! Okay—here is where the flue enclosure is attached to the gabled end of the roof—there is a waferboard panel over it to keep it separated from the attic space. Uuuumph-creeeak-thump. (That was me pulling a nail. Repeat five times) Okay, the board is loose, and I now swing it slowly over to the side and… (wow, sorta like opening Al Capone’s vault, ain’t it!) and HOLY LOAD OF …the entire side of sheathing on the outside wall of the enclosure is black as coal, from the TOP TO THE BOTTOM! It even has little shelflike bits of fungus growing out of it like a tree trunk. This is Not Good. At All. Okay, so we have ascertained that it is indeed leaking, so where is it coming from? I shone the flashlight up to where the black line stopped. There was a nice concentric white mold stain right around…a nail. A nail that had penetrated the flashing on the outside, which just happened to be the one little tiny bit of roof that sloped INTO the side of the chimney. Well, it’s pretty clear now what happened. That little bit of slope directed water against the side of the chimney. Which is not a great thing, but not the worst thing, which is that the flashing that was put there to catch the water has a nice hole in it. Allowing water to run around the nail and start soaking into the sheathing. From Day One. As the sheathing grew saturated, the water continued to drain down over the years, puddling up at the various metal flue spacers and spreading around, until if finally got to the bottom and met Mr. Fireplace and decided to come on in to the den and visit for a while. The sheathing, having soaked up so much water, began to expand, which is what caused the corner boards to separate and the caulk joints to open up on that one corner. BUT, as you know, solving the mystery and solving the problem are two different things. I can see this being a long and involved contest of urinary output. But I take comfort in the words of a former client who works for the Postal Service Facilities Division. Once, when advised by a contractor that surely he didn’t want to get involved in such a battle of wills, he rather loudly said—“I eat barbed wire, and I piss napalm—the FIRST thing I want every DAY I WAKE UP is a pissin’ match!!” Forewarned is forearmed, gentlemen. Then it was time for Catherine’s Big Chinese Lunch! (Talk about your segues!) I had told my mom to just come by our house at 12:30 and follow us over, since she is skittish of going anywhere unfamiliar with a deadline looming. So she showed up at our house at 12. While I was still dripping wet from my shower. ::sigh:: Can’t get my wife and kids to not be late, can’t get my mom to not be early. Somewhere in there is SURELY a happy medium I like to call “On Time.” Yeah, I know, who am I kidding. Anywho, got finished getting dressed and we were out the door. As always, Palace was very nice, and for once, not crowded. We got in and got a table with no problem. Of course, for some reason, Reba’s mom decided photographs were in order. And not just one. Or two. Or three. AAAAGGHHHHH!!! Make it stop!! Oh well, it goes well with her habit of commenting loudly about other people she sees or overhears. Bless her heart. Got all through and quite full, and then it was time to go to…WAL-MART. Catherine had gotten some money for her birthday, and the other kids wanted to shop, too, so we went exploring. Cat’s selection was some Betty Spaghetty dolls (OOO, I just LOVES Basgheddy Getty!!), and a Barbie Sing With Me Microphone, a deal that hooks to your belt and has a microphone and a headset and multiple sound effects. The operative word being SOUND. Why is it I keep getting things that make noise? (Although, being the devious parents we are, Reba and I managed to show the children the horrors of such an instrument by singing Paul Anka’s Breaking Up Is Hard To Do with the echo effect on. Actually, we sound really good together, even on a cheap toy microphone, but it drives the kids absolutely BONKERS anytime we sing together. Heh.) Other selections included Spirit, the Mustang of the Old American West Which Is Also An Animated Movie, And His Family—With Loving Wife Horse Rain, and Baby Horse Which Has No Name, (But Does Go On To Be Immortalized In Song.) “OOOOOhhh, I just LOVES Spiwit!!” Actually, any toy horse is fair game to her. She could have them all, and would only want to get more. Got all through, after about 12 or 15 hours or so (might have been longer—I believe I lost consciousness in there sometime), and then it was home and time for scrubbing the kids and fakepooing their easily tangled hair. Thank goodness I have one little boy whose head can be washed and dried in five minutes. I was beat once they got into bed, and Sunday was going to be another killer. We had church, and then a nice banquet afterwards that for once I didn’t have to clean up after (the congregation was honoring the elders and deacons, so they gave us a break. This time.) After that, Cat had HER final horsey lesson, and Rebecca was simultaneously supposed to be at a soccer practice, and then not long after that, we were all supposed to be back at church for them to take a Bible Bowl quiz. Whew. And if the soccer fields were closed, we were supposed to practice some other place. And the team mom would leave a message to tell us where. That didn’t quite happen. No messages when we got home. We got Tiny Terror and Middle Girl changed (and this time I changed, too—no wandering around a soccer field in church clothes!) and Reba decided to take Catherine, and I got the other three and headed for the park. Black flag flying, which meant the field was closed, but even if it was closed we were supposed to meet there. But there was no one there. We waited, and then I announced we were going to Clay (the supposed alternative site) and see if they were there. Clay is just a bit northeast of Trussville—just up the road a bit, so off we went. Got to the field, annnnd. No one. Not a soul. Drove back by the fields at the elementary school. Annnnd, no one. Well CRAP! “Let’s go back home, kids!” Like they could disagree. Back down Deerfoot Parkway—beautiful blue sky, redbuds starting to bloom, wonder where everybody was, wonder if Reba is back at the house, at least I’ll have time to change clothes, the kids won’t be late for their Bible Bow...GRRRRRRRRTHUMP-UMP-UMP-UMP-BDDRDRDRDRDRDR—CLANGCLANG-CLANG-THWOMP-rumblerumblerumblePOP! “WHAT WAS THAT DADDY!?!” That was me, crying as another gaping hole appears in our bank account. I glanced up in the rear view mirror and saw something metal and serious-looking bounding down the road behind us after having been dropped out from under the hood. I didn’t have power steering left, but at least the engine was still going. “We seem to have lost a very important part of the engine, kids.” “WHAT PART, DADDY!?!” I pulled off, “Lemme go see.” I parked and walked back up the road. Well, there she was. Idler pulley. Same thing that had sheared off on the Olds, and now it appears it was time for it to come off the van, too. I stooped down and grabbed it and looked at the mounting stud. Clean break. ::sigh:: Back to the van, lifted the hood, and thankfully, nothing else looked bent or broken, but there was no sign of the serpentine belt anywhere. This connects the power steering pump and the water pump and the alternator, all of which are necessary things to have. I closed it back up and started trying to figure out how to get Reba to come get me. She had the phone, but I knew it wasn’t on. I decided to find someplace and call home and wait for her to come get us. I thought if I could make it up to the vet clinic ahead I would at least have a better place to pull off and wait. I gingerly cranked it back up, half expecting to hear it explode. It didn’t. Hmm. I put it in gear, half expecting to hear it explode. It didn’t. HMm. I started off, and aside from having manual steering fighting against the front wheel drive and a pair of big Goodyear gumballs, it seemed like it was driveable. Poor little kids were now in the clutches of It’s Never To Broke To Drive To A Garage Daddy Man. My goal—Gray Automotive. Distance—Five miles or so. Onward. Except for an occasional transmission hiccup (I figure caused by the fluctuating battery current, since I had lost alternator power) and a temp gauge that got a bit too high for comfort, I actually got to Highway 11. Even if I got no further, this alone was pretty impressive. Not satisfied, though, so I turned right and figured I would go till it quit. Got to the traffic lights in Trussville, and who pulled up beside us and blew the horn? “HEY!! It’s MOMMY!” They were coming back from Camp Coleman and had managed to cross our paths at just the right moment. I rolled the window down and told her to follow us, and we got all the way to Gray’s. Success. Of a sort. Benny was even in the shop, although it wasn’t open, but he wrote up my ticket anyway and I left him the key. Back home, changed clothes, and we all piled in the car and made it back to church with ten minutes to spare. (Forget that part I wrote earlier about being “on time.”) So, they did their thing, and I read the paper, and we got back home, and we put them to bed, and I went through and put the snacks in the backpacks and signed the notebooks, and this morning thanked the Lord that I have Franklin the F-100 to fall back on as alternative transportation. Although Ashley was embarrassed to be seen in it as we pulled up at the middle school. Lucky for her it hadn’t started backfiring yet. And that’s it. Two fun-filled, action-packed days in suburbia. And how was your weekend?
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