Ain't irony funny?
Take the Mount Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, Texas - who's motto is "Digging up facts of God's Creation, one fossil at a time..."
Yeah, it's another Creation "museum." Not as slick or glossary as the far more infamous one in Kentucky, this once looks more like your standard Texas tourist trap, full of rubber tomahawks and overpriced kid-sized faux ten-gallon hats.
The webpage describes the place as "a science museum, showing facts and data about the actual fossils in the museum." And then goes on to say, "We believe that evolution is an old-fashioned theory not substantiated by facts, and that what the Bible says is more scientifically accurate" [emphasis mine].
Nothing particularly new going on at Mt Blanco, it's your basic brand of batshit crazy, booger eating Young Earth Creationism, complete with dinosaur skeletons and the same goofy rationalizations and deluded nonsense that has sprung up elsewhere. Creationist doctrine sounds like something a child would make up - or a mental patient. They've even got a bible waving, bearded nutjob, named Joe Taylor who fancies himself as some kind of scientist. You can call ahead and arrange to have Scientist Joe give a lecture to your church or homeschooler group, where he'll answer your questions about how the Earth is only six thousand years old, how man and dinosaurs lived shoulder to shoulder, and how old Noah even managed to squeeze a few of those big scaly beasts onto the Ark, two by two as they say. And for extra credit, go read James Taylor's (Joe's nephew and biomedical 'researcher,' no relation to the singer so far as I can tell) description of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which you can find under the 'Staff' section.
The crux of this crap is, of course, a rigid interpretation of the bible (I was going to say a literal explanation of biblical events, but that's not correct at all - if it were a literal interpretation, well, they wouldn't be adding dinosaurs to the Deluge mythology now would they?) By rigid interpretation, what I mean is that in an attempt to resolve the discrepancies that modern science is raising in ancient belief systems, the Creationists have developed a strict doctrinal world view and then gone looking in both the bible and in science for 'evidence' to support it. They have no more regard or understanding of traditional Christianity, than they do for science - and they'll bend both to fit their pre-defined paradigm. Their utter disregard for validated scientific dating methodologies such as carbon dating and the relatively recent inclusion of dinosaurs into the creationist fabric are both examples of this. It's a form of deliberate mass delusion, and the problem here, of course, is that it is not possible to resolve the discrepancies that saturate this kind of 'science.'
If you have real faith, then it's not necessary to whore-up your beliefs with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo in order to rationalize away the discrepancies. In fact, doing so shows just how threatened you are by science in the first place, and just how little faith you actually have. If you have true faith, then you let it stand on it's own. But, if you have some major doubts, then it's important that you yell good and loud and do everything you can to distract from those discrepancies, so you don't feel stupid for believing what you yourself think is fairly goofy.
If you're doing real science, you welcome those discrepancies, because resolving disparities between information points is what leads to real advances and improved understanding of how the world actually works. That process continually forces you to update and adjust your worldview as more and more information becomes available, which is why we have things like antibiotics, airplanes, and big-screen HD plasma TV.
But if you're engaged in pseudo-science rationalization of your goofy belief system, like oh say Young Earth Creationists, then those discrepancies are a trap. You can't change your beliefs, because that would mean that you were wrong to begin with, which means you might be wrong now, which means it's only a matter of time before people realize they're being hoodwinked and stop dropping money into the donation plate. (Blimey! 'E's just making it up as 'e goes along!) So you're stuck, hoist on your own petard, and forced into a position where your only option is to pretend the discrepancies don't exist. For example, claim the whole world was flooded to a height above the highest mountain and every animal today is the direct descendant of one to three breeding pairs and eight Iron-age humans who rode out the end of the world in a wooden ship the size of an aircraft carrier that they themselves built in their backyard using common household appliances - and you start to have some serious problems. Not one single branch of mainstream science supports the creationist deluge statement, not one. Everything we know about the world must be wrong. Everything. And that's demonstratively just not the case, for example if the science behind carbon dating is wrong and the Earth really is no more than six thousand years old - then pretty much all of nuclear science is wrong, which means the computer chips you're reading this on right now don't actually work and you're not actually reading this. And that's only one discrepancy, there are literal millions more in every branch of science. See, that's the problem with real science, unlike religion you don't get to pick and chose what you believe in. The devil can only steal your soul if you believe in him, but gravity will kill you whether you believe in it or not. Which brings us back to the creationists, sooner or later you're bound to get trapped in your own bullshit.
Here's the thing - old Joe Taylor and his museum are up to their eyeballs in debt. And they're going to go out of business if they don't come up with some real money, real soon. So, they've decided to auction off the pride of their bone collection, a restored mastodon skull, in order to raise some much needed cash.
They're hoping to get $160,000 or more for it.
And in order to get the full $160,000 dollars at auction, they are listing the skull as at least 40,000 years old. Ah, caught the problem, did you? Yeah, in those lectures Scientist Joe Taylor likes to give, the world itself is only 6,000 years old. But, here's the problem: nobody will pay top dollar for a pachyderm skull that is merely 6000 years old, even if Adam himself was feeding it peanuts in the Garden.
Is it just me, or is there about 34,000 years of discrepancy there?
Funny, isn't it, when threatened with bankruptcy Joe and his band of fervent believers suddenly dumped their convictions? And if they get the money, they'll go right back to them without ever once smelling the stench of hypocrisy? Then again, it occurs to me that maybe they're just saying they think it's 40,000 years old in order to fleece us gullible non-believers. After all, most of us want to believe that the skull is 40,000 years old, they're just telling us what we want to hear. Funny, though, how they turned to real science, including carbon dating, in order to determine the best price for the fossil, isn't it?
Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall when one of those homeshooled fundie kids asks that question during the next lecture:
"Excuse me, Scientist Joe, but how come you said the mastodon skull was 40,000 years old at that auction? But you just told us that the world is only 6,000 years old? Where were the mastodons before the Earth was created? Floating in space? What did they eat? Where did they go to the bathroom? I don't get it." (we're assuming a fundie kid would actually break programming long enough to have a stray thought of his own here).
"Well, that's a good questions, Tommy, and you'll have lot's of time to think about it while you burn in hell for all eternity!"
Oh well, either way, as long as you're bullshitting for Jesus, I guess it's OK.
If there really is a God, he's obviously got one hell of a sense of ironic humor.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Gone for a while (updated)
I've got to run into the VA in Anchorage this morning.
The VA needs yet another copy of my medical records, which I forgot to make last night and so am now fighting with the copier to get done in time. Also I've got to take a class at the port, harbor security or some such, so I can get a sticker on my driver's license. My wife works there, and it's a requirement for me so that I can visit her at work. The funny thing is that I probably know more about harbor security and marine force protection than the TSA instructor. I spent a considerable chunk of my life doing it. But every port has different requirements, and I'm now officially a civilian, which means I know exactly jackshit. So, yeah, class.
Anyway, I'm gone for most of my morning and early afternoon.
-------------------
Update: OK I'm back.
Anybody want to take a guess as to why the VA could not find my military medical records at the Naval Medical Archives in New Orleans?
Did you guess Hurricane Katrina damage? Well, you're wrong.
The originals were still sitting in a box at the 3rd Medical Wing Records Office, on Elmendorf AFB in Alaska - because the people that run the place are a bunch of retards.
My last posting was as Executive Officer of the Navy IO Detachment here in Alaska. We were located on a couple of acres in the back of the base. We didn't answer to anybody on Elemendorf, our boss was somewhere else, rather we just leased some land from the AF. Want to talk bastard stepchildren? Yeah, nothing worse than being Navy on an Air Force installation.
The Air Force was spawned from the Army Air Corps way back in the late 40's and they are the youngest of the services. As such they've always had somewhat of an inferiority complex around the other services which translates into what could charitably be described as a piss poor attitude when it comes to having to take of anybody not wearing AF Blue. The AF provided support for us, if you want to call it that - often that support consisted primarily of studied indifference, except when it came to the base police, they provided tailored personal service - mostly by targeting my personnel with their radar guns and issuing as many traffic citations as possible.
Anyway, long story short. Instead of forwarding my voluminous medical record to it's proper final location in New Orleans, they kindly threw it into a box and stashed it behind a desk in their records department. Which has held up my VA compensation and pension processing for the last four months while everybody in New Orleans has rooted around trying to find it.
I stomped in there today, and demanded that they either find it or produce a record of it having been shipped. They found it. Oops.
Fucktard idiots. Thanks for the support boys. Stellar job, really.
The VA needs yet another copy of my medical records, which I forgot to make last night and so am now fighting with the copier to get done in time. Also I've got to take a class at the port, harbor security or some such, so I can get a sticker on my driver's license. My wife works there, and it's a requirement for me so that I can visit her at work. The funny thing is that I probably know more about harbor security and marine force protection than the TSA instructor. I spent a considerable chunk of my life doing it. But every port has different requirements, and I'm now officially a civilian, which means I know exactly jackshit. So, yeah, class.
Anyway, I'm gone for most of my morning and early afternoon.
-------------------
Update: OK I'm back.
Anybody want to take a guess as to why the VA could not find my military medical records at the Naval Medical Archives in New Orleans?
Did you guess Hurricane Katrina damage? Well, you're wrong.
The originals were still sitting in a box at the 3rd Medical Wing Records Office, on Elmendorf AFB in Alaska - because the people that run the place are a bunch of retards.
My last posting was as Executive Officer of the Navy IO Detachment here in Alaska. We were located on a couple of acres in the back of the base. We didn't answer to anybody on Elemendorf, our boss was somewhere else, rather we just leased some land from the AF. Want to talk bastard stepchildren? Yeah, nothing worse than being Navy on an Air Force installation.
The Air Force was spawned from the Army Air Corps way back in the late 40's and they are the youngest of the services. As such they've always had somewhat of an inferiority complex around the other services which translates into what could charitably be described as a piss poor attitude when it comes to having to take of anybody not wearing AF Blue. The AF provided support for us, if you want to call it that - often that support consisted primarily of studied indifference, except when it came to the base police, they provided tailored personal service - mostly by targeting my personnel with their radar guns and issuing as many traffic citations as possible.
Anyway, long story short. Instead of forwarding my voluminous medical record to it's proper final location in New Orleans, they kindly threw it into a box and stashed it behind a desk in their records department. Which has held up my VA compensation and pension processing for the last four months while everybody in New Orleans has rooted around trying to find it.
I stomped in there today, and demanded that they either find it or produce a record of it having been shipped. They found it. Oops.
Fucktard idiots. Thanks for the support boys. Stellar job, really.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Jerkoff of the week (no not that kind of jerkoff, sorry)
You know, every time I think I've seen it all, all the self denying, hate-mongering, ignorant, conservative stupidity that it's possible to see, just when I think outspoken conservatives have sunk as low as it's possible to go - they manage to open their jowly months and the most unbelievable crap just falls out.
Don't get me wrong, Liberals say stupid stuff too, but seriously can anybody top the just plain vitriolic, stupid-ass, hate-filled, demonstratively wrong, utter bullshit that conservative pundits spew like a broken New York sewer pipe?
Take the king of 'traditional' Conservative assholes, Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor, and mouth piece for inbred, public-restroom cruising, bible waving, red-staters everywhere. According to the leading liberal font of blathering sheeplike hand-wringing, Daily Kos, in the process of bashing John Edwards, O'Reily claimed that there were no homeless veterans living on the streets of America.
Huh? Nobody is that stupid, says I to myself. Kos is full of crap, but I watched the video. This one:
And that did little to change my initial assessment. I don't like O'Reilly, loath would probably come closer to describing what I think of him, but according to the video he didn't actually say there were no homeless vets sleeping under bridges in America - what he actually said was that "the only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's [Edwards] brain... ." He was insulting Edwards, not denying the existence of homeless veterans. The guy is still a complete tool, a rabble rousing jerkoff who plays to the lowest common denominator and his own ego (which may be redundant), but he's not guilty of the accusation in this case.
Or so I thought, at first.
Which brings us to this video:
And, there it is. Kos had it right after all.
"If you know where there's a veteran sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately," says O'Reilly with smug, squinty-eyed, superiority. "They may be out there, but there's not many of them," he opines.
Bill? Fuck you. Seriously, put a sock in it, you rich, well-fed asshole. Reliable data shows there are nearly 200 thousand homeless vets out there, and I know where to find a whole bunch of them. Next time I go down to the VA, you're welcome to tag along - no cameras, no grandstanding, just you, you pompous ill-informed windbag. Just you. I'll introduce you around the waiting room, and you can explain to those guys how they're not actually, you know, homeless. After that, let's visit a couple of places I know in Southern California - and yes, some of them are under bridges. In fact, with a little effort, you could have your limo driver cruise past a few places in your hometown of New York, of course you'll have to look up from counting your piles of money, and the prime rib you're wolfing down off a call-girl's stomach and actually look out the fucking window.
If this idiot can't get his facts correct when he's talking about something so easily verified - and even when he has had his nose rubbed in it, he continues to claim that he's correct despite all evidence to the contrary - then it's a pretty good bet that the rest of his opinions are complete and total crap too. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
So here's the part I don't get: Why, why, why would anybody give this guy the time of day? Seriously, think about it, the only thing dumber than Bill O'Reilly, is someone who watches The O'Reilly Factor and believes what he's seeing.
Don't get me wrong, Liberals say stupid stuff too, but seriously can anybody top the just plain vitriolic, stupid-ass, hate-filled, demonstratively wrong, utter bullshit that conservative pundits spew like a broken New York sewer pipe?
Take the king of 'traditional' Conservative assholes, Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor, and mouth piece for inbred, public-restroom cruising, bible waving, red-staters everywhere. According to the leading liberal font of blathering sheeplike hand-wringing, Daily Kos, in the process of bashing John Edwards, O'Reily claimed that there were no homeless veterans living on the streets of America.
Huh? Nobody is that stupid, says I to myself. Kos is full of crap, but I watched the video. This one:
And that did little to change my initial assessment. I don't like O'Reilly, loath would probably come closer to describing what I think of him, but according to the video he didn't actually say there were no homeless vets sleeping under bridges in America - what he actually said was that "the only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's [Edwards] brain... ." He was insulting Edwards, not denying the existence of homeless veterans. The guy is still a complete tool, a rabble rousing jerkoff who plays to the lowest common denominator and his own ego (which may be redundant), but he's not guilty of the accusation in this case.
Or so I thought, at first.
Which brings us to this video:
And, there it is. Kos had it right after all.
"If you know where there's a veteran sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately," says O'Reilly with smug, squinty-eyed, superiority. "They may be out there, but there's not many of them," he opines.
Bill? Fuck you. Seriously, put a sock in it, you rich, well-fed asshole. Reliable data shows there are nearly 200 thousand homeless vets out there, and I know where to find a whole bunch of them. Next time I go down to the VA, you're welcome to tag along - no cameras, no grandstanding, just you, you pompous ill-informed windbag. Just you. I'll introduce you around the waiting room, and you can explain to those guys how they're not actually, you know, homeless. After that, let's visit a couple of places I know in Southern California - and yes, some of them are under bridges. In fact, with a little effort, you could have your limo driver cruise past a few places in your hometown of New York, of course you'll have to look up from counting your piles of money, and the prime rib you're wolfing down off a call-girl's stomach and actually look out the fucking window.
If this idiot can't get his facts correct when he's talking about something so easily verified - and even when he has had his nose rubbed in it, he continues to claim that he's correct despite all evidence to the contrary - then it's a pretty good bet that the rest of his opinions are complete and total crap too. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
So here's the part I don't get: Why, why, why would anybody give this guy the time of day? Seriously, think about it, the only thing dumber than Bill O'Reilly, is someone who watches The O'Reilly Factor and believes what he's seeing.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Milestones
Stonekettle Station achieved a milestone yesterday - 523 unique visitors, 12001 pageloads (in a 24-hour period). Which continues a steady upward trend.
Holy Crap.
If I'm to be honest though - 3 of those unique visitors were for (wait for it) Laura San Giacomo, nude - all from different locations, including one in Norway. And an even dozen were searches containing the word 'jerkoff' since I often use that term in the 'Jerkoff of the Week' posts (which, in hindsight was probably a poor choice of naming conventions, since people searching for gay porn don't seem all that interested in my site. Go figure. Strangely, I noticed that a significant number of folks that search for gay porn containing this phrase are from both the US Midwest and the Middle East, about half and half. Ohh, common ground between Fundie Christians and Muslims? I dunno).
However, 83% of the non-regular visitors stuck around for a minimum of 20+ minutes and read multiple pages, so apparently people are interested. Cool
The two biggest searches that seem to draw people in and keep them around for a while are searches involving woodwork (lathe work specifically, my bowl pictures are getting a rather large amount of unique views) and searches that hit on the post I made regarding the viral email containing a picture of John Wayne and the phrase "Now just why in HELL do I have to press '1' for English?" In fact, if you enter 'John Wayne' and 'Now just why in the hell do I have to press 1 for English' into google, Stonekettle Station is the number 5 out 80K results! Yeah, I find this fairly cool. Because every jackass neocon that goes looking for that topic finds me, and gets slapped up side the head with his bigoted bullshit.
So, thanks.
-------------------
I've got to run some errands this morning, and I have to go to the mill in Wasilla. Back in a bit.
Holy Crap.
If I'm to be honest though - 3 of those unique visitors were for (wait for it) Laura San Giacomo, nude - all from different locations, including one in Norway. And an even dozen were searches containing the word 'jerkoff' since I often use that term in the 'Jerkoff of the Week' posts (which, in hindsight was probably a poor choice of naming conventions, since people searching for gay porn don't seem all that interested in my site. Go figure. Strangely, I noticed that a significant number of folks that search for gay porn containing this phrase are from both the US Midwest and the Middle East, about half and half. Ohh, common ground between Fundie Christians and Muslims? I dunno).
However, 83% of the non-regular visitors stuck around for a minimum of 20+ minutes and read multiple pages, so apparently people are interested. Cool
The two biggest searches that seem to draw people in and keep them around for a while are searches involving woodwork (lathe work specifically, my bowl pictures are getting a rather large amount of unique views) and searches that hit on the post I made regarding the viral email containing a picture of John Wayne and the phrase "Now just why in HELL do I have to press '1' for English?" In fact, if you enter 'John Wayne' and 'Now just why in the hell do I have to press 1 for English' into google, Stonekettle Station is the number 5 out 80K results! Yeah, I find this fairly cool. Because every jackass neocon that goes looking for that topic finds me, and gets slapped up side the head with his bigoted bullshit.
So, thanks.
-------------------
I've got to run some errands this morning, and I have to go to the mill in Wasilla. Back in a bit.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Yeah, I'm an idiot
Actual transcript of a conversation that occurred between my son and I:
Son: Can I make myself a cup of hot chocolate?
Me: Yes.
(minutes pass - noises come from the kitchen followed by sighing)
Me (entering the kitchen): What's wrong?
Son: Well, there's no clean cups. The kind of cups I like for my chocolate, I mean.
(he likes to use the plastic Campbell Soup cups)
Me (opening the cupboard): What are you talking about? There's two of them right there.
Son: Those are dirty.
Me: What?
Son: They're dirty. They've got crud in them. The dishwasher didn't get them clean.
Me: (picking up a cup, looking inside - is indeed dirty) Um, why is it still on the shelf?
Son: Because it's dirty.
Me: Yes, I understand. Why didn't you take them out of the cupboard?
Son: I'm not making chocolate in a dirty cup! (gives me a look that says clearly how disappointed he is to have an idiot for a father)
Me: Did you think that they would get magically clean in the cupboard?
Son: Nevermind. Now I don't want any. (He saunders off, leaving me with a vague feeling that I am somehow in the wrong.)
This conversation continues a long downward spiral for me. Apparently I've been getting dumber and dumber as the years go by. It all began when my son was four, prior to that I was fairly intelligent. I remember the exact day I began to get stupid, it went something like this:
Son: (coming home from pre-school, he has a large piece of tagboard covered in green and black blobs of tempera paint. He comes into my office and holds up the paper) Look at what I did in school today!
Me: Wow! That's great.
Son: Do you know what it is?
Me: (Caught completely unprepared for this parental Rorschach test) Well...
Son: (tapping foot impatiently. I take the paper in order to buy more time and study it more closely. No matter how I stare it, it just looks like a bunch of blobs)
Me: (he likes dinosaurs, if I squint my eyes it looks sort of like something from the Jurassic) Um, is it a Tyrannosaur maybe? That big black blob looks like a Tyrannosaur eating that green blob which looks like a .... uh, no?
Son: (puts hands on hips, adopts a disappointed look) Nooooo, it's just a bunch of blobs! I'm only four, I don't know how to paint! Duh! (and he walked off, leaving me feeling like a idiot)
See, I didn't start thinking my dad was an idiot until I was in my teens. My son is obviously way ahead of me, developmental wise. My wife is pretty sure this is a sign that he's gifted. Of course, she thinks I'm an idiot too, so her opinion is suspect.
If you need me, I'll be in the shop - probably doing something stupid.
Son: Can I make myself a cup of hot chocolate?
Me: Yes.
(minutes pass - noises come from the kitchen followed by sighing)
Me (entering the kitchen): What's wrong?
Son: Well, there's no clean cups. The kind of cups I like for my chocolate, I mean.
(he likes to use the plastic Campbell Soup cups)
Me (opening the cupboard): What are you talking about? There's two of them right there.
Son: Those are dirty.
Me: What?
Son: They're dirty. They've got crud in them. The dishwasher didn't get them clean.
Me: (picking up a cup, looking inside - is indeed dirty) Um, why is it still on the shelf?
Son: Because it's dirty.
Me: Yes, I understand. Why didn't you take them out of the cupboard?
Son: I'm not making chocolate in a dirty cup! (gives me a look that says clearly how disappointed he is to have an idiot for a father)
Me: Did you think that they would get magically clean in the cupboard?
Son: Nevermind. Now I don't want any. (He saunders off, leaving me with a vague feeling that I am somehow in the wrong.)
This conversation continues a long downward spiral for me. Apparently I've been getting dumber and dumber as the years go by. It all began when my son was four, prior to that I was fairly intelligent. I remember the exact day I began to get stupid, it went something like this:
Son: (coming home from pre-school, he has a large piece of tagboard covered in green and black blobs of tempera paint. He comes into my office and holds up the paper) Look at what I did in school today!
Me: Wow! That's great.
Son: Do you know what it is?
Me: (Caught completely unprepared for this parental Rorschach test) Well...
Son: (tapping foot impatiently. I take the paper in order to buy more time and study it more closely. No matter how I stare it, it just looks like a bunch of blobs)
Me: (he likes dinosaurs, if I squint my eyes it looks sort of like something from the Jurassic) Um, is it a Tyrannosaur maybe? That big black blob looks like a Tyrannosaur eating that green blob which looks like a .... uh, no?
Son: (puts hands on hips, adopts a disappointed look) Nooooo, it's just a bunch of blobs! I'm only four, I don't know how to paint! Duh! (and he walked off, leaving me feeling like a idiot)
See, I didn't start thinking my dad was an idiot until I was in my teens. My son is obviously way ahead of me, developmental wise. My wife is pretty sure this is a sign that he's gifted. Of course, she thinks I'm an idiot too, so her opinion is suspect.
If you need me, I'll be in the shop - probably doing something stupid.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Farewell, Whateveresque
You know, this thread epitomizes why I've pretty much lost interest in Scalzi's Whateveresque.
Normally this is the type of conversation and subject matter I'd be intensely interested in - but this is also the type of conversation that seems to attract self-absorbed asshats the way flies are attracted to the shit buffet. This conversation started out interesting - and then almost immediately attracted the attention of two resident dickheads who expend a tremendous amount of time bashing each other and engaging in ad hominem attacks. And when they do talk about the subject at hand, they engage in pompous pseudo-intellectual pronouncements - the kind people make when they're either trying to start a fight, or when they are more interested in showing how big their reproductive organs are, instead of actually having a conversation. Both of these pompous jerks consistently show a complete lack of respect for any opinion other than their own. It's like being trapped on a bus with a bunch of teenagers.
I despise such nonsense. I've got enough assholes in my life, I don't have to to go looking for them. And I'm tired of having to tell these two idiots to shut up so the adults can talk. Their grandstanding bullshit constantly drives away those that I'd really like to talk to. The forum host doesn't seem inclined to do much about it, and that's his choice of course. But frankly the whole thing just turns me off.
Bill Cosby used to tell this joke: "So I asked this guy, why do you do cocaine? And he said, because it intensifies my personality. Intensifies your personality? Yeah, but what if you're an asshole?"
That's how I often see online conversations. Like cocaine. It strips away the thin veneer of civilization and exposes what's underneath. If you're a relatively decent person, you're still a relatively decent person online. But, if underneath it all, you're an asshole - well then that becomes exceedingly clear online. If, in person, you're the kind of guy who craves the approval of others yet states loudly 'I don't care what other people think of me' or better yet, 'I didn't come here to be liked' then online you're going to be an insufferable asshole who has a pathological need to be right all of the time. If, in person, you're the kind of boorish oaf who always has to be the center of attention, then online you're going to be that irritating jerk who always has to have the last word, always. And just like cocaine, if you're addicted to it - then you've become a liability to those around you. People start crossing the street to avoid your loud, boorish, coked-up assholiness.
And sadly, that's how it is for me and the Whateveresque. The esque is like a club that's been around for too long - it used to be fun, and interesting, and cool things happened there. Then the assholes showed up and started snorting coke in the bathroom and fighting on the dance floor.
It was fun while it lasted and I may look in occasionally, but I'm not sticking around anymore.
Normally this is the type of conversation and subject matter I'd be intensely interested in - but this is also the type of conversation that seems to attract self-absorbed asshats the way flies are attracted to the shit buffet. This conversation started out interesting - and then almost immediately attracted the attention of two resident dickheads who expend a tremendous amount of time bashing each other and engaging in ad hominem attacks. And when they do talk about the subject at hand, they engage in pompous pseudo-intellectual pronouncements - the kind people make when they're either trying to start a fight, or when they are more interested in showing how big their reproductive organs are, instead of actually having a conversation. Both of these pompous jerks consistently show a complete lack of respect for any opinion other than their own. It's like being trapped on a bus with a bunch of teenagers.
I despise such nonsense. I've got enough assholes in my life, I don't have to to go looking for them. And I'm tired of having to tell these two idiots to shut up so the adults can talk. Their grandstanding bullshit constantly drives away those that I'd really like to talk to. The forum host doesn't seem inclined to do much about it, and that's his choice of course. But frankly the whole thing just turns me off.
Bill Cosby used to tell this joke: "So I asked this guy, why do you do cocaine? And he said, because it intensifies my personality. Intensifies your personality? Yeah, but what if you're an asshole?"
That's how I often see online conversations. Like cocaine. It strips away the thin veneer of civilization and exposes what's underneath. If you're a relatively decent person, you're still a relatively decent person online. But, if underneath it all, you're an asshole - well then that becomes exceedingly clear online. If, in person, you're the kind of guy who craves the approval of others yet states loudly 'I don't care what other people think of me' or better yet, 'I didn't come here to be liked' then online you're going to be an insufferable asshole who has a pathological need to be right all of the time. If, in person, you're the kind of boorish oaf who always has to be the center of attention, then online you're going to be that irritating jerk who always has to have the last word, always. And just like cocaine, if you're addicted to it - then you've become a liability to those around you. People start crossing the street to avoid your loud, boorish, coked-up assholiness.
And sadly, that's how it is for me and the Whateveresque. The esque is like a club that's been around for too long - it used to be fun, and interesting, and cool things happened there. Then the assholes showed up and started snorting coke in the bathroom and fighting on the dance floor.
It was fun while it lasted and I may look in occasionally, but I'm not sticking around anymore.
In Service Day
What the hell is an "In-Service" day?
I swear, didn't every kid in America just have two weeks off from school? And today, in the the Matsu Valley, they're off again because of a teacher's in-service day. And then they're off next Monday for Martin Luther King day. Was there going to be some school this month, or what?
I can't work when the kid is home, I just can't. And it seems lately that he's been off more than he's been at school. I mean seriously, an in-service day? What the hell is that anyway? This is getting worse than Spain, where every kid is off at least four times a month for some Saint's birthday, or the US Air Force where everything just shuts down inexplicably two or three times a month for 'An Air Force Down Day.'
Supposedly an in-service day is so the teachers can get organized, review curriculum, and generally use the time to improve education. Bah. They've got all summer to do that stuff, they just had Christmas break - and now they need yet another day. At least I'm home, but what about all those folks who work and either have to take the day off or find child care? How much is this costing all of us in lost wages and babysitters?
Look, I like teachers, I always vote for improved salary and benefits, I think it's a tough job. But damn, seriously, how about a couple of full weeks in the school year. Is that too much to ask?
I swear, didn't every kid in America just have two weeks off from school? And today, in the the Matsu Valley, they're off again because of a teacher's in-service day. And then they're off next Monday for Martin Luther King day. Was there going to be some school this month, or what?
I can't work when the kid is home, I just can't. And it seems lately that he's been off more than he's been at school. I mean seriously, an in-service day? What the hell is that anyway? This is getting worse than Spain, where every kid is off at least four times a month for some Saint's birthday, or the US Air Force where everything just shuts down inexplicably two or three times a month for 'An Air Force Down Day.'
Supposedly an in-service day is so the teachers can get organized, review curriculum, and generally use the time to improve education. Bah. They've got all summer to do that stuff, they just had Christmas break - and now they need yet another day. At least I'm home, but what about all those folks who work and either have to take the day off or find child care? How much is this costing all of us in lost wages and babysitters?
Look, I like teachers, I always vote for improved salary and benefits, I think it's a tough job. But damn, seriously, how about a couple of full weeks in the school year. Is that too much to ask?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Mike McConnell: Jerkoff of the week
U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said in a magazine interview that waterboarding would be torture if it was used against him personally, but stopped short of condemning the controversial interrogation technique.
"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful!" McConnell said in the article. "Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."
What an asshole. What a complete and total hypocrite.
When I trained as part of combat teams I was qualified to carry CA (Pepper) Spray. In order to qualify to use this non-leathal weapon, I was required to get sprayed in the face with it. It hurt, a lot. In fact, I've had to periodically re-qualify three times. It never got any better. It hurt every time. A lot. I don't want to do it again. Here's an idea, in order to wield waterboarding as an interrogation technique, every senior official, from the President on down to the interrogators themselves should have to go through exactly the same thing - no stripped down, easier 'training' process. The whole deal, exactly the way it's administered at Gitmo by the CIA. Just like a face full of mace.
Personally, after reading the interview, I'd love nothing better than to see Mike McConnell strapped to a table and have Lake Erie shoved up his nose.
Attention Presidential Candidates: Here's how you get my vote - convince me that you will not suffer the service of fools, hypocrites, and evil men such as the current Director of Central Intelligence. Better yet, convince me that you will categorically put an end to America's use of torture forever. Hunt down those responsible for attacking Americans and our allies, try them before the world in a fair and open court, and if found guilty lock them away in a deep dark hole or put them against a wall - I don't care - but, convince me that we will do it honorably, and that our country will be led by honorable men and women. If you want my vote, shut up about your religion, shut up about the religion of your fellow candidates, shut up about conservative values, or liberal values, stop blathering on about irrelevant bullshit. Instead speak to me how you will restore America's honor and dignity as a free people. Start with how you'll hold both your self and your appointees responsible for their actions.
"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful!" McConnell said in the article. "Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."
But he rejected a suggestion that he personally condemned the practice.
What an asshole. What a complete and total hypocrite.
When I trained as part of combat teams I was qualified to carry CA (Pepper) Spray. In order to qualify to use this non-leathal weapon, I was required to get sprayed in the face with it. It hurt, a lot. In fact, I've had to periodically re-qualify three times. It never got any better. It hurt every time. A lot. I don't want to do it again. Here's an idea, in order to wield waterboarding as an interrogation technique, every senior official, from the President on down to the interrogators themselves should have to go through exactly the same thing - no stripped down, easier 'training' process. The whole deal, exactly the way it's administered at Gitmo by the CIA. Just like a face full of mace.
Personally, after reading the interview, I'd love nothing better than to see Mike McConnell strapped to a table and have Lake Erie shoved up his nose.
Attention Presidential Candidates: Here's how you get my vote - convince me that you will not suffer the service of fools, hypocrites, and evil men such as the current Director of Central Intelligence. Better yet, convince me that you will categorically put an end to America's use of torture forever. Hunt down those responsible for attacking Americans and our allies, try them before the world in a fair and open court, and if found guilty lock them away in a deep dark hole or put them against a wall - I don't care - but, convince me that we will do it honorably, and that our country will be led by honorable men and women. If you want my vote, shut up about your religion, shut up about the religion of your fellow candidates, shut up about conservative values, or liberal values, stop blathering on about irrelevant bullshit. Instead speak to me how you will restore America's honor and dignity as a free people. Start with how you'll hold both your self and your appointees responsible for their actions.
Book of Secrets
We went into Anchorage yesterday and didn't get back until late, by which time I was so damned tired I couldn't see straight and went to bed about 9:30PM, which is why you didn't see a post from me yesterday.
During the day we saw National Treasure, Book of Secrets at the Century 16 in Anchorage.
I liked it, so did my wife and son. It's not as tightly plotted as the first one, and there are a few more characters to keep track off, and the basic premise of the story is, um, well, highly improbable - but still it's a fun movie. If you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one. The dynamic between Jon Voight and Helen Mirren is worth the price of admission. However, If you disliked the first one, you'll hate this one. Just saying.
During the day we saw National Treasure, Book of Secrets at the Century 16 in Anchorage.
I liked it, so did my wife and son. It's not as tightly plotted as the first one, and there are a few more characters to keep track off, and the basic premise of the story is, um, well, highly improbable - but still it's a fun movie. If you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one. The dynamic between Jon Voight and Helen Mirren is worth the price of admission. However, If you disliked the first one, you'll hate this one. Just saying.
Friday, January 11, 2008
On Writing
As most of you regulars know, my post naval retirement goal is to become a writer full time.
I've wanted to be a professional writer my whole life. Like many folks with that particular personality defect, I started scribbling stories down on paper in my teenage years. As a longtime lover of the science fiction genre, naturally I wrote tales of adventure set in the distant reaches of space. When other kids were writing about what they did on their summer vacations, I never wrote an English assignment set below Low Earth Orbit (in those days, we called it English not Language Arts, which to me sounds like paper mache sculpture made from chopped up dictionaries, but I digress). This did not endure me to my teachers, and even the ones that taught Creative Writing weren't much thrilled with science fiction submissions. And I'm pretty sure my parents were less than thrilled with my obvious mental aberration, and blamed each other for the defective genes that caused it.
I wrote a lot, and no matter what I wrote all those stories had something in common. They all sucked.
Remember that scene in Throw Momma From The Train where Billy Crystal is listening to one of his students recite her latest work? "The Captain said, 'Dive, Dave.' And Dave pulled the thing that makes the ship dive, and the ship dove..." or words to that effect. Yeah, a lot of it was like that. Shudder. If you want to tell a good story, then you should write what you know, the problem was I didn't know shit. This is not a condemnation, most teenagers don't know shit, that's part of being a teenager.
Now, it's thirty years later and I'm retired from a life in the Navy. I've got a college degree, and advanced training in a dozen or more arcane specialties. I've been around the world, literally, more than once. I've lived on three continents. I'm a father, and a husband, an artist, a woodworker, and a fair chef. I know shit.
So, I set out to discover if I actually could, you know, write.
This blog was part of that, along with a couple of other projects, such as Deep Thunder. And I think I can actually do it, and can do it well enough to make a living at it. My wife and I have agreed that I will take this year and make the attempt. Ultimately, only you people will determine whether or not I'm any good at it.
With that said, I promised you a sample of my current work, The Iyes of the Dead. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my formal writing voice is vastly different from Thunder and this blog, which you will see in the sample below the fold. Iyes is nominally a locked room murder mystery, told more or less in the traditional mode where you see the murder happen in great detail - and yet may not immediately grasp what happened exactly. Throughout the rest of the book you follow the investigation, traveling along with the investigator and his assistant. Nearly every paragraph contains clues, some obvious, many not. The astute reader will have enough information to solve the puzzle in the first five chapters, but will have to be careful not to venture down false pathways, of which there are many. There's an obvious suspect, a not so obvious suspect, and a cast of characters, some human and some not, with their own strange pasts who may be suspects themselves. All have reason to commit the crime and many things to hide in the fashion of Murder on the Orient Express. The 'locked room' is a colony far removed in space and time. The technology is both benefit and bane, and is a mixture of the old and the far edge of the possible. Eventually all the suspects will be gathered together and we'll find out if the butler did indeed do it in the drawing room with the candlestick.
The following is excerpted from the first Chapter. Motive is key to the story, and each character is driven by their own personal history. In fact, despite taking place in the 'present' of 2361, much of what has happened in the period between now and then plays an enormous role in the shaping of each person, and the society of the colony. Some of the characters come from civilizations vastly different from our present one, and they've been shaped by disaster, war, and desperate necessity. It was therefore necessary to tell some of that history, here and there, throughout the novel. I despise the contrived conversational asides (I.e. "Say, Bob, even though you and I have lived through these events, I'm still going to explain at great length things you and I both know..."). I've chosen instead to weave that background information throughout the events of the novel - similar in technique to the way George R.R. Martin wove the history of his Federal Empire into his Double War/Integrum stories, such as The Dying of the Light (Which if you haven't read, you really, really should). In essence, the novel is really three stories, the central murder mystery, exploration of a new world, and the disastrous war that led to the present situation and explains many of the things that happen in the story.
The following excerpt comprises the last quarter of the first chapter. It is a bit of background for one of the primary characters. The only setup you need going in is this:
Henry Stonekettle has been castaway for a very long time. Stranded alone on a distant world with only his wits to keep him alive. Anyone else would have given up long ago, but not Henry. Here's part of the reason why.
[Note: copying this in from MS Word has been a huge pain. The formating codes in word are playing merry hell with blogger's embedded HTML engine. Some words have been dropped, and paragraph formatting is acting strangely. I'm tired of screwing with it. Read it or not, and try to ignore the formating issues. I may fool with it later, depending on how much time I have, but at this point I've wasted too much of my morning already. - Jim]
[And again, okay the font is seriously pissing me off. Word Press looks better to me every day. If below the fold you see little, itty bitty, times new roman letters but can't actually make out what they're saying, well, you're not alone. I'm trying to fix it]
------------------------
His mouth fell open in shock.
“Son of a bitch,” he said at last, in the strangled voice of a man punched in the stomach. Then he said it again, each word spoken softly, unbelieving, separate and distinct. “Son. Of. A. Bitch!”
When Henry Stonekettle was a young man, full of wind, shit, and excitement, he had done a foolish thing.
He entered a race.
In the year 1925, dog sled mushers raced with desperate speed across what was then the Alaskan Territory, up a frozen coastal trail in relay to the small northern village of Nome. They carried cases of carefully packed serum for a town dying of diphtheria. They made it, barely in time, and saved the townsfolk from certain, grisly death. They became instant legends, those old mushers and their dogs, books were written about them and movies were made for years afterward. The event, like so many others of the Alaskan frontier, might have faded quietly into the oblivion of the past, except that Alaskans were funny about their history. Fifty years after the epidemic, a crusty old sourdour named Joe Redington resurrected the desperate crossing and turned the epic into what he called “the last great race.” He named it The Iditarod for an ancient abandoned ghost town, one of waystations along the historic trail. In February every year, at the height of the northern winter, mushers and their dogs raced nearly twelve hundred miles from Old Anchorage across the vast land to Nome. The event was run every year, without fail. Though in 2129 during the darkest years of the Long Runout, the year Old Alaska became Alyeska and the last bastion of high technology civilization on Earth, there were only two teams and neither finished. By the time Henry Stonekettle was twenty-three, a graduate student in Planetary Sciences at the University of Alyeska, Fairbanks and dreaming of the stars, the Iditarod race spanned three hundred years of unbroken tradition. Henry had been mushing dogs since he was a child growing up at Pump Station Five on the Gasline. He had mushed the ancient Yukon Quest twice, finishing in the top ten, and had placed second in the grueling Skinny City Run. He had just returned from a couple years of fieldwork in ravaged mainland Europe and compared to that, entering the Iditarod seemed like only mild adventure.
The Iditarod had long been a purist’s race; engineered dogs were not allowed, and mushers carried no radio, no beacon, and no satellite navigation receivers. Henry would make the dash to Nome with nothing more advanced than map, magnetic compass, and his wits.
The first eight days were magnificent. The snow cover was light that year, a consequence of Earth’s disastrously fluctuating climate, and so instead of the traditional start in downtown Old Anchorage they mushed out of Willow, thirty miles to the north. He occasionally ran behind the sled, but spent most of his time riding on the runners as they hissed through the snow and listened to the excited panting of his team. On the second day, he lost control of the sled on a down slope in the dark and shattered a runner, and he lost two hours replacing it, working bare handed in the subzero temperatures by the light of his headlamp. A day later he surprised a bull moose just outside of McGrath as he rounded a bend on the frozen Kuskokwim, and spent another hour untangling harnesses and traces after he’d managed to run the beast off. He had to stitch up two dogs, and leave one at the checkpoint in McGrath to be flown back to Anchorage by tilter. These were normal hazards of the trail and Henry spent little effort worrying about lost time. During rest breaks he slept exhausted beneath the Aurora Borealis, wrapped in a powered survival bag, the one bit of advanced technology allowed, on the cold ground beside his animals unlike most other mushers who slept in the checkpoint cabins. The other mushers called him ‘Stone Cold’ with some amusement. He was considered a bit odd, but then oddball characters weren’t uncommon on the trail and some were much odder than Henry Stonekettle. Over the week he passed through tiny, ancient villages with such romantic names as Susitna Station, Finger Lake, Rainy Pass, Farewell Station, Cripple, Unalakleet, and White Mountain.
It was glorious.
The storm hit on what was to have been his last day on the trail. As he rode out of Safety Roadhouse, on the last leg to Nome, the sky was turning black with snow-laden clouds and the world was fading away into whiteout conditions. In the early years of the race officials might have turned the mushers back, made them wait it out at the roadhouse. But the First Tenet of the Alyeskan Constitution reads: “Every adult human being, sane or not, is solely responsible for the consequences of his or her own actions.” And so they could not prevent him from leaving. The older, more cautious mushers called it a race; they boarded their dogs and hunkered down in the lodge to await a flight to Nome or back to Anchorage on the bush tilters.
They didn’t know it then, but that year would mark the beginning of what climatologists would come to call the Post Runout Global Minima. And it was to be brutally unpredictable. Henry Stonekettle and four other teams rode out into what would become the worst blizzard in seventy years.
For six endless days he huddled in a snowy dugout, thirty miles from Nome, while the tempest raged overhead. The survival bag power cell exhausted it’s hydrogen supply sometime during the third night. With little food, and only the dogs for warmth, he knew that he would most likely die. He had left Safety with thirteen dogs; when the storm broke, only seven remained.
Seven dogs and Henry Stonekettle.
A day later he staggered into Nome behind the empty sled. He lost another dog on the trail. He was the only finisher that year, and by default the winner, but there was no joy in it. Of the four other teams who had left the final waystation a week earlier, he was the only survivor. Three of those mushers had been long time friends. In all, he lost nine dogs, four toes, three fingers, parts of his ears, and a piece of his nose to the cold. In true Alyeskan fashion, the racing committee held him accountable for his actions and he was banned from racing for life. He was penalized not for risking his own safety, but rather that of his dogs. He spent a week in the hospital only to learn that they lacked full cosmetic regeneration facilities; he would have to return to Wasilla in order to grow back the missing body parts. And, just to add insult to injury, he missed the Trapper’s Ball and they had to mail him his trophy – though that was probably for the best, since the Ball was a fairly grim event that year.
Afterward, alone, swaddled in bandages and a little drunk, standing in the middle of Main Street at four o’clock in the frigid arctic morning, he had looked up at the hard, unblinking stars and felt unaccountable wonder.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered to himself. “I’m alive. I made it. I made it. Son of a bitch!”
Ten decades and four light years later, Henry Stonekettle stood once again alone, crippled and freezing, beneath those self same stars and squinted unbelieving at a glowing line of diamond blue fire in the sky. It was a violet spear, tens of miles long and so bright that it cast shadows on the snow hundreds of miles below.
It was a blazing beacon in the heavens that could only be the plasma plume of a large fusion-powered spacecraft.
After twenty years castaway, salvation was at hand.
“I’m alive,” Henry Stonekettle shouted at the stars. “I made it. Son. Of. A. Bitch!”
I've wanted to be a professional writer my whole life. Like many folks with that particular personality defect, I started scribbling stories down on paper in my teenage years. As a longtime lover of the science fiction genre, naturally I wrote tales of adventure set in the distant reaches of space. When other kids were writing about what they did on their summer vacations, I never wrote an English assignment set below Low Earth Orbit (in those days, we called it English not Language Arts, which to me sounds like paper mache sculpture made from chopped up dictionaries, but I digress). This did not endure me to my teachers, and even the ones that taught Creative Writing weren't much thrilled with science fiction submissions. And I'm pretty sure my parents were less than thrilled with my obvious mental aberration, and blamed each other for the defective genes that caused it.
I wrote a lot, and no matter what I wrote all those stories had something in common. They all sucked.
Remember that scene in Throw Momma From The Train where Billy Crystal is listening to one of his students recite her latest work? "The Captain said, 'Dive, Dave.' And Dave pulled the thing that makes the ship dive, and the ship dove..." or words to that effect. Yeah, a lot of it was like that. Shudder. If you want to tell a good story, then you should write what you know, the problem was I didn't know shit. This is not a condemnation, most teenagers don't know shit, that's part of being a teenager.
Now, it's thirty years later and I'm retired from a life in the Navy. I've got a college degree, and advanced training in a dozen or more arcane specialties. I've been around the world, literally, more than once. I've lived on three continents. I'm a father, and a husband, an artist, a woodworker, and a fair chef. I know shit.
So, I set out to discover if I actually could, you know, write.
This blog was part of that, along with a couple of other projects, such as Deep Thunder. And I think I can actually do it, and can do it well enough to make a living at it. My wife and I have agreed that I will take this year and make the attempt. Ultimately, only you people will determine whether or not I'm any good at it.
With that said, I promised you a sample of my current work, The Iyes of the Dead. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my formal writing voice is vastly different from Thunder and this blog, which you will see in the sample below the fold. Iyes is nominally a locked room murder mystery, told more or less in the traditional mode where you see the murder happen in great detail - and yet may not immediately grasp what happened exactly. Throughout the rest of the book you follow the investigation, traveling along with the investigator and his assistant. Nearly every paragraph contains clues, some obvious, many not. The astute reader will have enough information to solve the puzzle in the first five chapters, but will have to be careful not to venture down false pathways, of which there are many. There's an obvious suspect, a not so obvious suspect, and a cast of characters, some human and some not, with their own strange pasts who may be suspects themselves. All have reason to commit the crime and many things to hide in the fashion of Murder on the Orient Express. The 'locked room' is a colony far removed in space and time. The technology is both benefit and bane, and is a mixture of the old and the far edge of the possible. Eventually all the suspects will be gathered together and we'll find out if the butler did indeed do it in the drawing room with the candlestick.
The following is excerpted from the first Chapter. Motive is key to the story, and each character is driven by their own personal history. In fact, despite taking place in the 'present' of 2361, much of what has happened in the period between now and then plays an enormous role in the shaping of each person, and the society of the colony. Some of the characters come from civilizations vastly different from our present one, and they've been shaped by disaster, war, and desperate necessity. It was therefore necessary to tell some of that history, here and there, throughout the novel. I despise the contrived conversational asides (I.e. "Say, Bob, even though you and I have lived through these events, I'm still going to explain at great length things you and I both know..."). I've chosen instead to weave that background information throughout the events of the novel - similar in technique to the way George R.R. Martin wove the history of his Federal Empire into his Double War/Integrum stories, such as The Dying of the Light (Which if you haven't read, you really, really should). In essence, the novel is really three stories, the central murder mystery, exploration of a new world, and the disastrous war that led to the present situation and explains many of the things that happen in the story.
The following excerpt comprises the last quarter of the first chapter. It is a bit of background for one of the primary characters. The only setup you need going in is this:
Henry Stonekettle has been castaway for a very long time. Stranded alone on a distant world with only his wits to keep him alive. Anyone else would have given up long ago, but not Henry. Here's part of the reason why.
[Note: copying this in from MS Word has been a huge pain. The formating codes in word are playing merry hell with blogger's embedded HTML engine. Some words have been dropped, and paragraph formatting is acting strangely. I'm tired of screwing with it. Read it or not, and try to ignore the formating issues. I may fool with it later, depending on how much time I have, but at this point I've wasted too much of my morning already. - Jim]
[And again, okay the font is seriously pissing me off. Word Press looks better to me every day. If below the fold you see little, itty bitty, times new roman letters but can't actually make out what they're saying, well, you're not alone. I'm trying to fix it]
------------------------
[Excerpted from Iyes of the Dead, by James L. Wright. All rights reserved. No portion of the following may be reposted, printed, or reproduced without the express written permission of the author.]
Henry Stonekettle had known for some time that he must be insane by normal standards. It troubled him greatly; his mind was all he had. He was suddenly afraid that the final slide into the abyss had begun, because as he stared stupidly at an impossible black silhouette on the white snow he realized that it was moving, lengthening rapidly and swinging around like the umbra on a sundial.
His mouth fell open in shock.
“Son of a bitch,” he said at last, in the strangled voice of a man punched in the stomach. Then he said it again, each word spoken softly, unbelieving, separate and distinct. “Son. Of. A. Bitch!”
When Henry Stonekettle was a young man, full of wind, shit, and excitement, he had done a foolish thing.
He entered a race.
In the year 1925, dog sled mushers raced with desperate speed across what was then the Alaskan Territory, up a frozen coastal trail in relay to the small northern village of Nome. They carried cases of carefully packed serum for a town dying of diphtheria. They made it, barely in time, and saved the townsfolk from certain, grisly death. They became instant legends, those old mushers and their dogs, books were written about them and movies were made for years afterward. The event, like so many others of the Alaskan frontier, might have faded quietly into the oblivion of the past, except that Alaskans were funny about their history. Fifty years after the epidemic, a crusty old sourdour named Joe Redington resurrected the desperate crossing and turned the epic into what he called “the last great race.” He named it The Iditarod for an ancient abandoned ghost town, one of waystations along the historic trail. In February every year, at the height of the northern winter, mushers and their dogs raced nearly twelve hundred miles from Old Anchorage across the vast land to Nome. The event was run every year, without fail. Though in 2129 during the darkest years of the Long Runout, the year Old Alaska became Alyeska and the last bastion of high technology civilization on Earth, there were only two teams and neither finished. By the time Henry Stonekettle was twenty-three, a graduate student in Planetary Sciences at the University of Alyeska, Fairbanks and dreaming of the stars, the Iditarod race spanned three hundred years of unbroken tradition. Henry had been mushing dogs since he was a child growing up at Pump Station Five on the Gasline. He had mushed the ancient Yukon Quest twice, finishing in the top ten, and had placed second in the grueling Skinny City Run. He had just returned from a couple years of fieldwork in ravaged mainland Europe and compared to that, entering the Iditarod seemed like only mild adventure.
The Iditarod had long been a purist’s race; engineered dogs were not allowed, and mushers carried no radio, no beacon, and no satellite navigation receivers. Henry would make the dash to Nome with nothing more advanced than map, magnetic compass, and his wits.
The first eight days were magnificent. The snow cover was light that year, a consequence of Earth’s disastrously fluctuating climate, and so instead of the traditional start in downtown Old Anchorage they mushed out of Willow, thirty miles to the north. He occasionally ran behind the sled, but spent most of his time riding on the runners as they hissed through the snow and listened to the excited panting of his team. On the second day, he lost control of the sled on a down slope in the dark and shattered a runner, and he lost two hours replacing it, working bare handed in the subzero temperatures by the light of his headlamp. A day later he surprised a bull moose just outside of McGrath as he rounded a bend on the frozen Kuskokwim, and spent another hour untangling harnesses and traces after he’d managed to run the beast off. He had to stitch up two dogs, and leave one at the checkpoint in McGrath to be flown back to Anchorage by tilter. These were normal hazards of the trail and Henry spent little effort worrying about lost time. During rest breaks he slept exhausted beneath the Aurora Borealis, wrapped in a powered survival bag, the one bit of advanced technology allowed, on the cold ground beside his animals unlike most other mushers who slept in the checkpoint cabins. The other mushers called him ‘Stone Cold’ with some amusement. He was considered a bit odd, but then oddball characters weren’t uncommon on the trail and some were much odder than Henry Stonekettle. Over the week he passed through tiny, ancient villages with such romantic names as Susitna Station, Finger Lake, Rainy Pass, Farewell Station, Cripple, Unalakleet, and White Mountain.
It was glorious.
The storm hit on what was to have been his last day on the trail. As he rode out of Safety Roadhouse, on the last leg to Nome, the sky was turning black with snow-laden clouds and the world was fading away into whiteout conditions. In the early years of the race officials might have turned the mushers back, made them wait it out at the roadhouse. But the First Tenet of the Alyeskan Constitution reads: “Every adult human being, sane or not, is solely responsible for the consequences of his or her own actions.” And so they could not prevent him from leaving. The older, more cautious mushers called it a race; they boarded their dogs and hunkered down in the lodge to await a flight to Nome or back to Anchorage on the bush tilters.
They didn’t know it then, but that year would mark the beginning of what climatologists would come to call the Post Runout Global Minima. And it was to be brutally unpredictable. Henry Stonekettle and four other teams rode out into what would become the worst blizzard in seventy years.
For six endless days he huddled in a snowy dugout, thirty miles from Nome, while the tempest raged overhead. The survival bag power cell exhausted it’s hydrogen supply sometime during the third night. With little food, and only the dogs for warmth, he knew that he would most likely die. He had left Safety with thirteen dogs; when the storm broke, only seven remained.
Seven dogs and Henry Stonekettle.
A day later he staggered into Nome behind the empty sled. He lost another dog on the trail. He was the only finisher that year, and by default the winner, but there was no joy in it. Of the four other teams who had left the final waystation a week earlier, he was the only survivor. Three of those mushers had been long time friends. In all, he lost nine dogs, four toes, three fingers, parts of his ears, and a piece of his nose to the cold. In true Alyeskan fashion, the racing committee held him accountable for his actions and he was banned from racing for life. He was penalized not for risking his own safety, but rather that of his dogs. He spent a week in the hospital only to learn that they lacked full cosmetic regeneration facilities; he would have to return to Wasilla in order to grow back the missing body parts. And, just to add insult to injury, he missed the Trapper’s Ball and they had to mail him his trophy – though that was probably for the best, since the Ball was a fairly grim event that year.
Afterward, alone, swaddled in bandages and a little drunk, standing in the middle of Main Street at four o’clock in the frigid arctic morning, he had looked up at the hard, unblinking stars and felt unaccountable wonder.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered to himself. “I’m alive. I made it. I made it. Son of a bitch!”
Ten decades and four light years later, Henry Stonekettle stood once again alone, crippled and freezing, beneath those self same stars and squinted unbelieving at a glowing line of diamond blue fire in the sky. It was a violet spear, tens of miles long and so bright that it cast shadows on the snow hundreds of miles below.
It was a blazing beacon in the heavens that could only be the plasma plume of a large fusion-powered spacecraft.
After twenty years castaway, salvation was at hand.
“I’m alive,” Henry Stonekettle shouted at the stars. “I made it. Son. Of. A. Bitch!”
Spammers, you're doing it wrong
I've been getting a large amount of 'male-enhancement' spam lately. Since I whitelist my email, it's not really a problem. But every couple of days I go through the spam and check to make sure the system hasn't captured legit email, then I flush it out. Some of the spam is amusing, mostly from a faulty logic standpoint. Today's winner:
Increase the size of you love muscle without tiresome exercise!
Um, isn't the 'tiresome exercise' the whole point?
Increase the size of you love muscle without tiresome exercise!
Um, isn't the 'tiresome exercise' the whole point?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Exciting Opportunity!
Immediate Opening for 1 Clueless Jerkoff.
Responsibilities include (but are not limited to):
- Going to the 'express checkout' lane with an entire cartload of junkfood and other crap of your choice. Paying with a check, despite the sign that says 'Cash only.' - You must not have proper ID (must be able to use stupid excuses such as 'Doh! I must have forgotten my Driver's License', despite having your wallet).
- Driving slowly through the parking lot talking on your cell phone (must have own phone). When approaching someone (me) obviously waiting to cross the lane into the parking lot proper, do not stop. As you pass me, be able to ignore my look of irritation, wait for me to begin stepping into the road, then stop for no apparent reason so that I nearly walk into the side of your truck.
- Taking the maximum amount of time to exit the parking lot, so that I have time to get in my vehicle and end up behind you.
- Driving 35 in a 55 zone, holding up traffic to the maximum extent possible.
Requirements:
- Must be at least 50 years of age. Old enough to know better and old enough to make people wonder how you survived this long (mystery is an essential part of the Clueless Jerkoff job).
- Must be wearing a Cowboy Hat three times the size of your head - or larger.
- Must be able to simultaneously light a cigarette and dial your cell phone while behind the wheel, slowing to a near stop in the middle of the intersection on ice covered, slippery roads while ten people are attempting to turn behind you.
- Must have own truck. Truck rear bumper must have at least three stickers with bible slogans. Must have a Jesus Fish on the tailgate - larger is better.
- Must NOT know what a fucking turn signal is.
---------------------
Yes, I had to run to the store for one lousy item. It should have taken two minutes, tops. Instead I ran into the king of idiots, in a white, step-sided, short bedded Ford pickup. If I'd have gotten his name I'd have posted it here - because it pissed me off just that much.
Responsibilities include (but are not limited to):
- Going to the 'express checkout' lane with an entire cartload of junkfood and other crap of your choice. Paying with a check, despite the sign that says 'Cash only.' - You must not have proper ID (must be able to use stupid excuses such as 'Doh! I must have forgotten my Driver's License', despite having your wallet).
- Driving slowly through the parking lot talking on your cell phone (must have own phone). When approaching someone (me) obviously waiting to cross the lane into the parking lot proper, do not stop. As you pass me, be able to ignore my look of irritation, wait for me to begin stepping into the road, then stop for no apparent reason so that I nearly walk into the side of your truck.
- Taking the maximum amount of time to exit the parking lot, so that I have time to get in my vehicle and end up behind you.
- Driving 35 in a 55 zone, holding up traffic to the maximum extent possible.
Requirements:
- Must be at least 50 years of age. Old enough to know better and old enough to make people wonder how you survived this long (mystery is an essential part of the Clueless Jerkoff job).
- Must be wearing a Cowboy Hat three times the size of your head - or larger.
- Must be able to simultaneously light a cigarette and dial your cell phone while behind the wheel, slowing to a near stop in the middle of the intersection on ice covered, slippery roads while ten people are attempting to turn behind you.
- Must have own truck. Truck rear bumper must have at least three stickers with bible slogans. Must have a Jesus Fish on the tailgate - larger is better.
- Must NOT know what a fucking turn signal is.
---------------------
Yes, I had to run to the store for one lousy item. It should have taken two minutes, tops. Instead I ran into the king of idiots, in a white, step-sided, short bedded Ford pickup. If I'd have gotten his name I'd have posted it here - because it pissed me off just that much.
Dancing Monkey is Dancing to Another Tune This Morning
Usually I spend the morning blogging and writing (which is redundant - I think). But this morning I'm starting out in the shop. I've completed the templates for the millwork I'm doing, and this morning I need to start the prototype production run, so you're on your own for a couple of hours.
This is a good thing, for me anyway. First the millwork provides me with income, which is always welcome. Second, woodworking is my zen and it gives me time to think about writing - and I've reached a point in Iyes of the Dead where I need to be plotting very carefully, there are a lot of details coming together and they all have to mesh correctly, woodworking gives me time to get things arranged in my head. I'm thinking I'll post a selected extract of the first chapter here maybe later today or tomorrow - just so you can get an idea of my real writing style which is radically different from Deep Thunder.
On a political note, I see Richardson dropped out of the race last night, sigh. But, truly, you saw that coming, right? I'll go on record as predicting Clinton and McCain. Here's why, I'm pretty sure the GOP engaged in a little under the table chicanery with ole smiling John, in order to get his backing for s.3930. And Clinton, well, you don't think the caucus votes actually matter, do you?
This is a good thing, for me anyway. First the millwork provides me with income, which is always welcome. Second, woodworking is my zen and it gives me time to think about writing - and I've reached a point in Iyes of the Dead where I need to be plotting very carefully, there are a lot of details coming together and they all have to mesh correctly, woodworking gives me time to get things arranged in my head. I'm thinking I'll post a selected extract of the first chapter here maybe later today or tomorrow - just so you can get an idea of my real writing style which is radically different from Deep Thunder.
On a political note, I see Richardson dropped out of the race last night, sigh. But, truly, you saw that coming, right? I'll go on record as predicting Clinton and McCain. Here's why, I'm pretty sure the GOP engaged in a little under the table chicanery with ole smiling John, in order to get his backing for s.3930. And Clinton, well, you don't think the caucus votes actually matter, do you?
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Death from the sky!
Seems like a cat story day, doesn't it?
Meet Stupid.
As cats go, he's right down there on the bottom rung of the ole' feline scratchin' post. You wouldn't want to know him. He is dumb as a catnip mouse. He has a rotten disposition, it would be a charity to say his personality is a lot like a bent shitcan. He is seriously unaffectionate, yet he is pathetically needy - a living contradiction in fur. He is pointy on five ends. He smells funny, like dead fish and old gym shoes. He sheds like you would not believe. And he is patently psychotic, of the twitchy voices-in-my-head-are-telling-me-to-kill-you variety.
This is he. And yes, his eyes really are lit from within by a hellish yellow light.
Technically his name is Sitka. But since he doesn't answer to anything except that one voice in his head that sounds like Lambchop quoting Mein Kampf, we call him whatever we feel like, which is usually The White One or as I may have mentioned - Stupid.
But for quite a while we called him Pegleg, and that brings me to an amusing Alaskan story.
See, Stupid and his brother, Tubby (AKA Kenai, The Grey One, or more often The Fat One) are house cats. They've still got their claws, because we felt funny about cutting off their toes, but let's just say that when I use the pronouns 'he' or 'his' - well, it's just a courtesy. They really have no reason therefore to go out prowling the neighborhood, if you get my drift. And there's another reason we don't let them out - Alaska is a dangerous place for small silly creatures, especially small silly stupid creatures.
Unfortunately, keeping a pair of cats contained is a lot like herding, um, well cats.
So, about two years ago, Stupid and Tubby decided to go for a walk. A door got left open and having no damn sense whatsoever, they slipped out. It took a while to realize that they were missing, we figure that they'd been outside for about an hour or so when I suddenly detected a marked decrease in the levels of free floating cat hair, found the open door, and started looking for them.
Imagine it: two medium sized cats, one grey, one white, lost somewhere in Alaska - Yeah, a mountainous, heavily forested and glaciated region fully as large as the rest of the United States west of the Mississippi (Well, OK, I reasoned that I could safely rule out Kodiak, The Komandorski and Aleutian Islands because cats don't like water and therefore were unlikely to swim for Russia. Still, the reminding search area was pretty good sized, just saying).
OK, not a problem. I knew just what to do.
I went back inside and shut the door, got a beer and went back to surfing the internet. Hell, maybe they would swim for Asia. Screw it, says I to myself (gleefully), let the Rooskies deal with the little bastards, cats are basically communists anyway.
Alas, it was not to be - the kid noticed them missing. The wailing and gnashing of teeth started to get on my nerves. Sigh.
Back outside. Around the house and around the shop I searched. Through the woods (and over the bridge to Grandma's house, ho, aren't you clever). Calling. Their. Names. Yep, perhaps we're calling the wrong creature stupid here. Eventually I found them, filthy and hissing under the back porch. I opened the side door, the one that leads into the attached garage, got a broom, and attempted to (wait for it) herd the cats into the garage. Tubby went, no problem, but Stupid here refused to do anything other than hunker down in the furthest dark reaches under the porch and spit at me.
Nothing for it then. I got down on hands and knees and slowly reached under the porch with my bad arm (because I needed the good one to hold me up, do I have to explain everything?), attempting to get a hold of him. About then, there came a loud sobbing noise from behind me - my son, who had crept up behind me and was attempting to help by suddenly yelling 'What are we gonna do!" over and over and then bursting into hysterical tears. The noise startled both the cat and I. I reacted by falling forward and banging my head on the porch. The cat reacted by attempting to bite my fucking thumb off. Between hitting my head on the porch and the searing pain in my hand, I thought for a moment that I'd been bit by a wolverine. Not one of my finer moments, and I'm afraid the resulting swearing killed all of the grass in the back yard and caused a large gray squirrel to fall stunned from it's perch in a Sikta spruce tree 30 yards away.
Then, and only then, did Stupid dash out from under the porch and into the garage.
Where I left him for a good while. It was either that or put a bullet into his fuzzy ass. And if I wasn't bleeding so much I would have. Instead I spent the next half hour with the medicine chest, pouring betadine into the wounds (yeah, cat slobbler in deep puncture wounds, shudder).
Eventually I let him into the house and he went off to compare tales of exploration with his retarded sibbling.
Think the story ends there? Guess again.
My wife came home. I told her the story. She took one look at my mangled hand, sniffed - and went to check if the cat was OK. It wasn't, something was wrong with a front leg. I was all for letting Stupid suffer for a day or so (you know, as a lesson, not to be cruel [OK, maybe just a little cruel]). Don't worry, Stonekettle Station is not a democracy and I wouldn't get a vote even if it was. Off to the vet. Guess what? Broken leg, oh and not just broken, shattered. Along with various cuts, scraps, and missing claws.
Hot damn, says I to myself, I'll get my pistol.
Did you know that they can fix a shattered cat leg? Apparently all you have to do is wrap it in a dozen hundred dollar bills for about six months (just as a point of reference, a .22cal long rifle cartridge costs about 9 cents). So, the cat ended up sedated, X-rayed, pinned, casted, and collared with a huge floppy blue apron-like thing to keep it from eating the cast. White cat, huge white stiff cast, giant blue floppy collar - glue a red rubber nose on him and he would have been the spitting and hissing image of Bozo the Clown.
So what happened? Bald Eagles, that's what. Unfortunately for me, clumsy and incompetent bald eagles. Damn birds.
Small, fuzzy, stupid, and outside - in Alaska, that means you're food.
We have hardwood floors. For the next six months, Stupid would stump around the house, banging his cast on the floor, like Ahab pacing the quarterdeck of the doomed whaler Pequod - hence the appellation Pegleg.
He would often sit in the windows of the sunroom and glare at the eagles circling outside.
Eventually he got the cast off and is just fine as only a crazy, psychotic cat who cost us $1200 can be. And he has never attempted to go outside again.
But, Jim, I hear you say, you said this was an amusing Alaskan story. We're not amused (OK, we were a little amused at that part where you got mauled by a wolverine, but we were expecting more).
Well, yeah. I left something out. See, we have this friend, an old and dear friend, and he often sends us something cool and different for Christmas. This year it was a plaster Bald Eagle, nearly full sized, designed to hang on the wall.
The cat took one look as it came out of the box on Christmas morning, hissed and ran away. I manfully resisted the urge to chase him around the house, holding the eagle like a kid playing 'airplane' and making screaming raptor noises. I expect serious positive karma credits for this, because at that moment my hand began to hurt in remembered pain.
I hung it in the sunroom, it looks like this (sort of a cat's eye view, so to speak):
Our friend was not aware of the cat's history with death falling from the sky. The irony is sweet sweet justice (about $1200 worth by my estimate). Now, we're even.
See, I said it was an amusing story. Notice I didn't say who it would amuse. The cat is not pleased - and this amuses me.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go make sure we have enough betadine and bandaids.
____________________________________
Additional Cat Stories:
Death From the Sky, Part II
The Further Adventures of Stupid
Manly Blogging Thursday with ShopKat
Meet Stupid.
As cats go, he's right down there on the bottom rung of the ole' feline scratchin' post. You wouldn't want to know him. He is dumb as a catnip mouse. He has a rotten disposition, it would be a charity to say his personality is a lot like a bent shitcan. He is seriously unaffectionate, yet he is pathetically needy - a living contradiction in fur. He is pointy on five ends. He smells funny, like dead fish and old gym shoes. He sheds like you would not believe. And he is patently psychotic, of the twitchy voices-in-my-head-are-telling-me-to-kill-you variety.
This is he. And yes, his eyes really are lit from within by a hellish yellow light.
Technically his name is Sitka. But since he doesn't answer to anything except that one voice in his head that sounds like Lambchop quoting Mein Kampf, we call him whatever we feel like, which is usually The White One or as I may have mentioned - Stupid.
But for quite a while we called him Pegleg, and that brings me to an amusing Alaskan story.
See, Stupid and his brother, Tubby (AKA Kenai, The Grey One, or more often The Fat One) are house cats. They've still got their claws, because we felt funny about cutting off their toes, but let's just say that when I use the pronouns 'he' or 'his' - well, it's just a courtesy. They really have no reason therefore to go out prowling the neighborhood, if you get my drift. And there's another reason we don't let them out - Alaska is a dangerous place for small silly creatures, especially small silly stupid creatures.
Unfortunately, keeping a pair of cats contained is a lot like herding, um, well cats.
So, about two years ago, Stupid and Tubby decided to go for a walk. A door got left open and having no damn sense whatsoever, they slipped out. It took a while to realize that they were missing, we figure that they'd been outside for about an hour or so when I suddenly detected a marked decrease in the levels of free floating cat hair, found the open door, and started looking for them.
Imagine it: two medium sized cats, one grey, one white, lost somewhere in Alaska - Yeah, a mountainous, heavily forested and glaciated region fully as large as the rest of the United States west of the Mississippi (Well, OK, I reasoned that I could safely rule out Kodiak, The Komandorski and Aleutian Islands because cats don't like water and therefore were unlikely to swim for Russia. Still, the reminding search area was pretty good sized, just saying).
OK, not a problem. I knew just what to do.
I went back inside and shut the door, got a beer and went back to surfing the internet. Hell, maybe they would swim for Asia. Screw it, says I to myself (gleefully), let the Rooskies deal with the little bastards, cats are basically communists anyway.
Alas, it was not to be - the kid noticed them missing. The wailing and gnashing of teeth started to get on my nerves. Sigh.
Back outside. Around the house and around the shop I searched. Through the woods (and over the bridge to Grandma's house, ho, aren't you clever). Calling. Their. Names. Yep, perhaps we're calling the wrong creature stupid here. Eventually I found them, filthy and hissing under the back porch. I opened the side door, the one that leads into the attached garage, got a broom, and attempted to (wait for it) herd the cats into the garage. Tubby went, no problem, but Stupid here refused to do anything other than hunker down in the furthest dark reaches under the porch and spit at me.
Nothing for it then. I got down on hands and knees and slowly reached under the porch with my bad arm (because I needed the good one to hold me up, do I have to explain everything?), attempting to get a hold of him. About then, there came a loud sobbing noise from behind me - my son, who had crept up behind me and was attempting to help by suddenly yelling 'What are we gonna do!" over and over and then bursting into hysterical tears. The noise startled both the cat and I. I reacted by falling forward and banging my head on the porch. The cat reacted by attempting to bite my fucking thumb off. Between hitting my head on the porch and the searing pain in my hand, I thought for a moment that I'd been bit by a wolverine. Not one of my finer moments, and I'm afraid the resulting swearing killed all of the grass in the back yard and caused a large gray squirrel to fall stunned from it's perch in a Sikta spruce tree 30 yards away.
Then, and only then, did Stupid dash out from under the porch and into the garage.
Where I left him for a good while. It was either that or put a bullet into his fuzzy ass. And if I wasn't bleeding so much I would have. Instead I spent the next half hour with the medicine chest, pouring betadine into the wounds (yeah, cat slobbler in deep puncture wounds, shudder).
Eventually I let him into the house and he went off to compare tales of exploration with his retarded sibbling.
Think the story ends there? Guess again.
My wife came home. I told her the story. She took one look at my mangled hand, sniffed - and went to check if the cat was OK. It wasn't, something was wrong with a front leg. I was all for letting Stupid suffer for a day or so (you know, as a lesson, not to be cruel [OK, maybe just a little cruel]). Don't worry, Stonekettle Station is not a democracy and I wouldn't get a vote even if it was. Off to the vet. Guess what? Broken leg, oh and not just broken, shattered. Along with various cuts, scraps, and missing claws.
Hot damn, says I to myself, I'll get my pistol.
Did you know that they can fix a shattered cat leg? Apparently all you have to do is wrap it in a dozen hundred dollar bills for about six months (just as a point of reference, a .22cal long rifle cartridge costs about 9 cents). So, the cat ended up sedated, X-rayed, pinned, casted, and collared with a huge floppy blue apron-like thing to keep it from eating the cast. White cat, huge white stiff cast, giant blue floppy collar - glue a red rubber nose on him and he would have been the spitting and hissing image of Bozo the Clown.
So what happened? Bald Eagles, that's what. Unfortunately for me, clumsy and incompetent bald eagles. Damn birds.
Small, fuzzy, stupid, and outside - in Alaska, that means you're food.
We have hardwood floors. For the next six months, Stupid would stump around the house, banging his cast on the floor, like Ahab pacing the quarterdeck of the doomed whaler Pequod - hence the appellation Pegleg.
He would often sit in the windows of the sunroom and glare at the eagles circling outside.
Eventually he got the cast off and is just fine as only a crazy, psychotic cat who cost us $1200 can be. And he has never attempted to go outside again.
But, Jim, I hear you say, you said this was an amusing Alaskan story. We're not amused (OK, we were a little amused at that part where you got mauled by a wolverine, but we were expecting more).
Well, yeah. I left something out. See, we have this friend, an old and dear friend, and he often sends us something cool and different for Christmas. This year it was a plaster Bald Eagle, nearly full sized, designed to hang on the wall.
The cat took one look as it came out of the box on Christmas morning, hissed and ran away. I manfully resisted the urge to chase him around the house, holding the eagle like a kid playing 'airplane' and making screaming raptor noises. I expect serious positive karma credits for this, because at that moment my hand began to hurt in remembered pain.
I hung it in the sunroom, it looks like this (sort of a cat's eye view, so to speak):
Our friend was not aware of the cat's history with death falling from the sky. The irony is sweet sweet justice (about $1200 worth by my estimate). Now, we're even.
See, I said it was an amusing story. Notice I didn't say who it would amuse. The cat is not pleased - and this amuses me.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go make sure we have enough betadine and bandaids.
____________________________________
Additional Cat Stories:
Death From the Sky, Part II
The Further Adventures of Stupid
Manly Blogging Thursday with ShopKat
Out of Pocket
I have an appointment at the VA this morning and have to run into Anchorage.
No, they have not finally completed my compensation and pension process. Argh!
However, I am getting the final gold crown this morning, which should finally fix the dental problems I've been having since the Persian Gulf. I am thrilled by this. Thrilled. No really, I am. I've had a temporary crown on the bottom rear molar since right before Thanksgiving, and while it's held up pretty well, I'll be glad to have the real crown done and the problem fixed. Want some advice? Don't get hit in the side of the jaw, just saying.
Hopefully I'll be back early enough to get some writing in before the kid gets home from school. We'll see. I made good progress yesterday, managing to complete almost an entire rough-draft chapter of Iyes of the Dead. If I can get enough time to edit and revise that today, I will be happy.
More later.
No, they have not finally completed my compensation and pension process. Argh!
However, I am getting the final gold crown this morning, which should finally fix the dental problems I've been having since the Persian Gulf. I am thrilled by this. Thrilled. No really, I am. I've had a temporary crown on the bottom rear molar since right before Thanksgiving, and while it's held up pretty well, I'll be glad to have the real crown done and the problem fixed. Want some advice? Don't get hit in the side of the jaw, just saying.
Hopefully I'll be back early enough to get some writing in before the kid gets home from school. We'll see. I made good progress yesterday, managing to complete almost an entire rough-draft chapter of Iyes of the Dead. If I can get enough time to edit and revise that today, I will be happy.
More later.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Update (Updated with a cool solution to a nagging problem)
Since I have not yet been able to devote time to finding an HTML widget to show 'most recent' posts in previous comment threads, I'm forced to do it manually (and if any of you know how to add this feature to blogger, please, post it in the comments under this thread, thanks).
-----------[update]------------------------
Update: OK, for those of you using Blogspot, face Eric's house and bow. He has provided the answer. You may add a rudimentary most recent comments widget using the following procedure:
Step 1: Go to Customize.
Step 2: Add a page element
Step 3: Select 'Feed'
Step 4: enter the following: "http://.../feeds/comments/default" (replace ... with your url and leave off the quote marks)
Step 5: refrain from speaking poorly about lawyers for at least 24 hours (you can do it, unless you're a, you know, lawyer).
An example of this widget has been added to Stonekettle Station, over there ->
Yes, over there -> scroll down until you find it.
Thanks, Eric
--------------[end update]--------------
Michelle K. and I have been continuing the discussion under the Cloning post.
As Steve Buchheit pointed out, my original post contained a large bit of rather crappy science. I thought about going back and fixing it, and decided instead to let it stand as written. As I've said elsewhere, yeah, sometimes I'm a bit off-base when I get outside my area of expertise, and this was the case with the original cloning post. However, I'm learning things, which is always first and foremost the point of this blog, because really it's all about me. And I'm finding the discussion with Michelle fascinating and the rest of you might too. As I suspected when Michelle joined our little group, she's a worthy addition, especially since her view points are, to some extent, the polar opposite of my own - though I do think we have more common ground than not. Again, I find her comments interesting and thoughtful and you might too.
-----------[update]------------------------
Update: OK, for those of you using Blogspot, face Eric's house and bow. He has provided the answer. You may add a rudimentary most recent comments widget using the following procedure:
Step 1: Go to Customize.
Step 2: Add a page element
Step 3: Select 'Feed'
Step 4: enter the following: "http://.../feeds/comments/default" (replace ... with your url and leave off the quote marks)
Step 5: refrain from speaking poorly about lawyers for at least 24 hours (you can do it, unless you're a, you know, lawyer).
An example of this widget has been added to Stonekettle Station, over there ->
Yes, over there -> scroll down until you find it.
Thanks, Eric
--------------[end update]--------------
Michelle K. and I have been continuing the discussion under the Cloning post.
As Steve Buchheit pointed out, my original post contained a large bit of rather crappy science. I thought about going back and fixing it, and decided instead to let it stand as written. As I've said elsewhere, yeah, sometimes I'm a bit off-base when I get outside my area of expertise, and this was the case with the original cloning post. However, I'm learning things, which is always first and foremost the point of this blog, because really it's all about me. And I'm finding the discussion with Michelle fascinating and the rest of you might too. As I suspected when Michelle joined our little group, she's a worthy addition, especially since her view points are, to some extent, the polar opposite of my own - though I do think we have more common ground than not. Again, I find her comments interesting and thoughtful and you might too.
The Iranian Incident
I've received a couple of emails this morning asking my opinion on the Straits of Hormuz incident involving the US Navy and Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats.
I wasn't there this time, so my opinion is based entirely on my past experience - and as you know, past performance is not a guarantee of future returns, especially with the crazed mob running Iran these days.
I've had the watch several times on the way through that strait, it's a tense process during the best of times. However, the Iranian Navy is fairly professional, and professional sailors from all countries tend to respect each other and tend to behave in a fairly predictable manner with respect for the rules of the sea. However, this incident appears to have involved the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force, these are not professional sailors or navy men - they are religious zealots who passionately hate America (and pretty much everybody else). Their actions are unpredictable and are often driven by political and religious reasons that are incomprehensible to westerners.
However, rest assured, had it come down to it - the Navy would have blown those boats out of the water without scratching their own paint. And the IRG knows that. Attack us at sea in our own element, and you are going to see some serious shit. It's one thing to attack a warship tied to the pier, or to go after a tanker restricted in it's ability to maneuver - it is something else entirely to engage a fast destroyer task force that is warned, linked, and ready to fight. But I doubt that a fight was the Iranian's intention and I suspect that the basic gist of the Times article, cited above, is in large part correct. The Iranian Government needs to show their own people that they aren't afraid of US Military might and that the Revolutionary Guard is the true power in the region, and they can spin this story however they like within Iran.
On the other hand, this incident has given Wall Street the perfect opportunity to ratchet up oil prices yet again.
I wasn't there this time, so my opinion is based entirely on my past experience - and as you know, past performance is not a guarantee of future returns, especially with the crazed mob running Iran these days.
I've had the watch several times on the way through that strait, it's a tense process during the best of times. However, the Iranian Navy is fairly professional, and professional sailors from all countries tend to respect each other and tend to behave in a fairly predictable manner with respect for the rules of the sea. However, this incident appears to have involved the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force, these are not professional sailors or navy men - they are religious zealots who passionately hate America (and pretty much everybody else). Their actions are unpredictable and are often driven by political and religious reasons that are incomprehensible to westerners.
However, rest assured, had it come down to it - the Navy would have blown those boats out of the water without scratching their own paint. And the IRG knows that. Attack us at sea in our own element, and you are going to see some serious shit. It's one thing to attack a warship tied to the pier, or to go after a tanker restricted in it's ability to maneuver - it is something else entirely to engage a fast destroyer task force that is warned, linked, and ready to fight. But I doubt that a fight was the Iranian's intention and I suspect that the basic gist of the Times article, cited above, is in large part correct. The Iranian Government needs to show their own people that they aren't afraid of US Military might and that the Revolutionary Guard is the true power in the region, and they can spin this story however they like within Iran.
On the other hand, this incident has given Wall Street the perfect opportunity to ratchet up oil prices yet again.
Back to Work!
Ahhh! Hear that? That's the sound of blessed silence.
It's quiet out in a way that only rural Alaska in the deep winter can be. The temperature has been dropping for the last week, and as a result all the remaining moisture has been condensing out of the atmosphere as hoar frost on every tree branch and surface. Since we live very close to the ocean, that's a lot of moisture. The trees are thickly coated in fuzzy white crystalline jackets and the ground makes a weird squealing noise when you walk across it. The thick coating of hoar frost acts as a sound absorber, and the world is dead silent outside, pitch black, and the sky is full of stars. Some people find it eerie, but I like it - it reminds me of the short story by Fritz Leiber, A Pail of Air.
Christmas break is over. The kid is back in school, and I've returned to my usual schedule - which is good, because insanity wasn't far away otherwise.
I've got a veritable plethora of projects going at the moment. I allow myself a hour for blogging first thing. Then an hour or so for Deep Thunder. Then several hours on The Iyes of the Dead, which is my current novel - a scifi locked room murder mystery told in the traditional mode. I've been at a standstill on that book for a while now, but I've finally figured out how to move the story along without losing momentum, and I'm excited to get back to it. Then I need a couple of hours to work on a piece I'm doing for submission to the the Anchorage Daily News, and to work on the outline for a military leadership book which will use lessons from history to illustrate true leadership in the face of adversity. Some time this month I need to find time to outline a 'how to' book on building a professional woodworking shop for cheap, using nothing but materials and equipment scrounged from scrap heaps, Craigslist, and eBay.
Writing takes up the first seven hours of my day, then I need to head out to the shop to start the millwork I've contracted for. I completed the templates and jigs for that project over the break and today I'll start the prototypes in plywood, making whatever adjustments are necessary to the jigs and templates. Tomorrow I'll convert the prototype templates from MDF into the final Plexiglass versions, and Wednesday I'll be able to start production. And somewhere in between all that I've got to find time during the week to finish up a couple of carved bowls which are due within the next two weeks, sooner if possible.
So, I'm going to be just a bit busy this week.
And people told me I'd have nothing to do after I retired from the Navy. Hah, fools! Fools!
It's quiet out in a way that only rural Alaska in the deep winter can be. The temperature has been dropping for the last week, and as a result all the remaining moisture has been condensing out of the atmosphere as hoar frost on every tree branch and surface. Since we live very close to the ocean, that's a lot of moisture. The trees are thickly coated in fuzzy white crystalline jackets and the ground makes a weird squealing noise when you walk across it. The thick coating of hoar frost acts as a sound absorber, and the world is dead silent outside, pitch black, and the sky is full of stars. Some people find it eerie, but I like it - it reminds me of the short story by Fritz Leiber, A Pail of Air.
Christmas break is over. The kid is back in school, and I've returned to my usual schedule - which is good, because insanity wasn't far away otherwise.
I've got a veritable plethora of projects going at the moment. I allow myself a hour for blogging first thing. Then an hour or so for Deep Thunder. Then several hours on The Iyes of the Dead, which is my current novel - a scifi locked room murder mystery told in the traditional mode. I've been at a standstill on that book for a while now, but I've finally figured out how to move the story along without losing momentum, and I'm excited to get back to it. Then I need a couple of hours to work on a piece I'm doing for submission to the the Anchorage Daily News, and to work on the outline for a military leadership book which will use lessons from history to illustrate true leadership in the face of adversity. Some time this month I need to find time to outline a 'how to' book on building a professional woodworking shop for cheap, using nothing but materials and equipment scrounged from scrap heaps, Craigslist, and eBay.
Writing takes up the first seven hours of my day, then I need to head out to the shop to start the millwork I've contracted for. I completed the templates and jigs for that project over the break and today I'll start the prototypes in plywood, making whatever adjustments are necessary to the jigs and templates. Tomorrow I'll convert the prototype templates from MDF into the final Plexiglass versions, and Wednesday I'll be able to start production. And somewhere in between all that I've got to find time during the week to finish up a couple of carved bowls which are due within the next two weeks, sooner if possible.
So, I'm going to be just a bit busy this week.
And people told me I'd have nothing to do after I retired from the Navy. Hah, fools! Fools!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Personal Pet Peave
Here's a question for the movie industry:
Don't they have medical professionals on the movie set? EMT's, Nurses, maybe even the occasional doctor?
I'm guessing no.
Because in all the years I've been watching TV and Movies I have yet to see CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) portrayed correctly.
Would it be so difficult, really?
You know they offer classes at the local Red Cross and I'd be willing to bet that there's some kind of union rule or OSHA regulation or something that requires at least one person on the set to be CPR and rescue breathing qualified - couldn't they offer some advice on the set?
(Digression: Frankly, I don't understand why everybody isn't basic CPR/Rescue Breathing/First Aid qualified - how come we don't teach that in elementary school, and require periodic requalification through high school graduation?).
Oh, and another thing - CPR almost never, never, restarts a heart. CPR is intended as 'life maintenance' until the paramedics arrives. Also, if first aid does manage to restart a heart (either through (sigh) CPR or an AED or hospital defibrillator) the victim isn't immediately all better. No really. They're gonna be in the hospital for a while - not up and about slaying monsters ten minutes after revival.
Really, is it too much to ask?
Don't they have medical professionals on the movie set? EMT's, Nurses, maybe even the occasional doctor?
I'm guessing no.
Because in all the years I've been watching TV and Movies I have yet to see CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) portrayed correctly.
Would it be so difficult, really?
You know they offer classes at the local Red Cross and I'd be willing to bet that there's some kind of union rule or OSHA regulation or something that requires at least one person on the set to be CPR and rescue breathing qualified - couldn't they offer some advice on the set?
(Digression: Frankly, I don't understand why everybody isn't basic CPR/Rescue Breathing/First Aid qualified - how come we don't teach that in elementary school, and require periodic requalification through high school graduation?).
Oh, and another thing - CPR almost never, never, restarts a heart. CPR is intended as 'life maintenance' until the paramedics arrives. Also, if first aid does manage to restart a heart (either through (sigh) CPR or an AED or hospital defibrillator) the victim isn't immediately all better. No really. They're gonna be in the hospital for a while - not up and about slaying monsters ten minutes after revival.
Really, is it too much to ask?
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Oh Noes! Hand me my torch and pitchfork!
We're all gonna die!
And maybe go to hell, for eating the devil clone meat.
"Whole Foods Market is committed to providing consumers with clone-free products," says Margaret Wittenberg, global vice president of quality standards and public affairs for grocer Whole Foods Market Inc. "The lack of effective governmental oversight and tracking could mean consumers will lose the ability to choose clone-free products."
Head for the hills! We're going to be overrun by really bad scifi-channel movie dialog! A pox on this writer's strike! Flee! Flee for your lives!
Cloned Milk! Why you might as well just suckle from the Devil's own teat!
"What are we afraid of???? Well let me see. Eating that stuff could possibly(and i mean this in a nice way) could turn you psychotic."
Oh no, not psychotic (even in a nice way)!
Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh. Ah?
Ah, hell, what a bunch of mass hysteria over nothing.
Snark aside, the chief complaint appears to be that the milk and meat from cloned animals won't be labeled as such on supermarket shelves. Opponents want the word "Clone" in big red letters on each package, because it's, um, really, really important! (technically I think it should probably say Clone! Clone! Clone! on the label, see because the word 'Clone' is copied several times and... what?)
Attention, clueless retards - since you spent your entire education with your ears plugged, afraid you might get a little Darwin on you, let me fill you in, cloning is NOT genetic alteration. Cloning is no different than twins. That's right, twins. Are you suggesting that we label milk and meat that comes from genetically identical animals (again, twins for the slow, science challenged people) as such? Maybe we should ban twins outright, those damned cows and their devil babies.
Look I'm all about food safety. I'm all about controlling genetically engineered foods. Frankly I'm a hell of a lot more concerned about making damned sure we know the long term effects of the steroids and hormones that are pumped into our food supply. This isn't that, cloning produces an animal genetically identical to the progenitor animal - that's why it's called cloning. If progenitor and offspring are not identical, the offspring is not a clone. If that progenitor animal was safe to eat, so is the clone. Q.E.D.
Simple genetic tests can easily prove this.
Which is what these alarmist idiots should actually be calling for: verification of identical genetic make-up between progenitor and clone(s). Certification that no significant genetic replication errors have occurred in the cloning process (by 'significant' I mean no greater than the normal +/- percentage of genetic mean deviation in a naturally occurring offspring). This would actually increase safety in the food supply. For example: a cow resistant to Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE, commonly called Mad Cow Disease) can be cloned over and over again. In fact, this could be a pretty powerful marketing tool - "Guaranteed to come from BSE Immune Animals!"
Are you eating cloned foods right now? Yep. Corn, wheat, potatoes, and many more plant products - we've been doing it for years, centuries in fact. Except the agriculture industry has been producing cloned crops using natural techniques. It's called monculture and it's what lead directly to the Dutch and Irish Potato Famine.
Which, of course, brings us to an actual real and legitimate concern regarding cloning - reduction of genetic diversity in the food supply. Over time it is likely that widespread cloning of selected animals will lead to a form of monoculture within the meat and diary industry, just as it has in agriculture.
Then again, it can be effectively demonstrated that if used on a large scale, cloning effectively stops evolution. Yep. And I think that's the marketing key, right there. Seriously push this hard enough, and it won't be long until the Creation Museum Cafe is serving nothing but Cloned Meat Hot Dogs. Eat Cloned Meat, Stop Evolution!
Cloned Food, the Conservative Christian Kosher!
Enjoy your Saturday.
And maybe go to hell, for eating the devil clone meat.
"Whole Foods Market is committed to providing consumers with clone-free products," says Margaret Wittenberg, global vice president of quality standards and public affairs for grocer Whole Foods Market Inc. "The lack of effective governmental oversight and tracking could mean consumers will lose the ability to choose clone-free products."
Head for the hills! We're going to be overrun by really bad scifi-channel movie dialog! A pox on this writer's strike! Flee! Flee for your lives!
Cloned Milk! Why you might as well just suckle from the Devil's own teat!
"What are we afraid of???? Well let me see. Eating that stuff could possibly(and i mean this in a nice way) could turn you psychotic."
Oh no, not psychotic (even in a nice way)!
Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh. Ah?
Ah, hell, what a bunch of mass hysteria over nothing.
Snark aside, the chief complaint appears to be that the milk and meat from cloned animals won't be labeled as such on supermarket shelves. Opponents want the word "Clone" in big red letters on each package, because it's, um, really, really important! (technically I think it should probably say Clone! Clone! Clone! on the label, see because the word 'Clone' is copied several times and... what?)
Attention, clueless retards - since you spent your entire education with your ears plugged, afraid you might get a little Darwin on you, let me fill you in, cloning is NOT genetic alteration. Cloning is no different than twins. That's right, twins. Are you suggesting that we label milk and meat that comes from genetically identical animals (again, twins for the slow, science challenged people) as such? Maybe we should ban twins outright, those damned cows and their devil babies.
Look I'm all about food safety. I'm all about controlling genetically engineered foods. Frankly I'm a hell of a lot more concerned about making damned sure we know the long term effects of the steroids and hormones that are pumped into our food supply. This isn't that, cloning produces an animal genetically identical to the progenitor animal - that's why it's called cloning. If progenitor and offspring are not identical, the offspring is not a clone. If that progenitor animal was safe to eat, so is the clone. Q.E.D.
Simple genetic tests can easily prove this.
Which is what these alarmist idiots should actually be calling for: verification of identical genetic make-up between progenitor and clone(s). Certification that no significant genetic replication errors have occurred in the cloning process (by 'significant' I mean no greater than the normal +/- percentage of genetic mean deviation in a naturally occurring offspring). This would actually increase safety in the food supply. For example: a cow resistant to Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE, commonly called Mad Cow Disease) can be cloned over and over again. In fact, this could be a pretty powerful marketing tool - "Guaranteed to come from BSE Immune Animals!"
Are you eating cloned foods right now? Yep. Corn, wheat, potatoes, and many more plant products - we've been doing it for years, centuries in fact. Except the agriculture industry has been producing cloned crops using natural techniques. It's called monculture and it's what lead directly to the Dutch and Irish Potato Famine.
Which, of course, brings us to an actual real and legitimate concern regarding cloning - reduction of genetic diversity in the food supply. Over time it is likely that widespread cloning of selected animals will lead to a form of monoculture within the meat and diary industry, just as it has in agriculture.
Then again, it can be effectively demonstrated that if used on a large scale, cloning effectively stops evolution. Yep. And I think that's the marketing key, right there. Seriously push this hard enough, and it won't be long until the Creation Museum Cafe is serving nothing but Cloned Meat Hot Dogs. Eat Cloned Meat, Stop Evolution!
Cloned Food, the Conservative Christian Kosher!
Enjoy your Saturday.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Please Make It Stop
OK, no TV today.
I'm still in pain this morning, the shoulder is better, but it hurts to turn my head. The pain in my neck caused me to wake up with a headache - which isn't surprising, since I went to bed with one.
Then I turned on the news - and it was like somebody jammed an icepick through my eye.
Somebody do me a favor - hold Britney Spears' head under water until she stops twitching. Please. Honestly, does anybody expect this empty-headed twit to live a long and happy life? Eventually she's going to commit suicide, or overdose, or drive her BMW through a Starbucks and over a cliff. It's inevitable. So, let's just get it over with, then the rest of us can get on with our business. Cold? Heartless? Yeah, that's me. I don't know what's more revolting, her drug-addled commando nihilism or the crazed mob of camera waving human diarrhea that camp out at the end of her driveway, or the fact that people the world over are actually interested in this woman's train wreck of a life.
Oh wait, as it turns out I do know what is more revolting - Huckabee's tent-revival smugness this morning, Praise JeeeZus! See, that's the problem with democracy - we have to let the idiots vote, and there's more and more idiots every day. The same people that compulsively surf the internet for pictures of Britney's nasty girl gadget are the ones who think the Huckster will make a good President - you know, because he's a preacher. Just what we need, another squinty-eyed conservative retard in the Oval Office who thinks Jesus talks to him personally.
Way to go Iowa.
Since Britney's career is basically head first in the toilet, maybe she could be Huck's running mate. Why the hell not? Look at it this way, since we've managed to turn our government into a joke anyway - let's go big. The whole world is laughing at us already, I say let's laugh with them.
Think about it - Huck and Brit. There's some real advantages here:
1) No more evil vice president who secretly runs things from behind the scenes. Britney couldn't organize a salad fight down at the Beverly Hills Taco Bell. Hell, she doesn't even get out of bed before 2PM, honestly how much damage could she do?
2) Major energy and time savings. Consolidating the frothing mobs of reporters who follow both Britney and the VP around into one group saves us all time and money. We'd get both our political and entertainment news all in one shot. Think of the savings! And truthfully American Politics and the Entertainment Industry aren't really all that different. Think about it, both generate mindless followers, heaps of money, bullshit, and crazy religious twaddle faster than an L. Ron Hubbard brain washing. Let's lump it all together and simplify the process, that's what I'm talking about.
3) Huck's a Republican Conservative, an ordained Baptist minister, the bass player in the band Capital Offense, and he used to be the Governor of Arkansas - now, you tell me, is that a recipe for a little cigar smoking in the Oval Office or what? With Britney as the VP, well, at least he won't have to go far afield - cheap nasty sex complete with VD, booze, drugs, and scandal all in one convenient package. Just saying.
4) Truthfully, when Britney shaved her head, didn't she look a lot like Dick Cheney from the ribcage up? And at the rate Britney's pounding down the booze, jowls and the spider-veined red nose aren't far away. Put a pair of glasses on her and we wouldn't even have to change the VP pictures in every government building. More savings for the tax payer.
5) He plays bass, he's got his own band. She's a singer and a dancer and has her own groupies. Do I have to spell it out? It's the perfect match, like the Brady Bunch - if Mike and Carol snorted coke off a hooker's ass with a rolled up page ripped out of the bible.
6) Seriously, Huck and Brit, really could they do any worse than the current dipshits? Really, how bad could it be, comparatively speaking? I mean we're basically faced with no good choices, mostly it's a matter of voting for the lesser of evils anyway. In fact that would make a damned good campaign slogan: Huck and Brit 2008! No Good Choices!
7) And finally, we'd at last find something for Paris Hilton to do. With Britney in the VP's office, it's inevitable that she'd see her old friend on the cabinet - Secretary of State I'm thinking. Or maybe a nice ambassadorship somewhere - say Baghdad.
Yeah, OK, I'm done here. I'll be out in the shop if you need me.
I'm still in pain this morning, the shoulder is better, but it hurts to turn my head. The pain in my neck caused me to wake up with a headache - which isn't surprising, since I went to bed with one.
Then I turned on the news - and it was like somebody jammed an icepick through my eye.
Somebody do me a favor - hold Britney Spears' head under water until she stops twitching. Please. Honestly, does anybody expect this empty-headed twit to live a long and happy life? Eventually she's going to commit suicide, or overdose, or drive her BMW through a Starbucks and over a cliff. It's inevitable. So, let's just get it over with, then the rest of us can get on with our business. Cold? Heartless? Yeah, that's me. I don't know what's more revolting, her drug-addled commando nihilism or the crazed mob of camera waving human diarrhea that camp out at the end of her driveway, or the fact that people the world over are actually interested in this woman's train wreck of a life.
Oh wait, as it turns out I do know what is more revolting - Huckabee's tent-revival smugness this morning, Praise JeeeZus! See, that's the problem with democracy - we have to let the idiots vote, and there's more and more idiots every day. The same people that compulsively surf the internet for pictures of Britney's nasty girl gadget are the ones who think the Huckster will make a good President - you know, because he's a preacher. Just what we need, another squinty-eyed conservative retard in the Oval Office who thinks Jesus talks to him personally.
Way to go Iowa.
Since Britney's career is basically head first in the toilet, maybe she could be Huck's running mate. Why the hell not? Look at it this way, since we've managed to turn our government into a joke anyway - let's go big. The whole world is laughing at us already, I say let's laugh with them.
Think about it - Huck and Brit. There's some real advantages here:
1) No more evil vice president who secretly runs things from behind the scenes. Britney couldn't organize a salad fight down at the Beverly Hills Taco Bell. Hell, she doesn't even get out of bed before 2PM, honestly how much damage could she do?
2) Major energy and time savings. Consolidating the frothing mobs of reporters who follow both Britney and the VP around into one group saves us all time and money. We'd get both our political and entertainment news all in one shot. Think of the savings! And truthfully American Politics and the Entertainment Industry aren't really all that different. Think about it, both generate mindless followers, heaps of money, bullshit, and crazy religious twaddle faster than an L. Ron Hubbard brain washing. Let's lump it all together and simplify the process, that's what I'm talking about.
3) Huck's a Republican Conservative, an ordained Baptist minister, the bass player in the band Capital Offense, and he used to be the Governor of Arkansas - now, you tell me, is that a recipe for a little cigar smoking in the Oval Office or what? With Britney as the VP, well, at least he won't have to go far afield - cheap nasty sex complete with VD, booze, drugs, and scandal all in one convenient package. Just saying.
4) Truthfully, when Britney shaved her head, didn't she look a lot like Dick Cheney from the ribcage up? And at the rate Britney's pounding down the booze, jowls and the spider-veined red nose aren't far away. Put a pair of glasses on her and we wouldn't even have to change the VP pictures in every government building. More savings for the tax payer.
5) He plays bass, he's got his own band. She's a singer and a dancer and has her own groupies. Do I have to spell it out? It's the perfect match, like the Brady Bunch - if Mike and Carol snorted coke off a hooker's ass with a rolled up page ripped out of the bible.
6) Seriously, Huck and Brit, really could they do any worse than the current dipshits? Really, how bad could it be, comparatively speaking? I mean we're basically faced with no good choices, mostly it's a matter of voting for the lesser of evils anyway. In fact that would make a damned good campaign slogan: Huck and Brit 2008! No Good Choices!
7) And finally, we'd at last find something for Paris Hilton to do. With Britney in the VP's office, it's inevitable that she'd see her old friend on the cabinet - Secretary of State I'm thinking. Or maybe a nice ambassadorship somewhere - say Baghdad.
Yeah, OK, I'm done here. I'll be out in the shop if you need me.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
What we have here is a failure to communicate, really
So, I'm on the phone this morning with a woman from tech support and she's reading me a pass phrase as follows (not the actual password, but you get the idea here):
"Ok, sir, the password is: Arr as in Robert, Tee as in Todd, four, Eee as in Elbow..." and she goes on until she's completed the 8-digit password. Then she asked me to repeat it back.
So I repeated the password as, "Arr as in Romeo, Tee as in Tango..."
At which point she interrupted me, "No sir, that's incorrect. It's Arr as in Robert, Tee as in Todd..." and she proceeded through the whole thing again.
Me: "Uh, sorry I was in the Navy, I tend to use military phonetics."
Tech Support: "Yeah, sorry I didn't realize that. Please repeat the password again."
Me: "Arr as in Romeo..."
Tech Support: "No, sir, no. I don't know where you're getting this 'romeo' from, it's Arr as in Robert."
Me "OK, isn't the Arr in Romeo the same as the Arr in Robert?"
Tech Support: "No sir, Romeo and Robert are different."
Me "Right. Thanks I got it. Bye."
"Ok, sir, the password is: Arr as in Robert, Tee as in Todd, four, Eee as in Elbow..." and she goes on until she's completed the 8-digit password. Then she asked me to repeat it back.
So I repeated the password as, "Arr as in Romeo, Tee as in Tango..."
At which point she interrupted me, "No sir, that's incorrect. It's Arr as in Robert, Tee as in Todd..." and she proceeded through the whole thing again.
Me: "Uh, sorry I was in the Navy, I tend to use military phonetics."
Tech Support: "Yeah, sorry I didn't realize that. Please repeat the password again."
Me: "Arr as in Romeo..."
Tech Support: "No, sir, no. I don't know where you're getting this 'romeo' from, it's Arr as in Robert."
Me "OK, isn't the Arr in Romeo the same as the Arr in Robert?"
Tech Support: "No sir, Romeo and Robert are different."
Me "Right. Thanks I got it. Bye."
A Truly Excellent Idea, truly
The satirical web 'newspaper' NewsBiscuit cracks me up.
Sports Cars to display drivers' penis size - now there's an interesting idea.
Did you ever try to pass a middle-aged guy in a Camero?
Seriously.
Ever been tooling up the highway and come upon a Camaro, or a Mach 1, or a Mustang, or some other 70's muscle car doing about 50 in the fast lane? And you swing right on cruise-control into the slow lane (grumbling under your breath about idiots that can't seem to grasp the basic left lane fast/right lane slow concept), and as you sail past you realize that the other driver is not some kid, but well into prime middle-aged crisis territory? (yeah, your age). And as you lock eyes over the rap music playing so painfully loud you can hear it through your closed window, you can see the outrage and the personal effrontery on their face?
That's right, I said effrontery - arrogant, audacious behavior that someone really isn't entitled to. You can see it on their botoxed faces, right above the chin implant and below the hair plugs - it's an expression similar to indignation. An expression that screams, "Hey! You can't pass me, I'm driving a Chevy Camaro here!" Then they slam down the gas pedal and roar away in a cloud of 4-barrel carbureted fumes, leaving you humiliated and humbled by their virile manliness.
And 20 minutes later, what do you come upon? Why the same guy, doing about 50 in the fast lane - yeah, 70's muscle cars didn't come with cruise control, and Viagra does exactly dick for long-term concentration (or so I'm told).
It would be just so much easier if we just made them put their age and the length of their, uh, muscle car on the fender.
----------------
Note: Yes, today I am deliberately ignoring the Iowa Caucus (because, really, it's like going to McDonalds at 2AM and getting a stale, cold, 6-hour old fillet-O-fish and some soggy fries - you know what you're going to get, but it's the only thing open), Huckabee's pathetic guitar playing on Leno (though I'm pretty sure I've seen him on the road in a Camaro), and Britney's lawyerly abandonment (because, apparently even the lawyers attached lamprey-like to her coke-dusted, booze-farting ass have had enough of her silly stupid shit).
Sports Cars to display drivers' penis size - now there's an interesting idea.
Did you ever try to pass a middle-aged guy in a Camero?
Seriously.
Ever been tooling up the highway and come upon a Camaro, or a Mach 1, or a Mustang, or some other 70's muscle car doing about 50 in the fast lane? And you swing right on cruise-control into the slow lane (grumbling under your breath about idiots that can't seem to grasp the basic left lane fast/right lane slow concept), and as you sail past you realize that the other driver is not some kid, but well into prime middle-aged crisis territory? (yeah, your age). And as you lock eyes over the rap music playing so painfully loud you can hear it through your closed window, you can see the outrage and the personal effrontery on their face?
That's right, I said effrontery - arrogant, audacious behavior that someone really isn't entitled to. You can see it on their botoxed faces, right above the chin implant and below the hair plugs - it's an expression similar to indignation. An expression that screams, "Hey! You can't pass me, I'm driving a Chevy Camaro here!" Then they slam down the gas pedal and roar away in a cloud of 4-barrel carbureted fumes, leaving you humiliated and humbled by their virile manliness.
And 20 minutes later, what do you come upon? Why the same guy, doing about 50 in the fast lane - yeah, 70's muscle cars didn't come with cruise control, and Viagra does exactly dick for long-term concentration (or so I'm told).
It would be just so much easier if we just made them put their age and the length of their, uh, muscle car on the fender.
----------------
Note: Yes, today I am deliberately ignoring the Iowa Caucus (because, really, it's like going to McDonalds at 2AM and getting a stale, cold, 6-hour old fillet-O-fish and some soggy fries - you know what you're going to get, but it's the only thing open), Huckabee's pathetic guitar playing on Leno (though I'm pretty sure I've seen him on the road in a Camaro), and Britney's lawyerly abandonment (because, apparently even the lawyers attached lamprey-like to her coke-dusted, booze-farting ass have had enough of her silly stupid shit).
I'll take Useless Knowledge for $500, Alex
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Pie in the Sky Science
Here's a question for you.
Say you were a large government agency, charged with, amongst other things, public safety in a specific area of regulation - and that responsibility applies to millions of Americans on a daily basis. And say you conducted a survey of professionals in that field in order to determine if the type of survey you were conducting was a good way to gather information (No, really). And let's say that survey of survey techniques cost the taxpayers $11 million dollars. And then, say, something funny happens - you get real data from your expensive test.
And the results are universally bad - indicating a major systemic danger to the public, one that is getting worse. Every single response (from thousands of professionals - the absolute experts in the field) says the system is breaking down. The results also indicate that you really aren't living up to your responsibility. The results strongly indicate that if something isn't done pretty damned quick, there are going to be some catastrophic consequences.
So here's the question: Do you A) take immediate action to correct the situation and live up to your charter? or do you B) cover that shit up and pretend it never happened?
I'll bet you can guess the correct answer. See because the part I left out is that you have friends in the industry you're supposed to be regulating, in fact you're in bed with this industry right up to your eyeballs, and if you choose Option A), well those friends are going to take a serious hit in the wallet. And, really, what kind of friend would you be if you placed public safety over the financial bottom lines of your buddies?
NASA yesterday released partial results of a massive air-safety survey of airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue, problems with air-traffic controllers, airport security, and the layouts of runways and taxiways. The results have been 'redacted' - which is a government term for 'deliberately rendered unreadable through the removal of critical references and specific information, because, really, that Freedom of Information Act just plain bites and the people who paid for this information really have no need to know anything about it."
You can find the actual survey data here. NASA was forced to release the information through the FOIA. They weren't happy about it. They sullenly followed the letter of the law, but did it in a manner that violates the very spirit of public disclosure. Good luck figuring it out, it's about 10,000 pages of raw data fields exported from the NASA database in PDF format. The data has been deliberately disassociated from the original survey questions in order to prevent analysis. All references to the original data fields have been removed - i.e. it mostly 10,000 pages of numeric tables without any description of what those numbers mean. Additionally, most of the pilot's statements have been edited in a manner that can best be described as ludicrous: for example, entire paragraphs have been removed leaving only the word 'fatigue.'
"NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters ... that the agency had no plans to study the database for trends. He said NASA conducted the survey only to determine whether gathering information from pilots in such a way was worthwhile."
And apparently, if the results show that NASA is not doing its job correctly then by Griffin's definition the survey isn't worth bothering with. I love the fact that Griffin said his agency has no intention of studying the database for trends. $11 million this database cost us, solely in order to determine if it was worth doing, which according to Griffin it was not. Oh well.
Silly me, I thought NASA was an agency dedicated to science. Apparently though, they have adopted the creationism model of scientific investigation, i.e. Step 1) Determine the results you desire FIRST, 2) conduct the investigation, 3) throw out any data that does not directly support Step (1). When confronted with the conflicting data, pretend it doesn't matter because that's not what you were looking for in the first place.
Really, is it any wonder why nearly forty years after men first set foot upon Earth's moon, we're still trapped in Low Earth Orbit? Or that we've lost two manned spacecraft due to utter stupidity and a complete inability to face unpleasant truths? Or that we've decided to throw away the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the single greatest scientific instruments ever fielded in the entire history of mankind? Or...oh screw it, I could go on all day and I've got other things to do today.
Personally, I think we ought round up Micheal Griffin's family, wife, kids, grandkids, and etc. Then strap these people into some bargain airline seats and let them fly around the country until Mike retires. If he's good with their safety, I guess I'm good with it.
Say you were a large government agency, charged with, amongst other things, public safety in a specific area of regulation - and that responsibility applies to millions of Americans on a daily basis. And say you conducted a survey of professionals in that field in order to determine if the type of survey you were conducting was a good way to gather information (No, really). And let's say that survey of survey techniques cost the taxpayers $11 million dollars. And then, say, something funny happens - you get real data from your expensive test.
And the results are universally bad - indicating a major systemic danger to the public, one that is getting worse. Every single response (from thousands of professionals - the absolute experts in the field) says the system is breaking down. The results also indicate that you really aren't living up to your responsibility. The results strongly indicate that if something isn't done pretty damned quick, there are going to be some catastrophic consequences.
So here's the question: Do you A) take immediate action to correct the situation and live up to your charter? or do you B) cover that shit up and pretend it never happened?
I'll bet you can guess the correct answer. See because the part I left out is that you have friends in the industry you're supposed to be regulating, in fact you're in bed with this industry right up to your eyeballs, and if you choose Option A), well those friends are going to take a serious hit in the wallet. And, really, what kind of friend would you be if you placed public safety over the financial bottom lines of your buddies?
NASA yesterday released partial results of a massive air-safety survey of airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue, problems with air-traffic controllers, airport security, and the layouts of runways and taxiways. The results have been 'redacted' - which is a government term for 'deliberately rendered unreadable through the removal of critical references and specific information, because, really, that Freedom of Information Act just plain bites and the people who paid for this information really have no need to know anything about it."
You can find the actual survey data here. NASA was forced to release the information through the FOIA. They weren't happy about it. They sullenly followed the letter of the law, but did it in a manner that violates the very spirit of public disclosure. Good luck figuring it out, it's about 10,000 pages of raw data fields exported from the NASA database in PDF format. The data has been deliberately disassociated from the original survey questions in order to prevent analysis. All references to the original data fields have been removed - i.e. it mostly 10,000 pages of numeric tables without any description of what those numbers mean. Additionally, most of the pilot's statements have been edited in a manner that can best be described as ludicrous: for example, entire paragraphs have been removed leaving only the word 'fatigue.'
"NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters ... that the agency had no plans to study the database for trends. He said NASA conducted the survey only to determine whether gathering information from pilots in such a way was worthwhile."
And apparently, if the results show that NASA is not doing its job correctly then by Griffin's definition the survey isn't worth bothering with. I love the fact that Griffin said his agency has no intention of studying the database for trends. $11 million this database cost us, solely in order to determine if it was worth doing, which according to Griffin it was not. Oh well.
Silly me, I thought NASA was an agency dedicated to science. Apparently though, they have adopted the creationism model of scientific investigation, i.e. Step 1) Determine the results you desire FIRST, 2) conduct the investigation, 3) throw out any data that does not directly support Step (1). When confronted with the conflicting data, pretend it doesn't matter because that's not what you were looking for in the first place.
Really, is it any wonder why nearly forty years after men first set foot upon Earth's moon, we're still trapped in Low Earth Orbit? Or that we've lost two manned spacecraft due to utter stupidity and a complete inability to face unpleasant truths? Or that we've decided to throw away the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the single greatest scientific instruments ever fielded in the entire history of mankind? Or...oh screw it, I could go on all day and I've got other things to do today.
Personally, I think we ought round up Micheal Griffin's family, wife, kids, grandkids, and etc. Then strap these people into some bargain airline seats and let them fly around the country until Mike retires. If he's good with their safety, I guess I'm good with it.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Years Day
Since it was nice out today and my shoulder was feeling a wee bit better, we thought we'd head up to Hatcher's Pass, which is about fifteen minutes from our house, and give the kid and the dog some exercise.
It was a little windy, but not too bad. About 20F, which is unusually warm this time of year. Plenty of snow. Lot's of snowboarders and sledders about.
This is my son "catchin' some air" as the kids say. Right now he's eleven and this is about as much air as he can catch - we're saving up for the hospital bills when he's a teenager.
Jumper enjoyed the day, even though I forgot to bring her boots. She gets ice and snow caught between her toes unless she's booted up, but today she didn't seem to have much trouble.
At first glance it looks like the snow was really deep since Becky had her entire left left leg buried to the hip - it's an illusion, she's just really, really short.
Afterward, on the way home, we diverted to Wasilla for Mexican food.
Hope you guys enjoyed the first day of 2008. Well, all of you except Shawn Powers, who as we all know spent the entire day rebuilding his server - which is probably for the best, since the last time he went outside he fell into a river.
It was a little windy, but not too bad. About 20F, which is unusually warm this time of year. Plenty of snow. Lot's of snowboarders and sledders about.
This is my son "catchin' some air" as the kids say. Right now he's eleven and this is about as much air as he can catch - we're saving up for the hospital bills when he's a teenager.
Jumper enjoyed the day, even though I forgot to bring her boots. She gets ice and snow caught between her toes unless she's booted up, but today she didn't seem to have much trouble.
At first glance it looks like the snow was really deep since Becky had her entire left left leg buried to the hip - it's an illusion, she's just really, really short.
Afterward, on the way home, we diverted to Wasilla for Mexican food.
Hope you guys enjoyed the first day of 2008. Well, all of you except Shawn Powers, who as we all know spent the entire day rebuilding his server - which is probably for the best, since the last time he went outside he fell into a river.
A little New Year's Humor
You never know what will turn out to be important:
In ancient Greece, Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance, who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students...?"
In ancient Greece, Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance, who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students...?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Test of Three."
"Test of Three?"
"That's correct," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to test what you're going to say. The first test is Truth. Are absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man replied, "actually I just heard about it."
"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second test, the test of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him even though you're not certain it's true?"
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed.
Socrates continued, "You may still pass though because there is a third test - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really..."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"
The man was defeated and ashamed and said no more. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.
It also explains why Socrates never found out that Plato was banging his wife.
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