The Volcano

Mount Redoubt blew last night.

The volcano is erupting right now - the news just broadcast that the fifth major explosion of this eruption series has just occurred and the ash plume is expected to reach 60,000 feet.

No ash has fallen here or in Anchorage. So far it's business as usual.

Updates to follow.
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Update 1: 3/23/09 06:33
It appears at the moment that the winds are such that the initial ash fall will pass both north and south of Anchorage , but not on the city itself. It does look, however, as if the wind transport will cause some of it to pass directly over my house here in Palmer. We'll see.

Flights out of Anchorage International are being grounded or redirected per normal procedure.

At the moment everything is normal, schools and businesses are open. Power and communications are unaffected. The bases and emergency services are on alert per standard procedure.

My generators are prepped and ready to go. We have water and supplies if the power goes out. And plenty of firewood if the gas goes offline. We have masks and goggles should the ash fall here. At the moment we're not expecting to need any of it - but I'm a big believer in being prepared.

Sun-up in an hour, then we'll know more.
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3/23/09 0800
Redoubt continues to erupt.

The wind is blowing the ashfall north, right at us. However, the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the National Weather Service are predicting only light ashfall here at the moment. I haven't seen any, and I expect that if any ash is falling it's north of here up near Talkeetna.

The AVO webcam nearest the volcano (station RSO) is dead, buried in ash, or knocked offline by seismic shock sometime during the night. If the weather clears we might get some real time pictures from the webcam mounted on a Chevron platform in the Cook Inlet - but I wouldn't hold your breath on that one. Right now it's showing mostly fog, which is what it usually shows.

As of this moment, 19 passenger flights into or out of Anchorage International have been canceled. Two flights were turned back to Seattle. Everything else here is grounded at the moment. International cargo flights, the vast bulk of the traffic through Anchorage Intl, are also grounded at the moment, so if you were shipping somthing to Asia via FedEx, it probably ain't gonna get there overnight, at least not through Alaska anyway.

People mostly seem to be taking it in stride. This morning at the coffee shop more people were bitching about our retarded Governor's decision to reject a big chunk of the Federal Bailout while jobs and schools and the oil industry are collapsing around us. Something tells me that this stupid politicking bitch is going to be out of a job come 2010, because, seriously here folks, if the MatSu Valley Fundies are talking smack about her, she really has no base left at all.
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3/23/09 09:00
Sunrise was very, very orange today. Turning yellow and cloudy now though. Sorry, didn't get a picture.

I used to live on Iceland, with more active volcanoes than you can shake a stick at - if you could find a stick on Iceland that is. I was in Sicily in the mid-80's for the Mount Etna eruption. And I used to work far out in the Aleutians, during several eruptions of various volcanoes. One thing about volcanic ash, it makes for some pretty awesome skies.

If we get more high altitude ash drift, sunset should be spectacular. I'll try to have the camera ready.
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3/23/09 12:00
Just talked to a friend with the USGS, biggest explosion was last night, the eruptions have been tapering off. However that doesn't mean that the event is over, and that doesn't mean that another big one couldn't occur at any moment. Redoubt could follow this pattern for months, or go silent again this week. Vulcanology isn't an exact science, prediction wise. Probability is that Redoubt will continue to erupt, just as it did the last time and the time before that, for several months.

The AVO is planning an overflight this afternoon, and in fact should be airborne now. How close they can get depends on a lot of things - as you might imagine. The weather over the mountain isn't the best, and visibility sucks even without a major eruption going on, so whether or not we get some clear pictures is anybody's guess at this point.

Definately an odd tint in the sky today, color wise.
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If I sound a bit cavalier about this whole volcano thing, it's because I am.

I can afford to be.

See, the USGS and Alaska Volcano Observatory have been monitoring Mount Redoubt and the other active volcanoes here in The Great Land for many, many years. When Redoubt began to rumble, they were all over it.

The geologists, geophysicists, and the scientists of the USGS looked at the twitches on their graphs and listened to the telemetry from the remote sensors and did what they do. They began predicting this eruption months ago.

The AVO has been in the papers, on TV, on the local radio, and on the web for months, providing updates, advice, and recomendation for preparedness. As a result our government, infrastructure, emergency services, State National Guard, and many citizens are prepared. The schools and airports and towns all have emergency plans, the airports put theirs into effect this morning. We've got filter masks and generators. We've got goggles and spare air filters for the cars. We've got shovels, and radios, and batteries. We've got food and fuels and more than anything we know not to panic.

But think about it for a minute. It's Alaska, we're remote and far from help. Should the power plants go down - and this is the single largest threat we face, both because turbines don't take kindly to particulate ingestion and because wet ash falling on power lines causes catastrophic short cicuits - we could easily end up with 200,000 people in the dark without heat, power, or communications, in the middle of winter.

It won't happen, we were warned and as a result we're preparred. But it is that very warning system idiots like Bobby Jindal want to take away, apparently on the theory that it's better to get hit without preparation - see how well that worked in New Orleans, in Bobby's home state? Yeah, the mind boggles.
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3/23/09 1600

The eruption has tapered off for the moment. No new ash emissions in the last several hours. No ash fall here, the winds are carrying it north of us, what little there is.

AVO has an overflight in progress at the moment, should be some updated pictures later this evening.

The phone call flood and email deluge continue however.

We're fine, really.
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3/23/09 2000

Just had another big explosion. Still waiting on the details
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3/24/09 0700

All quiet. No new eruptions since last night. No ash fall here.

Some cool pictures from yesterday's flyover can be found here.

Back To The House That Love Built

Yes, I did watch Desperado last night.

In hi-def, with the surround sound turned up.

No, smartass, not just because the movie has Selma Hayek in it.


Every time I watch this flick I can't help but be astounded at how utterly brilliant the soundtrack is.

Here's Tito & Tarantula doing Back to the house that love built:



If you've watched the movie (and really, how could you not have?) you know that Tito Larriva played Tavo, Cheech Marin's partner in crime - and like Marin, meets a violent end at the hands and guns of El Mariachi.

I'm not a big Robert Rodriguez fan, but I love this bloody and violent movie.

And yeah, OK, maybe just a little of that is because of Selma Hayek.
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And yes, Eric, Tito & Tarantula is the band in From Dusk Till Dawn, who perform while Selma Hayek strips - then they all turn to vampires and eat the patrons.

Don't be a Sucker

A Day of Silence

There will be no posts on Stonekettle Station today.

This site is a founding member of the UCF.

The UCF is a small, tightly knit circle of amazingly brilliant people from many walks of life, scattered across the globe and bound together through the technology of the Internet. We share a passion for truth, science, politics, critical thought, fine food, laughter, strange gifts, and above all, friendship.

Yesterday, one of our members suffered a most profound and terrible personal tragedy.

Out of respect for her loss, the UCF member blogs, including Stonekettle Station, will be offline today, Friday, March 20, 2009.

Our thoughts and hearts are with our friend today.

The biggest difference between Bush and Obama…

"I know Washington's all in a tizzy and everybody's pointing fingers at each other and saying it's their fault, the Democrats' fault, the Republicans' fault.”

“Listen, I will take responsibility. I'm the president."

"We didn't draft these contracts. We've got a lot on our plate. But it is appropriate when you're in charge to make sure stuff doesn't happen like this. So for everybody in Washington who's busy scrambling to try to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me, because it's my job to fix these messes even if I don't make them."

That’s what President Obama said regarding outrage that his bailout plan contained loopholes allowing tottering financial giant AIG to pay $165 million dollars of taxpayer money as bonuses to its employees.

Congress drafted that bill.  A whole bunch of supposedly smart people looked at that bill and helped develop the plan.  Those loopholes should have been found and fixed.

Regardless, the president signed it.

It was wrong.

It shouldn’t have happened.

The President made a mistake.

 

Now, lets compare:

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The demonstrated George W. Bush response to error:

The Intel was bad.

Clinton.

Tax Rebates for everybody!

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The Obama response to error:

I made a mistake.

It’s my responsibility.

It’s my job to fix it.

And I will.

Now, stop trying to fix blame, quit acting like children, and lets get back to work.

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You know what? This is what real leadership looks like.

We, my friends, are going to be OK.

Things That Chap My Ass About Cats

Wright’s Law of Cats: the perversity of cats tends towards the maximum – plus ten percent.

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Cats are irritating little bastards, aren’t they?

Take the chair routine.

Get up from your desk, go get a cup of coffee, and inevitably you come back to find Mr. Whiskers in your chair, curled up and pretending to be asleep. You dump him out, take the chair back - and the cat then climbs into your lap and parks on top of your bladder like a hairy codpiece. Try to move him, and he imitates a boneless chicken. It’s like trying to push a jellyfish with velcro on the bottom of it. Now after a while, you’ve got to get up (you’re drinking coffee remember, there’s a ten pound cat sitting on your bladder – try to keep up). So what do you do? You carefully pick the cat up, stand up, and place the cat on the chair. What’s the cat do? Yeah, gets down immediately and struts away. Fuck you, Pink Monkey, I’m not staying in the chair if you want me to stay in the chair, I only want to be in the chair if you don’t want me to be in the chair.

Perversity, see what I mean?

Then there’s the whole dive bombing your ankle.

You’d think that after the umpity dozenth (screw you, it’s a word, look it up) time of having a paw or tail stepped on, a cat would realize that walking under my feet is not a good idea. But no, at least once a day ShopKat decides the best place in the whole freakin’ woodshop to be is directly under my feet. Stomp. Squawk! And then I have to endure an hour of the “You HURT me, Pink Monkey, scowl.” Don’t think cats can glare? You don’t live with cats.

Then there’s the whole food thing.

The Comedian Leo Gallagher (The Sledge-O-Matic guy from the 80’s) used do this riff about cats: They can’t read but they can compare. They can look in the pantry and see what kind of cat food you got too many cans of – then they don’t want that kind any more.

Seriously, what kind of picky eater licks his ass? They ought to make ass-flavored cat food.

Cats will sit beneath your chair and mew piteously. Pet me! Pet me! I’m so lonely! My head is so itchy! How come you ignore me, Pink Monkey? So you reach for them – and they run away! Five minutes later, they’re back. Pet me!

A cat plays with its toys all at once. Bring home a new catnip ball, the cat will play with that bastard furiously for 30 minutes. Then the cat will leave it laying in the middle of the floor and never touch it again. There, got that done. Unless you pick it up and put it near the cat bed. The cat comes along and does a double take. What the fuck? How’d this damned ball get over here? Thirty minutes of furious batting later, and the ball is back in the middle of the floor – right in front of the last stair step. Just out of sight if you’re coming down the stairs with your hands full… Move my shit around, will you, Pink Monkey? I’ll kill you.

How about cat butt? In the face? Hey, Pink Monkey, check out my butt! In your face! Dig it, I just finished up in the litterbox. Check it out, my man! Then they do the cat butt dance and give you a little tail swish as a flourish.

If you don’t hack off their balls or their toes, how do they show their gratitude? Yeah, by either spraying your couch, or shredding it. What the hell is it with cats and couches anyway? It there some genetic feline memory, some ancient racial trauma of Paleolithic cats being hunted on the plains of Africa by giant prehistoric sofas? For God’s sake, Run, Fluffy! It’s a marauding naugahyde Barcolounger! Oh no! It got Snowbell!

Hairballs? No seriously, hairballs? Dude, you’d think that after swallowing gobs of hair, then choking a big nasty wad of it back up – you’d get a clue. Hair, bad, don’t swallow it. I mean, it can’t taste good (of course, there’s that whole ass licking thing again), ever come across your cat sitting by the window, trying to be cool and shit – with its mouth hanging open? The White One does this, and it freaks me out. The Grey One sometimes will sit with his tongue hanging out like he just completely forgot he was licking his balls in mid-stroke. I don’t know about you, but that’s something I’m not likely to forget.

How come a cat can remember to use the litterbox ten times in a row? Then one day hide a load behind the couch? Or leave a puddle in the clean laundry basket? Little surprise for you there, Pink Monkey. Have fun with that. If you need me I’ll be over here wiping my ass on your couch.

Don’t worry I’ll be by later so you can check out my fuzzy ass.

Cats. Yeah.

There’s a Reason Why Cheney’s First Name is Dick

You know, Dick Cheney is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Kind of like syphilis.

Two months ago, the former VP (and you have no idea how it gladdens my heart to type former VP) gave a bizarre and belligerent interview with Politico. He railed against the new administration, declaring that, then, newly elected President Obama was putting the nation at grave risk of “a devastating attack” because his administration was “more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans.”

And he, predictably, defended the Bush administration’s implementation of the Guantanamo Bay Prison system, the practice of extra-ordinary rendition, and “coercive” interrogation methods.

This week, like syphilis, Cheney is back.

In a live interview with CNN’s John King on Sunday, Cheney was again beating the same drum. He accused the current administration of making the nation less safe and expounded on how closing the secret prisons, outlawing rendition and torture, and complying with the Constitutional ideals of habeas corpus and our international agreements (such as the Geneva Convention and International Human Rights) will lead us to a horrifying terrorist spawned Armageddon.

Personally, my favorite part of the interview occurs early on, when King asked Cheney if there was any truth to the statement Obama inherited a disaster from Bush. Cheney responded with:

“…there's no question that what the economic circumstances that he [Obama] inherited are difficult ones. You know, we said that before we left. I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It's a global financial problem. We had, in fact, tried to deal with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problem some years before with major reforms and were blocked by Democrats on the Hill, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration, that's interesting rhetoric but I don't think anybody really cares a lot about that. What they care is what is going to work and how we are going to get out of these difficulties.”

So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration…I don’t think anybody really cares about that – well, yeah, Dick, sure. Unless, of course, you’re a republican and you’ve spent eight goddamned years listening to Bush and his fanatical cronies blame Clinton for every last thing from the pimples on George’s ass to 9/11 to Iraq.

Now, I’d be just as happy to allow Dick Cheney to disappear quietly into the dusty pages of history, fading slowly away until there’s nothing left but yellowed bones surrounding a rusty clockwork heart. But the bastard just won’t die, he just doesn’t have the grace to shut up and fade away – hell, he’s writing a book, which ought to be a big seller at KKK jamborees and anti-abortion rallies. Hopefully it’ll be a pop-up with lots of pictures so the intended audience can understand it*.

I’ve written extensively about information warfare, intelligence, and why things like habeas corpus are so important. I’ve written extensively about torture and why Americans should never, ever, tolerate it or tolerate leaders who tell us that torture is a necessary evil.

And evil is the correct word here. Torture is evil. Our founders knew it, the greatest and most admired American leaders, both civilian and military knew it, and I know it – and I suspect you do as well.

And Cheney, well, he knows it too.

He knows that what he and the Bush Administration did was wrong, and evil, and shameful, and illegal, and against everything this country stands for.

He knows. Yes, he does.

Yes, I’m reading his mind, such as it is. It’s not hard - it’s what I was trained to do. And you can too, it’s right there in front of you.

Cheney uses words like “Extraordinary Rendition” instead of “extradition” or “transfer of custody” or “foreign interrogation.” The use of “rendition” hides what is really going on – the transfer of prisoners to countries like Egypt and Bulgaria so that they can be tortured to death without remorse, without the pesky press, without regards for the law or human rights or even the same basic humanity we show to Charlie Manson. The use of Extraordinary Rendition is exactly the same as using words like “Separate But Equal” to hide bigotry, racism, lynchings, denial of basic civil rights, and decades of hatred and horror. In the interviews Cheney uses words like “Detainee” instead of “Prisoner,” “Coercive Methods” instead of “Torture” or “Waterboarding” or “Beating the information out of the bastards.” But when they wrote the Patriot Act and the Protect America Act, they couldn’t use euphemisms, they had to spell it out – that’s why they made those sections classified, not to hide them from the enemy but to hide them from us. That’s why those interrogation tapes were destroyed by the CIA, and that’s why the White House email backups were “accidently” erased. And that’s why the shredders have been running overtime for the last two months. When you strip away the euphemisms you are faced with the brutal truth. Torture. That’s what we’re talking about here. Torture.

And Cheney knows it. You can see it in his choice of words, you can see it in the way he avoids answering questions directly, and you can see it in his continued attempts to justify these things by throwing up armies of terrorist strawmen.

And that’s exactly what they are, strawmen.

And the most common strawman is the terrorist weapon of mass destruction. Conservatives pull this raggedy-assed scarecrow out at every opportunity. You’ve heard it:

“We have to keep all means on the table, including torture. We have to. Because the terrorists hate us and they’ll do anything, anything, to destroy us.”

And then they drop the trump card, the one nobody wants to argue with:

“What if the terrorists had your family? What if they had an atom bomb hidden in a city with you family strapped to it and you caught one of those bastards and there was only an hour left and there was no time to evacuate and millions were gonna die? Including your family! Huh? What about that? Are you saying you wouldn’t do whatever was necessary to get that information? Huh?” Then usually at this point they go on to describe exactly how they would save the day by beating the bomb location out of the sorry bastard terrorist just in time to defuse the nuke and kill Osama Bin Ladin himself in a flurry of mano a mano fisticuffs.

I’ve heard this same scenario I don’t know how many times. I’ve heard it from Hollywood, I heard it from Palin supporters, I’ve heard it from Rush, I’ve heard it from Anne, I’ve heard it from Dick and George, and I’m hearing it on the republican side of the aisle right now.

We need to keep torture on the table. Just in case.

Let me ask you conservatives something, how many times - outside of a Bruce Willis special effects laden summer blockbuster - as this ever happened? Ever? I hunted terrorists, I fought in combat, I worked in intelligence for twenty damned years, I’ve been in interrogations. I’ve studied history, of this war, and the last one, and the one before that, and the one before that – including the classified portions. I’ve seen the reports submitted by FBI field agents to Washington warning of possible airplane hijackings and reporting some of the 911 hijackers by name – those reports were obtained by good, constitutional intelligence work, and they were ignored. I’ve seen a lot of things during my time in government service, but I’ve never seen this strawman happen. Ever. I’ve never seen it. But, hey, I don’t pretend to know everything, so, let me ask again, how many times has this happened?

What was that? I couldn’t hear your answer.

Yeah, never.

Ahh, says the Conservatives, but it could, it could!

It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Reality isn’t like a summer action thriller. Real life isn’t a Tom Clancy movie. But that’s exactly what this entire house of cards is built on – this single strawman. And for this we’ve given up our rights. For this we’ve given into fear. For this we’ve become a nation of torturers.

That’s changed now, President Obama has taken those things off the table in an attempt to return the United States to a land of honor and law. And Cheney calls him a fool, he doesn’t use euphemisms there, does he? That is precisely the gist of Cheney’s message and it comes through loud and clear – those of us who believe in the founding principles of the United States are fools. The Founding Fathers, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, Adams, and the rest, those who framed the Virginia Plan, and those who came to the Constitutional Convention, and those who fought and died and bled to forge this nation, those people, those people were fools.

I don’t buy this crap for a minute. Oh, not that terrorists couldn’t obtain a nuclear device, smuggle it into the US, and detonate it in one of our cities. Anything is possible, given sufficient motivation, time, and resources. But if it happens - if, not when, if – it’s not going to be anything like a Bruce Willis movie.

But let’s just say that it was.

Let’s say that it was exactly like a Bruce Willis movie. Let’s say that Al Qaeda obtained an old Soviet era suitcase sized fission device from somewhere on the Russian/Afghan border – and despite being Soviet technology it actually still works. They smuggle it across the ocean and carry it in pieces across the porous US/Mexican boarder. It ends up in New York. Somehow, Bruce Willis crosses these terrifying men (actually I suppose I should have used Arnold as an example because I’m pretty sure I’m describing the plot of True Lies at this point), they kidnap his family and strap his daughter to the bomb.

Bruce catches one of the bad guys.

Now we’re screwed, right? Obama and those pansy-assed rights-loving liberals are in charge. Bruce has got to read Ahmed his rights. He can’t torture the defiant terrorist. They use harsh language, but Ahmed remains mum. Boom! Right? That’s precisely the scenario we’re talking about here, isn’t it? The founding fathers never foresaw that, did they?

Right.

And, yet utterly wrong.

Those men knew that they couldn’t foresee everything. They knew that they couldn’t make the Constitution too rigid, or the new United States would rapidly outgrow it. So they made it fairly general, except in the areas that they knew needed rigid and specific limits, habeas corpus and individual rights for example. But they weren’t stupid, they were in fact brilliant, and they could play the “what if? game too.

So, they built in safe guards.

You know what happens if the above scenario ever actually did come to pass? The colonel in charge, the detective, the chief of police, the CIA or FBI agent would beat the ever living hell out of that captive. He’d chop off fingers if that’s what it took. He’d zap that bastard with enough juice to jump start a fucking Sherman tank. He’d burn the bastard’s balls off with a zippo lighter. He’d cut that son of pig’s liver out with a spoon and eat it, if that’s what it took.

I would.

I would do whatever it took, including torture if that was the only way to save the city, if that was the only way to save my family, if that was the only way. I would. Absolutely. And I’d do it, knowing I was breaking the law, and I would expect to be tried for the crime and sent to prison.

I would.

And I’d be wrong - even if I saved the day.

And I’d go to jail - even if I was a hero.

And that is precisely what should happen.

The morality of this situation is a choice for human beings, for men, for women, for individuals. The morality of nations is something else entirely.

And that, my friends, is exactly what a presidential pardon is for.

It’s not to pardon Scooty Libby, as Cheney seems to think. It’s not to pardon a former President who committed criminal abuses of his office, now or in the past. It’s not to clean the slates of corrupt politicians and hacks and flacks and flunkies and contributors and lobbyists.

The Presidential Pardon is a safeguard for exactly this kind of situation, built into the framework of our nation as a relief valve for exactly this type of situation.

The Founding Fathers were far smarter than Cheney or Bush or the pinheads pushing this strawman give them credit for. They knew that no free nation could ever embrace evil and remain free.

Too bad Cheney can’t see that.

Too bad we can't give him a big syringe full of Penicillin and make him go away.

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* For those of you with more than two brain cells, I’d recommend that if you’re going to read Cheney’s version of events, you also read Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, ISBN 978-0-385-52639-5. Highly recommended.

Don’t Complain To Me About How Bad Things Are, If…

… we’re standing in line at Wal-Mart and you’ve got a high-def LCD large screen TV in your cart, because it would be silly to spend your tax return on bills.

… you’re driving a brand new $50,000 Lincoln Navigator with gold trim and custom rims that gets 9 miles per gallon. And you buy a new one, every two years, because otherwise people you don’t actually know but you pass on the street might think you’re totally lame or something.

… you buy a $7.00 coffee at Starbucks, every day. Sometimes twice.

… you’ve got a shopping cart full of frozen pizzas, a dozen boxes of Pop Tarts, cases of soda, and a load of nutritionally-zero expensive name brand prepared foods, because you don’t like to cook.

… you’re surfing the internet on a $500 cell phone and a $110 per month service charge, because your twitter feeds are important, damn it.

… you’re spending $120 a piece for hockey tickets, because it’s hockey. The Wings are playing, Dude. Besides you all chipped in on the limo…

… you spent $500 this month on online poker, but hey, you’re gonna hit it big real soon now. Real soon.

… you just bought the latest $50 edition of Grand Theft Auto, and a new Xbox360 to play it on, because you just totally had to have it.

… you eat out more often than not, because, as you mentioned somewhere above, you don’t like to cook.

… you quit your job, because your boss was being like a total dick. Because really, screw him, you don’t need to put up with that kind of shit.

… you’re taking a two week vacation on a tropical island this year, because you’re just soooo sick of winter and you need to recharge those batteries.

… your 10-year old goes to school in a $120 pair of “pre-faded, pre-stressed” designer jeans with holes in the knees, because her self esteem depends on it.

… you’re getting a big bonus this year, and you expected it.

… you regularly send money to a TV evangelist, because God thinks it's more important to fight gay marriage in California than for your kids to have decent winter clothes.

… you just bought $2000 worth of guns and ammunition, before the liberals take them all away, because, Dude, liberals. Yikes.

And finally, don’t talk to me about the economy if…

… you have no idea why everything is going to shit, but you’re absolutely certain it must be the fault of [insert scapegoat of choice: Obama, The Jews, The Muslims, The Godless Atheists Who Are Ruining Our Schools, The Liberals, The Media, The Liberal Media, Illegal Aliens, The Poor, The Socialists, The Chinese, The Japanese, The British, The Cowardly French, The Goddamned Mexicans, Martians, NAFTA, Time Traveling Reptiles, Inter-dimensional seven foot tall intelligent Insects, or a secret cabal of Masons called the Illuminati] and you’re pretty sure Sarah Palin would have fixed everything by now if only Tina Fey and the Democrats hadn’t stolen the election*. Really, just shut the hell up. Thanks.

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* Note: Why yes, I did overhear two Valley dwelling, mouth breathing dipshits in the Wal-Mart bathroom this weekend, expounding loudly on how Sarah would have had the economy fixed by now if that goddamnitliberalobama hadn’t stolen, stolen damn it, the election. Stolen. Damn it.

You don’t think I could make this shit up, do you?

Sunday Recipe – Oatmeal Pancakes

A while back my wife was making something that required oatmeal.

We didn’t have any.

I went out to get some at the local 3 Bears (kind’ve the Alaskan version of Sam’s Wholesale or Costco, only much better). I came home with a bargain, about ten pounds of Old Fashioned Quaker Oats.

What?

I got a really good deal.

My wife needed about 1 cup.

By my calculations, at the rate we’ve been going through that giant box of oats, we should have enough to last pretty much for the rest of our lives, even if the Zombie Apocalypse requires us to live in the shelter eating nothing but oatmeal for a year.

And then they can bury me in the box.

I froze half of it, but I’ve been trying to find ways to use up the remainder.

Now, I’m not really a big fan of oatmeal for breakfast, I’ll eat it, but I prefer grits. And nobody else in the house is a big fan either. But, you know, there’s more than one way to make oatmeal for breakfast.

These, for example, which beats a bowl of mush hands down:

Here’s what you need:

2 cups	Old Fashioned Quaker Oats
2 cups	buttermilk
2	large eggs
1 tbs	honey
2 tbs	vegetable oil
1/2 cup	flour
1/2 tsp	cinnamon
2	apples, chopped medium
2 tbs	sugar
1 tsp	baking soda
1 tsp	baking powder
1/2 tsp	salt

The night before:

- mix the oats and buttermilk together, cover and leave in the fridge overnight. The oats will thicken into a pretty solid mess, like oatmeal left in the bowl on a counter overnight. This is exactly what you want. If you don’t have time to leave them overnight, mix them up and let them sit for at least 2 hours, 3 is better, overnight, though, is best. Really. Trust me.

The next morning:

- add the eggs and oil to the oats and buttermilk and mix well. I use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

- add in the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

- cook like regular pancakes on a lightly greased griddle or non-stick pan. 1/4 cup of batter per pancake is about right. I use a 1/4 cup disher and that works perfect, portion wise. Wait for the tops to bubble just slightly, then flip.

- serve with butter, a dollop raspberry jam, and a little syrup.

- makes about 12 pancakes.

They taste, and smell, like cinnamon apple oatmeal and have a much better texture and mouth feel than regular jiffy mix pancakes. With some turkey bacon, you’ve got a healthy breakfast that everybody will love.

From the Spam Folder

This week’s batch of creative spam.

Well, see, except this is also apparently Dr. Gretchen West, Dr. Barry Gorur (in drag I’m guessing), Dr. Rosaline Kidd, Dr. Goldie Moore, Dr. Donna Claude, and about fifteen other “Doctors” of various names. Clones I’m guessing. Seriously, if you’re going to include a random name with a picture of a skanky ho, you probably shouldn’t be sending it multiple times with multiple names to the same address, Dumbass. Also, I did not visit your website and I don’t need my life changed, I like it just the way it is. Skank free. Thanks.

Be like a 16-year old in bed! Inexperienced? Clumsy? Over enthusiastic? Not having a clue as to what you’re doing? Hair trigger? Not particularly discriminating? Not really sure how all the parts fit together? Drunk? Reeking of Clearasil Zit Cream? Afraid your folks are going to catch you? Alone?

Men will see your power in every public shower! Aren’t there laws against this sort of thing?

Give her 3-hour rodeo! Ever hear the one about rodeo sex? See when you’re making love to your wife, you slap her on the ass really hard and say “That’s how my girlfriend likes it!” …Then you try to stay on for eight seconds, Yeehah!

Give her animal desire! Uh, uh, uh, you know I’m not even going to touch this one. And you keep your girlfriend away from my dog, I’m warning you. He bites.

You can forge the perfect male thing yourself like a professional blacksmith. 2500 degree cherry red furnace, molten metal glowing white hot, giant iron mallet, sparks flying, big sweaty guy with bulging biceps and forearms like Popeye in a pair of assless chaps … you with your male thing on the anvil…

Now you don’t have to get bigger shoes to trick women around you. Does this work? Really? Because I’ve got a set of size 12 Knee High Baffin Boots out in the shop…

Even if you are ugly women will still want to sleep with you. And if you’re not ugly you’ll have to beat the bitches off with a stick!

We’ll hamper your confidence! I don’t think “hamper” means what you think it means.

Women will stare at your bulge with their mouth open! Oh, they already do, they already do.

How to eliminate all your yacht or boat expense NOW! Sink that son of a bitch and collect the insurance! Run drugs from Columbia to Miami for South American drug lords! Smuggle in Illegals from China! Seriously nothing chaps my ass like those pesky yacht expenses.

Win the manhood fight every time! Pole vaulting? Sword fighting like gladiators? Jousting, naked on horseback? Wrestling? That must be what they meant about public showers.

Deeper into her entrails! Entrails? What am I, Hannibal the cannibal Lector? Jesus Christ.

Now you can poke your big impressing tool into everybody’s business! Hey, it’ll be just like an Italian subway! Poke poke. Chicks dig that. This is especially effective if you're a teacher and it's tenure review day in front of the school board...

Authentic Fake University Diplomas. I can picture the interview now: and here’s my credentials. They look fake. Oh, they are, absolutely authentic fakes. Excellent. So about this job here at the art museum? Yeah, you’ll be certifying all our incoming forgeries as authentic. Cool, right up my alley.

Hey, it’s Friday, what were you expecting?

Enjoy your weekend, and try not to stick your big impressive tool where it don’t belong, eh?

Things That Chap My Ass about Websites

Previously, when I talked about things that irritate me, I used kind of a scattergun approach. I talked a little about this, a little about that. What can I say? I’m a generalist, a lot of things bug me and I like to spread my ire around.

However, today, I’d like to concentrate on one subject in particular, websites. And specifically websites run by mainstream media. The simple truth of the matter is that mainstream media does a pretty lousy job of website design – unless their actual goal is to piss me off that is, in which case they are doing just fine. I mean, come on, you’d think people who specialize in mass media would have a better grasp of how not to irritate the ever living hell out of their readers, wouldn’t you?

No?

Yeah, it’s just me. Sure.

I mean seriously here folks, nothing chaps my ass more than to click on a headline in Google News Search and instead of the goddamned story I get wiggling jiggling giggling blinking bouncing flash animation like some schizophrenic's nightmare or any random Tim Burton movie (which come to think of it is basically the same thing).

I understand that some of these sites have to make a profit, I do. But Jesus Hairy-Eared Christ, does profit have to be so Goddamn irritating?

Let’s start with advertising, shall we? Pop-up ads are bad enough, but most modern browsers can be programmed to block them. In fact there’s a whole slew of add-ons and optional controls to prevent pop-ups. So you’re think that the dipshits who work in Marketing would get a clue. Oh hell no. The fact that 99% of the Internet using world blocks pop-up ads means one thing to Marketing people: We need even more annoying pop up ads! So what did they come up with? Splash ads. This is the equivalent of a midget with a sign jumping in front of you when you’re trying to look at something on the store shelves – which is where the sport of Midget Tossing came from. Just sayin’.

And speaking of ads, how about those sites that put advertising above the content? Or bury the content in advertising so that it’s damned near impossible to tell which is the ads and which is the story? My personal pet peeve is the ad in the middle of the text, with a little note “Story continues after the jump.” It’s not a jump, you wankers, it’s a fucking ad. You might as well say “the story continues after the woolly mammoth,” that makes about as much sense. Story continues after the jump, no shit, really? Hell I thought when you hit the ad, that’s it, end of story. Good thing they told me that story continues. I love it when when a website basically calls me a drooling moron right to my face. But hey! Buy our stuff!

How about posts that are broken up across multiple pages? What in hell is this all about? Every mainstream media publication pulls this bullshit. Of course, they’re trying to get you to click on their site repeatedly, that way they get more advertising dollars – and yeah, I’m not so stupid that I don’t understand this. But for crying out loud, how about a little common sense? How about more than one line per page? Today in Washington D.C. … (click NEXT to Continue) President Obama and his Llama (click NEXT to continue) conducted an Easter Egg hunt on the White House La… (click NEXT to Continue) |1|2|3|4|5|

Hyperlinking. For the love of God, there’s either too much or none at all. Seriously here, some sites hyperlink every damned word – like some conspiracy nut footnoting his footnotes. And just to add in two scoops of extra crunchy annoying flakes they turn the hyperlinks into a minefield ala those pop-up preview gadgets. I’d like to kill whatever paste eating nerd that came up with this idea. You move your mouse around and shit starts leaping out at you like some kind of half-assed carnival house of horrors. Or it’s just the opposite, nothing. No references, no links, nothing. The story will mention that Dick Cheney is now giving online hunting lessons, but there’s no link to his site. Seriously, if you don’t understand the basic concept of hyperlinking, you probably shouldn’t be publishing shit online in the first damned place.

How about the Automatic Video or Sound Ambush? I like to read the news and surf the web on my tablet while watching TV in the evening (Really, how the hell did people watch TV before the Internet?). I leave the sound turned up on the laptop, because occasionally I like to watch a video clip, or listen to a news broadcast, or whatever. If my wife is in the room, I put on the ear phones so as not to bug her. She does the same. Last night I was reading about Michael Steele’s firm stance against and/or for a woman’s right to choose or not to choose or choose to not have an abortion or whatever the hell it that idiot was going on about – and all of a sudden the computer speakers start shouting in Nancy Pelosi’s annoyingly confused shrill whine. Jesus Hopalong Christ! If I want to watch Pelosi’s bizarrely confused reaction to Steele’s bizarrely confused bullshit, I’ll click on the play button – though I admit, unless that wan, limp dishrag of a majority leader is announcing her resignation or describing how the Wizard of Oz gave her a pair of actual platinum coated testicles, I probably won’t.

Now, as long as we’re on the subject of video and audio – I’d like to point out that using a non-standard, proprietary media player plug-in is just a big fat pain in my ass – and I’m looking straight at you CNN. What the hell is this all about? Look, Flash, Quicktime, YouTube – pick something where I don’t have to download some kind of stupid one-use only plug-in. Really, I don’t like your site enough to download special software. It’s nothing personal, I don’t like anybody’s site enough to download non-standard software. And hey, if you’re using non-standard video formats because you think that it’s keeping people from stealing your shit, well then you really haven’t been paying attention – because seriously, Media Moguls, your shit was hacked before you even filmed it. That’s just how it is.

Registration. Somebody please explain to the Los Angeles Times that I’m not going to register to read some two paragraph five-page story about the chimp that bit off that guy’s nuts. I’ll just go elsewhere. Here’s the thing, it’s an AP story, I can read it, verbatim, in the Mumbia Mail or the China News or Poughkeepsie Plowhorse. When you get 99% of your news from international news sources, you don’t have the exclusive – and you don’t have any damned reason that I should give you my name, age, sex, and phone number in order to read something I can get elsewhere. And people wonder why the traditional newspapers are going out of business. They’re like giant dinosaurs, standing there watching that big fucking meteor flaming across the sky, and them with their little tiny pea sized brains and inability to adapt. Smell that, fellas? Yeah, it’s called extinction.

Fixed format pages. Fixed width? Non wrapping text? Pictures and embeds not dynamically anchored? What in the hell is this? Print media? I can’t resize your site to fit what’s happening on my screen at the moment? Or resize to suit my browsing habits? Who the hell still uses this shit? Well, aside from Adobe and their fixation with that1979 PDF format. Seriously, if you insist on fixed format you’d better be having some Goddamned stupendously interesting content, because if it’s not George W. Bush being stuffed naked into a 2x2 sweat box at Gitmo with an rabid angry lesbian badger, I’m going elsewhere. And hey, as long as we’re on the subject, print and email formats. I browse a lot of mainstream cooking sites, I’m always on the lookout for a new recipe. Here’s the thing – I generally don’t bring my expensive computer into the kitchen! Neither does anybody else, I know. I print out the recipe, I’d like to do that without having to print your whole damned website complete with adds and hyperlinked minefields. Same with email, don’t include a print or email button if you’re not going to provide a stripped down print or email format. Thank you.

And finally, navigation. It’s the 21st Century. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never live on Mars, let alone travel to the stars. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never own rocket boots or a flying car. I’ve come to terms with the fact that Rap music is not a passing fad. But I’ll be damned if I’ll put up with sites that don’t incorporate obvious and intuitive navigation. Symantec, Microsoft, MTD, and the list goes on and on. Stop trying to be clever, really. Just include some basic obvious navigation tools and a decent search function will you please?

I hope this clears things up.

So, what pisses you off about websites?

Arrgh!

OK, obviously I’ve pissed off the universe today.

I had a post finished, and my Internet connection dropped out.

I went back to writing while I waited for the connection to come back up.

Some friends called, they were cleaning a Ruger Mk III 22cal pistol. They’d taken it apart and couldn’t get it back together properly. The slide kept jamming. This is a common problem with this particular weapon, like most weapons there’s a trick to reassembling it correctly – and the Ruger is a bigger pain in the ass than most, it's like German engineering, or rather over-engineering. (Update, Note: just to be clear, Ruger is an American weapon). I hate Rugers, they're fine weapons, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like working on a BMW – you’ve got to be a humpbacked four-armed, left-handed, googly-eyed midget to work on the damned thing. Also it helps if you know how to swear in German. You have to point the barrel down while inserting the main spring, then flip the weapon over so the barrel points up and the hammer lever drops into the pivot slot on mainspring lever. Only then can you tension the spring and close the housing. If you don’t do this correctly, the hammer is forced up into the firing position and doesn’t retract, which means the slide jams against it. This process sounds easy, and it is, but it’s not something you can talk somebody through on the phone. So I had them come over and showed them how to properly disassemble and reassemble the weapon. If it seems odd that they didn’t know how to take apart their own weapon, well, it’s a 22cal Ruger. A weapon like that gets cleaned about once a decade, usually (unless you’re anal retentive about it like I am and clean them after every firing. A clean weapon is a happy weapon. Just sayin’).

OK great, got that done. Just as I was heading inside to check the Internet connection, the power went out.

It came back on after five minutes.

I wasn’t worried, both my word processor and blog editor are set to back up every couple of minutes.

Except, of course, they didn’t.

I lost the entire blog post and 2000 words of the novel. Goddamn it all to hell.

Also did I mention that this week is spring break? No? Well it is. So the 12-year old is under foot all day, which is why you’re not getting anything deep, blogging wise.

And now the Internet is back up and I’ve got nothing for you, deep or otherwise.

So, here have some ShopKat:

[Note the visual pun: Copy Cat, hardee har har]

Apparently the paper towels gave her some attitude, ShopKat doesn’t take that kind of shit lying down. Certainly the paper towels will think twice about offending her again. Oh, yes, they will.

Before you ask, yes that’s her box. It’s full of old towels and it sits on the work bench next to my carving station. Because otherwise we have issues over who owns that chair. Once I put the box on the workbench, she stopped trying to kick me out of my chair, and if you don’t think a two pound cat can kick a 180 pound combat veteran out of his own chair, you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong, I direct your attention to the aforementioned paper towels.

Hence the box. Now everybody is happy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out why the backup didn’t work and recreate ten pages of novel.

Please Stand By

About today's post: It'll be delayed.

I'm swamped this morning, er, afternoon damn it all to hell. I've got a bunch of things going on at the moment, and now I've got to run into to town.

Rather than sacrifice quality for your immediate bloggy satisfaction, I'll hold off posting until later. You'll survive - and like sex, Stonekettle Station is best when you have to wait for it ... on second thought maybe that's saurkraut. Whatever. Suck it up, I'll be back in a bit.

Iditarod 2009

AN EPIDEMIC OF DIPHTHERIA IS ALMOST INEVITABLE HERE STOP I AM IN URGENT NEED OF ONE MILLION UNITS OF DIPTHERIA ANTITOXIN STOP MAIL IS ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION STOP …

Those lines were part of a message sent by Curtis Welch, MD, on January 22nd, 1925 via radio telegram from Nome to all towns in the Alaskan Territory.

That desperate message was intended for the Territorial Governor in Juneau, and the public health service in Washington D.C. and it sounded an emergency of almost unimaginable horror. Dr. Welch was facing a disaster the likes of which are rarely seen outside of fiction.

At the turn of the century, during the boom town glory days of the Klondike gold rush, more than 20,000 people lived in Nome – in January of 1925, long after the gold and gold miners had run out, Nome boasted a population of around 1400, about 975 white settlers and 450 Alaskan Natives. The last ship of the season, the steamship Alameda, had left Nome harbor two months before, tracking south ahead of the encroaching winter ice. The sun had followed the steamship, disappearing below the southern horizon and leaving Nome locked in the grip of –50F temperatures and the endless Arctic night.

During the Alaskan winter, Nome’s only contact with the outside world was unreliable HF radio – and the more reliable dog sled mushers and their teams who carried the mail and what light cargo they could via the old Iditarod trail.

Shortly after the departure of the Alameda, a native child fell sick and died. At first Dr. Welch was unsure of the cause, but as more and more children sickened over the next few weeks he began to suspect diphtheria – an upper respiratory tract infection caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae. In the early stages, diphtheria mimics the symptoms of tonsillitis, the flu, or the common cold – which is why Welch, with the primitive diagnostic tools available to him at the time, was slow to recognize the impending disaster. Left untreated, diphtheria destroys the nervous system, leading to a loss of motor control and sensation, and very quickly, death. Diphtheria is highly contagious, with fatality rates up to 10% in the general population and as high as 20% in young children and adults over 40. Among the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, the fatality rate is much higher. More than likely, crewmen from one of the visiting ships had unknowingly brought the disease north at the end of the shipping season, leaving behind a deadly time bomb. As Welch noted in his radio message, by January an epidemic was almost inevitable. Nome’s only doctor was staring straight into the specter of at least 300 immediate deaths – all of which would be his family and friends.

But the pending disaster was far, far worse and far more horrifying. Nome was the hub of the surrounding area, the native population around the town numbered well over 10,000. Those natives had no resistance to the disease at all.

Their expected mortality rate was nearly 100%.

Nowadays, diphtheria would be treated with antibiotics, Erythromycin or even the big gun, Procaine Penicillin G. But antibiotics didn’t exist in 1925, and the best treatment was diphtheria antitoxin. The antitoxin didn’t cure the disease but rather neutralized the toxins released by the diphtheria bacillus into the victim’s bloodstream – giving the body’s own immune system a chance to combat the infection without having to deal with being poisoned at the same time. Unfortunately, even today the antitoxin doesn’t neutralize toxins already bonded to tissues and does nothing itself to kill the bacteria. For the antitoxin to work, it has to be administered as early as possible, usually immediately as soon as a doctor makes the clinical diagnosis of diphtheria infection and without waiting for laboratory confirmation.

One other thing to note: the antitoxin is perishable. Dr. Welch had antitoxin on hand, all of which had expired.

And so he radioed for help.

No ship could reach them, and in fact couldn’t get within 500 miles of Nome by then. No plane, not even the most advanced aircraft in the Alaskan Territory at the time, the Postal Service’s DeHavilland DH-4, could fly under the winter conditions – their open cockpits and liquid cooled engines made that utterly impossible.

The only solution was dogsled.

The antitoxin would have to be transported via a relay of sled dogs, from Tanana to Nome, a distance of 674 miles through astoundingly rugged territory in temperatures that were at record lows, -50 to –60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wild Bill Shannon led off, mushing out of the train station in Tenana with the twenty pound package, about 30 doses, of serum in his sled at 9PM on January 27. Shannon’s team was composed of nine dogs, all inexperienced, led by Blackie. Shannon was forced onto the frozen Tanana River, with temperatures approaching –62F he ran behind the sled to stay warm. He mushed into Minto with his face frozen black from the cold, hypothermic and severely frost bitten. He left three dying dogs in Minto, and headed out for Tolovana. Another dog died on the trail.

Edgar Kallands picked up the relay in Tolovana. When he arrived at Manley Hot Springs, they had to poor hot water over his hands to pry them off the sled’s handlebars.

Meanwhile the world waited. Nome’s plight had caught the attention of the entire globe . Famed Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen, even offered to make an attempt in an airplane. The Navy proposed sending one of its ships as far north as possible, then assembling a plane on the ice pack and launching it towards Nome. Many other ideas were suggested. All were rejected as too risky and foolhardy. Nome would live or die with the mushers and their dogs.

The serum went north, from Manely Hot Springs via native mushers arriving at Bishop Mountain on January 30, at 3:00 in the morning. The temperature was –62F, and dropping. Charlie Evans mushed out of Bishop Mountain and lost both of his lead dogs on the trail, legend has it that he himself held the traces and led the remaining dogs into Nulato.

Tommy Patsey took the next leg out of Nulato and across the Kaltag Portage. The serum was handed off to Victor Anagick and then to Myles Gonangnan at Unalakleet at the edge of the vast Norton Sound.

A storm was rising. The type of storm you’ll only find in the deepest of arctic winter on the ‘Sound. The kind of storm that comes from winds driven across two thousand miles of frozen ocean. Gonangnan took one look at it and decided not to cross the ice – he knew the storm winds could easily push the pack ice and open leads to the frigid black water below, cutting the team off from land and dooming 10,000 people to almost certain death. He choose instead to circle the Sound in whiteout conditions and with wind chills approaching 70 below zero in gale force winds. He arrived in the native village of Shaktoolik at 3PM on January 31st damn near froze to death. Henry Ivanoff, took the serum and headed out into the storm.

At the same time the serum was heading north, Leonhard Seppala rode south out of Nome to meet the relay in Shaktoolik. Sappala crossed Norton Sound on the ice and turned east toward Shaktoolik in blinding conditions. Just outside Shaktoolik, he meet Ivanoff who had gotten tangled up with a reindeer and was struggling to free his harness and dogs.

Seppala took the serum and turned back into the teeth of the storm, again crossing the ice of Norton Sound. His lead dog, Togo, managing to find the way with almost supernatural instinct. Togo led the team unerringly from Ungalik to the road house at Isaac Point on the far side of Norton Sound, and in one day they covered a distance of 84 miles through one of the worst arctic storms on record. They rested at the road house, and then departed into the full power of the worsening storm, and as they ran across the ice the 65 mile per hour winds begin to open leads behind them and the ice began to break up. Seppala managed to make the shore, just ahead of the buckling ice and crossed Little McKinley Mountain – climbing nearly 5000 feet in the process. Seppala reached the road house at Golvin at 3PM on February 1st and passed the serum on to Charlie Olsen.

Olsen lost the trail in the storm and suffered severe frostbite to his hands while trying to save his dogs, but he made it to Bluff on on the evening of February 1st. Gunnar Kassen was waiting for him.

Kassen attempted to wait out the storm, but instead of lessening it kept getting worse. Kassen, afraid that drifts would block the trail, departed Bluff at 10PM into a 60 mile per hour headwind and whiteout conditions so bad that he could not even see the wheel dogs harnessed closest to the sled. He missed the lodge at Solomon and was two miles beyond it before he realized his mistake – so he kept going. Beyond Solomon the trail became an endless nightmare. The winds flipped Kassen’s sled and the precious cylinder of antitoxin fell out and was lost in the snow. Kassen froze his hands feeling around in the drifts for it. He found it, righted the sled, and continued on to Point Safety, making it ahead of schedule on February 2nd. Kassen’s lead dog, Balto, had performed an almost unbelievable feat of navigation through the storm.

Ed Rohn, believing that Kassen would have to wait out the storm at Solomon was not prepared when Kassen arrived. Because it would take time to ready Rohn’s team, and time was of the utmost importance, Kassen elected to continue on rather than wait. Kassen and Balto covered the remaining 25 miles and arrived two hours later on Front Street, Nome at 5:30AM on the morning of February 2nd.

Not a single glass ampoule of the antitoxin was lost, and the serum was thawed and ready for use by noon. Altogether the teams covered 674 miles in 127.5 hours under extreme arctic winter conditions in a hurricane force gale.

That was the first relay.

There were more, carried by many of the same men who ran in the first relay.

And later there were plane flights.

Nome was saved and so were the Alaskan Natives.

Rarely in fact or fiction has there ever been anything to match the skill, courage, and dedication of those men and dogs.

Today, we remember the events of that long ago time with the Iditarod Sled Dog race.

Teams mush 1100 miles from Anchorage to Nome via the historic Iditarod Trail. This race is almost single handedly responsible for preserving dog sledding here in the United States - which was in danger of dying out in the mid 70’s with the advent of the snow machine - and making it an international sport. It’s great fun and a piece of living history. There are those in the animal rights movement who deplore the race as cruel to the dogs – those people are idiots, they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Those dogs are born and bred to run this race, it's in their genes and they love it – five minutes on the ice with those dogs and you know that to be true.

Here’s a few pictures from the start of the 2009 Iditarod Sled Dog race.

Musher Number 24, our friend Aliy Zirkle, during the ceremonial start on Saturday in Anchorage.

Sunday is the Restart at Willow, about 70 miles north of Anchorage on the Parks Highway. Out on a frozen lake.

Here’s me before the mile zero marker. The other sign like this, the one that marks the end of the race is on Front Street in Nome in the exact spot Gunnar Kassen and Balto arrived on that fateful morning 84 years ago.

That’s another friend of ours, Allen Moore, Aliy’s husband, and Musher Number 6 headed out for Nome. Go Allen, Go!

Here’s Aliy waving to the crowd as she sets out 30 minutes behind Allen.

Because my wife is the Iditarod Coordinator for her employer, a major sponsor of the race, we ended up with VIP passes. We have in the past as well, but this year we actually took advantage of them to sit in the VIP visitor box on the starting point. It was certainly, er, cool – especially those metal bleachers. Good thing we brought along a blanket. That’s Becky, bundled up against the cold to twice her usual size. Just in case you were wondering, that’s an Iditarider Jacket she’s wearing. Riders get to ride in the sleds with the mushers during the ceremonial start, Becky rode with Allen Moore a couple of years ago – which is how we met Allen and Aliy actually.

The Colony High School JROTC performed the color guard ceremony at the beginning of the race. The Olympic figure skating champion, Dorothy Hamill, spoke a few words in honor of famed Iditarod musher Susan Butcher who died several years ago of cancer. Somebody said Sarah Palin was supposed to speak, thankfully that turned out to be false information. Palin was nowhere in evidence – nothing against her, but we were having fun, the last thing we wanted was for some politician to show up and turn the race into a political ad.

Besides, there was enough local color already – here’s the Alaskan version of a furrie.

And finally a panorama of the paddock area where the mushers prep their teams before the race. The area is off limits to the general crowd, but our VIP passes let us in and I snapped a few shots and stitched them together just for you.

The mushers will be on the trail for at least seven more days. The teams all carry a GPS beacon this year and you can follow along here.

More pictures from the ceremonial start can be found here, courtesy of the Anchorage Daily News. Note, my son Jimmy and myself can be found in the background of picture 78, handing hot sandwiches to the mushers at the Horizon Lines Picnic along the downtown trail.

It was a pretty damned fine weekend.

Offline Until Monday

The post title says it all.

I need a break from being online.

And it's Iditarod Race weekend. I'm busy and I've used up my morning doing other stuff online and mostly bitching to friends.

I need to go lay out cold weather gear for tomorrow and Sunday and get some things taken care of.

See you next week.

That’s Why They Call It Duty

I [state your name], having been appointed a [rank] in the U.S. Army under the conditions indicated in this document, do accept such appointment and do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.

This is the US Army Appointment Acceptance and Oath of Office – an officer of the US Army must sign the appointment instrument, and swear with his right hand upraised those words. That oath is an officer’s sacred duty, it comes above all else. Note especially the portion that is in bold: I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

Now, as an officer either your word, your sworn oath, is good or it’s not. Period. There is no middle ground. Either you are a man of your word, or you are not. If you break your word, even once in the performance of your duties, then your word cannot be trusted. Duty, honor, authority, responsibility, accountability – all the things that we hold most dear in the military – depend on that simple fact, either your word is good or it’s not.

Notice what that oath doesn’t say.

The oath, which all officers swear, does not say that you must agree with the orders you are given. The oath does not say that you may only execute those orders you agree with. Note that the oath does not require your approval in any way shape or form of the civilian leadership of this country.

Notice what obligation the oath does place on you:

You agree, freely, that you will “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.” Well and faithfully. If you are a religious person, you’ve given your word to do so before your God, and either your word to him is good or you’re just full of shit when it comes to your religious beliefs. If you are a non-believer than you’ve given your word and have only yourself to account to. Either way, once you sign that paper and take that oath you are personally, personally, accountable for the well and faithful discharge of your duties. You are accountable to the Service, accountable to the Government, accountable to the people of the United States – and especially accountable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

An enlisted person gives a different oath, though it essentially binds them to the same ideal. The difference is that an officer must give his or her word freely – i.e. they cannot be coerced. Enlisted can – it’s called conscription. This is an important distinction, because of the ultimate responsibilities of the officer, a commission must be voluntary – officers cannot be drafted. This distinction is clearly and painstakingly spelled to each potential officer – because once they assume the office they will give up certain rights. For those of you who do not have military experience, and maybe even for those of you who do, it may appear that an officer has far greater latitude of action than enlisted – this is incorrect. One of the great advantages of being a senior NCO (Enlisted) is that you can choose to some extent what to know and what not to know – and officer has no such latitude. Allow me to illustrate: two privates and a buck sergeant go out on the town the night before deployment, they get shitfaced and forget about curfew, and stagger back to the barracks at 0400. Enlisted Outcome) The First Sergeant, who has done a post taps roll-call and knows the party boys are missing is waiting for them: First has options, he can call the MPs and throw the book at them for failing to obey orders, or he can (and probably will) tuck them safely into bed – and then wake them up with a fire hose two hours later and make their lives a living hell for the next two weeks with the Company Commander being none the wiser, officially. The First Sergeant will assume responsibility for the idiots, that’s his job after all. No paperwork will ever be filled. Officer Outcome) The Captain greets the party boys upon their return: He has no options. Period. His oath and rank require him to uphold the Uniform Code of Military Justice So Help Me God, those men will be put on report for failure to obey a lawful order, there will be an Article 32 hearing, the buck sergeant will become a private, asses will handed to their owners - and the First Sergeant will get chewed the merry hell out in private by the Major for not taking care of business.

This is how it works. I’m not asking you to agree with it, I’m telling you how it is. And it’s this way for a damned good reason. Because of what we do, a military must have rigid discipline and structure, but because it is first, foremost, and always a human endeavor, military command structures must have some flexibility. Those that lack this flexibility become brittle and break when stressed – you have only to look to the militaries of any third world dictatorship to see this. Those that allow too much flexibility suffer a catastrophic breakdown in discipline and become ineffective mobs – any multinational force under the aegis of the UN is a pretty good example.

The reason I mention it is that I want you to clearly understand that an officer’s options are limited. He gives up certain rights when he takes that oath. He agrees to uphold not only the Constitution but more importantly, at the personal level, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (the UCMJ) and the regulations of his service. (Note: when I say he, I mean he or she, but I’m tired of typing that, substitute the gender or genderless pronoun of your choice whenever I say he). This is not only tradition, it is not only the law, it is not only regulation – it is the very glue that hold military structure together.

Simply put: The officer’s obligations are rigid, but they are strictly voluntary. In peace or in war, in uniform or out, either that officer’s word is good – or it’s not.

And if it is not, if he breaks his word, if he fails to live up the exacting details of service with honor – then he has no one to blame but himself, and he should expect nothing less than the full force of the UCMJ.

Meet 1st Lt Scott R. Easterling, US Army.

Lt Easterling feels that the duly appointed President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, is an “imposter” and “usurper.” Lt. Easterling feels this way because, and stay with me here, he thinks that President Obama has not provided sufficient evidence of his US citizenship. In fact, the Lieutenant feels that until the president provides a “vault copy” (whatever that is) of his birth certificate for verification, Lt Easterling will not consider Obama either the Commander in Chief or the President.

Lt Easterling is an idiot.

However, he is entitled to be an idiot – up to a certain point. That point being this, he is allowed to think whatever he likes, beyond that he is in violation of his oath, Army Regulations, and the UCMJ.

See, Lt Easterling has given voice to his discontent, and has, in fact, put it down on paper as part of a lawsuit by a California attorney, Dr. Orly Taitz Esq, which questions President Obama’s citizenship and legal right to hold office. (Take a gander through her website, Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, read her bio, check out who she keeps company with, read her blog – really, go on, do it. It’s too gobsmackingly rabid to miss. This site may very well be the gooey black carcinoma deep within the NeoCon cerebellum).

The alleged original letter is here. I say alleged because there seems to be some question, raised by reporters at Military.com, of whether or not Lt. Easterling actually exists. I’ve done a bit of checking through my contacts, it’s unclear at this point and I can’t say one way or the other – so we’ll go with alleged and assume that this Lieutenant is a real person.

A real stupid person.

A dishonorable and disgraceful example of an officer who does not understand his oath and whose word is utter shit.

Supposedly, Easterling writes in the last paragraph:

I implore all Service-members and citizens to contact their Senators and Representatives and demand that they require Mr. Obama prove his eligibility. Our Constitution and our great nation must not be allowed to be disgraced.

This statement alone is tantamount to a declaration of sedition and an exhortation to mutiny. Surely no US Army officer, even a pogue Lieutenant, could be that stupid.

If Easterling is indeed a real officer, and if in fact he did write this letter and give DefendOurFreedeoms permission to publish it under his own name – then Lt Scott Easterling should be brought up on charges in accordance with the UCMJ and Court Martialed.

I’ve served under a number of Presidents and civilian leaders I had no respect for, Clinton and George The Simple Minded come immediately to mind. Clinton wasn’t too bad, in retrospect – but Bush was…well, you know what my opinion of George W. Bush is. In fact, I’ve written extensively about my hatred of George W. Bush, I’ve ridiculed him, I’ve parodied him, I’ve accused him of crimes against humanity, and I’ve said here on this site that the only time I would not piss on him is if he was on fire. But I never, ever, expressed such sentiments until after I left the service, and certainly not in print, and certainly not in a public and national forum.

And in or out of uniform, I certainly never engendered my comrades in arms to rise up en mass and question the authority of the chain of command.

When I wore the uniform, I kept my thoughts regarding the Commander in Chief to myself and soldiered on as best I was able.

That’s what our oath is all about.

That’s what duty means.

From the Lathe: You Win Some, You Lose Some

I’m more than a little irritated at the moment, for a number of reasons that I won’t go into.

Suffice it to say that if I post anything topical today, I may regret it later.

Therefore I won’t.

Instead I’ll leave with you with a couple of pictures of my latest work.

This bowl is made from green turned Alaskan Birch heartwood. It was green turned to final form, allowed to dry very slowly under controlled conditions over a period of several months until the wood was at roughly 8% moisture and stabilized. Then it was sculpted along the heartwood grain lines, and shaped to create the filigree. The sides are decorated with carved reliefs of an Alaskan musher and a team of sled dogs, which are also wood burned to enhance their look.

This piece is Alaskan Birch Bowl #102 and is part of an ongoing series of Alaskan images, and a continuation of my own unique style of bowl turning and carving. The idea here is to invoke the image of a Yukon musher chasing the trail through a swirling arctic snow storm – whether or not he (or she) is delivering the mail to Rainy Pass or carrying diphtheria serum to Nome I’ll leave as an exercise in imagination to the observer.

This piece is not for sale, it’s a gift for friends whom I will be having dinner with tonight. This weekend they both will be mushing 1100 miles from here to Nome in the 2009 Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Their names are Aliy Zirkle and Allen Moore, wish them luck.

As the post title says, you win some, you lose some. This last picture shows what happens in the later case.

Despite the fact that this morning I was turning at low speed and had left the bowl walls very thick (intending to pare them down later), the piece flew apart on the lathe. Fortunately I was working off the face (to the right in the image, hollowing the inside, for you non-turners) when it let go, which is a good thing considering that the flying chunk probably weighs several pounds. Where the missing piece is, I have no idea. ShopKat and I looked for it for fifteen minutes. It remains lost, somewhere on the far side of the shop, probably under the garden tractor or one of the ATV’s. Maybe it’s up in the canoe, which hangs from the ceiling 20ft in the air. It wouldn’t be the first time part of an exploding bowl has ended up there.

It happens, and breaking stuff is therapeutic – or so I’m told.

I’ll be off-line until further notice. Enjoy your day.

Faceplant!

Clonk!

Which is the sound a cat's head makes when it slams full tilt into a glass door like a coconut dropped from a height on to concrete.

Bonk! is the sound the second cat's head makes when it slams into the same exact glass door two seconds after the first one.

Stupid: [Clonk!] Ow! Ow! Ow! Shit, that's going to leave a lump! Damn my uncontrollable feline pounce reflex and lack of close range visual acuity!
Tubby: That's odd, why did he stop! Outta the way, Retar... [Bonk!] Ow! Ow! WTF? Why didn't you warn me!

Nyah! Nyah! is the sound a squirrel makes when it's sitting on the porch outside the glass door taunting the cats like the Frenchmen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

What amazes me about this entire incident, aside from the fact that both cat skulls and the glass security door managed to survive multiple high speed collisions (and not for the first time either), is that the squirrel didn't even blink. She just pretended to ignore the cats from a foot away, washing her face nonchalantly, peering through the glass with an amused expression on her little rodent face and wiggling her whiskers.

Both cats staggered drunkenly around for a minute after primary impact and then pressed up against the door like urchins at a candy counter. The squirrel froze - and then after a minute twitched her tail, once, twice, three times, for all the world like a kid taunting a cat with a piece of string. The cats damn near went insane. The squirrel just grinned - and it was obviously that she was just being an asshole.

Hmmm, I wonder what that squirrel could do with a laser pointer?

______________________________________
Update:

I'm not sure why, but this post has been linked to a number of cat blogs and forums.
For those of you surfing in from various cat related places, hello and thanks for coming by. You can find a number cat stories here on Stonekettle Station. Stupid, Tubby, and ShopKat provide endless fodder for blog posts. Start here.

/Jim

The Appearance of Leadership

I don’t often disagree with John Scalzi, but today he is wrong.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Remember that scene?

The one in The Fifth Element?

The cruise ship/hotel Fhloston Paradise is under siege by the Mangalores? Simple minded, single minded, brutish, thuggish, ugly, bald, jowly creatures? Easily duped into fighting for hopeless causes? Yeah, those guys. They’ve taken the bridge, shot the Captain and are holding a dozen hostages. They’ve lost the battle, but they’d crash the ship into the ground and kill everybody rather than surrender. They’re rooting around like feral children, smashing the instruments, fighting amongst themselves, and exchanging gunfire with what’s left of the ship’s crew.

The hero, Korben Dallas, and Ensign Fog are against the bulkhead, just outside the bridge:

Dallas to Fog: “We need to find the leader, Mangalores won’t fight without the leader.”

Aknot the Mangalore (shouting from the bridge): “One more shot, and we start killing hostages!”

Dallas: “That’s the leader.”

You can always spot the leader.

Sure, the details vary and he’s not always the the guy giving the orders, but you can usually spot the head Manglaore pretty easily:

- When you question an organization, the guy who consistently answers loudest, whether or not the organization approves – and in fact there is little the organization can do about it one way or the other - is the leader.

- In a crises, the guy they all turn to for hope is the leader.

- When a guy, speaking for your organization and purporting to represent you, spouts crazy nonsense, provably false information, blatant hate speech, and fixes blame for your organization’s problems on [insert convenient scapegoat: Jews, Atheists, Liberals, Socialists, Homos, Illegal Aliens, The Press, etc ad nauseum] and everybody in your organization nods their head and doesn’t raise an objection, he’s the leader.

- When the supposed powerful of your organization nervously wait to see what a certain guy says, not because they respect him, but because they fear appearing to hold contrary opinions, then that guy is the leader.

- If somebody speaks publicly for your organization without first consulting your organization, and the organization makes no move to either refute his statements or shut him up because they don’t have the balls to do so, well then he is speaking for your organization and he’s the leader.

- If somebody speaks publicly for your organization, loudly, repeatedly, and so often that he becomes the de facto face of your organization, then he’s the leader.

- When the chips are down, and morale is low, and you’re feeling blue, the guy you call to rally the troops is the leader.

- When you give a guy a twenty minute speaking slot in your organization’s very tight agenda, and he takes an hour and a half, and you do nothing about it because the crowd is eating it up – and in fact you actually can’t do anything about it because the crowd would tear you to pieces, so you bump supposedly important people off the schedule to let the guy go on speaking on his own agenda – well then his agenda is your agenda and he’s the leader.

- When a guy proposes no solutions, shows no inspiration, no insight, but excels solely at playing to your organization’s worst fears, when he tells you that [insert convenient scapegoat: Jews, Atheists, Liberals, Socialists, Homos, Illegal Aliens, The Press, etc ad nauseum] are ruining your country, destroying your home, raping your children, spitting on your holy books and your sacred ideals and you cheer him on, he’s the leader. Note: he is a particularly heinous type of leader, a leader of the weak minded, one that we’ve seen many times throughout history, one that our country has fought against over and over – but he is a leader nonetheless.

- When a guy bangs the podium, pounds his chest, and punctuates his speech with fist pumping salutes while misquoting the founding documents of your country in order to make his point – while conspicuously failing to mention those portions of the governing documents that directly refute his points – all while making simplistically mindless patriotic statements in order to pander to the lowest unthinking common denominator and inflame the crowd, and instead of hearing the words “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” the crowd of young people rise to their feet and cheer at the top of their lungs, then that guy is the leader.

- When a guy, speaking for your organization on the national stage, takes the most dishonorable, extreme, and dishonest traits (and thereby directly acknowledges that these traits are dishonorable and extreme and dishonest) of your organization and blatantly, obviously, childishly, pins those failings on the opposition rather than to own up to them and take responsibility for them, and the people in your organization cheer and do not correct him, he is the leader.

- When a guy stands before a crowd and tells them that their fellow countrymen are in point of fact the enemy, and the crowd cheers, he is the leader.

- When a guy stands before a crowd and speaks proudly of treason, and the crowd cheers, then he is the leader.

The GOP has such a leader.

He is the face of their party.

He is the one they listen to.

He is the one they’ve turned to for hope.

He is their voice, whether they like it or not.

He is the one the official leaders are afraid to challenge.

He is the one the official party leaders debase themselves before.

He is the one that tells them they are right and righteous and wronged.

He is the one that brings them to their feet and makes them cheer.

He is a man of abject ignorance who speaks of divine knowledge.

He is a man who has never served and yet speaks of service.

He has no ideas of his own but he is hailed as idealistic.

He is a man of gluttony who speaks of self control.

He is a man of vice who speaks of virtue.

He is a man of sin who speaks of piety.

He is a man of hate who speaks of love.

He is a coward who speaks of courage.

He is the one they’ve rallied to.

He is, of course, Rush Limbaugh.

Dallas to Fog: “We need to find the leader, Mangalores won’t fight without the leader.”

Aknot the Mangalore: “One more shot, and we start killing hostages!”

Dallas: “That’s the leader.”

Of course, it didn’t end well for Aknot the Mangalore.

And those who followed Aknot had it far worse.

But what of the innocent bystanders?

Why, they had it worst of all, and their bodies littered the Mangalore's trail of destruction.

Death by Tray

Comedian Eddie Izzard explains the Death Star Cafeteria, done in Legos animation.

Warning Not Safe For Work.

Death Star Canteen - watch more funny videos