Category: 40yrs

It’s Away!!!!!

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Click for full size

I really look way too much like this Starwars dude


Yes, I know it was Red 9 who said that, but I look more like the fat pilot

Did you know that the Washington Post is having a, “America’s Next Great Pundit,” contest?

Well, I’ve heard of it, basically, after submitting an article, and going through a series of “run-offs” with other winners, you get a 13 article gig for the Post online at $200 an article.

You are supposed to start with an essay of less than 400 words and a bio/sales pitch of less than 100 words.

After one abortive attempt (it was too much about me, and I do not write well about me), I ended up revisiting some of my posts on recent Federal Reserve ass covering on consumer protection, where the Fed discovers that, in order to avoid getting boned in the battle between regulators in the new banking system, they need to pretend that they care about consumer protection.

You know, it’s tough to imagine the Washington Post OP/ED hiring me, but they could do worse, by picking….Hmmmm…..I’ll get back to you on that.

In any case, I can’t publish this essay here, at least not until I get the news about whether it has been rejected or not, because the contest requires that, “I certify that I have perpetrated no fraud or deception in connection with my entry, that my Opinion Essay and my Paragraph above are my original work (created solely by me solely for participating in the Contest), and that neither my Opinion Essay nor my Paragraph have been published previously.“

This is subject matter that I have written about before, but it is a completely new essay, and until the folks at WaPo tell me, “Sorry Charlie,” I can’t publish it here.

Then again, my regular reader(s) have already read most of the statements and the thesis, only spread around about a dozen short posts, with hyperlinks.

Which is true, I haven’t

Deep Thought

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I was talking with Sharon* about her special education consulting and advocacy business today, and told her about some friends of mine who raise Morgan horses, who would front load purchases before a given year, and then end load purchases after the end of the year, so as to create a profit every 5 years or so, because otherwise the IRS would call it a hobby, and would not allow them to deduct expenses from other income.

Then I told her that this was completely different from her business.

Then I thought about it, and told her it was completely the same as her business: Both people have to shovel loads of horsesh$#, only hers comes from school administrators.

BTW, if you kid has unmet special education needs, you want to contact her, she’s a pit bull, Or maybe a Tazmanian Devil, for her clients…..

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me

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So, it appears that the House of Saud, whose two businesses are shaking the world down for oil, and shaking down observant Muslims on Haj to Mecca are now saying that they want compensation if the world starts burning less oil.

They are claiming that, “assisting us as oil-exporting countries in achieving economic diversification,” is basic fairness.

Ummm….You are getting plenty of money now. Put your royal family on a more reasonable allowance, stop bankrolling a Neanderthal view of Islam around the world, and spend that money in diversifying your damn economy.

You have at least a decade before anything changes to do this. If you choose not to, you can go Cheney yourselves.

I am a Complete Moron

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I spent 2 hours today trying to get a video of my daughter off a DVD that my neighbor, Michelle took of Natalie singing when she was at North Bay camp with her middle school class last year.

I kept getting parity and read errors, I tried a dozen utilities, with no luck….Then it hit me.

How about Cleaning the Fracking DVD?????

After about 30 seconds with a cloth for cleaning eyeglasses, the videos were on my hard drive.

As the saying goes, “ない愚かさはない薬です”.*

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.”

This is Not the Onion

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Playboy Turning Japanese?

Seriously, no joke, they are putting Marge Simpsonon the cover of Playboy’s November issue:

Marge is about to do something Homer might not approve of.

Playboy magazine is turning over its cover to the matriarch of Springfield’s first family: Marge Simpson.

It’s a first for the magazine, which has had everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Cindy Crawford to the Girls of Hooters and even the likes of Jerry Seinfeld on the cover. But it’s never had a cartoon character before.

Life is stranger than fiction.

You did WHAT with my investment money?!?11*

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“Saracen pigs! Saxon dogs! Roman cow!!

It’s actually a photo of kingbirds harassing a red-tailed hawk at Bonny Lake State Park in Colorado.

The kingbirds are actually pretty lucky.

If it had been a Falcon, they’d be lunch.

Hawks eat things like rabbits and mice while falcons eat birds, and would have seen the actions of the kingbirds as a smorgasbord.

*H/t Bladesmith at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the line.

Assault and Buttery

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Farmer sprays milk on policemen as protest

It’s a protest over agricultural prices and price supports at EU HQ in Brussels.

While normally, I would not be interested in this, this rather striking picture, which would surely result in the protester being arrest and taken a-whey.

Needless to say, such behavior must be curded.

I know what you’re saying, “Yogurt yourself! This is udderly unacceptable behavior”

Any other puns, please put in comments.

So, We Have Another Reason to Take off a Brassiere

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You know, if I were single, and a teenager, I’d be tempted to ask my date* to remove her bra because I expected a gas attack.

Whatever motivated someone to patent a bra that converts into two gas masks, I’ll never know, but it won them an Ig Nobel prize.

*Just so you know, I really did not have much of a social life in high school, so the prospect of just seeing a bra then was a big deal.

It’s Shagadelic, Baby!

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Click image for full size

The “Gogo” boots REALLY bring the ensemble together,

Though the Mini-Skirts, and the

White gloves and the Chinese model 79 sub-machine gun finish it all nicely.

Seriously, the Militiawomen uniforms at the People’s Republic 60th anniversary celebrations look like something out of Austin Powers’ wet dreams.

See also my earlier post Crouching Tiger, Hidden Segway, for more Chinese photo weirdness.

I understand the red, because after all, it is the color of Communism, but the miniskirts and Go-Go boots add a very silly aspect to all of this.

Republican Jesus Lives

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Just when you thought that the politicization of religion could not get any more despicable, we find that right wingers have decided to rewrite the bible in order to excise all those liberal bits:

  1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

  2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

  3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level

  4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

  5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census

  6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

  7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

  8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

  9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

  10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

No, this is not a joke, it’s right from the Conservapedia page (no link, it only feeds the delusions)

It is not April Fools Day, nor is it Adar,* and it is not The Onion. This is real.

You know, I believe that it would appropriate at this time for some people to be struck by lightning, or at least to get some damn psychotropic medications, the really strong stuff, because this is nuts, in addition to being laughable, and, of course blasphemous.

I support the right to blaspheme, but I really think it’s a bad idea to call him a c%$#sucker, which is what this is.

I really can’t add anything to the General’s Republican Jesus, so just go to his site, and buy his stuff, but don’t read his site when you are drinking anything, or you will need a screen cleaner.

*The month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar. It is associated with Purim, and is the preferred time for practical jokes.

Ummmmm…Not So Fast

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It appears that the Telegraph in the UK has reported that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s family converted from Judaism to Islam and changed their name when he was 4 years old, largely on the basis of the change in family name from Sabourjian.

The problem is that this is simply untrue, according to the Guardian.

First, the Telegraph says:

  • That “Sabour” is the word for Talit used by Iranian Jews.
    • Not true: it means “thread painter”, and refers to those who work coloring fibers for Persian carpets.
      • Note that thread painting is not a traditionally Jewish profession in Iran.
    • The word used by Iranian Jews for the Tallit is “Tallit” (my experience with Iranian coreligionists) or Titzit (19th Century Iranian Judaism Scholar David Yeroshalm), both Hebrew words from scripture.
    • According to scholars, there is no word Sabour at all among Jewish dialects in Iran.
  • That “Jian” is a suffix that almost exclusively refers to practicing Jews.
    • Simply untrue. It’s a fairly common suffix.

What is true, however, is that surnames have come fairly recently to Iran, and that the “hicks in the sticks”, typically had surnames associated with the family profession, like “thread painter”:

The reason that Ahmadinejad’s father changed his surname has more to do with the class struggle in Iran. When it became mandatory to adopt surnames, many people from rural areas chose names that represented their professions or that of their ancestors. This made them easily identifiable as townfolk. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital.

The Sabourjians were one of many such families. Their surname was related to carpet-making, an industry that conjures up images of sweatshops. They changed it to Ahmadinejad in order to help them fit in. The new name was also chosen because it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad.

But wait, there’s more:

Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mother is a Seyyede. This is a title given to women whose family are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Male members are given the title of Seyyed, and include prominent figures such as Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Judaism, this is equivalent to the Cohens, who are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. One has to be born into a Seyyed family: the title is never given to Muslims by birth, let alone converts. This makes it impossible for Ahmadinejad’s mother to have been a Jew. In fact, she was so proud of her lineage that everyone in her native village of Aradan referred to her by her Islamic title, Seyyede.

So, even if his father, or his father’s family were Jewish, he would not be, because Judaism is matrilineal, and if your mother is not Jewish, you are not Jewish, except by formal conversion.

Of course, I am competing with two links from two papers, the Telegraph, and the The Grauniad*, so why am I taking the side of the latter?

It’s pretty simple really: First, I have had Iranian Jewish friends, and the phrase “Sabour” never came up, and we did talk about Tallit in shul, and second, because the source was a newspaper formerly owned by Conrad Black, before he was sent off to a very well deserved stint in jail, and every story from a news outlet formerly owned by Conrad Black should be viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Additionally, you will note that that the Telegraph provides no on the record sources for its analysis, while the Grauniad* does, and goes into some detail as to the background of these sources.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

Went to the Burial at Arlington National Cemetery

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For my neighbor, MSgt Wade. (Note first name, not last, I’m not blogging that out of respect for his privacy)

As with any institution, it is end of life where the where the ritual becomes its most elaborate and intricate, and I think that the sense that it gives the loved ones of their place in the continuum of society and culture is a good thing.

The rigidly at attention honor guard, the flags and their folding, the firing of a salute, and the bugler playing taps all serve to show the loved ones of the deceased that they are a part of something bigger.

That being said, when the honor guard fired their weapons (bolt action Springfields, I think, they were manually working an action), my son, who hates loud noises, he’s an Aspie, and this is symptomatic of being on the spectrum, jumped and covered his ears.