Thursday, March 08, 2007

Okay, one more time..

Okay, we'll try it again. I took the word verification off my comments section. I knew it was a pain in the butt, but I got spammed something terrible one time, and I was looking to avoid that if I could.
Anyways, it should make commenting a little easier for the people that care to make comments. Both of you.

Sticks and Stones...

Well, I've listened and I've read and I've pondered. This whole deal about Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot has EVERYBODY'S undies in a bundie- Left, Right, everybody is tripping over one another to denounce her, distance themselves from her, and call her down. For what? Calling some lawyer a bad name? Get over it, everybody.
First thing, why is it the gays can call each other "faggot" and straight people can't? That's a BS double standard, just like blacks calling each other the "N" word. I'd spell it, but I don't have time to argue with all the PC crowd about it again. Why do we have a show called "Queer eye"? Isn't that derogatory, too? Oh wait, some queers are making money doing it, so we'll let that one go by this time. R-r-r-right... You're victims when it suits you, but the rest of the world isn't supposed to be in on the joke. This is hypocrisy at its worst.
Second thing, why does a big tough guy who thinks he can be President of this country need defending from the words of some skinny little girl? If he's such a momma's boy that he needs our help, why on earth should we let him lead the country?
I'll grant you that Ann Coulter is over the top at times, but that is her schtick, and people pay her money to do it, buy her books, hear her speeches all the time. You're telling me the collective frontal lobotomies at Air America haven't said things about our President and others on the right? And people don't even want to pay to hear them, judging by how that enterprise is going.
I suggest you all take a deep breath, left and right, and repeat after me-"It's just entertainment, Eddie Murphy has said worse. It's just entertainment, Al Franken IS worse. It's just entertainment, Rosie O'Donnell WAS worse"
Sometimes I think some of my fellow travelers on the Right fail to see what they are doing in cases like this. They complain of how the media gives kooks and radicals a free forum to broadcast their nonsense to the world, then turn around and in a case like this, churn up more chatter about someone they purport to now deplore.
Well, enough of that. I gotta find some ice for a drink....

UPDATE: I corrected Ms. O'Donnell's last name spelling, as per my daughter's gracious indication in the comments. Thank you Lucy. I shall try to be more observant in the future.

Bogus science? You tell me

I came across this on Yahoo!-

"Abigail W. Leonard, in a special to LiveScience writes:

Deep below the ocean's surface, blue whales are singing, and for the first time, scientists think they know why. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recorded the sounds and say they offer new insight into the behavior of the passenger jet-sized animals...
Using tags suctioned to the whales' bodies, researchers tracked the whales and found that as they feed, they send out calls to let each other know where they are, each group employing a different sound.....
A related study, also by Scripps researchers, found that there are distinct "dialects" of whale-speak in different regions of the ocean. The finding could have implications for preservation efforts. "

I read all the way to the bottom, but I didn't see anything about Southern whales telling funnier jokes. Or any efforts by Hillary Clinton to "reach out" to different groups of whales by speaking to them in a poor rendition of their dialect. So maybe the story is bogus, huh? We blog, you decide.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

International Incident Avoided

THIS from Fox News:

ZURICH, Switzerland — What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.
According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

This all reminded me of a time thirty some years ago when a small force of Pembina County rednecks invaded Canada by mistake. I and some friends were out driving around one warm summer eve in Pembina County, enjoying a few cans of spoiled grain juice, when it was perceived that we were being pursued by the local 5-0. I say perceived because we were in a state of mostly cognitive dissonance at that early hour, and probably confused an ambulance with a police cruiser. But being convinced we were far more important, and therefore worthy of pursuit, than we really were, we decided to evade capture by taking a quick exit from the paved road. The fact that we were kicking up a dirt cloud on those back roads escaped us at the time. At sun-down on the flat, treeless bottom land west of Pembina we were on, our trail had to be discernible from several miles, at least. Oh well.
As we made our way along, zig-zagging north and west along township roads, we found ourselves on a very high, very rough road headed west, the lights of a small town to the west beckoning us. We understood these lights to be Neche, a small town on the US-Canada border, where we could blend in and avoid the long arm of the law. We were the Dukes of Hazzard, before there were any Dukes of Hazzard. In a red Oldsmobile with two white doors....
When we finally came to this small town, we did not see any landmarks that we recognized, so we decided to simply take the paved road we came upon, and turned south. Imagine our surprise when we came across the border crossing sign at the station of Gretna, Manitoba! One small porch light was on in the now-closed-for-business tiny M.P. station there, and a series of orange traffic cones across the road, in the south-bound lane only. Sort of Homeland Security on the honor system, if you will.
We were at once struck by the absurdity of our situation. A bunch of under-age drinkers, here we were inadvertently smuggling inferior US beer into Canada, now having to figure out how to smuggle it BACK into the U.S. We could not see who or what may have been awaiting us at the U.S. station just down the hiway. After doing our best to lighten the load of smuggled goods, we finally were imbued with enough grain alcohol fortitude to go forth with the dash across the border. Two of my fellow revelers took the now lightened cooler and walked it across the border, away from any street lights glare, and I drove back across, professionally avoiding the cones in the way, thus avoiding any chance of our contraband being taken by any Federales that may have been lurking. A quarter mile later, drunks and drink were re-united, and what could have been an ugly border skirmish was avoided.
A short time later, we all decided against service in the diplomatic corps, there being no more we could do for our country than what we had just done. I whole heartedly sympathize with the Swiss, as it is embarassing to say the least that one has strayed from the arms of his Motherland, whether armed with folding pocketknives or Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.