Girlie Bear and I got drawn to hunt at Fort Knox later this month. She is totally stoked. Good thing about going out a bit earlier is that it tends to be a bit warmer.

We didn’t get the area I wanted, but no part of Fort Knox isn’t fun to hunt.

We are happy to announce a 75% mark down on a matched set of nice older British people.

The Somali pirates who kidnapped a British couple and were demanding $7 million for their release have hinted that they may free them for $165,000.

Like Bette Midler in “Ruthless People”, they’ve been put on sale. Must be great for their self esteem.

A poll in Sweden reports that 20% of Swedes under the age of 30 believe that the United States planned 9/11.

In other news, Sweden recently bought 1000 used septic tanks from Finland. When they can get them running and learn to drive them, they plan to invade Norway.

Denver and Baltimore – Baltimore
Houston and Buffalo – Houston
Cleveland and Chicago – Cleveland
Seattle and Dallas – Seattle
Miami and New York Jets – Jets
San Fransisco and Indy – Indy
New York Giants and Philadelphia – Giants
Saint Louis and Detroit – Tough one. Both suck this year. I guess I’ll pick Detroit.
Oakland and San Diego – Oakland
Jacksonville and Tennessee – Jacksonville
Minnesota and Green Bay – Minnesota
Carolina and Arizona – Carolina
Atlanta and New Orleans – New Orleans

No Redskins this weekend.

Hopefully I’ll do better this weekend. It would be very hard for me to do worse.

Not me, at least not this time.

Someone’s about to have a really bad week. Probably more than one someone.

While performing maintenance on a machine gun on the USS Ramage, someone fired 3 rounds into the Polish city of Gdinyia.

Rule #1 – All weapons are always loaded.
Rule #3 – Keep your booger hook off the bang switch.

And you always make sure your weapon is cleared before doing anything to it but shoot.

My guess is that they were finished with cleaning or what not and for some reason were putting rounds in the chamber. Maybe it’s SOP to keep loaded machine guns ready on a US warship. That would make sense since the USS Cole attack.

So either the weapon malfunctioned and fired when the sailor racked a round into the chamber, or the trigger got bumped.

Either way, some poor swabbie and his entire chain of command are about to have a very long, very rough week.

I stumbled across Vintage Projects while I was hunting for plans to make a wooden flat bottomed boat.

There are a lot of interesting projects on this site, and I may just have to take a swing at them.

Of course, the vintage instructions for setting up the home chemistry lab might get me visited by the men with the badges.

And the instructions for how to prospect for uranium could be hazardous to my health, but you take the good with the not so good.

Well, it’s Halloween again. This is normally my favorite time of the year, but due to a pretty big piece of family drama, I just don’t feel it this year.

Baby Bear will be dressed up as a pumpkin this year. He’s old enough that I’ll even let him have a bit of his candy.

Girlie Bear and Little Bear are going to go as vampires this year. They’re not trick or treating, but will be dressing up for the event.

We’ll take Baby Bear trick or treating and then go over to a friend’s house for a get together.

Maybe next year I’ll be in a better mood. I’m not even in a good enough frame of mind to celebrate the dark corners of my imagination this year.

Have a happy Halloween!

And the downward spiral begins.

This week, I was 5 and 11. I probably could have done better if I’d just tossed a coin 16 times.

For the season, I’m 53 and 59.

Tune in next week and see if I continue to circle the drain.

LabRat over at Atomic Nerds has an interesting rant about the controversy over climate science.

I tend to agree with him. I’m also somewhere in the middle on this question.

We know the natural environment is being destroyed in a lot of ways, but we are fixated on the whole carbon/global warming thing, and don’t tackle the things that we could actually do something about.

I tend to lean towards the “do no harm” end of the scale on environmentalism. We should continue to exploit the bounty that we are blessed with, but we should do so in a way that doesn’t destroy the beauty that comes with it, and in a way that ensures that the bounty is there for later generations.

I love seafood, but I only eat it once in a blue moon. Mostly that’s because I feel guilty eating something that’s been overfished and may not be there for my grandkids.

I prefer to drive my own car instead of taking a bus. But I know that I’m adding pollutants to our already polluted air here in the Ohio valley, so I drive as efficient a vehicle as I can get away with and still have room to transport the various people, children, dogs, and other mammals that I have.

I buy locally grown produce as much as I can. It tastes better than something that’s been shipped from Chile, and it’s better for me.

So, before I make a long post longer, I try to enjoy what’s available to me, but try to make sure I don’t do so in a way that does any harm that can’t be avoided.

How about you?

This week, I try to get ahead of .500 for the year again.

New England and Tampa Bay – Tampa
Green Bay and Cleveland – Green Bay
San Fransisco and Houston – Houston
Minnesota and Pittsburgh – Tossup. Both teams are doing pretty well this season, and I like both teams. I’ll take Minnesota, but that’s a total swag.
Indy and St. Louis – Indy
San Diego and Kansas City – San Diego
Buffalo and Carolina – Carolina
New York Jets and Oakland – Raiders, but only out of a deep seated sense of loyalty to Raider Nation
Atlanta and Dallas – Atlanta
Chicago and Cinci – Da Bears
New Orleans and Miami – New Orleans
Arizona and New York Giants – Giants
Philadelphia and Washington – Washington. Darn it, I’m going to have to skip Monday Night Football. And it’s a Redskins game too.