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Thoughts on the Day

  • Boeing 757’s make excellent snow blowers.
    • Luckily for me, I was watching from the window of my building.
  • There is an inverse relationship between how fast people walk from the parking lot to the guard shack and the sunrise temperature at the airport.
  • I know chicken stir fry isn’t usually made using bacon grease, but it sure does smell good.
  • There is a correct way to wear dread locks and an incorrect way to wear dread locks.
    • The young lady who made my coffee today was as ate up as a soup sandwich.
    • I drank the coffee, though.  One must have priorities, after all.
  • Today may go down in my personal history as the day I quit having sympathy when other people have to start doing their job the way I’ve had to do my job for months.
    • Yep, it’s going to be another year where “people skills” go on my career development plan.
  • The Louisville Zoo has a huge bear enclosure, complete with a running stream and a deep pond for them to swim and play in.
    • I’ll never understand why they don’t let some live salmon or trout loose in there every so often.
    • It would be recreational for the bears and educational for the children.
  • Today, at the grocery store, I began to understand why real bears eat their young.
  • For future reference, an 80 pound, 12 year old Labrador Retriever can have one adult-strength aspirin, twice a day, after she hurts her back leg trying to follow her idiot brother in a desperate escape attempt out of the back yard.
  • Boo’s homework for the night was to find pictures of words that start with “W”, have us print them out for him, then cut them out.
    • I suggested Wotan, war pig, and weasels, but I think I was overruled.

Today’s Earworm

I just heard that Russell Johnson, who played the Professor, died today.

Movie Quotes – Day 16

It’s true, you are a good woman. Then again, you may be the antichrist. — Tombstone

My beloved Irish Woman is the most important person in my life. She has been with me through good times and horrid times. She keeps me on the straight and narrow path, and never fails to help me when I need it, especially if I don’t realize I need it. But there are times, usually when I’ve done something less than brilliant, that I would swear she can kill with her mind. Yes, her name has become a killing word.

Overheard in the Living Room

Irish Woman is watching one of those “We polish that gilded turd you’re living in, and you buy a palace” home improvement shows.  The wife in the family has made life a living hell for her husband, the remodeler, the real estate person, her children, the dog, and the guy who brings latte’s to the set every morning.  She especially has a problem going through her belongings to put them into storage/landfill so that the home can be renovated and shown.

Irish Woman – This woman needs to be on an episode of Hoarders.

Me – This woman needs to be on Prozac.

Seriously, I hate these programs.  They always give Irish Woman bright ideas about things that she would like to have done to the house (read “She wants me to do to the house”), and the people who participate in them tend to the whiningest examples of twits I’ve ever seen.  If watching them didn’t make Irish Woman happy, I’d block the channels.

News Roundup

  • From the “Interesting” Department – The Senate Intelligence Committee has put out its report on the Benghazi attack, and surprisingly, it’s critical of the Obama administration.   It specifically singles out the departments of State and Defense for not doing more to prevent the attacks after being warned about them by intelligence agencies.  I’m shocked that the Senate, which is dominated by a Democrat majority, would put out such a report on a Democrat administration.   My political cynicism tells me that there’s something afoot here.  From what I can tell, it’s starting to look like Vice-President Biden will square off with former Secretary of State Clinton in the 2016 primaries.  Could this be one of the opening shots in that battle?  Mrs. Clinton made a very public scene when she testified in front of the committee, and now the committee is on the record criticizing her department.  I wonder if there might be a little positioning of Senator Feinstein and her Democrat colleagues to give a boost to Mr. Biden.
  • From the “So What?” Department – The NSA apparently has the ability to use compromised hardware to gather intelligence from systems that aren’t connected to the Internet.  It would appear that the agency has only used this capability against foreign targets, although some of them are our allies.  For once, I’m going to have to side with Fort Meade on this one.  Developing and exploiting advanced capabilities to gather information from foreign sources is what the NSA is for.  So long as they are not used against American citizens, I can’t say much.  I’m a bit uncomfortable with using them against allies, but that is what countries do.  What the agency is doing to harm our civil liberties is bad enough.  We don’t need to waste energy complaining about what they do to other countries.
  • From the “Advocate” Department – The Obama administration is taking fire over the appointment of a new leader of a Department of Justice office.  The appointee has gained notoriety for providing legal counsel to a convicted cop killer, and has some other troubling history in his legal career.  This is a tough one for me.  Even the most heinous of us deserves an attorney when we run afoul of the law, and that attorney is bound to put up as good a defense as they can.  John Adams, one of our founding fathers, defended the British soldiers who took part in the Boston Massacre, and no-one would say that he held the same beliefs as his clients.  Can we hold a lawyer responsible for who he represents?
  • From the “Go Granny!” Department – A 100-year-old woman in Great Britain celebrated her birthday by hiring a male stripper.  Reports are that she brought a bottle of baby oil with her to the pub that night as well.   Apparently she has found the secret to long life:  Looking life in the eye and saying “Forget it, I’m having fun.”
  • From the “Blood Runs Red In The Aisles” Department – An elderly man in Florida has been arrested after attacking another older gentleman over having too many items in the express checkout.  Apparently the alleged victim had 22 items instead of 20, and the other man took umbrage at that.  I won’t condemn his motivations, just his methods.  I’ve also been behind the person with 10 to the 5th power items in the “20 items or less” line.  Then again, I’ve also been in the grocery store on seniors day, and let me tell you, those old people don’t like it when they’re crossed, annoyed, or talked to.
  • From the “Stoolpigeon?” Department – A man in Mexico was arrested after his pet parrot told police that he was drunk during a traffic stop.  I’m not going to go into why the police believed the parrot, because in our country a dog is a good enough witness to get you arrested and probulated.  The man was arrested for drunk driving, and was allowed to take the parrot to jail with him because it would have stressed the bird to be away from him.  So I guess that when he’s asked what he’s in for, he has a good shot of being believed when he answers “Piracy”.
  • From the “Facepalm” Department – Secretary of State John Kerry, songwriter of that golden oldie “Cambodian Christmas”, recently presented his Russian colleague with a pair of large Idaho potatoes.  Apparently the foreign secretary had mentioned the tubers before, so Mr. Kerry thought they’d make a good Christmas gift.  This fits in with the iPod that President Obama presented to the Queen of England, as well as the glass beads Vice President Biden gave to the leaders of a Native American tribe in New York while he was there.
  • From the “Tool User” Department – An 80-year-old Illinois man had a talking-to from the police after neighbors complained about his use of a .22 revolver to shoot icicles off of his house.  I’m not sure this is the best method for de-icing the gutters, and I’m disappointed that he would waste rare .22 shells to do it.  I would condemn him for this, but I’ve used a .22 to get mistletoe out of a tree, so I won’t cast the first stone here.
  • From the “Plausible” Department – The Iranian news agency has reported that the documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the United States government was taken over by extraterrestrials in 1945, and we are still under the thumb of our alien Nazi overlords.  Apparently the aliens are based out of Nevada, which explains Harry Reid.
  • From the “Insults” Department – National Guard advocates are vociferously disagreeing with statements by General Raymond Odierno that assert that the National Guard is not as good at soldiering as active duty units.  I have to say that I disagree with the good general on this.  Yes, National Guard units don’t train as often as some, not most, active duty units, but they do bring the experience of years of working together in the same job, while active soldiers have much more churn.  Also, the Guard units I supported had a lot less rock painting and motor-pool sweeping than I saw with active duty units.   When the Guard and Reserve units I’ve had experience with trained, they used every available hour, probably because they knew they only had a few days to get through a lot of tasks.

Chuckle of the Day

We didn’t have the Saints of my birth, but in a Scandinavian town we had stories of the Nordic Gods as told through books and stories-Frigidaire- god of ice fishing, Lesfse, the goddess of unseasoned food, and Inclement, the god of school closures due to all the snow you betcha. The homes were warm, and full of the scent of coffee cake. On our kitchen walls were brightly painted plaques with sayings in Swedish that probably translated to “Keep making fun of the lutefisk and we’ll ship Socialism over there“. — Brigid, in one of the more poignant things I’ve read lately.

Movie Quotes – Day 15

Come on, Profile. You can make it. Don’t give the prick the satisfaction. — Heartbreak Ridge

Pride and stubbornness are sometimes all you have when you know you’re right, but know you aren’t winning. Having the ability to keep your head up and say “I never quit.” is worth more than anything that submission and surrender could give you.

Thoughts on the Day

  • Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Schadenfreude is a dish best served with a hot cup of cocoa.
    • It gives you something to sip and cover up the little smile you get as you nod along with their tale of woe.
  • Apparently I’m a jerk because I refused to become part of the crowd of highly paid and highly trained technical specialists who were trying to figure out how to clear a paper jam this afternoon.
    • Four or five people beating on the thing is my signal to just use the printer down the hall.
  • Doing your homework with me as your dad is a lot like having to pay the mob – there aren’t a lot of good excuses for non-performance.
  • A peanut butter and tomato-jalapeno jelly sandwich makes a tasty snack.  It’s also something the dog won’t filch, at least not twice.

Movie Quotes – Day 14

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.  — Secondhand Lions

We have to keep our ideals, if for no other reason than to use as a measuring stick against our wants and desires. If what I want doesn’t measure up to my ideals, then I need to take a good hard look both at that want and at what I see in the mirror. In my life, it’s usually when I don’t measure up that things go bad, or when I do the measuring, see that either I or what I want isn’t in line with how I want my life to go, and still go ahead with it.

Image of the Day

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. – The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 15, Verse 13*

 

Full story here.

 

*Yes, I know the young man was a Muslim, but the sentiment fits.