Tuesday, October 31, 2006

John Kerry's Halloween Costume!


Dude...Project much?

What I want to know is WHY anyone is paying any attention to this shiftless, useless sack of skin and crap?

(Pssst...John, I wouldn't be doing any "fact finding" tours of Iraq any time soon. Just saying. Afterall, our boys in the military are just a bunch of dumb, uneducated brutes...anything could happen.)

UPDATE: Now with song! (my deepest apologies to the Harburg & Arlen families, a parodist, I ain't.)

I appear before the cameras,
the media goes bananas
My brilliance leaves them stunned.
I tell the kids to get some learning
And they'll make a better earning
Than some E2 in Iraq.

Our army's full dumb brutes
An unwashed mob of galoots
Dropouts by the score
Better stay in school and work hard,
Or you'll end up like those bastards
quiremired down in Iraq.

Oh I just don't know why
People hate me like they do
I was only saying things that are really true.
The army's full
of pinhead fools.

An learned life is really sumpin'
Mass riches insteada nuthin'-
Depending who you wed.
You can disparage your country's bravest
And then say they are the lamest-
And sleep cozy in your own bed!

BOO!!

On the Way to Visitor 10,000!


Oh Boy Howdy.
The suspense is building.
The meter is running.
Who, yes, who will be the 10,000 visitor to The White Trash Republic??

According to the Site Meter, which to be honest, this is the first time in almost a year I have delved in to even look at any stats, the lucky 10,000 should hit sometime this week! That is, if current patterns hold. Honestly, I had no idea!

So what? Big deal you say?
HA!
My dear friends 'n' neighbors-I'll have you know THERE WILL BE A PRIZE INVOLVED!

No chittin', Cherlock. I'm serious.

If YOU are the winner and I can, to the best of my ability with the help of the invasive, nosey stats of the Site Meter determine just who you might be, then my crack team of reformed ex-Santa elves will personally handpick a special gift...just for you! I can't tell ya what it will be, because, honestly, I've not a clue. But I think you won't be disapointed.


So, what's it gonna be, punk? Ya feeling lucky?

I just hope the lucky I.P. ain't some jackleg herbal 'viagra' spammer or someone hawking their anti-anxiety cures!

Monday, October 30, 2006

Pop Quiz!

OK, put on your thinking caps!

What is the difference between this:



And this?



Give up?



Answer: No difference.

Wuzzadem 'splains it all. And it will shock you. Or at the very least tick you off mightily!

Suffice it to say, it just reaffirms why I left that festering petri-dish of socialist experimentation 20 years ago!

Sunday, October 29, 2006

A Lil' P-Shop Project

Been trying to improve upon my primative but functional 'shop skills and this thing below just kinda evolved this evening.

Don't really have a use for it myself-but if anyone out there wants to swipe it for their blog, please be my guest!

Friday, October 27, 2006

Cards Win World Series- Final Score: "Fohdatoo" !

Cardinal shortstop (and now MVP) Dave Eckstein was unavailable for comment as he was busy doing donuts on the Busch Stadium outfield in his brand stinking new Corvette.


Way to go, boys! Ya did good and did us proud!!

As for Detroit- Sorry about your errors, dudes. Crap happens.

Commenter 6pence called it Cards in 6 here last week. Dang good call, my man, (or lady!) Only off by one!

I owe ya a brewski.


In other news: Still in the dark. Electrical guy had to go to Illinois-death in the family. Looking like Tuesday, maybe.
Guess I should try to find someone else. But screw it, right now I'm dog tired and hoarse and off to bed.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Blood is Not Thicker Than Water...


You just know the Talent camp is giggling like lil' schoolgirls over this.
This mill was once the McCaskill family biz, now under new ownership. (duh!)

This made me laugh so hard, I had to gyp it from the Jim Talent website.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Sitting in the Dark


I'm having flashbacks of scenes from "The Moneypit". The movie from many years ago with Tom Hanks about an idealistic, clueless couple who get a "fixer-upper" mansion at a bargain price and set about to rehab and remodel it. It was a pretty amusing film at the time and amongst my favorites.

I'm getting that feeling of helplessness and impending financial drain right now. Not quite on the epic scale of that hapless couple in the movie, but more on my level. In the movie, everything was phrased in thousands and hundreds to fix whatever was ailing their house. In my situation, it's more modest-maybe 50's teetering into the hundreds. But it's all relative.

All I wanted to do was put in a new ceiling light. In the dining room. That's all. No biggy. A simple upgrade, people do it all the time. But I reckon most people don't live where I do. They live in residential areas that are less than 40 years old and actually have building and electrical codes. Where the electrical wiring make sense and is color coded for your convienience.
Where I'm living now is in the dark...for the most part. Literally.

Yesterday I went about finally fixing the kitchen sink once and for all. We had been plagued with a wore out washer/connector to one of the drain pipes causing ooky sink water to dribble under the sink. It got so bad that I had a dishpan under the drain to catch the torrent. I had tried to fix it once before recently, but the well intentioned dork at the True Value directed me to the wrong type washer. How was I to know? There's a plethora of shapes and styles of washers for these drain pipes, all serving a particular purpose. I explained what the drain was doing and where and I came home with a 30 cent plastic circle that did nothing to remedy the problem.
I figured the only way to fix it would be to get a complete new kitchen drain set that came with everything one could possibly need. So I finally did.

After 20 minutes of some trial and error and with no help from the incredibly vague and generic instructions on the package, my task was finished! A few test runs and I was satisfied that I had fixed it. No dribbling, no spewing, no leaks. HUZZAH! I so totally rock! Success went to my head:
'Hey, let's get that dining room light up now while we're at it!'
I had bought the fixture weeks ago to replace the awkward, ozark engineered, heavy lead etched glass pendant light that had hung there for years-a trophy from one of my husband's junking expeditions. The local funeral home had done a remodel and had all their old light fixtures sitting out on the curb, free for the taking. He brought one home, figuring it would be perfect for the dining room. An afternoon of tinkering and adapting it to suit the room and it was up and functional. And so it had hung there from the dining room ceiling for, lo, these past 8 or so years with nary a hitch.

But it was ugly, and a pain to maintain-always windexing all those glass panes which showed every little smudge and speck of dust and the length of the heavy chain it hung from made for some close calls. I had more than once bonked my noggin on it. But to him it was beautiful, elegant and most importantly- FREE.
But it HAD to go. It was time. And now flush with the success of conquering the kitchen drain I was up to the job. Hey, how hard can it be? Turn the correct breaker off, undo the old fixture, get the new one wired up and attached-bingo bango-you're groovin', right?

Riiiiii-iiiight.

My first clue that I should stop just right there and now was the breaker box. It's always been a little inside joke how the old faded handwritten labels next to each breaker had absolutely no base in reality. We had always intended to mark them correctly...one day. But y'know how those things go.
So now it was hit n miss time. I had the dining room light on, so I would know when I got lucky. Took about 3 tries. Curiously, the ceiling fan nearby the dining room light was still going. Oh well, who knows.
I then went about the house to see what else had been shut off. Amazing!
OK, no light in the kitchen, no light on the back porch, no hallway light, eldest's bedroom light is out, my bedroom light is out. We have no porch light! The entryway light is kerplunkt, no light in the family room and oh, yeah...the dining room light is out,too.
Holy crap! That one breaker just about took out the whole house! Then what the hell else do all those other switches rule?! Good God, are we controlling the electricity for the whole neighborhood? You'd think that looking at this breaker box-jammed pack with almost 24 switches. And only one empty spot. Basically all the lighting was takened out, except for the "newer" part of the house (newer as in within the past 30 years!) The bathroom which is in the original part of the house still had lights and power, though. Thank Goodness! We still had power at some but not all the outlets throughout the house. Oy! My head hurts just trying to figure this all out! Obviously, the computer still works-even though it's in the dining room now.
Ahhh, but it won't matter...in about 30 minutes I'll have the light in and power restored.

HA!!!


Bill had been in the construction biz for all his adult life and so he accquired alot of skills, shortcuts and other novel ways of dealing with any quirks in building that might have come his way. He was especially skilled at electrical and even though he had time and again tried to explain simple electrical principals to me, I just barely grasped it. He always used the water analogy to explain how electricity "flowed" through a house. All well and good, I could get the basic idea, but when your water flow starts turning into side creeks, tributaries and streams branching off from the main "river" then I'm lost! In short, I knew just enough to get me into trouble.

Like now.

Teetering on a dining room chair, flashlight stuck in my mouth so I'd have both hands free, and the front pocket of my hoodie stuffed with pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, wire nuts and any other implements I thought I'd need to do this task I set out to remove the offending light fixture. That took nearly a half hour! As I had said, my husband had been quite clever with his approach to things like this, and the way this whole fixture was afixed to the ceiling was no exception. I did notice that he had attached little strips of masking tape to the wires leading down from the ceiling to the light itself-no doubt to indicate which were "hot" and which were neutral, but over the years the ink had faded to the point that you couldn't even discern anything had been written-it was totally blank. Fuggin' great!
Anyway, finally got the whole shebang off, shocked at the overall weight of the fixture...all that leaded glass, I guess and was now staring up at a horrific fist sized rat's nest of archaiac wires in the round box in the ceiling. Oh crap! I'm screwed now.
This wasn't shown in the directions that came with the new light fixture!

Some were bundled in old electricians tape, starting off black but emerging from the bundle of tape as white, some were the really, really old school clothcovered wires, some showed splitting along their outer coating, a thin streak of copper showing. OH CRAP-NOT GOOD! (I do know that much.)
It was a jumbled mess. I was in way over my head. And to disturb any of this precarious balance I saw above me would mean possibly having the whole house burst into flames at the flip of a switch. Reluctantly, I knew at this point I would have to stand down and call in the calvery.
So now I have a hole in my dining room ceiling and a couple of arthritic wires poking out and am humbly sitting in the dark typing this.

Hey, we can deal with no lighting for awhile. Shoot, sometimes in the winter we go for days, sometimes a week with no power AT ALL when we get our notorious fierce ice storms. This is but a nuisance, not the end of the world. I'm hoping that electrical contractor I called can get here today. But if he can't, oh well. Suck it up. It was my fault, afterall. I will freely cop to that. I have a feeling that ponying up some major buckage for a complete home re-wiring will be in order.

"The best laid plans of mice and men..." and all that, y'know. Story of my life!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

What? Don't I Count??


HowManyOfMe.com
LogoThere are:
0
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?



Damn, nothing like being told you're a big fat zero!!
There must be a mistake...by my reckoning, there has to be at least ONE---Me.

(blantantly pinched from Patrick, at Born Again Redneck)

"A Skunk by Any Other Name..."



(We saw this one coming up the Hudson, didn't we?)


Liberal Radio Network Launches Next Week

PHOENIX — "The co-founders of Air America Radio formed a new liberal talk radio network that promises to promote freedom and social justice, the new company's CEO said Monday.

(I think I heard that phrase in a 3 Dog Night song once...)


Nova M Radio, a Phoenix-based network formed by Air America co-founders Anita and Sheldon Drobny, will make its first broadcast on Oct. 30, said Mike Newcomb, chief executive and chairman of the network.

Shortly before Air America filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, Newcomb said he and the Drobnys made a proposal to take a controlling interest in Air America, but the offer was declined two weeks before the company's reorganization petition was filed.

Newcomb said the new network is a competitor to Air America and that the Drobnys invested in Nova M Radio because they believed in the business model of liberal talk radio and wanted it to continue to grow.

The Drobnys and Newcomb are the principal investors in Nova M Radio and plan to seek additional investors."...
(more here.)

HT: FreeRepublic

"the new network is a competitor to Air America ..." OK, how can you have competition when your "competition" technically doesn't any longer exist and is comprised of the same players, essentially?
Oh, I know I shouldn't think so dang hard first thing in the morning! Especially when trying to figure out the weeble-wobble bubble world that liberals live in.

Some axioms do easily come to mind, though, like:

Throwing good money after bad.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Don't pee on my shoe and tell me it's raining.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I'm sure you all can come up with a few more. Feel free to add your applicable axiom, or even better yet- a suggestion for their launch campaign slogan!!

Monday, October 23, 2006

The Advil Must Have Worked

Apparently Blogger has recovered from it's hangover this morning.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Fifth Sign of the Impending Apocalypse


Oh, My God! Say it ain't so, Joe!

The Pink Flamingo factory is closing down!!!
Oh, the HUMANITY!!!!!!

This is all that evil BushiltlerRoveianEconomicControlMachineCabalComglomerate's fault-I just know it!

"The pink plastic flamingo, a Florida-inspired icon that has been reviled as kitschy bad taste and revered as retro cool, is dead at age 49.

The pop culture symbol met its demise after its manufacturer, Union Products, of Leominster, Mass., was socked with a triple economic threat -- increases in costs of electricity and plastic resin combined with loss of financing. Production ended in June, and the plant is scheduled to close Nov. 1, according to president and CEO Dennis Plante. Union Products made 250,000 of its patented plastic pink flamingos a year in addition to other garden products."

Read the rest of the obit here at the Sun-Sentinel.

I'm sorry folks, but this is just too devestating for me. I have to go lay down.

Alas! Dear Pinky...we hardly knew ye!

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Fourth Sign of the Impending Apocalypse




The Cardinals are going to Detroit! They made it to the Series!!!


Wooooo-Hoooooody!!!


Due to my family loyalities and also being a proud Missourian, this will be a win/win situation-
We will root for the Tigers AND the Cards and we won't really care who wins!

This final game was a true nail biter. And also witness to the most awesomest catch EVER...too bad it didn't do the Mets any good. Pppffffffffft!!

OK...done gloating and happy dancing, I gotta get to bed.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Which Part of "No, Thank You" Don't You Understand? (a mind blowing example of Leftard bureaucracy)

It's no secret that all these happyass 'social' programs that use OUR tax dollars depend upon increasing their client numbers every year to assure funding, which in turn gets more and more bloated and just makes the problem worse-but keeps some college grad pencil pusher employed. This story about how desperate they have become would be laughable, if it wasn't so pathetic.
Oh, those damn Amish!! How dare they be self reliant!! Why, That's UNAMERICAN!!!

HT: Freerepublic, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Counties Caught in Conundrum: Getting Amish to Take Food Stamps
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
John Horton
Plain Dealer Reporter

Claridon Township -- Tim Taylor's job calls for finding ways to distribute food stamps to Geauga County's Amish. He might as well be trying to sell them cars.

The horse-and-buggy crowd philosophically opposes the support program overseen by Taylor's agency, the Geauga Department of Job & Family Services. Accepting public assistance is verboten within the Amish culture. It simply is not done.

But Taylor is under orders to at least try to get them enrolled. The Ohio Department of Job & Family Services has asked Geauga and Holmes counties, which feature the state's largest Amish populations, to lift dismal food-stamp participation rates.

Taylor and his Holmes counterpart, Dan Jackson, called the mandate a waste of tax dollars, time and resources.

In their eyes, the directive is government bureaucracy that ignores the obvious in setting an unrealistic goal.

"No matter how much we do, the Amish won't sign up," Taylor said. "It's not something they endorse."

But the offer needs to be extended, said Jeanne Carroll, who is deputy director of the state's Office of Family Stability.

Geauga and Holmes lag far behind the rest of the state in getting eligible families registered. The state cannot presume that a group won't participate, Carroll said. Eligible families need to be made aware of the food-stamp program and given ample opportunity to join.

"We can't assume they don't want the benefits," Carroll said. "Frankly, they may."

The state required Geauga and Holmes to draft plans to lift participation rates. Both intend to launch small-scale advertising campaigns to reach the Amish and others. Holmes might use a billboard within an Amish enclave to promote food stamps."

(Oh yeah...that's a swell idea! Hey, I'm sure you can find another 40 or 50 grand just laying around the budget to do that. Just make sure it's a union shop when you contact the billboard company. Jeeeeeeuz H!!!)

If you can stand to read the rest...it's here.

At least Taylor and Jackson realize they are beating their heads against the wall, but they'll carry on with their Quixotesque mission, as ordered, afterall...it's steady work...and they don't want to have to go on food stamps!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Talent to McCaskill: "Are you a natural blonde?"


The third senate debate 'twixt our boy, Jim and Clare McCaskill was televised last night. It took place down here in Springfield. I missed the 1st 15 minutes of it since due to a ridiculous amount of rain all day yesterday we had to take the long way home from the dance studio because our regular route was flooded. This always adds about 15 minutes to the drive time.
I fired up the tv as soon as we got home and listened and sometimes watched while I cobbled up a late din-din for the younguns.

Nothing real spectacular to report. Clare came off like a librarian, annoyed at Talent like he was a noisy little boy in her reading room. Poor Jim, dude, I like ya- but steer clear of mean...mean don't look good on ya. And trying to mask it with some little passive/agressive humor don't help. This could have been a real moment to shine and mop the floor with this hag, but instead you faltered. Bummer. We know you can do better than that, Jim. We've seen it.

Halfway through they allowed the candidates to ask one question to each other. (it was at that point I barked out that question which is the headline to this post...I couldn't help myself...I'm a smartass.) Jim asked Clare about her tax returns and whether she would allow ALL of them to be made public.
Some of her financial records are suspect....as are those of her immediate family. There were insinuations of tax shelters, off shore holdings and other 'creative' and out and out illegal money wrangling on her part. She of course denied it all and had somewhat plausible, although confusing, explanations for her actions.

The panel was stacked in her favor I feel, one guy from the local paper which kinda shakes to the left, a rep from the local PBS station and a reporter from the tv station hosting the event. The questions submitted by the viewers were handpicked to make Clare look good, but represented the concerns of us hillbillies-namely illegals and national security.
Stem cell research got a mention as did the big tobbacco tax amendment on the ballot. Clare railed Jim about not being in favor of the cig tax or the minimum wage issue which Jim wisely said it really didn't matter...these were issues the voters should decide and he would go along with what the people decided. It wasn't up to him.
That's a very broad paraphase, but that was the gist of it.

The debate was only an hour long but afterwards I really didn't feel there was any clear winner. Both were so in attack mode it was hard to filter any answers. It didn't get shouty in-your-face ugly, but I was really hoping for some real clear debate of the issues. Instead it became a He said/She said deal, both on the defensive.
Dang.

(photo credit to KYTV, who managed to use the one pic that makes Talent look like Al Franken.)


In a related story:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- "The Missouri Supreme Court struck down a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. The decision upholds a lower court judge, who ruled last month that the ID requirement is an unconstitutional infringement on the right to vote... the ID requirement would harm poor, elderly and disabled people, who may be less likely to have driver's licenses."

The only bright spot in all this is that voters WILL have to show i.d. in this upcoming state election...but afterthat...anything goes! Gee, just in time for the one that really matters: The Presidential election. Thanks alot, morons.

Ok, so by extraplolation I hereby declare that I will no longer have to show my i.d. when writing a check, buying a 6 pack, or getting a carton of Luckys. I got the state Supreme Court on my side on this. It may take some convincing if I ever get stopped by the local law authorities, but hey, it's worth a shot.

WTH kinda madness is this??? Anyone with half a brain KNOWS this isn't a hardship on the poor. Every friggin' state in this country issues photo i.d. cards besides driver's licenses...and the state i.d.'s are CHEAPER than the driver's licenses! In this state the difference is by nearly 5 bucks or more, if I recall.
The article stated that cases of voter fraud are rare.

Clearly, they've never been to St. Louis.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Help Wanted (conservative bloggers need not apply)

Occasionally I wander over to Laura Mansfield.com to stay in the loop.
Here's an interesting story on the homepage (you'll have to scroll down by now, though, to read it.)
Do all these jihadis feel compelled to put these neverending preambles of thank ye allahs on everything, even a posting for volunteer help?


"In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Praise be to God, Who honored Islam with Victory, humiliated polytheism with His might, procured the matters with His will, lured the infidels with His schemes, and destined power to circulate among nations. By His grace, the rewards will certainly be for the most righteous. May God's peace and prayers be upon the one who elevated the banner of Islam with his sword, upon his family, all his companions, and those who followed righteously in their footsteps until Judgment Day.

'And say (O Muhammad (peace be upon him)) 'Do deeds! Allah will see your deeds, and (so will) His Messenger and the believers. And you will be brought back to the All-Knower of the unseen and the seen. Then He will inform you of what you used to do" (Koranic verse).

May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon all of you.

Dear brothers, due to the falling of some brothers into captivity, (may God free all mujahidin from captivity) we are experiencing a shortage of members, therefore, we ask every brother who finds in himself the ability to serve jihad and the mujahidin to come forward and join the Board of Volunteer Media Jihadists.

We announce our need for the following:

video production, program and film montage;

translators and editors for the following languages: (English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish);

individuals to monitor and collect programs and mujahidin special movies uploaded on the all Arabic, western Internet forums; and

uploading topics with multiple links on Internet hosting sites."



No word if they posted this on any sites connected to MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, The NYT, Daily Kos, or the D.U.
Bet they'd get a better response there.

("humiliated polytheism"? Hey, now...dontcha be tossing them 20 dollar words around!)

Saturday, October 14, 2006

I Question the Timing

BOSTON - Former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress, died early Saturday at Boston Medical Center, several days after he collapsed while walking his dog, his husband said. He was 69.

(The rest of the article, via Yahoo News)

Usual St. Louis Election Night Weaselry Gearing Up

(Y'know, it was just last night I was saying to my eldest that I could almost assure her that come election night, St. Louis would be front and center for all manner of mischief and pre-planned monkeying of the works. I all too well remember the blantant fraud that ran amok there during the Presidential election. And the Talent/McCaskill race is getting ugly...or I should say the McCaskill camp is getting ugly.
So...when I read this I was amused...Yep, here we go! ACORN is, as usual, involved.)

Missouri Republicans allege illegal campaigning for McCaskill

The Missouri Republican Party has asked federal election regulators to investigate whether a group that registers voters illegally campaigned for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill.

The complaint sent to the Federal Elections Commission this week points to an online video testimony from former employees of the St. Louis branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - or ACORN.

The video, produced by Pubdef.net, an online political blog based in St. Louis, shows two ACORN workers protesting last week that they were never paid for signing up new voters. Two workers said in the video they were told by ACORN to solicit votes for McCaskill while registering voters.

McCaskill is facing Republican incumbent Sen. Jim Talent in the Nov. 7 election.

ACORN officials called the allegations completely false.

"This is not true that we are working for McCaskill. These charges come from a fired employee accused of theft and she appears to be angry," said ACORN national spokesman Kevin Whelan.

Josephine Perkins, the fired ACORN worker speaking in the video, had an unlisted telephone number.

The four-page complaint claims that it's illegal for ACORN to solicit votes because the nonprofit organization is not registered to do so.

McCaskill spokeswoman Adrianne Marsh said the campaign has never solicited help from ACORN.

"The McCaskill for Missouri campaign adheres to all FEC regulations and does not communicate with unauthorized organizations," Marsh said.

Missouri Republican Party Executive Director Jared Craighead called the alleged activity "egregiously unlawful."

"We will act promptly and aggressively to protect the honesty of the coming election," Craighead said in a statement.

ACORN also came under fire this week by St. Louis election officials who claimed workers turned in up to 1,500 potentially bogus voter registration cards, including ones for dead and underage people.

The national group has been criticized in the past for similar registration card problems in other states.

ACORN contends that the group does honest work in signing up thousands of U.S. voters and that sometimes, mistakes with voter cards are made in the process.

Talent spokesman Rich Chrismer called the party's allegations of illegal campaigning for McCaskill serious.

"We are hopeful the FEC investigates the matter fully, particularly as it relates to the McCaskill campaign and the potential political exploitation of a tax-exempt organization," Chrismer said.

Selisa Washington, who leads St. Louis ACORN, discredits the claims.

"ACORN members have worked hard to empower people in our communities through voter registration and to pass Proposition B to raise the minimum wage this November," Washington said. "We are not going to allow partisan attacks to interfere with our efforts to make our voices heard."


(I can only pray that all us country bumpkins come out in droves to counteract the inevitable fraudulent voting that will ensue in St. Louis and Kansas City.)

Friday, October 13, 2006

...and the laughs just keep on rollin' in.

Heard Rush mention this story today and even he was laughing so hard he couldn't get through it:

Running of the Elephants

Republican uses animals, mariachi band to critique border security

By SARA INÉS CALDERÓN
The Brownsville Herald

October 11, 2006 — Reports of an elephant crossing the river or people trying to smuggle an elephant across were rampant Tuesday while an elaborate political stunt was taking shape near the mouth of the Rio Grande...

(Read the rest here)

I swear to God, if I lived anywhere near this cat's district in Pennsylvania he'd have my vote!
Outrageous cajones always count in my book!

"Air America Files Chapter 11"

HaHaHaHaHaHa--HawHaHaHahaHaHa--wheeze-
HAHAHAHHHAAAAAAAAHaHaHaHaHaHa-(gasp)-HAHAHA!!!
AhHAhAhAhAhHeeeeeHeeeeeeeeHeeeeeee--oh,jeez-
HaHaHaHaHaHa-oh....oh...oh...wheeze---HAHA-HAWHAW
HAW!-ahhhhhh-- HaHaHaHaHaHa-whew!-- Oh...mercy!

That headline just made my day today. That one will never get old.
Been laughin' & smiling all day!

HAH!

See? Friday the 13th is good fer sumpin'.

Video Jihad Update

Friday the 13th is turning into a good day so far.

I've finally been able to resolve the resolution problem with my little ol' vid and have sucessfully uploaded it to YouTube.

So, here ya go, kiddies--- (I ain't putting the viewer up here cuz it bogs everything down so much. Sorry, I'm a Neanderthal.)

"We Shall Not Be Moved"



(and if the translations are wrong...blame the Dread Pundit commenters. That's where I got the phrases from.)

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Decision Altitude


Well, November is creeping up fast and I have yet to make a decision.
No, silly, I ain't talking about elections. Anyone who knows me knows I would crawl across broken glass, voter i.d. card at the ready, to get to the polls. (I did once walk the 3 miles of rough as a cob Ozark dirt roads to get there when the Mommobile was ailing many years ago. Not braggin', just fact.)

Nope, I'm talking about this annual foray into utter craziness, The National Novel Writing Month.

My pal, Kathy, talked me into this last year and it was quite an experience. Simple concept- starting Nov. 1st you have the entire month to crank out a 50,000 word story. No prizes, no fame, no recognition- you're just doing it because you can.
Last year I finished with a few days to spare at about 50,178 words and the ever so rough beginning of a potentially amusing work of fiction. (Well, I thought so anyway.)

So now I must decide if I wanna try it again. Maybe keep hammering away at what I had already started, my little tale is languishing unfinished in my hard drive. It was grueling and some days difficult to stay on task. I had to manage my time wisely, since I'm the only quasi-responsible human here, and had other pressing things to do...like make sure my kids were fed, laundry done, bills paid...y'know, all that crap. Once you get going and find your groove and plotline it can easily consume your time.
But in retrospect, I really did enjoy the challenge. Just don't know if I wanna go through all that again.

But I really do need to finish that story...

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Iowahawk Goes Nuclear!

I know what's good for me-
So I'm linking Iowahawk's profound announcement to the blogosphere.
Besides, he mentions Missouri...alot.
All hail the destroyer of blogs!

A Mid-week Wrap-up

Mercy! Here it is already Wednesday. I've been busier than a cat covering crap since Friday down here at the Laughing Dog Ranchero tending to business so I've missed out on alot of excitement and have been trying to catch up here and there when I can.

So, Google's gonna buy out YouTube? Boy Howdy. I, for one, look forward to this merger! Afterall, Google has been such a driving force for free speech in China, I expect no less of an effort now with YouTube under it's ever expanding cyber wing.
Interesting how Google is snatching up all arenas of information and opinion transmission on the innertubes. Blog service, search engine, news, books, and now vids...I wonder how much some lackey like me could make employed as a censor for Google? At the rate they're going, they'll have to ramp up in that part of the biz.

Speaking of YouTube-one of my projects over the weekend was creating a little vid, just so's I could get on the hate list too. But I've hit a snag. My vid program saved it in a small resolution for emailing purposes, so I could send it to some pals for initial review (which, btw...noone has replied...Geez! Did it SUCK that much, guys??!!). But now I can't save it in a larger format suitable for uploading to YouTube. This one is puzzling me. Even renaming the file doesn't help.
So until I can get that straightened out my foray into video jihad is on hold. Dangit!!

Lil' Kimmie Ding-Dong been's showing off ...AGAIN. Here it has been several days and we still don't have a definitive answer as to just what the hell they blew up in the outskirts of the land of Nork. This is most curious. And is leading me to believe all he did was dump a coupla hefty dump-truckloads of ammonium nitrate into some bigass hole, tossed in some bottles of drain cleaner and got all hillbilly on us. The seismic fingerprint is suspect, compared to other known underground nuke detonations-the geology of the region could be messing with the readings, but what do I know? Well, I do know I don't trust this little miscreant weasel boy any further than I can throw him. And I do know what he's doing is yet another bit of misdirection...just like this past July, with that apparently pointless display of severe erectile missile dysfunction. Something is up elsewhere, my spidey sense is telling me, no doubt somewhere in the middle east (isn't it always?!).

The only good this did was to finally get Anderson Cooper out of Darfur! Holy Jumpin' Jeezuz, I was getting so sick of that! Day after friggin' day...like for how long? Seems like a month. Yeah, we get it, A.C., it sucks, it's Bush's fault, baby gorillas are being sold into slavery on the black market, human genocide, starvation, abject horror, misery, pestilance, disease, cats and dogs-living together!...just another day over there...whaddya want me to do about it?! Gawdalmighty. Sorry, I'm an ugly American...my emotional reserve is pegged out right now. I had to just ban CNN altogether. The History channel is much more edifying.
But now we get treated to them going on and on about North Korea...Oy!

The Defoleyation of Washington...oh Christ, I don't even want to go there! I was sick of it in the first 12 hours.
The Dems really thought they had The Perfect Storm with that one- once anyone labels you with the scarlet letter of "P", whether true, implied, or out-n-out false, you're doomed. That's it, game over. There's no way anyone can defend it-the perfect Damned if ya do/Damned if ya don't situation. Bastards.

I've noticed quite a few travel ads popping up, especially on CNN, promoting places in the middle east and there abouts (Egypt, and one of the '-stan' countries,the actual one escapes me at this moment). All pretty, warm fuzzy, scenic, romantic, awashed in a sunny glow...they almost make you wanna call the travel agent...and the ads all end with domes and minarets topped with crescents in the sunset. Oooohhhhh Kay! Uh, cancel that notion!
What up wit' dat? Visiting a predominately islamic country with an ugly American passport in this current world climate has always been a big ambition of mine!..isn't it everyones?

Monday, October 09, 2006

What Happens When Daddy's a Photoshoppin' Fiend...

With all the ugliness and scary crap that's been going on this past weekend, I thought it was high time all had a good laugh-at an innocent baby's expense!

A pal of mine sent me this in an email- enjoy!



The original photo:

And then away we go!....









Personally, and don't read too much into this but, the baby Hitler gave me the biggest laugh. Afterall, in so many ways all babies are lil' tyrants!

Friday, October 06, 2006

Trying for My "Dhimmi-Tube" Fatwah

Been plinking around with my video editor tonight and I just might have something fatwahworthy. Nothing profound, just a simple montage with music. Amateur stuff.
I'm gonna sneak it in under the radar at You Tube and see what happens.

Running on the "Ripple of Peace" Platform

Okay, this proves one of 2 things.

1) 40 years of smoking dope does very scary things to you.
Or
2) They really do hire skid row bums to boost protestor numbers!



HT: Cold Fury

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Nice Try, Guys, But....

Note to the folks at TerrorFreeOil.org:

The other day I came acrossed one of your comments on another blog. Sure, it was pure spammy self promotion, since it really had no bearing on the post you were "commenting" on- but I was intrigued. You do have a catchy web addy afterall and the offer for free blog corner banner was, to me, worth checking out.

Wow! What a wonderful array and choices of corner banners! Someone had spent alot of time on this. I immediately saw the one I just had to have. Did as instructed, copy the line of code and merrily skipped back to the backroom of my blog to shove the code in the spot you suggested.

Oh, the horror...the horror.

I was agast at the preview screen. Sure, the corner banner looked all bitchen and cool BUT it had totally wonked out the template! Now I've done lots of tweaking on my template over the years, simple modest changes and additions, so this ain't my first rodeo. I kinda knew what I was doing. And I know that sometimes (rarely) in Blogger, the preview isn't always 100% WYSIWYG. So, I decided to give y'all the benefit of a doubt and went ahead and hit the 'save template changes' button and republished.

Nope...it wasn't a quirk in the Blogger preview. Your code totally fuggered up my site!


Yikes! It took on the look of a Reader's Digest Large Print edition!! How on earth your little single line of code managed to hijack the font size and even the font style and color is beyond my ken, I'm only a demi-geek. I can do html if I absolutely have to and monkey with the other lingos out there if necessary, but this one has me stumped...and kinda pissed. I reverted the template back to my original and dumped your banner.

And you know what? I'm bummed too, because after strolling about your site I decided that y'all really do have a noble & novel cause and I was fully prepared to do a post hawking your cause and pointing folks to your site so they too could learn more and cop a banner or 2.

But not now.


I'm not even gonna link ya on this post. That's how dismayed I am.

As I said above, someone did alot of work on those banners-at the very least they could have checked to make sure it worked CORRECTLY on other blog formats. That's Web Graphics 101. I see that on your site you guys have a blog that uses a modified version of the very same Blogger template I use and even yours is screwed up like mine was!
Maybe you're ok with the "minor" distortions of the fonts. Me? No way. This blog is my online house. And just like my own physical home, I don't hang up a new picture on a wall and expect it to change the entire wall color! That's nuts.
And so is the code in your banners.
So for now, I'm advising my friends and neighbors to steer clear of all your promotional graphics until you get that little issue fixed.

Oh and here's another little clue....DON'T SPAM OUR SITES! That's really rude. If you want to win us over to your cause, please take the extra minute or 2 to type a REAL LIVE comment, and go right ahead and add your link to it. We wouldn't mind that at all. But just blanketing the blogs with with your commercial is sooooooo '90's. It's basic marketing: don't alienate your base right out of the gate!

Quid pro quo, and all that, y'all. Be more 'blog friendly' and then we'll talk.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Reason # 90,483 to Not Convert to Islam

One word: Micromanagement!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...


Woke up to fog outside this morning. Always a sign that fall is trying to creep in.
But summer isn't willing to give up the ghost just yet. Yesterday it was actually dang hot, well into the 90's. We had been experiencing a nice cool down the past 2 weeks. One morning it was a bathrobe wrapping 38 degrees. So this little blast of heat can't be considered a true "Indian Summer", since we have yet to have a frost first...ahhh, but it's coming. The leaves are changing, the acorns and walnuts are dropping with every little breeze making for some very noisy days as they fall on my tin roofed garage and barns.

The younguns got in a hurry with the Persimmon Prognosticator and brought one of the little wild fruits into the house to see what it had to say about the upcoming winter this past Sunday. Like Indian Summers, these little morsels ain't kosher until they've been hit with frost- the cold concentrating the sugar content and making them (in my opinion) a gooey tasty treat. Until then, though they may have a nice, translucent orange glow and may look ripe, they will still pucker you up at first bite. (The photo above shows a very much UNripe persimmon, much like the one my younguns brought in.)
Nevertheless, the younguns figured the pits would have already come to a concensus about winter and tore into the thing and picked out the big, slippery seeds.

Mom's got the strongest jaw so it was my job to chomp down lightly on one in order to split it. That's where the answer is-inside the seed. How the little fetal seedling inside is positioned tells you what kind of winter is ahead. It's an old Ozark method and after doing it for 20 falls now, I've found the persimmon to be surpringly accurate! And not with just a broad generalized prediction. These guys are into "micro-climates". A persimmon growing a hundred miles north may tell a different tale than the ones in our big backyard.

So what did we see? A spork. It was more of a spoon, though, than a true spork, the tips of the baby leaves just barely splayed. Others might say it was a spoon, but I scrutinize these things very closely.
So what's the interpretation?
More snow than ice. But ice is on the menu sometime this winter, but not enough to worry about.

The tradition uses cutlery as a guide and here are the basic definitions:

Spoon- (the leaves are broad and lay neatly atop one another, and really look like a tiny spoon with a handle) you'll be shoveling snow.
Fork- (where the leaf tips are clearly apart) you'll be chopping ice.
Knife- (the leaves are overlapped and narrow) it'll be a cold, windy winter, as in "cuts like a knife."

Any variation on these 3 basic forms allow to fine tune the prediction, depending on the expertise of the viewer. The winter we had the worst ice storm ever, about 15 or so years ago, the persimmon seed showed a very well defined 2 tined fork that fall. That was when I was pretty much sold on these little guys and their fortune telling. We don't see knives very often, but when we do...it's almost always a dry and COLD winter.

Now I've never split one so early in the season so I don't know if that will have any bearing on the results. After our first real frost, I'll do another check and see if this initial prediction holds. But until then, the younguns are looking forward to good sledding ahead!

UPDATE: I found a story about persimmons and predicting weather here. Their interpretation of the fork is different, but this might be a local variance. Here in the Ozarks it means ice storms. A young gal put the folklore to the test via her Science Fair project! Great idea and surprizing results. (Well, not to us, though!)

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Uncle Mac is PISSED!



More so than usual, as a matter of fact.

The Hillbilly Ecosystem version of the lovable "Otis" has sobered up enough to crank out an massive 3 part post about Clinton's true legacy. No, we're not talking blowing off Osama whilts getting blown hisself, no , we're talking the Serbs, man...'member them?

I do and what Mac has posted here is a must read.
Fair warning though-Mac likes to use the F-word...alot...well,ok, obsessively...maybe compulsively, either case, if blunt talk scares the crap outta you, then don't bother clicking here....or here....and just for good measure...here.

(oh, and I kid about the Otis thing, Mac...really.Well, alittle, maybe)

"I'll Take a Dozen, Please!"


Mohammed Bobbleheads!! Better order one before the site gets hacked!
"DashboardMohammed.com"


It's already having the desired effect:
"Frank Peters, a professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at NYU, warned that a bobblehead Muhammed was "a really bad idea."

"Jews and Christians have gotten used to this kind of thing, but Muslims haven't," he said. "This may not be his intention, but these things have consequences."


Yeah...like making a buttload of money-that could be a consequence!

And as for Islamics not being used to "this kinda thing", IT'S HIGH TIME THEY DID!
The rest of us (Jews, Christians, Buddists, the occasional Krishna, and Shintos) have been having to endure mockery far far worse than a friggin' stupid bobblehead doll for thousands of years!!!!

In my opinion, the item is a bit pricey, but that might be just a bit of my envy showing. I predict this will be hotter than the Chia Pet for those last minute Christmas gifts!
File this under "Wished I'd Thought of That!"