Tag: stupid is as stupid does

Posted on

Remember when?

You recall in one of the presidential debates when Jean Fraud sKerry recounted how his mother tried to encourage him to stop lying?
 
Yeh, you remember that.  She tried one last time to pound it into his skull that he needed to start developing some “Integrity, integrity, integrity.”
 
Here’s my lil reminder to Jean Fraud sKerry (otherwise known as John F. Kerry):
 
Posted on

Just for fun.

Who likes plain beige boxes? OK, you can both put your hands down, now.
 
I’ve never been a fan of plain box computer looks. But I’ve not felt attracted to the flourescent/translucent Macs or the whirly-lights moded gamer look, so, I was sorta left with the option of buying someone else’s idea of a cool looking case (usually, *blech!*) or doing something about it, myself.
 
The old bird shown below houses an older (333Mhz) processor and only 256 MB ram, etc., but yes, that’s mahogany veneer (and yes, I painted the dustcatcher front black). 
 
 

It’s not the camera; it’s my photography “skills.” 🙂 
 
I liked that veneered, stained and varnished look.  Still do.  But when a mobo I ordered came with a nice case, and I was temporarily (I thought) out of veneering materials (found some more later, tucked away safely.  heh) I decided to use some paint/glaze that I’d used on a furniture project to give it a more attractive look.  Added some mahogany pieces to slotcovers, etc., and…
 


It’s not the camera; it’s my photography skills, still. 🙂 
 
I think I’ll add another optical drive to Ziggy, but for now, the one is just fine, and the mahogany slot cover is nice.
 
I used to, before it died the death of clicks, have a nice black keyboard I had face-veneered with mahogany on all but the keycaps, but since it’s only good for looking at, it’s junk, now. My current wireless keyboard for this computer is a nice, attractive gray/black, so I’m not itching to change its looks.  The mouse that goes with the wireless keyboard, though… Hmmm… how touch would it be to carve a cover for that??? And now that I think about it, what about the fascia for my monitor? Hmmm… Tha’d look nice civered in a mahogany veneer or with the computer case’s paint treatement…
 
🙂
 
Posted on

Liar! Liar!

[UPDATED, AGAIN: Don Singleton has a good roundup of various comments about Jean Fraud sKerry’s disingenuous proclamation that he’s “signed it” (whatever the antecedent of that “it” may be… ) .  And thanks for the link, Don.
 
[UPDATE: ACCORDING TO A REPORT quoted on Michelle Malkin’s blog, sKerry has signed his SF-180:
 
 On Friday, May 20, Kerry obtained a copy of Form 180 and signed it. ”The next step is to send it to the Navy, which will happen in the next few days. The Navy will then send out the records,” e-mailed Wade [a Kerry staff worker]. Kerry first said he would sign Form 180 when pressed by Tim Russert during a Jan. 30 appearance on ”Meet the Press.”
How disingenuous is that?  For weeks people have been emailing and faxing and snailmailing him the form. And it’s been readily available even before then, without all that “help.”  And he finally “obtained” a form on May 20?
 
Liar.
 
Tries to make it sound as though it were a major task to get his hands on one.  And as though he just managed to get his hands on one on May 20. His staff must be keeping his faxes, emails and snail mail away from him, cos he’s gotten enough of them to fill a weeks-long (real, old-time) filibuster just reading one after another of the copies he’s recieved aloud.
 
Liar.
 
Now we’ll just have to see if he actually did sign it as he said. Note this little gem:
”I have signed it,” Kerry said. Then, he added that his staff was ”still going through it” and ”very, very shortly, you will have a chance to see it.”
Note the disinformation: he was asked when he’d signed the SF-180 and did not answer the question (“when”).  Then note that he simply said he’d signed “it”–leaving out what “it” he was referring to, since we all know that means he can go back later and assert “it” was something other than the SF-180, because he then says we will very shortly have a chance to see “it”–“it” what?  The SF-180?  We can see and read it already!  Not with his signature, of course…
 
Oh, and what is this about his staff ”still going through it”?  Surely he cannot mean the SF-180 he was asked about? The darned thing is only 3 pages long!  He must have a staff of illiterate cretins, if that is the “it” he signed.
 
Which “it” refers to the SF-180 and which “it” refers to his military records—if either one refers to either set of documents?
 
sKerry’s apparently not saying.
 
Oh, how I’d like to hear reports of a conflagration in his pants…
 
Children used to taunt people like Jean Fraud sKerry on the playground with “Liar, liar, pants on fire; nose as long as a telephone wire.” Yeh, I know.  So very oldtimer: obscure literary/cultural references to Pinochio and actual POTS service. And kids today don’t taunt liars.  They want to grow up to be just like ’em.
 
*sigh*
 
(I’m a day behind.  Monday was supposed to be my major curmudgeonly mode day. heh )
 
But back on point.  Jean Fraud sKerry maintains his standing as a world class liar, a standing he has held at least since his days lying before the Senate “back in the day.” Eh? You say?  What now?
 
Look at the “Jean Fraud sKerry’s a liar” counter toward the top of this blog.  Yeh, it doesn’t say it’s a “Jean Fraud sKerry’s a liar” counter, but it is. What it says today is:
 
“114 days ago, John Kerry promised, on national TV, to sign form SF-180 and release his military records. He has yet to do so.”
So, asserting that once again Jean Fraud sKerry has lied to the American public is a slam dunk.  A piece of cake.  A provable assertion.
 
What to do… what to do…
 
Well, apparently, sKerry has gotten tired of all the faxes he’s recieved and shut down the numbers I published here a couple of weeks ago, so mail and email may be our only way of contacting this *spit* *gag* politician to remind him to make good on ONE promise.
 
 
From Cao’s Blog, this helpful piece of information:
Kerry moved his email form to http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/contact/email.html .
What do you wanna bet he’ll hide again, as soon as our emails reach him?  Just do it.  And pop on over to Cao’s Blog and join the Tuesday 180 blogburst, OK?
 
heh. Ya just have to appreciate Cao’s sense of humor:
“NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”
On second thought… maybe that’s covering the bases… you never can tell what freedoms the politicians are going to insist are theirs and theirs alone.  You know, like political speech (which was once covered by the First Amendment.  The First Amendment now apparently only covers free “expression” that is obscene or anti-Christian or incites to violence).
 
Once again, that emailto for sKerry can be found (today, at least—until he runs and hides again) at
 
 
Posted on

A cautionary from Kipling—discouraging the savages

As counterpoint to the lies of Mass Media Podpeople about our military personnel who are facing jihadis, listen to Kipling:
 
The Grave of the Hundred Head
 
by Rudyard Kipling.
 
    There’s a widow in sleepy Chester
   Who weeps for her only son;
   There’s a grave on the Pabeng River,
   A grave that the Burmans shun;
   And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri
   Who tells how the work was done.
  
A Snider squibbed in the jungle-
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.
 
Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall.
 
They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face-
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race-
They made a samadh in his honour,
A mark for his resting-place.
 
For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in state,
With fifty file of Burmans
To open him Heaven’s Gate.
 
The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village
The village of Pabengmay-
A jingal covered the clearing,
Caltrops hampered the way.
 
Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Biddin8 them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With Jemadar Hira Lal.
The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.
The Jemadar’s flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.
 
Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back to their grave again,
 
Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village-
The village of Pabengmay
And the “drip-drip-drip” from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way
 
They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man’s chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.
 
Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below-
With the sword and the peacock banner
That the world might behold and know.
Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris-
The price of white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.
 
Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a white man’s head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.
 
 
    There’s a widow in sleepy Chester
   Who weeps for her only son;
   There’s a grave on the Pabeng River,
   A grave that the Burmans shun;
   And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri
   Who tells how the work was done.
 
I’d say Kipling got the ratio about right: 300,000+ jihadis is a good start on a cautionary retribution for 9-11. It’d at least give the next savage jihadi pause.
 
(Oh, and radioactive glass where the sands of Mecca and Medina are now—a monument that could be seen from space—would be a more fitting than any monument raised in NYC. In case you’d missed it, I’m not feeling exceptionally charitable toward filthy Muslim jihadis at the moment. Or, frankly, for any moment since 9-11. Note that the official population estimates for Mecca are within an order of magnitude of a “proper” number for a “cautionary retribution” ~ 377,000.)

 
 
 
 
Posted on

Today was eaten by locusts…

*sigh*
 
Very Nice having The Daughter visit for my birthday anniversary.  Good to spend much of the day running down parts, etc., and making essential repairs to her car. My BD present to me.  :-)  Add the treat of her presence and The Son, and all was well, indeed. (And yes, according to one manner of figuring, I’m still only thirty-six and one-half years old. Makes it interesting to have been married for somewhere in the close neighborhood of twenty-seven years… heh “According to one manner of figuring… ” I’ll stick with that story.)
 
But… still, time eaten.  Much left undone. Much to do to catch up on from time taken due to last week’s Wonderfully Successful Operation.  🙂
 
And Kipling Tuesday and 180 Blogburst to prep for tomorrow.
 
Coming…
Posted on

Filter today’s (and tomorrow’s and… ) news through this

[NOTE; BUMPING THIS TO THE TOP—folks, read the Bill Whittle essay.  Just CLICK the link and read. Just. Do. It.  In the past few days, I have had multiple upon multiple hundreds of folks view posts on this blog. Yet only one has commented on this post. So read, especially the update at the end.]
 
The best links can come from the strangest places…
 
By now, most folks know that IMAO is the nuthouse of the blogosphere, where the (space)monkeys (is that monkies?:-) rule the zoo.  Great place.  I recommend regular reading there.  But what I’m not used to seeing is links to material that’s of as high a quality as this . Sure, there’s lotsa lighthearted snark directed at serious stuff, but this is just pure gold. Thanks, Frank J., for pointing out Bill Whittle’s re-entry into the fray. As Jay Tea at Whizbang! says,
 
This one piece is precisely the one I wish I had written. The one I wish I could have written. He explains what I fumbled around, ties together all that I wish I could have thought of, and concludes exactly the way I wish I could have. And so much BETTER.
Damn.

Yeh, what he said (and soooo much better than I would have in revealing my envy… 🙂
 
And, thanks again, Frank, for being the first to clue me into Bill Whittle’s Sanctuary Part I and Sanctuary Part II.
 
UPDATE: Here’s a very short excerpt from Part I. I could almost literally have clipped at random and have gotten something true and provocative. It’s a brief excerpt of the section where Whittle deals with the effects of the Fantasists (as I have previously labeled them) on society, on civilization. Read and then CLICK on one of the links above… or anywhere in the text below.
 

“Reality has left their building.
 
“The inability of external reality to become perfect is a profound disappointment for people who live in their own fantasy worlds where everything is perfect. Such people expect the external world, the world beyond the boundaries of our Sanctuary, to behave like a celebrity awards show dinner or a faculty lounge. Of course, only very, very small areas of the world behave like a celebrity award show dinner or a faculty lounge. But when enough people experience nothing else, and when those pampered, bored, hollow and guilty elites control the way information is reported, run the schools and universities in which reality-free theories are taught, and hold the keys to the manufacture of a society’s myths and stories and culture – well, then the disconnect between the Civilization and reality becomes so acute that the wing stalls and what was once a soaring airplane becomes a few tons of metal plummeting earthward.”
Posted on

Music Meme

Golly gee whiz, there aure are some nosy parkers out there in the blogosphere…
 
🙂
 
Yeh, well, this was a “volunteer” recruitment thing, so I can’t complain.  Actually a little interesting.  Several questions about musical listening habits.
 
So, from Jenna Thomas–M cKie, the questions:
 
Total volume of music files on my computer?
 
I’m not real sure.  I did a quick search of the hard drive where I archive most of them that I save for CD compilations.  Many are original recordings, etc.  That quick search turned up over 6BG of files.  I have a lot more I’ve “cleaned off” onto CDRs. Then there are all the music scores, “sheet music” transcriptions of my own and others stuff.  I’ve archived most of that on several CDRs, but still turned up about 6,000 transcription files and about 2,000 midi files, most of transcription files “tweaked” for recording.
 
The last CD I bought was…
 
Jazz Masters 33: Benny Goodman
 
Song playing right now
 
Listening to 4MBS, Brisbane, Australia’s “Classical CDs til Dawn.”  The end of Brahms’ Symphony #1.  Now, Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”  Later, John Williams (guitarist) playing various selections.
 
 
 
Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):
 
This one’s a litlte difficult for two reasons: “songs” shuts out a whole big buncha music that means a lot to me or that I listen to a lot and even limiting the selection to songs, there are too many to choose from! *sigh*
 
  • Marta Keen’s “Homeward Bound“
  • Nick Glennie-Smith and Randall Wallace’s “Mansions of the Lord“
  • Frank Houghton’s “Thou Who Wast Rich (Beyond All Splendor)”
  • Noel Paul Stuckey’s “For the Love of It All”
  • Beethoven’s an freude section of his 9th symphony, words by Schiller (well, the small ensemble and chorus both sing, accompanied by the orchestra… 🙂
 
Hard to stop with just five…  and any number of other songs could just as easily go in that list.
 
Which 5 people are you passing this baton to, and why?
 
Arrrggghhhh!  That’s something I’ll have to update with…
 
…this: Megan at Eel-Infested Waters has agreed to participate.  She’s visiting for the weekend, so we fixed her blogger logon and posting problems, installed Zoundry Blogwriter and have things cooking, now.
 
One down, four to go?
 
OH! And don’t forget Blogfathers Dayâ„¢ (June 19) is approaching—just a month away!
 
UPDATE:  Alan Woody (who lists “5376 songs / 388 hours” on his site) has taken the bit between his teeth on this one. Glancing over his list, I have a feeling that paring it down to five songs may be a bit of a chore. Update to update: Here’s Alan’s (Woody’s News & Views) contribution— “My Music Is Like Totally…” Alan goes everyone one better and posts links to Amazon.com samples of the songs he lists, so if you like ’em you can just buy ’em.  Nice.
 
Richard of Random Rambling has also said he’ll give it a shot.
 
Nibbles from a couple more… we’ll just see how many will take the bait.
 
🙂
 
Christine, at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea, has a solid post on this: “I’ve been tagged!“  And I completely agree with her approach: “It’s fitting since I’m sitting here listening to an old tune and sipping a cuppa… “ Well, unless it’s a great orchestral piece and I’m too close to my collection of batons… coffee cup, baton, waving arms—not a good mix.  heh Great post, Christine!
 
Posted on

Sissy’s WoW #5–not quite yet

This is NOT my “WoW” post for “zaftig”
 
…that’ll take either some thought or inspiration. Or maybe some cheating.  I dunno.  I thought immediately of just saying I’ve always wanted a ZAF TIG welder, but that’d not only be disallowed because it’s not A word (or an alternative meaning to “zaftig” as I did with “trammel” last week) but it’d also be untrue.  Besides, I just made it up by combining two things: “ZAF”—for Zero Alignment Force—and TIG welder, which should need no explanation to folks who know what one is. heh.
 
So, my “zaftig” post will have to wait, unless I bloviate long enough for this post to become zaftig, and then I could use zaftig in a self-referential manner to describe my prolix posting. But, of course, that would be absurd. “Zaftig” refers to a pleasingly plump (even erotically well-rounded) woman. And whatever one might say of this post, it’ll never be female (though it has a slight chance of becomeing pleasingly plump or well-rounded) or erotic.
 
So, I dunno.  Perhaps I should just chill out and let the word sink in.  I’ve read the word quite a few times over the years, but I cannot recall ever hearing it said. It’s just not the kind of word I expect to hear in conversation, you know?
 
I just tried to imagine a conversation down at the feed store in America’s Third World Countyâ„¢ featuring the word “zaftig.”  The closest I could get was Bubba rhapsodizing about his heifer’s brown-eyed appeal… Blech.
 
So, this post, while overblown, and even though it contains a twice-removed allusion to Bubba’s perverse appreciation of a cow, lacks the well-rounded erotic appeal of a zaftig woman, so I guess I’ll just have to wait for inspiration to strike.
 
What you are NOT going to see is a post where I describe Wonder Woman as zaftig.  Uh-uh.  Ain’t gonna happen.
 
But do go on over and check out Sissy’s new digs. And while you’re there, ask her what kinda crazy thing led her to choose “zaftig” for a WoW, ok?
Posted on

Thank you, Dan

…for introducing me to The Nose on Your Face
 
Subtitle: “News so fake you’ll swear it came from the mainstream media.”
 
heh
 
“ACLU Files Bear Class Action Lawsuit” was the post Dan Riehl of Riehl World View —look in my blogroll under, umm, Riehl World View. heh— chose to link to that introduced me to “Buckley F. Williams” (and a better blog nome de plume for The Nose on Your Face I wouldn’t want to be tasked with imagining).
 
There’s even a commenter to the post who references Gordon Dickson’s The Right to Arm Bears.
 
 
Cool.
 
Other posts at The Nose on Your Face that, umm, bear reading: 
 
New Strain Of “Shapeshifting Grackles” Discovered
New “Drunk Pill” On The Horizon
Newsweek Article Spurs Wave Of “Islamo-rappers”
Newsweek Editor Apologizes, Magazine To Begin Inquiry
 
Oh, just get on over there and start reading. I gotta kick myself that I took so long finding this stuff…
 
Posted on

Two thoughts converge

..but not in a snowy woods
 
This article, “Rednecks: the Virtues Thereof” by Fred Reed, and this post “Make room for daddy — he’s packing heat!” by Jay Tea at Whizbang! converged in my reading today…  In the first, Fred offers such nuggets as
 
“If some upscale flowerbed like Fairfax County outside DC ever had to deal with hard times, it would the best show since Aunt Sally sat on that ant nest. It isn’t just that they can’t do anything. They can’t even think about doing anything. I mean, suppose that after the asteroid hit the cops had other things to do, like look after their families, and a larcenous parasitic lawyer encountered some Diversity with a knife in its hand and an itch for his television or daughters, what would he do? Get extra therapy? Hit him with a rubber stamp? Say, “Can’t we talk about this?”
 
Now, in the country, people had a slightly less lenient attitude toward having their homes invaded. Nobody ever shot anybody, much anyway. People didn’t think it was civilized. They did have dogs and shotguns and rifles. Further, they had the backbone to use them if the need arose. Which is why it didn’t.”
 
(Click the link, there’s a LOT more where that came from!)
 
Such thinking provides illuminating wisdom to a question asked by Jay Tea concerning a father, who had gone to pick up his 17-year-old twin girls from a frat party where alchohol was flowing freely, who, when confronted by a bunch of drunk fratboys, showed them he was armed in order to back them down:
 
“It’s understandable, then, that such a father would be considerably upset when he arrived to pick up his girls. And that he’d be a bit fierce when he’s surrounded by drunken fratboys who don’t want to see the girls leave just yet.
 
But does that necessarily justify pulling a gun on the fratboys?”
 
Well, read Fred’s article for the answer… it’s in there, not very well hidden between the lines.