Top Fuel's House of Teriyaki YardBird

quote of the week

2006-02-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

"Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure." - Lord Byron

Top 100 opening lines from novels

2006-01-31T10:02:00.000-08:00

from American Book Review

100 Best First Lines from Novels
1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)
7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)
14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)
15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)
19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. —Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759–1767)
20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. —Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)
25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)
28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)
29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)
30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)
32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)
33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)
34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. —John Barth, The End of the Road (1958)
35. It was like so, but wasn't. —Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)
36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. —William Gaddis, J R (1975)
37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
38. All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
39. They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)
40. For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)
41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)
42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)
43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)
44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. —Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)
46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. —Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)
47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)
50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)
51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. —Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927)
52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)
53. It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. —Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)
55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. —David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)
58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. —George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)
59. It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? —Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)
61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)
62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)
63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. —G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
65. You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
66. "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)
68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)
69. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. —Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)
70. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. —Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)
71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. —GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)
72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)
73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. —Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966)
74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. —Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)
75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. —Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)
77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)
78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)
79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. —Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)
80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. —William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)
81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. —J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)
82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)
83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)
84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. —John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. —James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)
86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)
87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. —Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)
88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)
89. I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. —Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)
91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. —John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)
92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. —Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)
93. Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. —Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)
94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. —Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. —Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)
96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. —Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)
97. He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. —Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)
98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. —David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)
99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. —Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
American Book Review Campus Box 4241 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4241For more information contact the webmaster

another boring quote

2006-01-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

"The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again." - Anonymous

25 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do.

2006-01-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

from askmen.com

Have you ever wondered why Patty and Selma never miss an episode of MacGyver? The reason is simple: Women (yes, even celibate, cartoon women) love a man with a vast reservoir of knowledge. Whether it's knowing what to say when you're in bed or being able to build an explosive out of a roll of toilet paper and a pile of pigeon poo, having all the right answers is just plain sexy.Make yourself as irresistible as Richard Dean Anderson by following the helpful tips.

1- Control your emotions at work
Far too many of us have seen our coworkers commit career suicide by throwing childlike tantrums at work. Fortunately, you can avoid the same fate by applying AskMen.com's certified job saving techniques. When something doesn't go your way, give yourself time before you react. Take a walk to cool down, talk to someone who can calm you down or go to the gym to work off your anger. If you don't have the luxury of time, ask for clarification before you react and give yourself a standing 10 count before you say something you might regret. Control your emotions before they control you.
2- Keep your memory sharp
Do you find yourself frequently forgetting the name of that do-hickey from the what-ja-mabob? The good news is retaining information is as easy as 1-2 and, uh... whatever number comes after two. When you receive new information, be an active listener, imagine that everything you hear and see is vital, make links between what you're trying to recollect and things you already know, and repeat what's said. Now what was I talking about?
3- Keep your clothes wrinkle-free
Are your clothes starting to look more wrinkled than Elizabeth Taylor's backside? Take immediate action through these simple steps: a) Fold and hang your clothes as soon as the dryer's spin cycle is complete; b) Always store a piece of clothing as soon as you take it off; and, c) Avoid pulling up your pants when sitting down. If all else fails, simply throw your clothes in the dryer a second time and they'll come out looking good as new.
4- Avoid a hangover
Just because you're planning on having a smashing night on the town, doesn't mean you have to have a smashing reminder the next day. Stop your hangover before it begins by preparing your body properly. Put some food in your beer belly, drink milk to coat the lining of your stomach and toss back a couple of multivitamins to minimize the amount of nutrients you'll lose.
5- Keep it up when you're tired
We all have moments in our lives when Little Elvis decides to leave the building. Be it booze, fatigue or a woman who looks like Abe Vigoda, there's probably a simple reason you can't get it up. If that reason happens to be fatigue, then the solution is easier than you think. Next time you think you're too pooped to pop, try eating, taking a nap or just zoning out in front of the tube. Your little friend will thank you for the chance to recuperate.
6- Avoid boredom at work I
f you're anything like most people, your work is likely more numbing than Novocaine. The good news is you can prevent yourself from slipping into REM by being proactive. Ask for new projects, volunteer for tasks not related to your job, expand your knowledge of your field and your industry, and turn downtime into networking time by engaging your colleagues in brainstorming sessions. With any luck, your newfound ability to stay awake might even land you a promotion out of the mailroom.
7- Choose a first-date location
First dates can be stressful enough, so why add to the pressure by choosing a lousy location? Win over your date from the start by proving that your "raison d'etre" is to provide her with the best life has to offer. Invite her to your place for a gourmet meal (sorry, mac & cheese doesn't count), whisk her away to a luxurious resort or simply enchant her with a picnic along the water. Oh, and one more thing. Whatever you do, make sure your wife isn't going to be there at the same time.
8- Spot a woman who will be good in bed
Sometimes you can just tell if a woman is going to be spectacular in the sack. If she's a good kisser, you know she has the potential to be sensuous. If she's a good dancer, you know she's comfortable with her body. If she's flexible, you know she can perform 101 positions in bed. And if she can skin a lion with her hands tied behind her back, you know she's the woman for you.
9- Read a woman's body language
Unlike cars and fondue sets, women don't come with owner's manuals. So if you want to understand them, you have to look closely for a number of subtle signs. For instance, a woman who is lustful will sit with her hips and chest out and will make prolonged eye contact. A woman who is feeling flirtatious will laugh more often than usual, smile constantly, and fidget with her hair and jewelry. A disinterested woman will keep looking away, will rarely smile and will keep her arms folded across her chest. And a very disinterested woman will reach for her mace while kneeing you in the groin. Again, they're all very subtle signs, but they can be detected.
10- Know about interest rates
Whether you're starting a small business, remodeling your home or just saving up for a brand new pony, there comes a time in every man's life when he needs to borrow money. The main thing you'll be judging when comparing potential lenders is the interest rate, which is essentially the price of the money. Ask several banks for quotes and then do the same with brokers. Above all else, don't be afraid to negotiate. Tell the lowest-priced broker you think he can do better. He might laugh in your face, but he also might give you a better than expected deal.
11- Impress your girlfriend's parents
When meeting your girlfriend's parents, keep in mind that first impressions can last a lifetime. If you're going to their home, bring a small gift like wine or flowers, and offer to pay if you're dining out. As for conversation, politely answer questions about yourself and do your best to appear interested in their lives and backgrounds. Seeing as how you already duped their daughter into liking you, getting the parents on board should be no problem at all.
12- Tell if her breasts are fake
Your date's breasts are round mounds of gravity-defying fun, but are they real? Although you can't ask her outright, you can look for a few telltale signs before you lure her home. If they're perfectly round, overly firm and sit suspiciously high on her chest, chances are they could be more artificial than George Hamilton's tan. The good news is that that's never stopped you before. Real or fake, enjoy those blouse bunnies while you still can!
13- Relax your muscles
You've just completed a strenuous workout with your girlfriend's five-pound weights and are really feeling the tension in your muscles. Now it's time for your cool down. Start by controlling your breathing. Take slow, deep breaths on a 4:4-second count. As you exhale, imagine all the tension leaving your body one muscle group at a time. All right, now who's ready for a box of Mallomars?
14- Sell stuff on eBay
So, you're finally thinking of selling your entire He-Man collection. Turn that thought into action by visiting eBay. To get the party started, you'll have to become a registered member and create a seller's account. Once you've done that, you can list your items by clicking the "Sell" button at the top of any eBay page. The site's accompanying "Sell Your Item" form will then guide you through a step-by-step process for listing your item. May the power of Grayskull be with you!
15- Mix a Stinger
Anyone up for a little brandy and white crème de menthe? Channel your inner Tom Cruise by creating this simple little cocktail. Pour 1½ ounces of brandy into a snifter half-filled with ice, then pour in 1½ ounces of white crème de menthe. It's a great tasting cocktail worthy of screen time in any Bond movie.
16- Get rid of pesky friends
Everyone has a friend they secretly can't stand. They show up when they're not wanted, they stick around long after all your other guests have gone home and they borrow your girlfriend without ever returning her. Fortunately, you can gradually eliminate these cretins from your life. Cut back by decreasing your availability, emotionally or otherwise. Quit doing them favors, stop returning their phone calls, and don't invite them along to parties and outings. If they still don't get the message, confront them and tell them politely.
17- Eat lobster without looking goofy
There are certain foods, like mussels and oysters, which can be downright tricky to eat -- especially if you try to devour the shells. But no food presents a more daunting task to the culinary neophyte than the lobster. Fortunately, you can outwit this crafty crustacean with the right tools. Put on your bib, pick up your nutcracker and get to work. Start by breaking off the legs through twisting them away from the body. Do the same with the claws, breaking them apart at the first joint. The meat in the legs can be sucked up easily but you'll need to tackle the claws with your trusty nutcracker. As for the bottom end of the lobster, grasp the tail with one hand and the lobster's back with the other, and give it a good twist. Now give it a good squeeze to crack the shell and push the tail meat through the larger hole with one finger. Keep in mind you might want to remove the digestive tract before devouring your underwater friend. Now that you've worked up an appetite, break out the garlic butter and enjoy!
18- Do a background check
These days you never want to get financially involved with someone unless you know their background inside and out. The good news is that performing an informal background check is easier than ever, thanks to the magic of the Internet. With a few simple keystrokes you can get the license plate information and social security numbers of nearly anybody. If that isn't enough, talk to people who might know your subjects well, call their alma mater about a supposed graduation date and connect the dots about all of the information you've uncovered.
19- Negotiate like a pro
In the words of a certain British philosopher, "You can't always get what you want but, if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." That, in a nutshell, is the art of negotiation. You too can get what you want by following these rules: Never make the first offer, aim high but never appear eager or impressed, know your opponent and always, always be willing to walk away. Now that's satisfaction!
20- Deal with your enemies
We all have enemies. Perhaps it's the schmuck dating your ex, maybe it's the "friend" who humiliated you in public or it could be the three mustachioed gentlemen who kicked you out of their barbershop quartet. And although karma does usually come around to smite these everyday nemeses, it doesn't mean you're powerless to alter the dynamics of the situation. Use your time to plan your revenge, don't publicize your beefs, always remain cool, and throw them off the scent by pretending to befriend them. How you choose to finish the job is entirely up to you.
21- Get a trademark
So, you're finally looking to acquire a trademark for your amazing new "Sedan Ceiling Fan." In order to get started, you'll want to contact the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO.gov). Their comprehensive website lets you know if your trademark has already been registered. And, if it's still available, you can acquire the trademark for anywhere between $300 and $400.
22- Order sushi
When it comes to ordering sushi, you essentially have two choices: Nigiri or Maki. Nigiri is typically a pairing of raw fish (sashimi) and rice. Maki, meanwhile, is rolled sushi and comes wrapped in seaweed. Both are delicious, but Maki is a better choice for those new to the wonders of eating uncooked fish, as it has less of an overwhelming "fishy" taste. Try sampling a variety of dishes, toss in some tempura and, if you prefer your meals cooked, opt for chicken teriyaki. Keep in mind that sushi is meant to be savored, so enjoy it at a leisurely pace.
23- Survive a fistfight
You're a lover, not a fighter, which could explain why the last time you were involved in a fistfight, you lost to a 12-year-old girl (hey, in your defense, she was big for her age). But now that you've been backed into a corner again, you'll have to come out swinging like your life depends on it. Forget everything you've ever seen in the movies and be willing to fight dirty. Kick him in the gonads, give him an elbow to the head or the kidneys, and use your fingers to scratch/gouge his face, eyes and throat. You might even consider using your teeth, but be prepared to hang on tight (it's not honorable, but it might just save your life).
24- Bluff effectively
If you're looking to get something for nothing, then you'd better learn how to bluff. For starters, get your story straight, keep the bluff simple, consider the consequences of your deceit, and never underestimate the other guy. Getting caught in a web of your own lies is far too easy, so you'll ultimately only want to use bluffing as a last resort.
25- Survive getting caught with another woman
You're having a romantic dinner with your date when, all of a sudden, you notice your girlfriend out of the corner of your eye. She's rapidly headed towards your table and she looks like she's ready to circumcise you with her teeth. So what do you do? If you value your manhood, you calm the mood by introducing the two women. You take one of your lovers aside and explain you misunderstood your dating agreement and didn't fully appreciate the severity of your relationship. Then, you immediately choose between the two women on the spot. If this were a porno, you'd all end up in a threesome in the kitchen; however, since this is your life, you should be prepared for the possibility that both women will leave you in their dust.

more to come..........

Recruiting from the Mullet Wrapper

2006-01-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

Recruiting $uccess is relative
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Things I learned from Internet message boards in the past few days:
Urban Meyer is cheating. There's no way the Gators' recruiting class,
ranked No. 1 in the country by virtually every service that ranks recruiting
classes, is a product of hard work, solid salesmanship and ample opportunity
at one of the nation's premier programs. Is there?
Also, Ed Orgeron is cheating. The Ole Miss coach is putting together a
top-10 recruiting class on the heels of a 3-8 season, staff tension and
player defections. There's just no way Orgeron, who is lauded for his
recruiting successes as an assistant at Miami, Syracuse and Southern
California, has been able to lure top talent to play in Oxford. New
state-of-the-art facilities, an opportunity to play early in the SEC and
relentless recruiting can't explain his success. Right?
Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? I certainly don't, but disgruntled rival
fans have made up their minds. Oh yeah, if Georgia gets Homewood wide
receiver Tim Hawthorne, Mark Richt is cheating. If LSU or USC somehow land
Birmingham offensive tackle Andre Smith, Les Miles and/or Pete Carroll are
obviously cheating.
That's what I've learned on the Internet recently. Everyone is
cheating. When Shelby, N.C., linebacker Brandon Spikes picked Florida over
Alabama, it was inexplicable. After all, the Tide needs linebackers more
than Florida does. And who would turn down a chance to play in Tuscaloosa
when the alternative is Gainesville? Obviously -- and I saw this one on the
Internet too -- $pikes got bought.
When Boutte, La., defensive end Kentrell Lockett picked Ole Miss over
Alabama, that was an even more egregious example, according to the message
boards, of shady recruiting. A coveted player picking the lowly Rebels over
the Tide? Come on. The fact that Lockett is no worse than second-string on
the depth chart to play for a fellow south Louisianan and a program that had
been recruiting him longer than anyone else just won't explain it.
Clearly -- watch this, I'm learning -- Ole Mi$$ did something untoward to
land Lockett.
Here's where I get confused, though. If Meyer is such a cheater, how
did he lose two Fort Lauderdale, Fla., offensive linemen -- Sam Young and
Dan Wenger -- to Notre Dame? Are the Irish cheating too? If Orgeron is such
a cheater, shouldn't he learn to shop at home? After all, three of the
Rebels' top four in-state targets have committed elsewhere. Ocean Springs
tight end Richard Dickson, who has family connections to Ole Miss, committed
to LSU. So did Jackson linebacker Derrick Odom. Oh yeah, Oxford defensive
back Justin Woodall committed to Alabama.
The point, of course, is no one in this part of the country can safely
cast stones when it comes to recruiting. Show me a program in the Deep South
that is crystal clean when it comes to recruiting and I'll show you a trophy
case that is devoid of any crystal.
The majority of top-notch recruits want to know how quickly a coach
can get him on the field and how well a program can prepare him for the NFL.
The rest, including tradition and championships from the 1940s, is just
window dressing.
Believe that if you choose. If not, keep throwing accusations around.
If nothing else, I find them entertaining.
Contact Neal McCready at:
nmccready@mobileregister.com
His column appears on Wednesdays in the Register.

© 2006 The Mobile Register
© 2006 al.com All Rights Reserved.

quote of the week

2006-01-24T12:02:00.000-08:00

"It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work." - George Bernard Shaw

Quote of the Day

2006-01-17T03:38:00.000-08:00

"It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue." - Voltaire

keep your eyes open

2006-01-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

KLM, this isn't about you, just sharing something interesting with other people who may have been cheated on like I was in the past......................from Askmen.com. I will put an "X" after ones that I totally was oblvious to.

8 Signs She May Be Cheating
By Tamara Hanson

Women can be extremely cunning when they're trying to conceal a huge secret, including hiding an affair from their significant other. In some cases, their best friend may not even know what's going on.
But even the craftiest of women may show signs of extracurricular activity or unusual behavior; you just have to learn to pick up on them.
It goes without saying that there are more obvious signs of a cheat, like staying out late and being dodgy about her whereabouts or phone calls. But there are other signs that aren't so obvious and, if you aren't prepared, you might miss them.
However, seeing one or more of the following behaviors is not a clear sign that your girlfriend is cheating. The only true indication is when you confront her and she fesses up.
So, without further ado, here are eight signs that your lady could be cheating on you.

1- Her approach to sex changes Forms of this sign can range from wanting to try new positions to becoming more dominant in the bedroom to a sudden infrequency of sex. The latter of the three may be a huge sign to some, but to those very few who can go without it for long periods of time (by choice), it may not be as clear. If she's traditionally the instigator in the relationship and she isn't instigating anymore, or less frequently, a red flag should be going up, as she could be getting it from someone else. X

2- She's too accommodating. Is your girlfriend suddenly encouraging your poker night with the boys and cleaning your place when she has never done it before? Is she trying extremely hard to please you by making your favorite meals every evening? Does she bring over small tokens of affection? If this is unusual behavior, and you know she hasn't been watching Dr. Phil, then guilt could be eating away at her.

3- She dresses differently This can be an obvious sign if a drastic change was made overnight. If it was a progressive shift, you may not have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Assess when she started wearing those stiletto heels and low-cut blouses. Determine if anything else happened at the time of this change: Did she get a new job? Did she lose weight? Then, decide whether you consider this normal behavior or if it's a drastic change in her usual dressing pattern. X

4- She's overly defensive You ask her a simple question like "What did you do today?" and suddenly she's tripping out. If she appears edgy when you ask her insignificant questions about her day and then accuses you of being controlling or nagging, this could be a sign that she has something else cooking. If she has something to hide, she may feel like you're investigating and are out to make her tell the truth. X

5- She makes new friends Making new friends can be a good thing, unless she isn't introducing any of them to you. And if she won't reveal where they're going or if she's giving you vague details, then these so-called "friends" are something you should be concerned about. X

6- She reveals too much She tells you all the details of her night out with her friends, including what they ate, who was there and who said what. This is all information you probably wouldn't care about on any other day; you may even wonder why she's telling you all this trivial stuff. Heads up: This information could mean a lot if you read between the lines. X

7- She initiates strange conversations She starts asking you hypothetical questions like "What do you think of people who have affairs?" or she begins telling you about a "friend" who is cheating on her boyfriend. This could be her way of gauging your reaction to her cheating ways. X

8- She's mean to you in publicShe's getting nasty, making fun of you to your face. And it's not the "I'm just kidding" type of fun. She picks on you in front of your friends. Something's probably up, as couples should have each other's backs in public. It could be that she's coming out of her shell and you're her target. If she's cheating, she won't feel the need to be nice to you anymore. Think about it; she has someone else on the side, why should she worry about you?
keep one eye open. XXX BIG time

Now don't become paranoid; the purpose of listing these signs is to provide you with a guide so you'll be aware of the not-so-obvious signals. Pay attention to her behavior and personality, but don't go overboard. If she starts dressing differently or makes new friends, that doesn't necessarily mean she's having an affair.
So make sure you have all the facts before accusing her of cheating. She may be going through other changes in her life that you aren't aware of.
However, if you do discover she's cheating on you, then dump her immediately and find a woman who will appreciate you.

I finally found her.........

weekend

2006-01-13T12:16:00.002-08:00

just wanted to post something. it has been a pretty good week, been busy as fuck but overall been good. Kat is coming in tonight, so i wil have my girl to keep me warm and to amuse me this weekend. we are going to work on fixing my furnace together which should be interesting. what a great girl, she really has brought me up from the depths of depression and made me genuinely happy. thanks honey. anyhow, not much else going on, we may try to go see a movie tomorrow. i dunno, maybe not. got some house work and some yard work to do, so otherwise it will be uneventful and laid back. i actually am enjoying not going out and getting plowed with her like i have in the past with girls. i feel better, and am starting to lose a little weight and get things done. good stuff!

weekend

2006-01-13T12:16:00.001-08:00

weekend

2006-01-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

Amazing Predictions for 06

2006-01-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

for more information please go to amazingkreskin.com

I will highlight some of the ones that are just like my own predictions...................

Kreskin's Predictions for 2006
January, 2006

ANIMALS

A new fad will take place amongst private parties where individuals will be invited to bring their pets to the home.

There will be an uncovering, much to the horror of so many of us, of the cruelty to animals in the Middle East.

BUSINESS

The public is going to rebel against the lack of services that exists in so may areas of our culture, mainly reflected by recorded voices telling us to push certain numbers etc. In the end, what each button is telling us is that the company is incapable of personalized service.

Another selling point of certain hotels will be advertising, that certain rooms are haunted, or that tragedies took place in certain rooms, and, the hotels were remodeled so that they resemble the time that the deaths or traumatic actions etc., took place in the setting of the décor.

CELEBRITIES

An interest will be generated in the work of Nipsy Russell who thirty or more years ago appeared on television as really the first rap artist making up words that described incidents that happened on a TV show in the hour before he came on. His work was cleaner, more devoid of hate and tasteless words.

There will be another announcement of a movie to be made on the life of Houdini. If the movie is made, it will turn out to be remarkably unsuccessful.

More and more celebrities will embrace the use of Tarot cards in their lives.

CUISINE

Peanut Butter will have a rage-like fad of popularity not only with children and adults but pets as well.

ECONOMY

Baton Rouge, LA will have a renaissance, when it is rebuilt, beyond what existed before the devastating hurricanes.

The stock market will lose a substantial amount of investors.

EDUCATION

Pressure will result in the final initiation of courses on civility and manners at the grammar school and high school levels.

ENTERTAINMENT

There will be a fad of practical jokes in which ice cubes will play a role whether they are dropped down people's backs, placed in packets, or what have you.

Read an recent artical supporting this prediction.

The use of pendulums will flourish not only as a serious introspective technique but as a recreational experience.

The day will come when some innovative theatre owner will introduce a unique, unheard of service, that of making available to his customers a double feature presentation. This could save movie attendance and increase it, for it will enable the return of well written movies, many of which could be less than ninety minutes by tight writing scripting and combining two movies as a double feature, the public will get it's monies worth and not leave bored by an unnecessarily lengthy single motion picture.

The day that audiences find they are being railroaded and cheated, the future of live entertainment will be threatened. The day that the public finds when they attend the performance of their favorite musician, and that some of the musicians are not actually playing but are pretending to play, the audience members will questions the experience. Sooner or later, it will be discovered that entire orchestras and bands are not playing a single note, a secret that has been concealed, not the past several years, but for almost a decade. The day that a camera crew sneaks in and shows that behind the stage is a console and that all the music that is apparently being played by musicians onstage is being broadcast through pre-recorded machinery, the public will begin to express outrage.

In television this coming year there will be more deaths in various series'. The real reason, to cut the cast and consequently, cut down on the expenses for the series.

A great novel will come out of the Katrina disaster which will compare with Hemmingway's writings.

Entertainment will reach a point that many people will find actual torture amongst private gatherings to be their form of perverted pleasure.

Kids will be prone to imitate and experience various forms of torture.

ETTIQUETTE

At lunch, at outdoor eating places, a new social activity will take place exhibited by disgruntled friends. If an acquaintance or dinner partner ends up devoting more than several minutes on a cell phone leaving the other person sitting and waiting, more and more such partners will simply get up from the table and leave the restaurant.

FASHION

An important American designer of luxury goods will be tapped as a good-will ambassador to a third world country.

There will be a fad of shoeless and sockless feet in our society which will last from three to six months, period.

Neck-ties will return in popularity. The tie-less shirts will have become so tiring that it will be refreshing to see ties again although, they will not necessarily be tightened all the way around the throat, but, worn loosely.

GAMING INDUSTRY

Established card manufacturing companies will suffer credibility by the questionable marketing and selling of "marked decks." They will of course use the excuse that the decks are sold for "entertainment purposes only." A ludicrous excuse which no intelligent person would accept for one moment.

HEALTH

More and more individuals attending wedding parties and large family celebrations will complain that music is so loud that they cannot hear conversation. More and more people are going to find themselves sitting at private parties and gatherings, stone silent, as it is becoming difficult to hear the person sitting directly across from you.

While it has been notorious for having amongst the highest disturbed members, mental illness will increase even further amongst Psychiatrists.

Suicide will increase amongst Dentists.

An occasion of mass hysteria will take place in a school. The cause of the fainting epidemic will not be based on any physical or chemical factors, but, pure psychological behavior.

LAW & ORDER

There will be renewed interest and a serious investigation into the murder of Mario Lanza, the great movie and recording artist of the 1950's.

A number of lawsuits will be issued against movie theaters because of what will be construed as damaging noise level of the sound.

POLITICS

If and when, Fidel Castro passes on, Raoul, his son, will not succeed him. There will be a political military take-over certainly away from the Castro dynasty.

North Korea will make some major agreements with the Western World, most of which will never hold up and be kept.

REAL ESTATE

A window will be invented that will automatically close when it begins to rain.

SPORTS

The Olympics will continue to remain removed from New York City in the foreseeable future.

TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE

Hard as it will be to believe, listening devices imbedded in the body which will be increasingly used by card sharks, spies, fake psychics etc. will find their way into general society, even amongst teenagers.

A mass UFO warning of sorts will be picked up by people on their cell phones.

As less and less jobs become available in our society, what with the outsourcing, many work activities that today are filled by illegal aliens, will be filled instead by young individuals seeking some kind of work fulfillment.

I still insist, as I have said for a number of years, that weapons of mass destruction have existed and do exist, they simply have not been found.

I repeat again, my prediction of the past few years which applies to 2006. Osama Bin-Laden will not be captured.

A new electronic service of homes will simply be that individuals be able to change the color of their home walls at their whim.

There will be an onslaught of gossip columns done on a local level, available on the web page dealing with local city inhabitants.

A lawsuit will be filed accusing someone of what they are thinking.

The length of employment for a television executive will drop to three to four years.

Steven Spielberg will produce a film in the style of the films of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy features.

Teenage addiction to poker and other gambling will compete with drug addiction.

One of the new television team news shows will be a disaster.

In a few years, Iran will be closed-off; physicists will estimate that almost a decade will pass before radio activity will decrease to a safe level.

In a few years, that average adult American will weigh 190 lbs.

The issue of eminent domain will threaten and topple many state and city officials in the United States.

A campaign is looming in the background for the State of New Jersey that will encourage people to visit New Jersey but not to live there. This campaign will receive great support from residents of the state as well as animal lovers. However, to the contrary, it will arouse the anguish of politicians, land developers and criminals.

One of the biggest crises in the broadcast industries, especially television, is when it is realized by advertisers that commercials, at least ninety percent of them are not working,

quote of the day

2006-01-12T05:53:00.000-08:00

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself." - Johnny Carson

Dating Chicks with a Kid

2006-01-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

Fron the Phatphree.com

As I grow older and more dashing, I tend to run into more and more single women who have had the misfortune of bearing a child. Many people are hesitant to become romantically involved with a chick with a kid. But speaking from personal experience, don’t knock it, as they say, until you’ve tried it.
Of course there’s a downside to dating a woman in this situation, namely, Corey. Obviously, children suck and should be avoided at all costs. The kid might want you to talk to it, or it might crap itself, or walk in and interrupt when his mom is giving you a killer hummer. That’s no good. Additionally, kids are generally sticky and smell like a combination of apple juice, maple syrup and piss. You also might have to pretend to like the kid in order to trick your mom-girlfriend into thinking that you’re a decent person. That means you have to take him to the zoo or do a shitty magic trick in front of him. You also might get stuck shuttling him to the hospital if he falls out of something high, because kids are always falling out of shit. All of these things are admittedly a huge pain in the ass. But the perks to dating a mom are manifold and often overlooked. Here are just a few:

Advantage 1- INSECURITY A chick with a kid knows she’s on thin ice. She has a handicap going into the relationship. The whole kid situation turns a lot of guys off, and she knows this from experience. This has effectively lowered her standards in men, thereby admitting persons like myself and you into her realm of possible acceptable mates. Jackpot! Another example of this sort of relationship is the Black Guy/Fat White Girl coupling that so often takes place. There is a huge misconception that black men find fat white girls somehow more attractive than slender white girls, and this myth has been perpetuated in countless movies and Fox TV shows to meager comedic effect. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Black men don’t prefer fat girls, they just recognize that they are infinitely more attainable. The relationship is mutualistic because fat girls want to be loved and held and complimented, just like real girls do. African American men are more than willing to perform these duties so long as their efforts are repaid with consistent intercourse. Everybody wins! But I digress. Let’s get back to hooking up with moms.There’s a defining moment during the advent of every chick with a kid relationship in which she breaks it to you that she’s a package deal. She usually tries to slide it in there casually so it doesn’t sound as much like an admission as a point of pride. But we’re not fooled. “Oh my son loves this song”, she might say nonchalantly. This is where men who are feint of heart find an excuse to drift away from the scene, using clever excuses like, “I have to go, my ride is leaving” or “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you were used goods. I’m off to find someone without a car-seat.” But to people like myself, that vocalized revelation sounds like a dinner bell, beckoning us to a delicious and affordable banquet of desperation. Because moms aim to please.

Advantage
2- RELIABILITY You pretty much always know where a mom is, which is nice for us jealous types. It’s hard for a mom to have too much of a life outside of her kid, because children selfishly monopolize a lot of your time. They always have to be taken to the dentist or soccer practice or therapy because the kid’s dad moved to Austin with his band and didn’t call the kid on his birthday. And though this is tragic in regards to the child’s young and fragile psyche, it’s great news for you. Because this means that if your mom-girlfriend is not with you, she’s probably with her kid. Unless she’s a really shitty mom, in which case the kid is at her mom’s house and she’s at T.G.I.Friday’s Happy Hour crushing half-priced 22 ounce drafts and smoking Camel Lights. But you still know where she’s at.

Advantage
3- UNFLAPPABILITYIt is all but impossible to gross out a mom. They’ve seen it all. Let me put this in perspective for you. Say you’re messing around with a non-mom girl and things are getting hot and heavy and you’re both really into it, and then you accidentally do something gross like tear ass. This will most likely ruin the mood. She will probably become disgusted with you and tell you to get off of her and put it away. But not with a mom. Moms have been in every possible gross situation you can imagine. Toxic diapers, gaping wounds, projectile vomiting. You name it. They even had a little person come out of their vagina. Now that’s gross! What I’m saying is that a little gas isn’t going to scare her off by any means. They’re just so happy to experience physical contact with someone over seven that they’ll fight right through that shit. In fact, when it comes to moms, I feel fairly certain that you could get completely wasted and throw up all over their faces and they would simply dry you off and say, “Did somebody have too many Heinekens? Who had too many Heinekens?”

Advantage
4- SNACKS
You Get Used To This StuffThere’s a pretty good chance that your mom-girlfriend has some Teddy Grahams or at least a Fruit by the Foot in her purse at any given time. Score! So you see? Dating a mom is the way to go! They’re nurturing and warm, and can often be surprisingly adventurous in the bedroom. Plus, if nothing else, there are usually juiceboxes in the fridge.

(okay, let us get this straight, this is humor. it has nothing to do with ex girlfriends or any others. the womEn that i have dated with children have been wonderful, and i have immensley enjoyed their company as well their children)

Fact of the Day

2006-01-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

The first e-mail was sent over the Internet in 1971.

those wacky Nigerian scumbags are back

2006-01-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

Dear friend,
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!
I'm happy to inform you about my success in getting the fund transferred under the cooperation of a new partner from Paraguay. Presently I’m in Paraguay for investment projects with my own share of the total sum. Meanwhile, I didn't forget your past efforts and attempts to assist me in transferring those funds despite that it failed us some how.
Now contact my secretary, his name is MR JOHNBULL EGOKA and his email address is ( johnbullegoka@ny.com ) ask him to send you total $800.000.00 which i kept for your compensation for all the past efforts and attempts to assist me in this matter. I appreciated your efforts at that time very much. So feel free and get in touched with my secretary MR JOHNBULL and instruct him where to send the amount for you.Please do let me know immediately you receive it so that we can share the joy after all the sufferers at that time. In the moment, I am very busy here because of the investment projects which me and the new partner are having at hand, finally, remember that I had forwarded instruction to the secretary on your behal f to receive that money, so feel free to get in touch with MR JOHNBULL and he will send the amount to you without any delay.

Email address of my secretary (johnbullegoka@ny.com) for security reasons please.

With best regards.
Dr jimmy Brown.

Stella Awards

2006-01-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

THE STELLA AWARDS
It's time once again to review the winners of the Annual "Stella Awards." The Stella Awards are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck of New Mexico who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's. That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States. Here are this year's winners:

7th Place :
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

6th Place :
19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.
5th Place :
Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

4th Place :
Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams, who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd Place :
A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd Place :
Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1st Place:
This year's runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around

birthday

2006-01-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

well, as i told you, this past sunday was my birthday. it was relatively uneventful, though i met Kat's parents and sister and extended family. They seemed to like me and i enjoyed meeting them and spending time with them. But i suppose the big part of it all, was that i got to go to a mega-church, with full orchestra, jumbotrons and i think they had a zamboni in the back. it was strange, but i told Kat i would never be critical of her faith, as long as no one ever forced me to try to change mine or was critical of the church in which i was raised. sorta like the time an ex friend actually had the balls to tell me what church i ought to attend even though she was a member of a totally different denomination. anyhow, it was quite interesting, and if i feel up to it i may enlighten you more. Regardless, i enjoyed my girlfriend's company and meeting her family.
otherwise nothing major happened. had a lot of great sex, good food and was doted on by my newest love. she is so good to me and is a great catch for me. she gave me a new elephant to add to the collection that my father started, some high end khakis, and some personal items that we shared late night.
All in all it was great birthday, and i am happy right now.

fact of the day

2006-01-10T07:42:00.000-08:00

Fact:

In December 1993, an angry husband cut off the head of his pregnant wife's lover and put it on her hospital bedside table when she was about to give birth.

i love this

2006-01-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

http://greetingsfromneworleans.typepad.com/didntheramble/

eyes

2006-01-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,All the live long day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,You can not get away.
Do not think you can escape them At night or early in the morn-
The Eyes of Texas are upon you'Till Gabriel blows his horn.

message from Pete

2006-01-04T07:25:00.000-08:00

LONDON - Guitarist
Pete Townshend'has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don't turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones.
Townshend, 60, guitarist in the 60s band The Who, said his hearing was irreversibly damaged by years of using studio headphones and that he now is forced to take 36-hour breaks between recording sessions to allow his ears to recover.
"I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said on his Web site. "Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK ... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead."
Referring to the increasingly popular practice of downloading music from the Internet, Townshend said: "The downside may be that on our computers — for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience — we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound."
The Who rock group was famous for its earsplitting live performances, but Townshend said his problem was caused by using earphones in the recording studio.

so sad

2006-01-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

this really broke me up to read even though there is a happy ending..........
go to this link for pics of Lily, and more about the LSPCA

http://www.la-spca.org/tails/lily.htm

There’s Something about Lily
December 2005
There’s something about Lily that stole everyone’s heart. She was not unlike the other animals that are beginning to fill our new shelter in Algiers. The strays or the ones that have run away from home; or those that were found still wandering the streets, the lives they once knew disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. They all find a place in the hearts of the animal care attendants who care for them every day. They linger in the minds of the ACO’s who find them wandering the streets in need of shelter. But there is something about Lily. Maybe it’s her big round eyes and her red nose. Maybe it’s the nameon her collar – Lily – that tells you she once had a home and a family that gave her such a beautiful name. Maybe it’s the phone number that’s on a collar – a phone number that goes no where thanks to Hurricane Katrina. Maybe it’s how when she’s taken out of her kennel for a walk she continues to turn this way and that way, as if she’s looking for a familiar face, listening for a familiar voice. Or maybe it’s how she was found on a Friday morning in early December by one of our ACO’s, Kris Damon, responding to a dispatch report of a stray in the French Quarter. There they found Lily, very thin and in need of food and water; taking shelter inan abandoned oven behind an Irish pub in the French Quarter. Firemen at District 3, located next door to the closed Irish Pub alerted the LA/SPCA to the sweet dog who had carved out a shelter for herself in this abandoned oven. Whatever it is about Lily you know there has to be more. And she looks at you with eyes that beg you to listen.Our new shelter is still finding its way to a place that we were before; where volunteers fill our building taking Lily and all the other animals under their wings. As we do, everyone pitches in, as did one of our board members, Susan Hess, on the day after Lily was brought into the shelter. Like many, Lily’s eyes seem to have sought out Susan. She jotted down the phone number and made it her mission to try to find Lily’s family. When simply dialing the number proved unsuccessful, Susan used the tools of cyberspace, and googled the phone number. The search found two email addresses, and Susan sent out a message asking anyone to call her if they were looking for a dog named Lily. Lily had been found.On Monday, only three days after Lily had been brought into the shelter, Susan’s efforts paid off. Carlos and Dale Menendez, New Orleans evacuees now living in Fort Smith, Arkansas were looking for Lily. One could hear in their voice just a slight hesitation, fearing that their hopes might be raised and maybe it wasn’t their Lily after all. They had been searching for Lily since early September and after hearing their story of what they and Lily had been through, you knew there was indeed something about Lily.Lily came into Carlos and Dale’s lives almost by chance some three years ago. Carlos was in a cab one afternoon when a fleeting image caught his attention – a puppy wandering the busy streets. Without reservation Carlos told the cabdriver to stop immediately. Jumping out of the cab, Carlos ran to Lily and in an instant rescued this cute little puppy from an uncertain, dangerous life on the streets. He brought the puppy home with the thought that it would be a nice surprise for his wife. She fit comfortably into their lives and Dale immediately knew the perfect name for her. She named her Lily, after Dale’s mother Lillian who had died a few weeks prior. From that day on it was probably as perfect a life as it could be for a dog named Lily.Unfortunately, due to Katrina, Lily’s life changed dramatically.The Menendezes stayed in the city in their one story home on Nashville Avenue when Katrina hit. Like so many of us, they felt they could withstand the winds of the storm, and felt relief on Monday morning when New Orleans had been spared a direct hit. But in a story that’s all so sad and familiar, the levees were breached and by late Monday their home was completely overcome by floodwaters. After being trapped in their home for two days, they sought shelter in a next door neighbor’s two-story home, but that would prove to be unsafe as well. By the third day, Carlos, Dale and Lily had to be rescued by boat. They saw life change before their eyes. Lily was by their side all this time, Carlos recounts, but she was confused by all the chaos that surrounded her. Their boat rescue was a short trip in distance at least from their home on Nashville Avenue to the intersection of St. Charles and Napoleon Avenue. They were told to stay there and wait with others who had also been rescued. They were told a bus would be there soon to take them to safety. Seven hours later a bus finally arrived. Carlos had to plead to be allowed to take Lily on the bus. The powers that be finally agreed, noting Lily’s friendly disposition. Once on the bus, Dale, Carlos and Lily didn’t know where they would be taken. There was confusion everywhere. When the bus reached its final destination, the Convention Center was probably not what they imagined as a place of safety.In what they could only describe as a nightmare, they prefer not to relive the experience over and over. They were forced to spend five nightmarish days and nights with thousands of others in the Convention Center where sleep was not an option, food and water were scarce to none and there was nothing for Lily to eat. On the sixth day, National Guard helicopters arrived. They didn’t know where they were going. At one point they were told they would be flown to San Antonio, Texas but so many things were being said it was hard to know what information was accurate. Finally, the Menendezes, still with Lily, were airlifted on a helicopter. Dale was weak and ill from the experience and on a stretcher. The Menendezes are ultimately faced with a Sophie’s Choice. The National Guard tells the family that they can’t take Lily. If you keep Lily you can’t be rescued. Either she stays or you don’t go. They plead with the guardsmen to take Lily. They can’t imagine leaving her behind. But of course their pleas go unanswered. Relaying their experience even now, Dale can hardly bear to recount it. Everyday she’s haunted with the recurring image of hearing her own cries and screams as she lay on a stretcher, seeing Lily released by the guardsmen and running away from the Convention Center, alone and confused. “Oh my God, I just about lost it,” Dale recalls. Dale and Carlos ended up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, ultimately relocated there after taking yet another ride on what Carlos described as a cargo plane that seemed so old he thought it was from World War II. Without having Internet access they continued to look for Lily with the help of friends who had a computer. It was this friend whose email address Susan found. Dale, who is a member of the Humane Society, said she had been in touch with every organization she could contact. They had many Lily sightings reported to them but they all proved to be false. They eventually found work in Fort Smith and are about to buy a home. They are currently staying in an apartment that wants to charge $25 a day to keep a pet. As we write, the Louisiana SPCA is working to transport Lily back to Carlos and Dale so they can finally be reunited. When Dale learned that Lily was found in the French Quarter, she wondered how Lily found herself there. “We never took Lily to the Quarter, but I guess she’s a Quarterite now,” she muses. For the first time in many months Dale can again smile when she thinks of Lily.
By Gloria DauphinUPDATE: On December 12, Lily was finally reunited with Dale and Carlos. Lily arrived late Monday night in Fort Smith where she was greeted with open arms. Lily appeared confused for a few minutes - she was again in a new enviornment and like many dogs,she had to adjust to seeing her humans after such a long absence. Ten minutes later, as Lily's tail began to wag wildly and she comfortably jumped onto Carlos' lap you could see that Lily was home. Through a flood of emotion Dale said she will never forget the traumatic experience of seeing Lily taken away from her, but getting their Lily back has confirmed that "you can never give up hope." Along with her new home in Fort Smith, Lily also was met by a new member of the family -- a three- legged poodle named Lucky who the Menendezes adopted since re-locating to Fort Smith.

new tunes

2005-12-29T08:43:00.000-08:00

well, it has been awhile, but i purchased three cd's that i just had to have by the end of the year. first off, i got Wico's Kicking Television live cd/dvd from Chicago. Then i got the Old 97's Alive and WIred live cd, and then finished things off with the album Alligator by the National, a highly acclaimed band out of Ohio. We will see.

Father Christmas

2005-12-29T04:51:00.000-08:00

When I was small I believed in Santa Claus Though I knew it was my dad And I would hang up my stocking at Christmas Open my presents and I'd be glad But the last time I played Father Christmas I stood outside a department store A gang of kids came over and mugged me And knocked my reindeer to the floor They said: Father Christmas, give us some money Don't mess around with those silly toys. We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over We want your bread so don't make us annoyed Give all the toys to the little rich boys Don't give my brother a Steve Austin outfit Don't give my sister a cuddly toy We don't want a jigsaw or monopoly money We only want the real McCoy Father Christmas, give us some money We'll beat you up if you make us annoyed Father Christmas, give us some money Don't mess around with those silly toys But give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one He's got lots of mouths to feed But if you've got one, I'll have a machine gun So I can scare all the kids down the street Father Christmas, give us some money We got no time for your silly toys We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over We want your bread so don't make us annoyed Give all the toys to the little rich boys Have yourself a merry merry Christmas Have yourself a good time But remember the kids who got nothin' While you're drinkin' down your wine Father Christmas, give us some money We got no time for your silly toys Father Christmas, please hand it over We'll beat you up, so don't make us annoyed Father Christmas, give us some money Don't mess around with those silly toys We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over We want your bread, so don't make us annoyed Give all the toys to the little rich boys
Ray Davies

My favorite time of day

2005-12-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

Snooze, You WinAccording to new studies, nothing tunes up mind and body like a good nap. But there's an art to catching the right kind of z's.

When billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett broke the record for around-the-world solo jet flight last March, he slept just 60 minutes in 67 hours of flight time -- 60 minutes broken into two- and three-minute naps. "I slept when I needed it and awoke refreshed," he says. Fossett, who holds world records in ballooning, sailing, and flying, adds that none of his feats could have been done without these micro-variety "power naps."
So what makes a power nap effective? Think of it as an investment with the greatest return in the least amount of time, a kind of super-efficient sleep that fits nicely in a high-pressure schedule: say, between business meetings or in the minutes before a game.
Napping in general benefits heart functioning, hormonal maintenance, and cell repair, says Dr. Sara Mednick, a scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies who is at the forefront of napping research. A power nap, says Mednick, simply maximizes these benefits by getting the sleeper into and out of rejuvenative sleep as fast as possible. No surprise that Lance Armstrong's coach, Chris Carmichael, says that "naps were critical in his overall training plan." In Manhattan, napping has become a lucrative business: MetroNaps in the Empire State Building provides darkened cot-like redoubts that attract Broadway actors between shows as well as investment bankers who otherwise would fall asleep at their desks. And in Iraq, U.S. Marine commanders have mandated a power nap before patrols.

Here's how the power nap works: Sleep comes in five stages that recur cyclically throughout a typical night, and a power nap seeks to include just the first two of them. The initial stage features the sinking into sleep as electrical brain activity, eye and jaw-muscle movement, and respiration slow. The second is a light but restful sleep in which the body gets ready -- lowering temperature, relaxing muscles further -- for the entry into the deep and dreamless "slow-wave sleep," or SWS, that occurs in stages three and four. Stage five, of course, is REM, when the eyes twitch and dreaming becomes intense.
The five stages repeat every 90 to 120 minutes. Stage one can last up to 10 minutes, stage two until the 20th minute. Extenuating circumstances, like manning the controls of a jet, aside, experts believe that the optimal power nap should roughly coincide with the first 20 minutes in order to give you full access to stage two's restorative benefits. In addition to generally improving alertness and stamina, stage two is marked by a certain electrical signals in the nervous system that seem to solidify the connection between neurons involved in muscle memory. "It's like a welding machine," says Mednick. "When you wake up, your neurons perform the same function as before, but now faster and with more accuracy," making the 20-minute nap indispensible to the hard-working athlete looking to straighten out his putter or baseline shot.

Mednick's most recent research also shows that power naps can lift productivity and mood, lower stress, and improve memory and learning. In fact, Mednick has found through MRIs of nappers that brain activity stays high throughout the day with a nap; without one, it declines as the day wears on. Tell that to the boss next time he finds you passed out at your desk.
There is, however, a pitfall in all this sleeping around. You have to carefully time the duration of your nap in order to avoid waking in slow-wave sleep. This can produce what's known as sleep inertia. That's when the limbs feel like concrete, the eyes can't focus, the speech is slurred, the mind is sluggish. Sleep inertia can ruin your day. You must keep the nap to 20 minutes or slightly less, and if you need the extra sleep, wait until the 50-minute mark. This will safely keep you on the power side of your nap.
Getting The Perfect NapEveryone, no matter how high-strung, has the capacity to nap. But the conditions need to be right. Dr. Sara Mednick, who will publish a book on napping in the spring (tentatively titled Take Back the Nap!, Workman Publishing) has some helpful hints:
1 The first consideration is psychological: Recognize that you're not being lazy; napping will make you more productive and more alert after you wake up.
2 Try to nap in the morning or just after lunch; human circadian rhythms make late afternoons a more likely time to fall into deep (slow-wave) sleep, which will leave you groggy.
3 Avoid consuming large quantities of caffeine as well as foods that are heavy in fat and sugar, which meddle with a person's ability to fall asleep.
4 Instead, in the hour or two before your nap time, eat foods high in calcium and protein, which promote sleep.
5 Find a clean, quiet place where passersby and phones won't disturb you.
6 Try to darken your nap zone, or wear an eyeshade. Darkness stimulates melatonin, the sleep- inducing hormone. 7
Remember that body temperature drops when you fall asleep. Raise the room temperature or use a blanket.
8 Once you are relaxed and in position to fall asleep, set your alarm for the desired duration (see below).

How Long Is A Good Nap?
THE NANO-NAP: 10 to 20 seconds Sleep studies haven't yet concluded whether there are benefits to these brief intervals, like when you nod off on someone's shoulder on the train.
THE MICRO-NAP: two to five minutes Shown to be surprisingly effective at shedding sleepiness.
THE MINI-NAP: five to 20 minutes Increases alertness, stamina, motor learning, and motor performance.
THE ORIGINAL POWER NAP: 20 minutes Includes the benefits of the micro and the mini, but additionally improves muscle memory and clears the brain of useless built-up information, which helps with long-term memory (remembering facts, events, and names).
THE LAZY MAN'S NAP: 50 to 90 minutes Includes slow-wave plus REM sleep; good for improving perceptual processing; also when the system is flooded with human growth hormone, great for repairing bones and muscles

from Men's Journal

a letter to my woman

2005-12-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

Brandee, honey, I know it ain’t always been Talladega and Dinty Moore for us, but now that we’re common law married, things are gonna change.I can’t believe we’ve been livin’ together for four years now, ‘cept for those two months you was in the hospital ‘cause I used the buckle end. And in the great state of Alabama that makes us legally husband and wife. We don’t need to put on any airs or nothin’ with a fancy common law wedding. There ain’t even no common law wedding planners. I’d be happier than a pig in shit if you’d just stay with me and drop some of them charges.I bet you can’t wait to tell your folks that we got common law hitched. They gonna be real proud of you. It’s about time. Your baby sister’s fifth common law wedding anniversary is just around the corner.I have to admit, I was gettin’ cold feet about two months ago. I damn near ran off with Linda from the Subway awhile back. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about her. She’s a businesswoman. And if I can’t barely handle you working your Beanie Baby table once a month at the flea market, I ain’t got a prayer’s chance in hell of lettin’ her prance off to work every morning.You know there’s only nine states that let you take a common law bride? The other ones make you fix your steering column, put on a shirt and drive down to the dang courthouse. A big wedding ain’t for us with a bailiff and judge sniffin’ around, asking questions about your neck bruises. Yep, common law is the way to go. Since we common law man and wife now, when I die you’ll get everything that’s mine. Hell, this whole dang trailer will be yours. Even then, though, if you so much as lay a finger on my Bocephus mirror, I will strap you, woman. You hear me?!Oh, now, don’t start that snivelin’ this is a happy day. We’re common law married.We got some celebratin’ to do. Why don’t you take your bike up to the store and get us a case of Bud and some of that pussy drink you like. I know it’s rainin’- that’s why I ain’t takin’ the truck. You ain’t gonna melt.Get a couple of Slim Jims for supper. And you know what’ll happen if you bring back any of those goddam beaner nacho flavor. This ain’t Carlos O’ goddam Kelly’s. And grab me a can of Kodiak.What? What the fuck did you say!?He he.
The blushing common law brideFine. Fine. Look at me, common law married for one day and already whipped. Go ahead and get a tin of peach Skoal for yourself. Now hustle up and get back before the race starts. I know how long it takes to get to the store on a bike, so don’t be stoppin’ off at your momma’s to squeal and shriek about how happy you is to be common law married.You lookin’ for a bruise the size of my knee? Then what the fuck are you rootin’ for in my foldin’ money? You thought. You thought? Does that gov’ment check say B-R-A-N-D-E-E on it when it comes in the mail. No, it don’t. You got your Beanie Baby money, ain’t ya? Just ‘cause we common law bride and groom, don’t mean you can be spendin’ up all my earnins on your panty hose and concealer. If you don’t go pissin’ me off every dang second, we gonna have a long, happy common law marriage. Now git.

from thephatphree.com

interesting recipe

2005-12-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

Bob Blumer's Cauliflower Popcorn From: Surreal Gourmet Bites published by Whitecap Books, $19.95
Bob says you should find some waxed popcorn bags, and serve the cauliflower at a party. How about at an Academy Awards party?
Ingredients
1 head cauliflower
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt (or, for a salt-free alternative, Mrs. Dash Table blend)
Preheat oven to 425F. Cut out and discard cauliflower core and thick stems. Trim remaining cauliflower into florets the size of golf balls. In a large bowl, add cauliflower, olive oil, and salt. Toss thoroughly. Spread cauliflower on a baking sheet (Lined with parchment paper, if available, for easy cleanup). Roast for 1 hour, or until much of each floret has become golden brown. (That's the caramelization process converting the dormant natural sugars into sweetness. The browner the florets, the sweeter they will taste.) Turn 3 or 4 times during roasting.
Use crumpled up aluminum foil or paper towels to create a false bottom in your popcorn container, fill it with cauliflower, and serve immediately.

Mr. T responds to Chuck Norris

2005-12-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

1. Every time a church bell rings, Mr. T pities a fool.
2. Mr. T doesn't pity anyone who likes the Black Eyed Peas. He just
kills them.

3. Mr. T speaks only when necessary. His main form of communication is
folding his arms and slowly shaking his head. And regardless of the
situation, he is always understood.

4. Mr. T pities fools because even fools deserves their daily dose of
vitamin T.

5. Mr.T once punched Chuck Norris at the exact moment he roundhouse
kicked Mr.T in the chest. the result was the 80's.

6. Mr. T and Chuck Norris once encountered each other on a lonesome
British path. Before the inevitable battle could begin, the earth shit
itself and created Scotland .

7. Mr. T. does not break wind. He destroys it.

8. 23. That's the number of people Mr. T has pitied in the time it has
taken you to read this sentence.

9. On the A-team, Face , Haniabal, and Murdoch were all masters of
disguise. Mr T didn't have to wear a disguise. The bad guys didn't
recognize him out of fear.

10. Mr. T invented fools. Realizing the magnitude of his folly, he then
created Pity.

11. Mr. T's pity for fools is used by mathematicians as a demonstration
of the concept of infinity.

12. Mr. T is allergic to doorknobs. That's why he can only kick through
doors.

13. There are only four horsemen of the apocalypse, because Mr. T is
going to walk.

14. Mr. T once shook hands with Chuck Norris, or so it appeared, in
actuality, their combined power caused an earthquake, which gave their
hands a look of shaking to any onlookers, who were probably too scared
to accurately testify anyway.

15. Despite popular belief, Mr. T in fact ended the civil rights
movement by getting on a bus....all caucasian people moved to the back.

16. Mr. T coined the phrase, "I see dead people," after the waiting
staff at Denny's forgot his birthday.

17. Mr. T's edition of the VH1 show 'Where Are They Now' was the
shortest in the show's history. It was 10 seconds long, and consisted of
a black screen with the words "Right Behind You" written on it.

18. Mr. T is not black. It's just that the sun is to afraid to shine on
him.

19. Mr. T once bit off more than he could chew. He ate it anyway.

20. Yoda had two sons. To one he taught pity, to the other he gave the
gift of the beard.

21. Mr. T puts the laughter in manslaughter.

22. Mr. T once pitied the sun. An ice age followed.

23. Behind every great man, there is a great woman. Behind that woman is
Mr. T.

24. The last time Mr. T went to McDonald's, Ronald McDonald greeted him.
What occured next proved to be the most violent beating of a clown ever
recorded in human history.

25. Despite popular belief, if there is a fool in the woods, and nobody
is around to hear his jibba jabba, Mr. T is still able to pity him.

26. Mr. T was fired from the Psychic Friends Network for always
predicting pain.

27. It took five women 2 years to give birth to Mr. T.

28. Mr. T's incredible greatness has been attributed to the fact that
his genetic code doesn't have any A, G, or C. His genetic code is in
fact, nothing but T's.

29. Mr. T made his van go twice the speed of light because he wanted to
prove that quantum physics was a bunch of jibba jabba.

30. Mr. T once appeared on the show, Fear Factor, not as a contestant,
but as a stunt. There were no winners and 6 deaths on the show that day.
Mr. T has not been invited back.

Chuck Norris

2005-12-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

this has come to my inbox about 3,765 times in the last month, so i thought it might be worthwhile to share...................

Some things about Chuck Norris you should know:
- Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
-When Chuck Norris has sex with a man, it is not because he is gay, but> because he has run out of women.
-Macgyver can build an airplane out of gum and paper clips, but Chuck
Norris can kill him and take it.
-Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the> information he wants.
-If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds
till." After you ask, "Two seconds to what?" he roundhouse kicks you in the face.
-Chuck Norris only masterbates to pictures of Chuck Norris.
-Chuck Norris appeared in the "Street Fighter II" video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse> kick. When asked bout this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch."
-Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead
decided to punch his way out of his mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he
grew a beard.
-Chuck Norris uses ribbed condoms inside out, so he gets the pleasure.
-Since 1940, the year Chuck Norris was born, roundhouse kick related deaths have increased 13,000 percent.
-Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of> the month.
-Chuck Norris lost his virginity before his dad did.
-Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life and a crowd had gathered, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, breaking its neck, to remind the crew once more that Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.
-Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits. >> -Chuck Norris built a time machine and went back in time to stop the JFK> assassination. As Oswald shot, Chuck met all three bullets with his beard, deflecting them. JFK's head exploded out of sheer amazement.
-There are no disabled people. Only people who have met Chuck Norris.
-Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby Jesus the gift of "beard". Jesus wore it proudly to his dying day. The other Wisemen, jealous of Jesus' obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths.
-Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris
-Chuck Norris does not have AIDS but he gives it to people anyway.
-To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.
-There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist.
-Chuck Norris doesn't actually have a beard. What we perceive as a sexy and rugged man-beard is actually just Chuck Norris' skin. Legend has it that if Chuck Norris actually grew a beard, every woman in the world would simultaneously orgasm, thus destroying the Earth. Chuck Norris isn't sure if that's true, but he thinks we're better safe than sorry
-The original theme song to the Transformers was actually "Chuck Norris--more than meets the eye, Chuck Norris--robot in disguise," and starred Chuck Norris as a Texas Ranger who defended the earth from drug-dealing Decepticons and could turn into a pick-up. This was far too> much awesome for a single show, however, so it was divided.
-Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull.
-The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.
-Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
-When Chuck Norris plays Oregon Trail his family does not die from cholera or dysentery, but rather roundhouse kicks to the face. He also requires no wagon, since he carries the oxen, axels, and buffalo meat on his back. He> always makes it to Oregon before you.

Got God?

2005-12-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

here you go heathens. need something to satisfy your thirst other than communion wine?? well some savy entrepeneurs have decided to get into the burgeoning Christian thirst quenching biz with nothing other than bottled holy water.

http://www.holybottledwater.com/index.htm

I got a girl

2005-12-14T13:46:00.000-08:00

excerpts from Tripping Daisy's "I got a girl"........

I got a girl who lives with me
I got a girl she smells so sweetly
I got a girl she loves her dog
I got a girl i love her dog too!
I got a girl she is so right
I got a girl she's my guiding light
Well i know, i need, i feel we're going higher and higher
Well i know, i need, i feel we're going higher and higher
I got a girl who loves good soul
I got a girl who dances to disco
I got a girl who wears cool shoes
I got a girl who wears them in the nude!
I got a girl who speaks her mind
I got a girl she'll knock down any wall
Well i know, i need, i feel we're going higher and higher
Well i know, i need, i feel we're going higher and higher
I got a girl i love to kiss
I got a girl i never wanna miss
I got a girl she's my best friend
I got a girl that makes me laugh
I got a girl i'll make her laugh too
I got a girl she has girlfriends
I got a girl i like her girlfriends!!
Well i know, i need, i feel we're going higher and higher
Well i know, i need, i feel we're going higher and higher
i got a girl
i got a girl
i got a girl

And she's got a guy

2005

2005-12-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

this year has been full of highs and lows for me. it has been tough, but i think i am going to make it out just fine. after a couple of years of dealing with a whole lot of bullshit, things amazingly seem to be turning for me. For the most part having a new friend and lover and confidant entering my life has been a bright and positive part of the direction that i am going in. Kathryn, thank you for all that you have done for me. Your honesty, positive attitude and friendship are refreshing to me. i have battled for years to find a partner who fills my life with warmth and understanding, and love, and after a couple of near misses, i was so lucky to stumble across this absolutely wonderful woman. thanks.
i have regained a positive outlook, and it is such a good feeling. i can only hope that in 2006 i build on the personal successes that have gotten me out of a pretty bad rut and into the straight and narrow. i appreciate my friends and their support and love, i appreciate my family who i have let down at times but who still love me, and i even appreciate my ex loves for whom i wouldn't be here today without the involvement that i once had with them. i am good, and i'm only going to get better. a year from now, i fully expect my life to be 180 degrees different. new opportunity, new life, and probably a new home, with a new love. i have so much to look forward to and i can only thank the man above for keeping me optmistic. because to be quiet honest, i had given up. i swore off relationships, i swore off women, and i swore off love. and in a flash, i regained my senses by finally finding the needle at the bottom of the haystack. It is such an amazing feeling to have life going full throttle in a positive direction.
to everyone, my best to you and your families during this holiday season. may you all have joyous, safe, and fun times.

My secret

2005-12-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

okay, so i have been hounded for years about the crazy and idiotic stuff that i send out via email. well first things first, i have been on the net for a long time. actually, i have actively surfed the net since 1996, so i am entering year number ten. pretty impressive? i didn't think so. but the fact is that over the years i have sorted through a lot of crazy shit on here and picked out some great sources that link me to even wilder things. the bottom line for those who care is that jwalkblog.com and thephatphree.com. These are my current primary resources for stupidity other than what i receive from you my loyal readers.
so anyhow, just wanted to share that with you. you probably don't give a fuck, but considering it doesn't take much to humor me, well, wouldn't you like to know the root of it all?

last week

2005-12-12T05:40:00.000-08:00

well, last week was a trying one that ended quite nicely. It was difficult because I had just gotten back from vacation and had to dive head first back into work which is really becoming less and less tolerable as time goes on. On top of that I got into my first tiff with Kat and it wasn't pretty, but unlike past relationships, she forgave me and we moved on, thank god, and things are like they were before. I spent the weekend, or actually less than half, but a great one. we had fun, she was a wonderful host, and we had a very nice time with one another.
on the other hand i had to put my dog, Reagan, down on thursday. it crushed me and i am still reeling from it all. very sad in all honestly, but kat was supportive and loving unlike past girlfriends, so that was nice and a good feeling to be understood rather than browbeat by a someone else's selfish attitude. Kat is a refreshing part of my life.
Reagan i will miss you puppy!

2005-12-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted much of late, because in all honesty i really don't have much to talk about. i am sorta mesmerized by a woman and things are going well with regards to that. Had an uneventful Thanksgiving thank god, and then was off last week. Coming back to work has sucked, but it was inevitable. Anyhow, I promise i wil make a serious effort to post something here. It is amazing though considering the fact that i really am creative and for the first time in a long time i am actually happy. i don't know, maybe the writer in me requires angst and self torture and shit like that, you know, like a country singer!!

Kat!

2005-11-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

I just have to get it out there, that i have met an absolutely wonderful woman and am quite head over heels right now with regards to her. She will be reading this at some point soon, but that is okay cause i think she loves me. anyhow, i am nuts over this girl. She IS the total package, stunningly beautfiul, worldly and bright, fun and effervescent, advneturous and exciting, sexy and classy. Just an amazing, incredible part of my life. I want to thank her for coming into my world! Thank you Kathryn! You are the best, I mean it...................................

i never trusted the helmsman

2005-10-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

Fucking Sulu!! I knew it all along, something was not right with him. NO, I am not being homo phobic. Nothing racially oriented either. But to be 68 years old and come out of the closet. Were you waiting for the last of your family to die. C'mon, as long as you don't yearn for my crotch, i have no problem with people's sexuality. But to wait this long??? I do harken back and remember seeing Sulu look at Kirk's tight pants quite often. As though he wanted the Captain to discipline him, in a manly way.

Or was he just waiting for James Doohan to die??

A lawyer goes to War, part 2

2005-10-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

From: Phillip CarterSubject: The Ups and Downs of Preparing for WarWednesday, Oct. 26, 2005, at 11:18 AM PT

The M9 pistol range at Camp AtterburyA military historian once compared the study of war by soldiers who have never seen combat to the study of sex by virgins using only pornography. Despite the U.S. Army's accumulated millions of years of combat experience, it can do only so well in training its neophytes for battle, for anything but war itself is simulation. No matter how many miles we run, classes we take, bullets we shoot, or mock attacks we repel, we cannot truly consider ourselves warriors until we have actually been bloodied by combat.
During the 12 weeks between my call-up and actual deployment to Iraq, I have gone through a series of training exercises with my unit, the 101st Airborne Division Detachment, to ready us for war. But deploying involves much more than training; it also involves a litany of logistical and administrative tasks such as loading and shipping equipment, and those tasks would consume as much of our time as the combat training. We would also plan a great deal, developing standard operating procedures (SOPs in military parlance) for small units and elaborate battle orders for large ones. If we were a sword, then our goal would be to deploy with as tempered and sharpened an edge as possible
There are certain mundane, universal tasks that come with reporting for duty anywhere in the Army, and I did these at Fort Campbell. On Day 1, I signed into my new unit and filled out a ream of paperwork—updating my emergency data, signing up for Servicemembers Group Life Insurance (every soldier today can opt for up to $400,000 in coverage for a very cheap premium), and starting direct deposit, among other things. Napoleon once said that an army moves on its stomach. Observing the U.S. Army in action, he might have said it moves along on a sea of paperwork.
Physical prowess has mattered to militaries at least since ancient Greece, where the best warriors competed every four years in ancient Olympic events designed to mirror the military training and tactics of the time. Today, the 101st Airborne Division starts each day with physical training from 0630 to 0800 (6:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. civilian time). I arrived at Fort Campbell a little older and softer after four years out of the Army. To beat my body back into shape, I ran three miles per day, four days a week, on Wickham Ave., closed and transformed into a giant track for Fort Campbell's 20,000-plus soldiers. The most impressive thing about morning PT at Fort Campbell is the sound. Nothing in the world quite resembles the adrenaline and testosterone-filled chorus of thousands of young infantrymen screaming in responsive verse to their sergeants as they run:
Saw an old lady walkin' down the streetHad a ruck on her back, and jungle boots on her feetHey old lady where you goin' to?U.S. Army Ranger School!Hey old lady don't you think you're too old?Leave that shit for the young and the boldHey young punk you talkin' to?I'm an instructor at the Ranger School!
My combat boots fit differently than my lawyer's leather Oxfords, to be sure, and the military's customs (like constant saluting) stand in stark contrast to the world I had just left behind in Los Angeles. Yet it's the visceral sensation of PT that truly hammered home the reality that I was a soldier once again.
On Day 3, I went to the Central Issue Facility, a giant warehouse of Army gear, to receive the personal gear I would need for war. I signed for a large-frame backpack that goes by the military acronym MOLLE (modular lightweight load-carrying equipment), an unbelievable amount of polyprolene thermal underwear and Gore-Tex cold weather gear, sun goggles, and various other sundry items. Most important, I got my Interceptor body armor, the state-of-the-art protective vest that many soldiers went without during the first deployment into Iraq. A few weeks later, the Army would issue me four more duffel bags of gear, including four complete sets of the new Army Combat Uniform and the old Desert Combat Uniform. The new ACUs came with a digitized gray-brown camouflage pattern that made us look like oddly pixilated wannabe chameleons.
We received more gear than we could possibly take to Iraq, so I would need to store some of it for my year overseas. But I still found myself wanting for certain items, like moisture-wicking Under Armour T-shirts, a high-capacity CamelBak, and ammo pouches that could carry four rifle magazines instead of three like the ones we got from Uncle Sam. Fortunately, Clarksville (like every other base town in America) has a plethora of shops willing to sell these things to deploying soldiers—at a nice profit of course.
Camp Atterbury, Ind., was our next stop en route to Iraq. The regimen there comprised a mix of administrative processing, basic combat training, and field training on missions we might see in Iraq. In theory, all reservists should report for duty with a solid foundation in all these areas. In practice, many do not. Inactive reservists like me reported having not fired an M-16 in years; others soldiers showed up out of shape or out of practice on other essential skills. Other soldiers or units might show up ready for one mission (such as firing artillery cannons), only to learn they were being deployed as a convoy security company instead. Regardless of what level we came in at, units left Camp Atterbury with a baseline proficiency in soldiering.
We spent about half our time training outdoors, sweating profusely under the weight of our Kevlar helmets, body armor, combat uniforms, and boots. We relearned basic first-aid tasks long since forgotten, practiced navigating through the woods with a map and compass, shot our rifles and pistols on ranges, threw hand grenades, drove Humvees, and exercised ourselves on scores of other individual and group tasks. Near the end of our sojourn, we moved to a mock "FOB" (forward operating base) to train on the more difficult combat tasks like convoy operations and foot patrols. Our unit drew the fun but difficult task of acting as the enemy while we were out in the field.
When not in the field, we went to school. My unit sat through dozens of briefings on everything from Army ethics to urban operations. We did our best to stay awake, aided by liberal amounts of coffee and tobacco products, and sometimes even managed an erudite question or two. A sign-in sheet was passed around to document our attendance for posterity, and possibly to cover someone's ass should a particular subject come back to haunt us. (I imagine that someone frantically searched for the sign-in sheet for Charles Graner's class on the Geneva Conventions.)
Our best classes came from the combat vets who had served in wars from Vietnam to Iraq; they used their personal experience to teach us how to spot IEDs or load a Humvee for combat. By contrast, the bad classes came via canned PowerPoint briefing; today's U.S. military has developed a fetish for the use of Microsoft PowerPoint that would make a business consultant green with envy. Perhaps the worst class was the most important of all for us, given our mission to advise Iraqis: This was our country briefing on Iraq and Islam. The instructor was a less-than-impressive former pilot, now in the National Guard, who couldn't pronounce "martyrdom" properly, let alone explain its theological foundations or connect the subject to the insurgency Iraq. We got the basics, like the five pillars of Islam and a general chronology of Iraqi history, but we would need to teach ourselves the more advanced stuff. Once back in Clarksville, several of us raided the local Borders for books on the region, and we also started listening to Arabic on CD courses that we bought or obtained from the Army.
When the pace slowed, I spent a lot of time on my bunk listening to Coldplay and the Killers on my iPod, reading books I had brought or sent from home, or writing in my journal. My colonel, a die-hard conservative from southern Illinois, had a field day making fun of me for my reading selections (i.e., Bill Clinton's My Life or copies of The New Yorker), but it was all in good fun. The other guys in the unit divided their time among trips to the PX, the gym, and watching DVDs in the barracks. I knew they'd watched too many when a Dave Chappelle punchline ("Because I'm Rick James, biatch!") became our unit's unofficial motto. Nearly all of us had cellular phones and Internet access, so it was easy to stave off homesickness with a quick call or e-mail home.
After 30 days in Indiana, we returned to Fort Campbell to continue our deployment preparation, another endless list of logistical minutiae. We loaded a metal container with unit and personal equipment to be shipped to Iraq. A couple of sergeants and I inventoried everything we would leave behind—tents, field desks, office equipment, unarmored vehicles, and even our unit's building—and passed ownership of this gear on to a nondeploying unit: 40 cots, 112 tent poles, six general purpose small tents, 12 rolls of communications wire, three desktop computers, one building built in 1942, and so on. It took a day to count the stuff and another day to do the paperwork.
There comes a point before deployment when a unit has shipped its equipment, accounted for everything else, and done all the meaningful training it can do. At that moment, three weeks before our departure, we settled into a routine that maximized off-time while leveraging the time we had left in the States. Our unit acquired some new rifle scopes, and we went out to the range to practice with them. We spent four days in a virtual-reality simulator honing our marksmanship. The local police department gave us an orientation to law enforcement to help us prepare for our mission of advising Iraqi police. And so it went, until the e-mail came that we had been booked for a flight across the Atlantic.
As a new second lieutenant, I attended a lecture by retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, one of the Army's legendary officers, played by Mel Gibson in the movie We Were Soldiers. Moore stressed the difference between being "prepared" and "ready": the former being a status you acquired through training and preparation; the latter being a state of mind. To survive in combat, he said, you must be both. In the 12 weeks since our call-up, we had prepared ourselves for war. As the date got closer for our departure, I started asking myself a lot whether I was ready.

From Slate, part 3

2005-10-28T05:36:00.000-07:00

From: Phillip CarterSubject: Arriving in a Combat ZoneThursday, Oct. 27, 2005, at 10:52 AM PT

Frantically packing my rucksack at Fort CampbellHigher headquarters had promised us that we would not fly out until at least Oct. 5. Roger. Most of the guys in my unit made plans to fly home before departing the States; I made last-minute plans instead to spend (and I do mean spend) my last weekend in Las Vegas. But on Sept. 28, the Wednesday before our last weekend, headquarters e-mailed again: Our flight would leave Monday morning, Oct. 3, meaning we would report for duty late Sunday night. The date had danced around several times before, but this time it was different—we had a plane number and a detailed timeline for our flight. Small wonder that the informal motto of so many units is "Semper Gumby"—translation: Always flexible.
The news turned everyone's plans for the last few days upside down. Few of us had our gear packed, figuring we would have a day or two more to get that last-minute task done. (Another favorite military maxim: If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.) We had a quick unit huddle at 7 a.m. on Thursday, then split to the four winds to get our gear ready for the Friday luggage drop. Vegas was still on, but I had to cut the trip short to make it back on time.
drove over to the PX and stocked up on shaving cream, razors, batteries, socks, and all those other items I wanted to have a fresh stock of. I got my hair cut too—the "high and tight" buzz that is de rigueur among soldiers in today's Army.
Packing for war is a two parts science, one part art. We would take three bags with us—a small assault pack, a large frame backpack, and a duffel bag. The science is easy: Our unit gave us a packing list, and we had to bring at least those items. The art is in deciding where to put what and what additional gear to bring. I learned early as a lieutenant to put essential items near the outside of my pack for easy access—extra socks and ammo, for example. So, I stuffed my cold-weather gear and the extra books in my duffel bag and packed my rucksack full of those things I knew I'd need right away: a spare uniform, socks, sunglasses, desert camouflage Gore-Tex, weapons-cleaning kits, my combat sewing kit (don't laugh—the Army's new uniforms are notoriously prone to ripping), my backup rifle sight, and my medical kit. My rucksack had a small pocket on the inside, ostensibly for a radio, that I used for my sentimental items: the photo album of my family and friends, my leather-bound journal, and a lucky dog tag my best friend gave me before leaving.

Walking out to our aircraft at Fort Campbell Flying to war with the U.S. Army can go a long way toward making you appreciate the virtues and efficiencies of a civilian airline on even its worst day. All luggage had to be dropped off three days before our departure. We had to report to the Fort Campbell gym for our flights late on Sunday night*, although our planes would not leave until midmorning on Monday. We spent the next several hours going through administrative processing, drawing our weapons from the arms room, staging our gear, and waiting. A bunch of soldiers chose to pass the night sleeping on the gym floor. I couldn't sleep—partly due to the coffee I'd consumed and partly due to my nervous energy, so I stayed up to talk and joke with soldiers and their families at the gym.

Sweating on the plane at the Kuwait City International AirportAt oh-dark-hundred* on Monday morning, the order went out to line up in formation. A military chaplain delivered an invocation he wrote for the occasion, blessing our flight and our unit for the coming endeavor. Then we lined up in alphabetical order, swiping our ID cards through a scanner to create a passenger list for the aircraft. As the sun rose over Fort Campbell on Monday morning, our flight boarded several cramped buses for the short ride from the gym to the airfield.
The first several days of our deployment dragged like a slow-burning cigarette. Our first day lasted nearly 48 hours, including a half day* of processing and waiting at Fort Campbell, a seemingly endless plane flight to Kuwait with a short refueling stop in Europe, and then several more hours of waiting and processing in Kuwait before we bedded down for the night. We spent the next several days acclimating to the desert and preparing to cross the border into Iraq. And though we did different things each day, it still felt like a surreal, sandy version of the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. Those of us who deployed with the 101st to Iraq last time said time would fly by; I rather doubted it after our first week in Kuwait.
Nearly every unit going to Iraq passes through Kuwait on the way there and back, so it's not uncommon to run into old friends from tours gone by at the chow hall or the Internet cafe. The camps themselves look like a cross between a desert mining town and the cantina from Star Wars. They're full of dusty concrete and aluminum buildings, heavy equipment, and tough-looking men and women walking around with weapons strapped on, along with contractors and civilians who look alien among the soldiers dominating the landscape. Outside the camp lies only a barren desert moonscape, populated sometimes by Bedouins and more frequently by oil drillers and soldiers. (We did see a goat herder with his flock on the day we went out to shoot.) The sky above was a brilliant cloudless blue, every single day without fail. As you looked closer to the horizon, however, the sky faded into light brown as it mixed with the powdery dust of the Kuwaiti air.
We lived for those first days in semipermanent tents, where we were lucky enough to get wooden floors, air conditioning, cots, and about three square meters of living space. By military standards, this was good living, although I imagined Martha Stewart would have had something to say about our Spartan accommodations. On any given day, we would wake up, eat breakfast in a massive contractor-run chow hall, train on the base or out in the desert, do some PT, then relax until it was time to go to sleep. The lethargic pace, intense sun, and searing heat combined to make our days in Kuwait pass slowly. Some nights, a group of us would sit outside the "Green Beans" stand (a faux Starbucks in an aluminum shack) drinking coffee and bullshitting to pass the time. I also read a lot, finishing Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, a classic book about military advisers in Vietnam that I thought might illuminate my mission in this war. We waited anxiously for the "call forward" message that would finally put us on an airplane to Iraq.

Wearing the new Army Combat Uniform and carrying an M-4 rifleThree days after arriving in Kuwait, I celebrated my 30th birthday. This was the first birthday I'd celebrated away from my close friends and family since 1998, when I was stationed in Korea. And though I missed everyone back in the States, I felt no loneliness or regrets. In my unit, the 101st Airborne Division Detachment, I had already found a new band of brothers (and a sister), and I was ready to go to war with them. So, I celebrated my 30th with them and had a pretty good time doing it; downing a can of Beck's nonalcoholic beer at dinner, smoking a cigar afterward with one of my sergeants, and listening to the division band play '70s and '80s rock on the USO stage. Our war would start in a few days, when we would fly up into Iraq to begin our year as advisers to the Iraqi police. But for now, there was nothing to do but enjoy the music and company in the Kuwaiti moonlight.

A lawyer goes to war

2005-10-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

I thought this was a good read from MSN's Slate

From: Phillip Carter
Subject: The Things He Carried
T uesday, Oct. 25, 2005, at 2:40 PM PT

My call to arms came by e-mail on June 22, while I was at my office working on a research assignment for a partner at my law firm. The e-mail itself came as no surprise; I had volunteered for attachment to the Army's 101st Airborne Division and mobilization to avoid a completely involuntary call-up, which I had been told was looming on the horizon. Still, the appearance of the orders shocked me. The two-page mobilization document left nothing to the imagination: It singled me out by name and Social Security number, mobilizing me for duty in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Everything about the war that had previously been academic or abstract suddenly became quite personal.
Active-duty soldiers and drilling reservists typically get many months of notice before a deployment; as an inactive reservist, I got roughly three weeks. Being mobilized for war involves changing jobs, moving, and leaving your family behind all at once. I was sorely tempted—as one lawyer at my firm suggested—to take a three-week-long siesta on the beach with my dog and some potent margaritas until my report date. But the Army officer in me knew better, so I developed a plan. When I was a young lieutenant in Korea, a charismatic brigade commander of mine likened mammoth military tasks to eating an elephant, saying that the only sure method was to eat it one bite at a time. And so I set out to tackle my deployment one piece at a time.
Telling my family and friends about the deployment was the first and hardest thing to do. My first call went to my best friend in New York. Like me, she had been expecting this for nearly the entire time we had known each other, and we had actually been through false mobilization alerts with the National Guard. However, this time was different, and she understood that as soon as I said I had orders (instead of a mere verbal warning). My subsequent calls went to my father, then my mother, then my grandparents, and then my aunt, then my best friends, eventually closing the circle of my immediate family. The next day, I told the partner I worked for at my firm and shared the news with the other junior attorneys over lunch. That afternoon, I shotgunned an e-mail to a few dozen of my friends, former colleagues, and people I hadn't spoken to in years but I thought might want to hear.
It hurt to share this news, because I felt like I was inflicting pain on my family and friends. After all, I had volunteered for this when I could have theoretically continued to play inactive-reserve roulette, knowing that orders were probably on the way; I could have also volunteered for safer duty. Friends who have been there say the war is tougher on your family on you. In Iraq, I will know when I am in danger and when I am safe, and I'll be able to relax when I'm out of harm's way. My family won't. Every reported IED or sniper attack will jar them and send them rushing to CNN or their e-mail accounts to make sure it wasn't me. Yet despite my worry, everyone seemed to keep a stiff upper lip. My grandfather, a World War II vet, was stoic and full of advice: "Don't volunteer for nuthin'," he said. Other family members reacted differently: Mom, who worried about me incessantly during my year of duty in South Korea, never shed a tear; Dad became the family organizer, planning a going-away party for me and pledging to create an e-mail chain to share any news from the front. Within seconds of hearing the news, my best friend volunteered to take custody of my precocious 3-year-old dog Peet. I even had a couple of professors I knew offer to send me journal articles and Supreme Court cases so I could continue my writing while overseas.
My law firm's human-resources team quickly swung into action, approving my use of sick and vacation time, and letting me know I'd be eligible for six months of differential pay after my call-up. (Federal law requires employers to hold reservists' jobs for them, but goes no further, so my firm's policy was quite generous.) My clients were very supportive; two even offered to send me care packages in Iraq. I tried to cancel my state bar membership, only to learn that California waived membership fees for mobilized reservists; I chose to keep it instead, because you never know when you'll need your law license. The partners took me out to lunch at one of Los Angeles' finer restaurants on my second-to-last day, the same restaurant they had taken me a few months before when I passed the bar exam. My fellow associates bought Anchor Steam, my favorite beer, to stock my last weekly happy hour at the office. I knew my absence would mean more work for my colleagues at the firm, yet they downplayed that, instead telling me how proud they were. Their gratitude only made me feel guiltier for leaving.

Wrestling with Peet, who I adopted in law schoolThe logistics of physically leaving Los Angeles took the bulk of my time during my last two weeks in town. I talked a law-school friend into taking over my apartment (for a reduced rent) while I was gone, eliminating the need to move out. But if ever there were a time for spring cleaning, this was it. So, with my best friend's considerable help, I set to cleaning out my apartment. Any clothes that had not seen light in one year were readied for donation, along with old books, camping equipment, and three footlockers of Army gear. If it wasn't going to war with me, why did I need it? The good stuff went to a local veterans' charity in Westwood; the rest went into the trash. Winston Churchill once said that nothing focuses the mind so much as being shot at without effect; I learned that the prospect of imminent combat focuses one's housecleaning as well.
I also spent a lot of time doing things for the "last time," something that felt strangely hedonistic and fatalistic at the same time. Most of these adventures involved things I'd get no taste of in Iraq—tasting wines in Santa Barbara and eating garlic chicken at my favorite Cuban place in Culver City, for example. Some were more physical, like going for my final run on the beach in Santa Monica taking Peet to play with his buddies at the Brentwood dog park one last time. The confident soldier in me knew I'd be back to do these things again, but it was still hard to silence the voice that asked constantly "what if?"
My unit sent me a packing list, but it had been a while since I had done something like this, so a bit of shopping was in order. I made a trip to REI and A-16, the local outdoors stores that stock everything an American mountainman or infantryman could want. (Army stuff is great, but nothing compares to Patagonia's silkweight shirts and boxers.) I asked a friend stationed in Arizona to FedEx me some insignia so I could show up wearing the right uniform; I then took my battle dress uniforms to the L.A. Air Force Base to get them sewn on. Civilian tailors usually botch the job, so it was worth the 30 minute drive to ensure that I reported for duty with the right accoutrements.
As an inactive reservist, I had not practiced soldiering in a while, so I spent some time training my body and mind for war. I asked a colleague from the Los Angeles County anti-terrorism task force I had worked on to take me shooting, and he lined up some combat pistol practice with one of his department's best shots. Instead of taking leisurely jogs with my dog, I went for longer runs by myself and intensified my weightlifting regimen as well. In those last few weeks, I scrounged the aisles of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the UCLA bookstore in search of primers on Iraq, Islam, and counterinsurgency warfare, devouring the books I found in search of wisdom that might help my soldiers and me over there.
A few days before leaving, and just before I took the final load of clothing to my grandparents' house for storage, I set out to pack for my deployment. A Marine I know in Iraq advised me to pack light, so I squeezed everything into one duffel bag, one gym bag, and a carry-on containing my laptop, medical records, and personnel file. On the advice of a fellow reservist, I also scanned the important documents like my birth certificate and military shot records into into PDF files and uploaded them into my official Army e-mail repository. At times, I felt like a college graduate packing for his backpacking tour of Europe, except I probably packed more socks, underwear, and razors. I also added a few sentimental items to the load, like the Ranger Handbook I'd carried in my rucksack as a lieutenant, and a small laminated photo album containing 15 or 20 pictures I could take with me to Iraq and back.
My dad volunteered to throw a backyard going-away party to gather all my friends and family in one place to send me off. The party started in a fairly jubilant mood, given the occasion; my family doesn't do a lot of big get-togethers, so this was special despite its cause. But as the night went on and people started to leave, and I had to start saying goodbye, the night became much tougher. I had resolved not to drink much because I wanted to remember everyone and everything about my last night in Los Angeles with everyone. But when it came time to hug my grandmother for the last time, I suddenly wished I had finished the case of Sam Adams I had brought. After my family departed, leaving only my close friends, the conversation finally veered to my subject of my deployment itself. I tried to explain as much as I could, but found myself saying "I don't know" more than any other phrase.
By the time the day came to report, I had numbed to the thought of my deployment. My checklist of tasks was complete: I had moved out, closed out my legal practice, hugged my dog, packed my bags, and said my goodbyes. Eventually, the time came to leave. My parents drove me to the airport so I could catch the 4:30 p.m. Southwest flight from Los Angeles to Nashville. We hugged at the curbside briefly, and that was it. I walked into the airport, went through security without a hassle, and sat down at Gate 13 with my bags to wait for the flight. I spent an hour hand-writing my will on the legal pad I had brought with me to write letters home, and then spent the next hour listening to my iPod, trying to relax while waiting for my flight. It would be a while before I saw Los Angeles again.

Tomorrow, Carter reports for duty and prepares to ship out

marginally more

2005-10-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Apples, pennies and herpes rank high among the disappointing items you can receive on Halloween. This week I found one more I'd like to add to the list: "New MEGA M&MS."
When I first heard about them, I thought "Wow, what a great idea! Huge M&Ms!"
And just look at the packaging. They're so massively gigantic, only 6 of them fit on the bag! Oh, doctor!
I now present to you an ordinary m&m side-by-side wth a new "mega" m&m.
* * *
What the mega F?
* * *
I know it's silly, but in my head I had visions of holding an M&M with two hands and biting into it like a sandwich.
Maybe taking one on a picnic and sharing it with my wife. Then feeding the leftovers to squirrels and bums.
Oh well. I guess I can dream. And at least now I know how little it takes to be "mega."
Boy, I can't wait to give my wife a dose of my mega dong tonight.

lifted from the Sneeze. sorry about the missing pics, will try to fix.

more of Jim

2005-10-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

http://homepages.theonion.com/PersonalPages/jAnchower/

Hola Amigos

2005-10-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

I Guess I Got A Girlfriend
The CruiseBy Jim Anchower
October 12, 2005

Hola amigos. What's shakin'? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but the waters are not always smooth in Lake Anchower. The brakes on my Festiva were starting to whine and grind, which really pissed me off. If it's not one thing, it's another with that car. I was gonna sell it and let someone else have the headache of fixing the brakes, but then gas went up to $3 a gallon, and my Festiva gets like 35 miles to the gallon. These gas prices can suck my ass. I remember when it used to cost $12 to fill up my car.
So, I had them fix the brakes, and I spent a day giving her a tune-up myself. Changed the plugs, the wires, filters—everything. I even wiped off all the crap on the engine. I hate getting started on that stuff, but once I'm up to my elbows in oil, nothing feels better. Now it's in great shape, which is more than I could say for me.
You may think that my life is pretty sweet, and who could blame you? Usually, Jim Anchower drives where he wants, drinks what he wants, tokes when he wants, and doesn't take much shit from anyone unless he absolutely has to. But lately, things have changed in a big way.
My summer was packed full of hanging out, keeping Ron from accidentally burning his place down, and getting together with Wes, which has been hard to do since he moved. Anyway, a few days ago, there was a knock on the door while I was trying to find my keys so I could make a beer run. I opened the door, and this woman was standing there.
Now, I had no idea who she was. All I knew was that I had five minutes to get to the liquor store before it closed, and someone I don't know is in my way. Plus, I might have forgotten to pay some bill she was there to collect, in which case I wouldn't have beer money anymore, so I told her this is a bad time and tried to get past her. That's when I noticed she was carrying a 12-pack of Miller Genuine Draft. If she's a bill collector, she knows how to get my attention.
She told me that she was sorry for throwing up on my floor. Then I remembered who she was. She was one of those chicks Ron and his friend Rob brought over to my place to watch Dude, Where's My Car? a couple months back. They were all pretty wasted, and this girl, Debbie, puked all over my floor. It was disgusting. It was all I could do to throw a shopping circular or two over it and wait for it to dry.
I told her it was cool, but I still have to get to the store. She told me that the MGD was for me, and she had another 12-pack in her car. For the first time, I took a good look at her. She's not Pamela Anderson hot or anything, but she's all right to look at. So I invite her in.
So this chick, who I barely know, walks past me and starts making herself at home. She put the 12-pack in the fridge, right on top of the pizza from two days ago. She grabs herself a beer, don't even offer me one, then sits down on my couch and turns on the TV. In my book, that's a hell of a way to say you're sorry, but I let it slide since she brought beer.
We were talking some and watching whatever was on. She seemed cool enough. She was able to keep up with me, beer for beer. I wasn't really paying much attention to the TV. I had a girl on my couch that was probably good to go, if I could figure out how to get the engine running.
I couldn't even remember the last time I dipped the wick, so I was thinking about what I did last time that worked, only I didn't get a chance to make a move. Before I could even come up with something, she was all over me.
Now, I don't want you making any judgments on me. I did what any man would do in my position: bumped uglies. I ain't going to tell you any more details than that. All I'll say is, she sure as hell wasn't puking that night. I mean, she got up to use the bathroom once or twice, but I don't think she puked or anything.
The next morning, I woke up thinking she was gone. I don't like a lot of snuggle bunny shit, so I was glad I had some space to get my head together, which was hard because I was pretty hung over. I went to the kitchen, and there was Debbie going through my cupboards. I asked her what the hell she was doing, and she told me that she was looking for coffee. I told her that I don't have any.
That would be enough for most anyone, but not her. She just kept rummaging through my shit without answering me, as if she didn't believe me. I told her that there was a gas station two blocks away and maybe she could just pop down there and pick some up. That seemed reasonable to me, but not to her. She turned and looked at me like she was going to rip my head off, and said that if I was a man, I'd get my ass down to that gas station and pick her up the biggest coffee they had with cream and sugar.
I didn't even know what to say. I believe in being a gentleman and all, but I don't usually have someone yelling at me first thing in the morning. I was about to say that when she reached in the cupboard and threw a pot at me. That was all the encouragement I needed. I went down to the gas station and got two coffees, one for me and one for her.
I got back and she was sitting on the couch flipping channels. She hung out for a while and watched TV, finally leaving at 2:30. But before she left, she said if I had plans that night, I better change 'em, 'cause we were going to a movie.
Seriously, I like getting some trim, but I'm not too big on having to look after someone else. See, I like to play it by my rules. No compromises, no remorse. I don't need no one to tell me when to be home and what we're doing this weekend. She drops by unannounced with beer once or twice a week, then expects me to drop everything so we can get busy? Hell, I'm not a machine.
Jim Anchower has to have some space. I can't have Debbie telling me where to go and what to do. I figure I can only take another month or so of this before I let her go. Don't worry, I'll let her down easy. I'm king of the breakup. I just need to get some weed in the system first so I can get myself in the zone.

lifted from the Onion

this is funny, try it at home

2005-10-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.blennus.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=52&Itemid

things

2005-10-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

well, things haven't gotten much better since last week. i am still pretty down unfortunately, and on top of that had to put my little dog into the Vet's yesterday for some nasty viral infection. She hadn't eaten in like 4 days and had already had an IV on saturday. Keep your fingers crossed.
Anyhow, not much going on, as I said I am sort of emotionally drained right now, between work, life and love I am just idling right now. Not sure what to do, but i need a boost and unfortunately i don't see it happening on any of those fronts. I need to get back on the bike though and start to get the energy flowing again. I will figure it all out soon i hope. Cause i really need something good to happen, and soon.

a word from America's Rabbi

2005-09-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

by Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Posted Sep 7, 2005
In New Orleans, beginning Tuesday morning,
August 30, I saw men in helicopters risking their lives to save stranded
flood victims from rooftops. The rescuers were White, the stranded
Black. I saw Caucasians navigating their small, private boats in
violent, swirling, toxic floodwaters to find fellow citizens trapped in
their houses. Those they saved were Black.
I saw Brotherhood. New York Congressman Charlie
Rangel saw Racism.
Yes, there are Two Americas. One is the real
America, where virtually every White person I know sends money, food or
clothes to those in need -- now and in other crises -- regardless of
color. This America is colorblind.
The other is the America fantasized and
manufactured by Charlie Rangel, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who
constantly cry "racism!" even in situations where it does not exist,
even when undeniable images illustrate love, compassion and concern.
These three men, together with today's NAACP, want to continue the
notion of Racist America. It is their Mantra, their calling card. Their
power, money, and continued media appearances depend on it.
Often, people caught up in accusing others of
sin neglect to undergo their own personal introspection. They begin to
think they alone inhabit the moral high ground. It is high time these
men peered into their own hearts at the dark chamber that causes this
unceasing labeling of their fellow Americans as "racist." They may find
in that chamber their own racism -- against Whites.
There is only one real America. Beginning Friday
morning in Houston, thousands of regular citizens poured into the
Astrodome offering water, food, clean clothes, personal items, baby
diapers and toys, love and even their homes to the evacuees who had been
bused in from New Orleans. Most of the givers were White, most of those
being helped were Black. But there was Jesse Jackson, busy on TV,
accusing the country of not putting Blacks -- i.e., him -- on some type
of Commission he is demanding. Where was he early in the week? Not
sweating with others from around the country who had scraped their last
dollar to come help. With Jesse, it's always about Jesse.
After decades of hearing accusations from Jesse,
Al, Charlie, the NAACP and certain elitists about how racist America is,
it would have been refreshing to hear them for once give thanks to those
they for years have been maligning. These self-anointed spokesmen for
the Black community lead only when it comes to foisting guilt and
condemnation, and not when it comes to acknowledging the good in those
they have made a career in castigating.
As a Rabbi I have a message I wish to offer to
my fellow members of the cloth, Reverends Jackson and Sharpton: It is
time to do some soul searching. Your continued efforts to tear this
country apart, even in light of the monumental goodness shown by your
White brothers, is a sin.
There are no churches in the world like the
American churches. And there are no better parishioners and members of
churches anywhere in the world. These churches are saving the day. Their
members -- infused by the special and singular teachings of our unique
American Judeo-Christian understanding of the Bible -- are, at this
moment, writing an historic chapter in giving, initiative, and
selflessness. They are opening their homes to strangers. They are doing
what government is incapable of doing.
America works because of its faith-based
institutions. It always has. That is what makes it America.
So next time the ACLU tries to diminish and
marginalize the churches, saying there is no role for religion in
American public life, that an impenetrable wall must be erected
separating the citizens from their faith, cry out "Katrina."
Next time the ACLU goes to court asking that
U.S. soldiers not be allowed to say Grace in the Mess Hall and that
communities be forbidden from setting up a nativity scene, ask yourself:
without the motivation of Goodness sourced in Faith, would people offer
such sacrifice? Where else does this Brotherhood come from but the Bible
which teaches "Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself."
I saw brotherhood on Fox News, where 24/7
reporters used their perch as a clearing-house for search-and-rescue
missions and communication between the stranded and those in position to
save. In contrast, the Old-line networks continued with their usual
foolish, brain-numbing programming. Those who always preach "compassion"
chose profit over people.
The New York Times has utterly failed America.
Its columnists could have used their talents and word skills to inspire
and unite a nation. Columnists such as Frank Rich and Paul Krugman,
however, revealed their true colors by evading their once-in-a-lifetime
chance to help and instead chose to divide, condemn, and fuel the fires
and poison the waters of Louisiana. In them, I saw no Brotherhood. The
newspaper always preaching "compassion" verifies Shakespeare's "They
protest too much."
Similar elitists here in the northeast and on
the west coast have over the years expressed their view of the South as
"unsophisticated" and Texans as "cowboys." Well, the South has come
through, especially Houston and other parts of Texas, whereas, as I
write this on Labor Day, the limousine moralizers are lying on east and
west coast beaches thinking they're doing their part by reading Times'
editorials and calling George Bush "racist." How sanctimonious life
becomes when proving you are not a racist depends not on living in a
truly integrated neighborhood, but by simply calling others racist.
Like so often in history, facts trump
platitudes. Reality reigns. Those who always preach brotherhood, thus
far have acted devoid of it. Those who for decades have been accused by
elitists of not having compassion are the ones living it. They are: the
churches, the military, and the sons and daughters of the South.

"Category Five Woman Done Me Six Kinds Of Wrong"

2005-09-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

well, i haven't exactly lit up my blog of late with anything personal or anything in all honesty. things haven't been going my way and i am dragging. i am not going to bore anyone with crap about this or that, but i really am not doing well and am very depressed. unfortunately, it revolves around a couple of issues, most importantly a woman. i am not going to bore anyone with a bunch of crying and crap, but i have fucked up bad, continue to fuck up and just can't shake it. this woman is everything to me, my heart and soul. i don't know what to do. i do actually but i don't have the balls to do it. i have sought advice time and time again, and the fact is that for the most part it is the same, walk away. but i can't and i don't want to throw her out of my life. christ, i don't know what the hell i am even saying, i just needed to vent and it is my fucking blog. i am a piece of shit, i have screwed up my life and her life, and i need something to happen, soon. cause i am losing my mind. this woman is my best friend, the love of my life, and everything that i have ever dreamed of wrapped into one package. i have always done relatively well in the relationship department though i generally walk away or run away, so i have it in me. but i don't know, it is as though she has some hold on me. i just don't understand how i can continually make the wrong moves. i treat this woman in particular like a goddess, say things that would make most women melt, provide unconditional support and affection. i am not unattractive, i dress relatively well, am educated, come from an outstanding family, am generous and am widely known as a pretty nice guy. i make mistakes of course, and i don't think that i am a sex god, but i am pretty adventurous. i am fun for the most part, compassionate, caring and loving. so what is it?? i just want to know why i am in the situation. i can't extricate myself because i care for her and her child, and i suppose even more importantly, i guess i just don't want to. i love her, and all i want between the two of us is peace and happiness. i don't know why she continues on with me as it is. it seems i piss her off on a continuous basis. she is a hell of a fighter, she is a bitch and one hell of a manipulator, but i just can't understand what her preoccupation is with me. i know what people say about her, but i just can't and won't accept it. i know she loves me, but i don't know why we aren't together.
anyhow, i will get over this shit. my back is killing me, and that is causing me to be pissy. i will be fine, and if you don't want to listen to me gripe, well then you didn't have to read it. Right???.
Right!

Panoramic views of Katrina's aftermath

2005-09-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/katrinapanos/neworleans01.htm

all i ever wanted

2005-09-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

that would be vacation. and that i was on last week. nothing accomplished, didn't get in trouble, for the most part an absolute waste of time, but i had to burn it. more refreshingly special commentary at another time.

top 10 cool ways to die

2005-09-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

1. Of wounds sustained in a triumphant battle with a dragon.
2. Leaping into an exploding volcano.
3. Diving into an open barbeque pit to catch a falling rib.
4. Purposely crashing your spaceship into the sun.
5. Head-first tackle on the three-yard line to win the Super Bowl after losing your helmet.
6. Riding a nuclear bomb out the belly of a B-52.
7. Getting sucked into a super black hole.
8. Catching a lightening bolt in your hands to save a baby.
9. In a shootout with the Bolivian Army.
10. Right after having sex with Scarlett Johansson.

from the Phatphree.com

joke

2005-09-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

President Bush and Rumsfeld are sitting in a bar.
A guy walks in and asks the barman, "Isn't that Bush and Rumsfeld sitting over there?"
The bartender says, "Yep, that's them."
So the guy walks over and says, "Wow, this is a real honor! What are you guys doing in here?" Bush says, "We're planning World War III."
And the guy says, "Really? What's going to happen?"
Bush says, "Well, we're going to kill 140 million Muslims and one blonde with big tits." The guy exclaimed, "A blonde with big tits? Why would you want to kill a blonde with big tits?" Bush turns to Rumsfeld and says, "See? I told you no one would give a shit about the 140 million Muslims."

WTF???

2005-09-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

granted my little space of the internet is not big or well attended, but i have noticed over about the last week or so that comments added by "anonymous" that are spam. What in the hell? you can't make a fucking move without these assholes attaching themselves to you. The government needs to to do something about this, because between my fifteen email addresses and my blog, i can't get away from it.

An opponents view of Memphis State University, their fans and their stadium

2005-09-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

Observations and commentary-

-Memphis Tiger fans should be proud of their success over the last two years, but they have no idea what humility is. Losing to us brought them back to earth or should
-$45 for a ticket is b.s.. Ole Miss isn’t even that high. And for crappy seats. Two years ago they were only $20 or $25
-Deangelo Williams is a great player, and maybe Memphis could compete at the same level as Vandy or MS St, but long term success will never happen.
-The fan base is weak. Not even sold out on a holiday!!! With their “biggest rival”
-Not many, er, very few public schools that have the name of the city in the University’s name ever succeed for long periods of time.The national fan base is limited and exposure is even more so. National exposure against BIG TIME programs will ensure success.
-The sinks where I was didn’t even work, thus in a grimy nasty stadium with bad sight lines one couldn’t even wash his or her hands after peeing.
-The concessions were a joke, cept for Germantown Commisary and their awesome sweet tea. Otherwise, amateur.
-Trying to work your way around the stadium at half is horrible. At several points where concessions were busiest were also the narrowest parts of the concourse. Dirty and nasty as well.
-The scoreboards at the Liberty Bowl suck
-Memphis Fans are assholes. In fact a twenty something young lady told me to fuck off at a MAPCO after the game. Yes, she did. And why? Because the clerk asked me who won, and with a proud tone I said Ole Miss just as this young lady came into the store. Then she had the balls to tell me to leave Memphis. I live ¼ mile from this store, and am a taxpayer in the city of Memphis. I about went back in to kick her little boyfriend’s ass.
-Florida/FSU/ Miami fans have more class than Memphis fans.
-I am disgusted by the absolute lack of taste exhibited by their fans

On the other hand two things on a positive note…………..

-From Liberty Bowl to my house by foot, 10 minutes.
-The people who were in the livestock show area for the U of Memphis Alumni party were all very nice and generous. But when you walked out, it changed

opposing views of Katrina's prep and after effects

2005-09-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline

http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/category/katrina-timeline/

Wall Street Journal opinion

2005-09-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

fromt he WSJ.com editorial page

AFTER THE STORM Blame Amid the Tragedy Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin failed their constituents.
BY BOB WILLIAMS

As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina continues to shock and sadden the nation, the question on many lips is, Who is to blame for the inadequate response?
As a former state legislator who represented the legislative district most impacted by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, I can fully understand and empathize with the people and public officials over the loss of life and property.
Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government, rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am fully aware of the challenges of having a quick and responsive emergency response to a major disaster. And there is definitely a time for accountability; but what isn't fair is to dump on the federal officials and avoid those most responsible--local and state officials who failed to do their job as the first responders. The plain fact is, lives were needlessly lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin.
The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency operations center.
The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.
In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in the simulation apparently were not solved.
A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again, they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected.
The New Orleans contingency plan is still, as of this writing, on the city's Web site, and states: "The safe evacuation of threatened populations is one of the principle [sic] reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan." But the plan was apparently ignored.
Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation and supervising the actual evacuation: His Office of Emergency Preparedness (not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.
The city's evacuation plan states: "The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas." But even though the city has enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000 citizens per fleet run, the mayor did not use them. To compound the problem, the buses were not moved to high ground and were flooded. The plan also states that "special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific lifesaving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed." This was not done.
The evacuation plan warned that "if an evacuation order is issued without the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area impacted by toxic materials." That is precisely what happened because of the mayor's failure.
Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions for food, water and sanitary conditions. As a result people died, and there was even rape committed, in these facilities. Mayor Nagin failed in his responsibility to provide public safety and to manage the orderly evacuation of the citizens of New Orleans. Now he wants to blame Gov. Blanco and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an emergency the first requirement is for the city's emergency center to be linked to the state emergency operations center. This was not done.
The federal government does not have the authority to intervene in a state emergency without the request of a governor. President Bush declared an emergency prior to Katrina hitting New Orleans, so the only action needed for federal assistance was for Gov. Blanco to request the specific type of assistance she needed. She failed to send a timely request for specific aid.
In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact with Mayor Nagin and FEMA. It is likely that thousands of people died because of the failure of Gov. Blanco to implement the state plan, which mentions the possible need to evacuate up to one million people. The plan clearly gives the governor the authority for declaring an emergency, sending in state resources to the disaster area and requesting necessary federal assistance.
State legislators and governors nationwide need to update their contingency plans and the operation procedures for state emergency centers. Hurricane Katrina had been forecast for days, but that will not always be the case with a disaster (think of terrorist attacks). It must be made clear that the governor and locally elected officials are in charge of the "first response."
I am not attempting to excuse some of the delays in FEMA's response. Congress and the president need to take corrective action there, also. However, if citizens expect FEMA to be a first responder to terrorist attacks or other local emergencies (earthquakes, forest fires, volcanoes), they will be disappointed. The federal government's role is to offer aid upon request.
The Louisiana Legislature should conduct an immediate investigation into the failures of state and local officials to implement the written emergency plans. The tragedy is not over, and real leadership in the state and local government are essential in the months to come. More importantly, the hurricane season is still upon us, and local and state officials must stay focused on the jobs for which they were elected--and not on the deadly game of passing the emergency buck.
Mr. Williams is president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a free market public policy research organization in Olympia, Wash.

the HATE list

2005-09-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

well, just a few days back i broke down who and why i liked in College Football. Well today, we take it to the other extreme, a listing of the teams that i despise. Starting with,
#1 Notre Dame- My fucking grandfather played for Knute Rockne, and I still hate em.
#2- FSU. Semenholes. Pure hate for Bowden and that whole crooked outfit.
#3-Miami. Scum sucking fucksticks. I was in the Orange Bowl when Flutie threw that pass. Awesome day.
#4- Auburn. Not worth wasting my breath over.
#5- Mississippi State. Their cheer is "Go State, Go State!" Nuff said.
#6- Tennessee. They dress like it's 1977 and they are at Studio 54.
#7-Clemson. They have Clem in their name.
#8- AR-Kansas. Walmart University with Lil Abner running the school, and a Nutt running the team
#9- Texas A & M- Gig em, er, should I say Gag em.
#10- Oklahoma. Boomer Sooner, maybe later. Good job TCU.
#11 Duke. ACC baby, can't like em.
#12 Big East conference. No, really, the whole conference. Not a team in here worth my time.
#13 Stanford. Not sure why, but I guess that faggot in the band that got run over by Kevin Moen during the miracle game kinda turned my stomach.
#14 Wazzou. Jeez, all they are is the Northwest's version of Clem-burn
#15-Swissconsin- Rags to riches and when Barry Alvarez retires back to rags.
#16-Penn State. ha-ha. Joe-Pa needs to retire.
#17- Michigan State- Ugly unforms. Ugly stadium. Just ugly, and i am still pissed that they beat Larry Byrd's Indiana State team in the NCAA's
#18-Iowa. I really used to hate when Hayden Fry would stand the tight end up. So gay.
#19- Nebraska. I used to like em, then they got way too good and cocky, and now they suck.
#20- BYU. Jim McMahon was the best thing to ever come out of this school. Of course my ex loves Steve Young. Tried to tell her he is gay.

In the Hall of Fame of Hate........................Virginia Polytechnical Institute

I could probably continue but let's leave it like this. But hear me now, Univeristy of Memphis fans!!! You are going to be put on here very soon, cause i hate, hate, hate, hate you.

Help the animals as well

2005-09-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

Some truths about Katrina

2005-09-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

Get Off His Back (Updated) By Ben SteinPublished 9/2/2005 11:59:59 PM
***UPDATED: Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005, 2:13 p.m.***

A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:
1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.
5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile
6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.
8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.
9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.
10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.
11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.
12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.
God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush.
****UPDATE: Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005, 2:13 p.m.:
More Mysteries of Katrina:
Why is it that the snipers who shot at emergency rescuers trying to save people in hospitals and shelters are never mentioned except in passing, and Mr. Bush, who is turning over heaven and earth to rescue the victims of the storm, is endlessly vilified?
What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?
What special abilities does the media have for deciding how much blame goes to the federal government as opposed to the city government of New Orleans for the aftereffects of Katrina?
If able-bodied people refuse to obey a mandatory evacuation order for a city, have they not assumed the risk that ill effects will happen to them?
When the city government simply ignores its own sick and hospitalized and elderly people in its evacuation order, is Mr. Bush to blame for that?
Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?
Where did the idea come from that salvation comes from hatred and criticism and mockery instead of love and co-operation?

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He also writes "Ben Stein's Diary" in every issue of The American Spectator. Please click here to subscribe.

personality test

2005-09-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.blogthings.com/worldsshortestpersonalitytest/

i am loving this

2005-09-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

Subject: Re: Politics over duty from a fellow over in Merritt Is, Mayor Nagin's pomp and posturing is going to bite him hard in the near future as the lies and distortions of his interviews are coming to light.

On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center took the unprecedented action of calling Nagin and Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of NO and they said they'd take it under consideration. This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves before it was destroyed.

President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act). Just before midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up. He was told that they didn't think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet. After the President's final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.

Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation. After a personal plea from the President Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting and authorizing federal action. In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President's legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops - but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.

Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to NO for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships. Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city's website was never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or coordinating into any planning though the document implies that they were.

The suffering people of NO need to be asking some hard questions as do we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the multi-state mutual aid pack activation documents until Wednesday which further delayed the legal deployment of National Guard from adjoining states. Or maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should have commandeered 500 Greyhound busses to help him when according to his own emergency plan and documents he claimed to have over 500 busses at his disposal to use between the local school busses and the city transportation busses - but he never raised a finger to prepare them or activate them.

This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of thousands more suffering, but it's certainly not a time for people to be pointing fingers and! trying to find a bigger dog to blame for local corruption and incompetence. Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in the future.

a little something from the NOLA disaster plan playbook

2005-09-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00
'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...
The Hurricane Emergency Evacuation Standard Operating Procedure is designed to deal with all case scenarios of an evacuation in response to the approach of a major hurricane towards New Orleans. It is designed to deal with the anticipation of a direct hit from a major hurricane. This includes identifying the city's present population, its projected population, identification of at-risk populations (those living outside levee protection or in storm-surge areas, floodplains, mobile homes, etc.)...
Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans...
The authority to order the evacuation of residents threatened by an approaching hurricane is conferred to the Governor by Louisiana Statute. The Governor is granted the power to direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from a stricken or threatened area within the State, if he deems this action necessary for the preservation of life or other disaster mitigation, response or recovery. The same power to order an evacuation conferred upon the Governor is also delegated to each political subdivision of the State by Executive Order. This authority empowers the chief elected official of New Orleans, the Mayor of New Orleans, to order the evacuation of the parish residents threatened by an approaching hurricane.
The person responsible for recognition of hurricane related preparation needs and for the issuance of an evacuation order is the Mayor of the City of New Orleans.

the Blame Game

2005-09-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

i was asked by a dear friend of mine to post a blog by Anne Rice. I chose not to because of political aspects of it as well as the racial accusations that come out of it. I decided instead to post this in lieu. I am very surprised at the anger shown towards the Feds in particular GW, so I want to show some other view points. Politically I am pretty moderate these days, whereas once upon a time I was a psycho right wing zealot, kidding, but today I am middle of the road and happy with it, until the assigning of blame begins. I may be wrong but I am going to stick up for those being attacked by those who don't know all.

From a CNN interveiw between anchor Miles o'Brien and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (via Little Green Footballs):
S. O'BRIEN: You're telling me the president [Bush] told you the governor [Blanco] said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?
NAGIN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in?
NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the -- I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places.
S. O'BRIEN: And the governor said no.
NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died. [Emphasis added]
From The Washington Post: Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Craig Martelle: FEMA is not a first responder.
As one who has received training by FEMA in emergency management and also training by the Department of Defense in consequence management, I believe that the federal response in New Orleans needs clarification.
The key to emergency management starts at the local level and expands to the state level. Emergency planning generally does not include any federal guarantees, as there can only be limited ones from the federal level for any local plan. FEMA provides free training, education, assistance and respond in case of an emergency, but the local and state officials run their own emergency management program.
Prior development of an emergency plan, addressing all foreseeable contingencies, is the absolute requirement of the local government --and then they share that plan with the state emergency managers to ensure that the state authorities can provide necessary assets not available at the local level. Additionally, good planning will include applicable elements of the federal government (those located in the local area). These processes are well established, but are contingent upon the personal drive of both hired and elected officials at the local level. ...
It seems that the mayor of New Orleans is leading the effort in not taking responsibility for his actions. The emergency managers for the state of Louisiana do not have much to say either. The failure in the first 48 hours to provide direction for survivors is theirs to live with. When FEMA was able to take over, it started out behind and had to develop its plan on the fly. Now the federal government has established priorities -- rescue the stranded, evacuate the city, flow in resources and fix the levee. It appears that now there is a plan and it is being systematically executed.
From The Telegraph: The Big Easy rocked, but didn't roll by Mark Steyn:
Readers may recall my words from a week ago on the approaching Katrina: "We relish the opportunity to rise to the occasion. And on the whole we do. Oh, to be sure, there are always folks who panic or loot. But most people don't, and many are capable of extraordinary acts of hastily improvised heroism."
What the hell was I thinking? I should be fired for that. Well, someone should be fired. I say that in the spirit of the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, the Anti-Giuliani, a Mayor Culpa who always knows where to point the finger.

a different perspective

2005-09-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005
by Robert Tracinski
It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency—indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows a SWAT team with rifles and armored vests riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage one night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"—the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels—gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails—so they just let many of them loose. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see here and here.]
There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters—not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.
The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
Robert Tracinski is the editor and publisher of TIADaily.com and The Intellectual Activist magazine.

College Football on the tube, or My fall tv lineup

2005-09-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

this weeks college football lineup with my viewing choices

Sep. 8 Thu. Oklahoma State @ FAU 7:00 p.m. ESPN2
Sep. 9 Fri. Pittsburgh @ Ohio 8:00 p.m. ESPN2
Sep. 9 Fri. Washington State @ Nevada 10:00 p.m. ESPN
Sep. 10 Sat. Kansas State @ Marshall 10:30 a.m. ESPN2
Sep. 10 Sat. Notre Dame @ Michigan Noon ABC
Sep. 10 Sat. Clemson @ Maryland Noon ESPN
Sep. 10 Sat. Temple @ Wisconsin Noon ESPNU/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Virginia Tech @ Duke Noon JP/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Cincinnati @ Penn State Noon GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Army @ Boston College 12:30 p.m. ESPN Classic
Sep. 10 Sat. Tulsa @ Oklahoma 12:30 p.m. FSN
Sep. 10 Sat. Mississippi State @ Auburn 12:30 p.m. JP/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Colorado State @ Minnesota 2:00 p.m. ESPN2
Sep. 10 Sat. North Carolina @ GA Tech 3:30 p.m. ABC/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Iowa @ Iowa State 3:30 p.m. ABC/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Cal @ Washington 3:30 p.m. ABC/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Hawaii @ Michigan State 3:30 p.m. ESPNU/GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Northern Illinois @ Northwestern 4:00 p.m. ESPN Classic
Sep. 10 Sat. South Carolina @ Georgia 5:30 p.m. ESPN
Sep. 10 Sat. LA Tech @ Florida 6:00 p.m. GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Stanford @ Navy 6:00 p.m. CSTV
Sep. 10 Sat. Boise State @ Oregon State 6:30 p.m. FSN
Sep. 10 Sat. The Citadel @ Florida State 6:45 p.m. ESPNU
Sep. 10 Sat. Wake Forest @ Nebraska 7:00 p.m. TBS
Sep. 10 Sat. North Texas @ MTSU 7:00 p.m. GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Southern Miss @ Alabama 7:45 p.m. ESPN2
Sep. 10 Sat. Texas @ Ohio State 8:00 p.m. ABC
Sep. 10 Sat. UAB @ Troy 8:00 p.m. GP
Sep. 10 Sat. Arizona State @ LSU 8:45 p.m. ESPN
Sep. 10 Sat. TCU @ SMU 9:30 p.m. CSTV
Sep. 10 Sat. New Mexico State @ Colorado 10:00 p.m. FSN
Sep. 10 Sat. Weber State @ Fresno State 10:00 p.m. ESPNU

Let me get this straight

2005-09-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

I constantly get badgered about the number of teams that I like in College Football. Well the fact is, yes, I do like several teams. I hate more though. But regardless i need to go ahead and get this down on paper for all to see.
In no particular order......

1-Universtity Of Florida- grew up in South Florida, two brothers and MANY friends went to.

2-North Carolina State University- family from NC, went to college here out of h.s., lived in Raleigh for some time, family still there

3- University of Mississippi- attended Ole Miss, fell in love with the universtity, the area and the women, and developed relationships with people who i will always call my friends, including my best friend. The only three women that I ever loved went to Ole Miss as well.

4-University of Texas- Loved the Horns since Earl Campbell was there. The history, the success, the city, the colors, Bevo, 6th Street, and so forth. Went to the UT- A&M game many years ago, and let me tell you that place, Memorial Stadium is sick. Big, scary, they stand the whole game, cannons, and the traditions, chants and songs that go on and on. It is unbelievable. Will name first child or next dog Bevo.

5-University of Oregon- They filmed Animal House there, need I say more? Really, Eugene is apparently a very cool town, and i have always had a place in my heart for the northwest. Would move there if the ratio of sunny days to cloudy would improve. Everyone needs a Pac 10 team anyhow, and I used to like Washington alot, but Oregon finally started winning. So......

Honorable mention teams that I like to watch and support...........
Carolina ( I know, I know), East Carolina ( hometown shit you know), Bama (dirty secret, their fans are way too obnoxious to get fulltime love from me), LSU ( yes, another rival, but I love the way they get off on the Tigers, and c'mon, "Geaux Tigers" is a hell of cheer), the aforementioned Washington Huskies ( stadium is awesome), K-State (years of mediocrity turned around by Bill Snyder), Colorado State (Sonny Lubick is a hell of a coach), Meeshigan ( this is for the people I know who love em, and the fact is, you gotta love the helmet, people love the helmet).
Everyone else I despise.........................

The "O" Zone

2005-09-06T06:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my friend Krivor and I went to the Ole Miss and Memphis game down the street at the Liberty Bowl. I took off early from work and Krivor showed up with a six pack of heaven's nectar, so the two of commenced to begin our tailgate festivities at my house. Anyhow, after a short walk to the stadium and realizing that it was hot after all we continued to drink beers, grabbed some overpriced tix to the game and headed to our seats. Well, the game was fun and a big crowd, so we decided to leave. To make a long story short, we ended up getting pretty lit and I can safely say that I don't remember much. The point to this post is to make some observations with regards to the game, harsh realities, etc.

Tickets for the game were overpriced
Memphis fans really don't have much taste in nice clothing or how to properly tailgate. I am spoiled coming from Ole Miss where it is a profession to be a tailgator.
Memphis fans, well, they need to learn how to be humble. Their success over the last two years has been good for the program, but losing to Ole Miss seems to have ended their world.
Let's get this straight Tiger High!! YOU are NOT our rival, never will be. So quit whining all the time and find yourself a real one. UAB would be a good starting place. USM, there is another. But leave us alone.
DeAngelo is a GREAT running back, BUT he aint gonna win the Heisman. Please realize that now, because when he doesn't get invited to NYC for the presentation you are going to be even more devastated.
The Liberty Bowls concessions are crowded and terrible. No variety and on the bottom level the main concession stands on either side pinch in at MAJOR bathroom and walkway areas.
Germantown Commissary has some good fucking iced tea. Now if I happen to go to another Memphis game this year, I will certainly bring me some vodka for Ice Picks. Yum!
It isn't a bad walk from my house to the stadium. About 10 minutes.
The Rebel offense did not look to good, not bad, but not good. The defense is great, and the special teams SUCKS. Not overly impressed about the boys, maybe they can get their heads out of their asses, and soon. Vandy, next weekend at Vandy

Hurricane prone

2005-09-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

courtesy of National Geographic 10/2004

By Joel K. Bourne, Jr.Photographs by Robert Caputo and Tyrone Turner

The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble—with dire consequences for residents, the nearby city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers everywhere.
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday. But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party. The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it. Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great. "The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse." The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when." Yet just as the risks of a killer storm are rising, the city's natural defenses are quietly melting away. From the Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any place in the U.S. Since the 1930s some 1,900 square miles (4,900 square kilometers) of coastal wetlands—a swath nearly the size of Delaware or almost twice that of Luxembourg—have vanished beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Despite nearly half a billion dollars spent over the past decade to stem the tide, the state continues to lose about 25 square miles (65 square kilometers) of land each year, roughly one acre every 33 minutes. A cocktail of natural and human factors is putting the coast under. Delta soils naturally compact and sink over time, eventually giving way to open water unless fresh layers of sediment offset the subsidence. The Mississippi's spring floods once maintained that balance, but the annual deluges were often disastrous. After a devastating flood in 1927, levees were raised along the river and lined with concrete, effectively funneling the marsh-building sediments to the deep waters of the Gulf. Since the 1950s engineers have also cut more than 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) of canals through the marsh for petroleum exploration and ship traffic. These new ditches sliced the wetlands into a giant jigsaw puzzle, increasing erosion and allowing lethal doses of salt water to infiltrate brackish and freshwater marshes. While such loss hits every bayou-loving Louisianan right in the heart, it also hits nearly every U.S. citizen right in the wallet. Louisiana has the hardest working wetlands in America, a watery world of bayous, marshes, and barrier islands that either produces or transports more than a third of the nation's oil and a quarter of its natural gas, and ranks second only to Alaska in commercial fish landings. As wildlife habitat, it makes Florida's Everglades look like a petting zoo by comparison. Such high stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows—scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to forge a radical plan to protect what's left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin. To glimpse the urgency of the problem afflicting Louisiana, one need only drive 40 minutes southeast of New Orleans to the tiny bayou village of Shell Beach. Here, for the past 70 years or so, a big, deeply tanned man with hands the size of baseball gloves has been catching fish, shooting ducks, and selling gas and bait to anyone who can find his end-of-the-road marina. Today Frank "Blackie" Campo's ramshackle place hangs off the end of new Shell Beach. The old Shell Beach, where Campo was born in 1918, sits a quarter mile away, five feet beneath the rippling waves. Once home to some 50 families and a naval air station during World War II, the little village is now "ga'an pecan," as Campo says in the local patois. Gone forever. Life in old Shell Beach had always been a tenuous existence. Hurricanes twice razed the community, sending houses floating through the marsh. But it wasn't until the Corps of Engineers dredged a 500-foot-wide (150-meter-wide) ship channel nearby in 1968 that its fate was sealed. The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known as "Mr. Go," was supposed to provide a shortcut for freighters bound for New Orleans, but it never caught on. Maybe two ships use the channel on a given day, but wakes from even those few vessels have carved the shoreline a half mile wide in places, consuming old Shell Beach. Campo settles into a worn recliner, his pale blue eyes the color of a late autumn sky. Our conversation turns from Mr. Go to the bigger issue affecting the entire coast. "What really screwed up the marsh is when they put the levees on the river," Campo says, over the noise of a groaning air-conditioner. "They should take the levees out and let the water run; that's what built the land. But we know they not going to let the river run again, so there's no solution." Denise Reed, however, proposes doing just that—letting the river run. A coastal geomorphologist at the University of New Orleans, Reed is convinced that breaching the levees with a series of gated spillways would pump new life into the dying marshes. Only three such diversions currently operate in the state. I catch up with Reed at the most controversial of the lot—a 26-million-dollar culvert just south of New Orleans named Caernarvon. "Caernarvon is a prototype, a demonstration of a technique," says Reed as we motor down a muddy canal in a state boat. The diversion isn't filling the marsh with sediments on a grand scale, she says. But the effect of the added river water—loaded as it is with fertilizer from farm runoff—is plain to see. "It turns wetlands hanging on by the fingernails into something quite lush," says Reed. To prove her point, she points to banks crowded with slender willows, rafts of lily pads, and a wide shallow pond that is no longer land, no longer liquid. More like chocolate pudding. But impressive as the recovering marsh is, its scale seems dwarfed by the size of the problem. "Restoration is not trying to make the coast look like a map of 1956," explains Reed. "That's not even possible. The goal is to restore healthy natural processes, then live with what you get." Even that will be hard to do. Caernarvon, for instance, became a political land mine when releases of fresh water timed to mimic spring floods wiped out the beds of nearby oyster farmers. The oystermen sued, and last year a sympathetic judge awarded them a staggering 1.3 billion dollars. The case threw a major speed bump into restoration efforts. Other restoration methods—such as rebuilding marshes with dredge spoil and salt-tolerant plants or trying to stabilize a shoreline that's eroding 30 feet (10 meters) a year—have had limited success. Despite the challenges, the thought of doing nothing is hard for most southern Louisianans to swallow. Computer models that project land loss for the next 50 years show the coast and interior marsh dissolving as if splattered with acid, leaving only skeletal remnants. Outlying towns such as Shell Beach, Venice, Grand Isle, and Cocodrie vanish under a sea of blue pixels. Those who believe diversions are the key to saving Louisiana's coast often point to the granddaddy of them all: the Atchafalaya River. The major distributary of the Mississippi River, the Atchafalaya, if left alone, would soon be the Mississippi River, capturing most of its flow. But to prevent salt water from creeping farther up the Mississippi and spoiling the water supply of nearby towns and industries, the Corps of Engineers allows only a third of the Mississippi's water to flow down the Atchafalaya. Still, that water and sediment have produced the healthiest wetlands in Louisiana. The Atchafalaya Delta is one of the few places in the state that's actually gaining ground instead of losing it. And if you want to see the delta, you need to go crabbing with Peanut Michel. "Peanut," it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer. At six foot six and 340 pounds, the 35-year-old commercial fisherman from Morgan City wouldn't look out of place on the offensive line of the New Orleans Saints. We launch his aluminum skiff in the predawn light, and soon we're skimming down the broad, café au lait river toward the newest land in Louisiana. Dense thickets of needlegrass, flag grass, cut grass, and a big-leafed plant Michel calls elephant ear crowd the banks, followed closely by bushy wax myrtles and shaggy willows. Michel finds his string of crab pots a few miles out in the broad expanse of Atchafalaya Bay. Even this far from shore the water is barely five feet deep. As the sun ignites into a blowtorch on the horizon, Michel begins a well-oiled ritual: grab the bullet-shaped float, shake the wire cube of its clicking, mottled green inhabitants, bait it with a fish carcass, and toss. It's done in fluid motions as the boat circles lazily in the water. But it's a bad day for crabbing. The wind and water are hot, and only a few crabs dribble in. And yet Michel is happy. Deliriously happy. Because this is what he wants to do. "They call 'em watermen up in Maryland," he says with a slight Cajun accent. "They call us lunatics here. You got to be crazy to be in this business." Despite Michel's poor haul, Louisiana's wetlands are still a prolific seafood factory, sustaining a commercial fishery that most years lands more than 300 million dollars' worth of finfish, shrimp, oysters, crabs, and other delicacies. How long the stressed marshes can maintain that production is anybody's guess. In the meantime, Michel keeps at it. "My grandfather always told me, Don't live to be rich, live to be happy," he says. And so he does. After a few hours Michel calls it a day, and we head through the braided delta, where navigation markers that once stood at the edge of the boat channel now peek out of the brush 20 feet (six meters) from shore. At every turn we flush mottled ducks, ibis, and great blue herons. Michel, who works as a hunting guide during duck season, cracks an enormous grin at the sight. "When the ducks come down in the winter," he says, "they'll cover the sun." To folks like Peanut Michel, the birds, the fish, and the rich coastal culture are reason enough to save Louisiana's shore, whatever the cost. But there is another reason, one readily grasped by every American whose way of life is tethered not to a dock, but to a gas pump: These wetlands protect one of the most extensive petroleum infrastructures in the nation. The state's first oil well was punched in south Louisiana in 1901, and the world's first offshore rig went into operation in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947. During the boom years in the early 1970s, fully half of the state's budget was derived from petroleum revenues. Though much of the production has moved into deeper waters, oil and gas wells remain a fixture of the coast, as ubiquitous as shrimp boats and brown pelicans. The deep offshore wells now account for nearly a third of all domestic oil production, while Louisiana's Offshore Oil Port, a series of platforms anchored 18 miles (29 kilometers) offshore, unloads a nonstop line of supertankers that deliver up to 15 percent of the nation's foreign oil. Most of that black gold comes ashore via a maze of pipelines buried in the Louisiana muck. Numerous refineries, the nation's largest natural gas pipeline hub, even the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are all protected from hurricanes and storm surge by Louisiana's vanishing marsh. You can smell the petrodollars burning at Port Fourchon, the offshore oil industry's sprawling home port on the central Louisiana coast. Brawny helicopters shuttle 6,000 workers to the rigs from here each week, while hundreds of supply boats deliver everything from toilet paper to drinking water to drilling lube. A thousand trucks a day keep the port humming around the clock, yet Louisiana 1, the two-lane highway that connects it to the world, seems to flood every other high tide. During storms the port becomes an island, which is why port officials like Davie Breaux are clamoring for the state to build a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) elevated highway to the port. It's also why Breaux thinks spending 14 billion dollars to save the coast would be a bargain. "We'll go to war and spend billions of dollars to protect oil and gas interests overseas," Breaux says as he drives his truck past platform anchors the size of two-story houses. "But here at home?" He shrugs. "Where else you gonna drill? Not California. Not Florida. Not in ANWR. In Louisiana. I'm third generation in the oil field. We're not afraid of the industry. We just want the infrastructure to handle it." The oil industry has been good to Louisiana, providing low taxes and high-paying jobs. But such largesse hasn't come without a cost, largely exacted from coastal wetlands. The most startling impact has only recently come to light—the effect of oil and gas withdrawal on subsidence rates. For decades geologists believed that the petroleum deposits were too deep and the geology of the coast too complex for drilling to have any impact on the surface. But two years ago former petroleum geologist Bob Morton, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, noticed that the highest rates of wetland loss occurred during or just after the period of peak oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. After much study, Morton concluded that the removal of millions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and tens of millions of barrels of saline formation water lying with the petroleum deposits caused a drop in subsurface pressure—a theory known as regional depressurization. That led nearby underground faults to slip and the land above them to slump. "When you stick a straw in a soda and suck on it, everything goes down," Morton explains. "That's very simplified, but you get the idea." The phenomenon isn't new: It was first documented in Texas in 1926 and has been reported in other oil-producing areas such as the North Sea and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Morton won't speculate on what percentage of wetland loss can be pinned on the oil industry. "What I can tell you is that much of the loss between Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Terrebonne was caused by induced subsidence from oil and gas withdrawal. The wetlands are still there, they're just underwater." The area Morton refers to, part of the Barataria-Terrebonne estuary, has one of the highest rates of wetland loss in the state. The oil industry and its consultants dispute Morton's theory, but they've been unable to disprove it. The implication for restoration is profound. If production continues to taper off in coastal wetlands, Morton expects subsidence to return to its natural geologic rate, making restoration feasible in places. Currently, however, the high price of natural gas has oil companies swarming over the marshes looking for deep gas reservoirs. If such fields are tapped, Morton expects regional depressurization to continue. The upshot for the coast, he explains, is that the state will have to focus whatever restoration dollars it can muster on areas that can be saved, not waste them on places that are going to sink no matter what. A few days after talking with Morton, I'm sitting on the levee in the French Quarter, enjoying the deep-fried powdery sweetness of a beignet from the Café du Monde. Joggers lumber by in the torpid heat, while tugs wrestle their barges up and down the big brown river. For all its enticing quirkiness, for all its licentious pleasures, for all its geologic challenges, New Orleans has been luckier than the wetlands that lined its pockets and stocked its renowned tables. The question is how long Lady Luck will shine. It brings back something Joe Suhayda, the LSU engineer, had said during our lunch by Lake Pontchartrain. "When you look at the broadest perspective, short-term advantages can be gained by exploiting the environment. But in the long term you're going to pay for it. Just like you can spend three days drinking in New Orleans and it'll be fun. But sooner or later you're going to pay." I finish my beignet and stroll down the levee, succumbing to the hazy, lazy feel of the city that care forgot, but that nature will not.

Katrina

2005-09-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

okay now! what a week, both personally, professionally and with the hurricane striking our neighboring states, an emotional rollercoaster.
i have troubel finding time to post on here, and when i think of something, it is generally when i am driving around and have no access to a pooter, or i have had too much to drink and i may regret writing what i think. that is as bad as speaking your mind when your drunk. anyhow a few thoughts with regards to NOLA and the Miss Gulf....

the numbers of dead will end up to be astounding
Mayor Ray Nagin of NOLA seems to be a pretty damn good mayor and is fighting tooth and nail for his city to survive
MS Gulf Coast is going to be built back like a mother and those casinos will be on land
we should all donate as much money as possible as well as our time
the ex wants to drive to NOLA and rescue a BMW load of people???? Have you lost your mind? Beautiful white women in expensive german cars with lots of diamonds will get raped and more than likely killed.
this whole deal in NOLA is becoming a racial pot of boiling water, it is going to blow up and soon, and no matter the results of all, the government and white guys like me will be to blame
how come Jesse fucking Jackson is down there. What exactly is he doing?
quit blaming everything on someone else, get the fucking people out and worry about everything else later.
shoot the motherfucking crackheads who are looting to get a fix, cause that is what's happening
NOLA will rebuild. It will, and the problems that need to be fixed to prevent this from happening will be put in place. but just think if Katrina came west maybe 40 or 50 miles we wouldn't be having this discussion, cause NOLA would NOT be there at all.
Give, Give, Give
don't blame me because your Auntie didn't want to leave. It is NOT my fault, or any other white guy
and don't even think about blaming Republicans. This is a non-partisan issue.

i will have more over the weekend, but let's just say the story hasnt' ended. God bless the Gulf coast.

R. L. Burnside RIP 9/1/2005

Phatphree advice

2005-08-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

Love, exciting and new."-Love Boat theme song sung by Jack Jones (1977-1985)

Isn’t it great in the beginning? Before all the bullshit, before the drama, before the restraining orders? Finding a significant other may be the single most important quest in one’s life. Infact, I’m pretty sure it’s what David Carradine was searching for in the opening credits to “Kung Fu”. He was looking for a life-partner, or maybe he just wanted to karate the fuck out of someone. Who really knows? The point I’m trying to make is the topic of finding ‘true love’ is universal. It has spawned countless shitty game shows and even shittier reality shows. It is the universal quest in the game of life; to find a soul mate that will bring you permanent happiness. Unfortunately, to do so, one must test the waters in what is known as a “relationship” to discover if the person you just had sex with in a bar restroom is also a person you can spend the rest of your life with. Personally, I have as much business talking about relationships as Maverick and Goose did buzzing the control tower in Top Gun. But hey, I am dangerous, and I'm also an opinionated "a-hole" who is starving for attention, so I’m going to talk about it anyway. I’m also going to bring in my boy Scott Hofman from The Phat Phree to add his two-cents on the subject. He’s my “Goose” on this except, he won’t die at the end (I don’t think). Scott and I are going to analyze several different types of relationships and expose them for what they really are… HILARIOUS BULLSHIT!

You see, I simply don’t get it! Maybe because I was always the “abused child” in relationships. The one who's lost all capacity to have feelings for another human being, myself included. This probably stems from my last relationship, when I was faded out like a 1983 Michael Jackson "Beat It" jacket after two long years of commitment. You remember that red jacket with all the zippers? Anyhow, 80’s references aside, Scott and I will now go about the task of identifying and breaking down some of the most common relationships out there. You may currently be in one of these, know someone else who is or, for those of you bitter commenters out there, never been in a relationship at all. Nevertheless, the following is a guide to shed some light on these relationships and hopefully promote awareness for those who find themselves in such situations. Also, it will help you to point and laugh at these people when you see them.The long distance ‘who the fuck are we kidding that we can make this work’ couple If relationships weren't challenging enough, having them across long distances is nearly fucking impossible. As if it isn’t hard enough to relate to another person when you share a common community, all of the sudden you’re going to relate across city limits, state lines, or national boundaries. Please! However, some have come to master the skill of building long-lasting relationships while not sharing the same geographical area, despite surrendering half their income to phone bills. Unfortunately, I did not (though I did single-handedly keep Verizon in business for a few months). Me? When my ex-girlfriend moved, she adapted right away by teaching herself to bang other men in my absence. I, however, did not adapt so well. While she was out there on the other end of some random guy’s Don Johnson, I was sitting at home eating Andy Capp Hot Fries, emotionally broken and wondering if she missed me as much as I missed her… I’M FUCKING PATHETIC! (note- Scott Hofman had nothing to add on this subject)

Fuck You, Let's Fuck!.The ‘fuck-you bitch, let’s fuck each other’ couple This is by far my favorite couple and, not coincidentally, the typical relationship I always find myself in. The relationship is almost always based on sex, head games, cheating, and the absence of trust. It's nothing close to functional or healthy, but boy can it be fun! Most of these kinds of couples will break up every three days but somehow manage to be together for five years. I highly recommend such a relationship, but be forewarned that things can get violent. These are NOT for the faint of heart. If the idea of being choked before, during and after sex is not your idea of a good time, then avoid such relationships.

On the other hand, if that’s what you’re into, give me a call! The ‘24-hour-seven-day-a-week’ couplePeople in this type couple of bleed insecurity as they try to become one like "Voltron" from the moment they meet. They will sleep, eat and spend every waking second with each other. They rarely leave the house alone and one is seldom seen eating without the other. They take trips together and never attend social events alone. They will forget about friendships and responsibilities and speak to each other in unintelligible baby talk. These couples should die a gruesome death, but somehow they never do. Typically they marry, move out of state and become religious fanatics that are no longer a part of your life, aside from the annual call inquiring to see if you had found the Lord. If you are currently in one of these relationships and you are reading this, fuck you!

The ‘I’m still banging my ex-boyfriend while I’m banging you but I’m not sure if I love him-love him anymore’ couple This is not so much a common couple, but it happened to me (Chad) and I have to vent. I won’t go into detail but I actually dated a girl (who turned out to be Satan herself) that would sleep over my house and then leave in the middle of night to go sleep with her other boyfriend. This went on for incredibly healthy and functional nine months. The only thing I took from that experience is that it could have been worse- I could have been the other guy getting my sloppy seconds. Believe me, you don’t want my sloppy seconds. Sidenote: I understand Satan herself is currently ruining some other poor son-of-a-bitch's life as we speak. Sorry, dude.

The ‘we’ve got no other options’ couple Most of us have been in this type of relationship. You know it isn’t going anywhere, but it’s guaranteed action, and you don’t really hate each other… you just don’t really like each other, either. This may be the most common of all couples, and doesn’t really make any waves for the people around them. You’d both cheat on each other in a heartbeat if you could, but for whatever reason the opportunity hasn’t presented itself. Eventually, one or the other finds someone else and ends the relationship. At this point, the dumped person often goes into a deep depression, longing to be back in the “going nowhere” relationship until eventually he/she gets laid again and they repeat the cycle.
Fuck you guys.

The ‘perfect story-book’ couple The percentage is low, but such couples do exist -- it's the ultimate goal in dating. This type of couple is headed into a long, loving, happy union. The relationship is ideal from the start, and poses few problems to the happy lovers. Love at first sight -- this couple was meant to be. People in this situation will marry and become pairs, like Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose, John and Yoko, Jack and Diane, Bonnie and Clyde, Arm and Hammer ... all the great couples of our time. They make the rest of the dating world envious. You will want to kill this couple eventually- DEAD! At least you can take solace in the fact that someday they will die. Unfortunately, they have agreed that their love will last forever. Bastards.

There is absolutely no reason'Tubbs' should be in this article.I hope you've enjoyed our warped, pseudo-expert outlook on relationships. Our only advice before you get into one of these is to learn to be alone and love yourself before you share your time with someone else. Just kidding. Actually, we want you to be sure to never refuse to kiss your lover after she’s done licking your taint. I know this sounds repulsive, but nothing will ever bring a couple closer together than giving her a little sugar on that dirty little Hog-Washer of hers. It’s a way of saying, “I’m not going anywhere baby.” Suck on that, Dr. Phil.

My heart

2005-08-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

this has been a pretty bad week so far, and i promise that i will start posting some worthwhile things coming up. Just the hurricane, labor day week, and my love and i finally parting ways have been very tough on me

Katarina, one bad bitch

2005-08-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

To those who may read this, please consider sending a small donation to the American Red Cross to assist in the recovery from Hurricane Katarina, and if you can swing it The Humane Society of The United States is also desperately in need of help.
This is an incredibly horrible situation that has occurred and i hope that each and every one of you can help.

i'm back, again

2005-08-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

a couple of pieces that really are worth the read. will post some things over the weekend. it is on my to do list.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050825/wl_uk_afp/britainoffbeatzoo

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9069423/

world's shortest fairy tale

2005-08-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?"
The girl said "No."
And the guy lived happily ever after, drank lots of beer, and went golfing a lot.
THE END

J-Walk Blog Link Experiment

2005-08-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/attention_bloggers/

Idiot bites Postman

2005-08-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

By Associated PressAugust 12, 2005
HOUMA, La. - A mail carrier got bitten, by a barking man, police said.
Mark D. Plumb, 20, of Butler, Mo., was arrested and charged with simple battery Wednesday after he ran barking from a house and bit the letter carrier on the shoulder, police spokesman Lt. Todd Duplantis said.

Plumb said he bit the carrier as a joke, and has no history of criminal activity or mental illness, police said.
Plumb was released from the Terrebonne Parish jail after posting $165 bond.

Sports chick dreams

2005-08-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few months, you have heard of Danica Patrick. I’ll be the first to admit that I couldn't give less of a fuck about Indy-car, or NASCAR (Neck-Car), or street racing, or any other kind of racing for that matter, or turning left all day (as my man Jim Rome would say). My concern is that Danica Patrick, like other female athletes, (not that race car drivers are actually athletes, but…) is confusing heterosexual men and homosexual women everywhere. Is she hot, or not? I sure as hell can’t tell. The problem with Ms. Patrick, is that you’ll see her one time, and she looks really hot: long dark hair slowing gently down around her shoulders… intense eyes… nice smile… cute nose- and the next time you see her, whoa! Pockmarks… disheveled hair… Miss Piggy’s nose… and I’m left asking myself: what the hell happened? Danica Patrick is a beauty enigma; the most recent in a span of females in sport, ranging from long before I was born until long after I’ll be dead. Throughout my lifetime of viewing sports, I’ve come across many of these women, so here they are in pseudo-chronological order, starting with Danica Patrick. I’ll allow you to be judge, jury, and executioner regarding the status of these ladies: are they Hot, or Not?

Danica Patrick-I think the good outweighs the bad when it comes to Danica. I’m a sucker for longer, darker hair, and I find her petite stature intriguing. Despite her sitting down to do her job all the time, the figure looks all right. Too bad she can’t drive from her knees. Plus a woman who can drive… now that’s hot (plus she’s knows how to drive stick!).
My Verdict: Hot
Fantasy Scenario: Danica gives me road head, sans helmet, while I attempt to control an Indy car at 200 MPH after drinking a twelve pack of Miller High Life… The Champagne of Beers!

Misty May and Kerri Walsh-These volleyball vixens may be a little long in the tooth, but since I’m offering them as a pair, age ain’t nuthin’ but a number! The swimsuits plus the tans equal hot, and the bodies seem to be on point as well (although I like a little more in the breast department myself). If the faces don’t work for you, mix in some sunglasses... they work wonders! May Walsh bang L? Walsh May bang L? Either way I’m getting’ mines, threesome style. Six serving nine!
My Verdict: HotFantasy Scenario: Misty gives me a BJ (mainly working the shaft) while Kerri helps out (mainly working the balls) as their gold medals dangle from my skyward-pointing erection.

Maria Sharapova-I’m not much for blondes, but I’d bang this up-and-cumming tennis star like she was a timpani drum and I was in the percussion section of the New York Philharmonic. There is something intrinsically hot about tennis skirts and/or tennis dresses, and Ms. Sharapova fills it out with a toned, slinky figure that has fellas reaching for more than the remote when they are watching one of her matches. I have to give her extra props from being from the former Eastern Bloc and still being fine (in Eastern Europe, vodka is to ‘shot glasses’ as beer is to ‘beer goggles’ in the United States).
My Verdict: HotFantasy Scenario: Maria and I are trapped somewhere in Siberia in a cabin, with nothing to keep us warm but an endless supply of Stolichnaya Vodka and condoms.

Diana Taurasi-This former UConn Lady Husky and current Phoenix Mercury guard isn’t bad looking… Not that I’ve met her personally, but she seems to give off the vibe that she’s probably heterosexual. My only real problem with Taurasi is her legs. She just doesn’t have the calf development that you’d expect from a professional athlete. She doesn’t have cankles, but her legs remind me of 2-x-4’s made of sausage links. More running and less Manicotti equals more opportunities for sucking Cannolis.
My Verdict: Not HotFantasy Scenario: I have intercourse with Diana doggy-style while I eat Linguini, in a creamy wine sauce and heavy extra virgin olive oil, off her back with a spork.

Sue Bird-Don’t confuse Sue Bird with NBA All-Ugly Teamer Larry Bird. Although they share a last name and can shoot the pill, they are not related; nor are they similar looking. Sue Bird is probably the most attractive female basketball player I’ve ever seen, and on top of it, she’s a baller! Game knows game, and I would fill Sue Bird out like an application. Plus, since she has to have at least a few lesbian teammates, odds are she has to be open-minded enough to experiment.
My Verdict: HotFantasy Scenario: Sue and I play a seven game series of one-on-one to eleven straight, in which I win the seventh and final game 11-9. In order to ‘get even’, she challenges me to a seven orgasm sex marathon, in which the loser comes first… I lose four games to three.

Anna Kournikova-Sorry, friends; I just don’t see it. The fact is that she’s a shitty tennis player and that has always been kind of a turn-off; not to mention she got fucked by someone with ‘hockey hair’ in the form of Sergei Federov. She also has a bit of a rat face in my opinion. Rats named Splinter can lead the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, but they cannot have relations with an internet journalist of my elite status.
My Verdict: Not HotFantasy Scenario: I sit in the stands at center court and watch as she wins Wimbledon.

Serena Williams and Venus Williams-Doubles, anyone? Although I will offer the Williams' as a pair, it would be tough to make it out of this sister sandwich alive. You could probably hold court with Venus, but there is definitely a 50/50 chance that Serena would accidentally rip off your meat pole while attempting to give you a satisfying handjob during foreplay... I'm sure she would just not realize her own strength. Also, Serena reminds me a lot more of Grace Jones than Cleopatra Jones, and as Hall and Oates said, “I can’t go for that.”
Verdict: Not HotFantasy Scenario: Serena and Venus ride a double-headed dildo as I watch, masturbating in the corner, sadistically chanting “ass to ass… ass to ass”, a la “Requiem for a Dream”.

Jennifer Capriati-Unlike wine, Jennifer Capriati has gotten worse with age. She went from a thin, athletic teen playing tennis to a twenty-something weakside linebacker playing tennis. Although I’m okay with the face, Capriati has three major flaws… broad shoulders, a chunky torso, and cankles. Yuck.
My Verdict: Not HotFantasy Scenario: I have intercourse with Jennifer doggy style while I eat meat Ravioli, in a hearty red sauce and heavy extra virgin olive oil off her back with a spork. De ja vu?

courtesy of thephatphree.com

The Magnolia State

2005-08-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

this is attributed to Paul Harvey................................

Mississippi is still burning. Times have changed, but the incendiarieswon't quit. Mississippi, statistically, could shame most of our stateswith its minimal per-capita crime, its cultural maturity and itsdistinguished alumni. But Mississippi has enough residual gentility ofthe Old South not to rub our noses in our own comparative inadequacy.The pack-media could not wait to remake the movie MISSISSIPPI BURNING,into a TV version called, MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI. Thus yet anothergeneration of Americans is indoctrinated with indelible snapshots whichare half a century out of date. The very idea that anybody from NewYork, D.C., Chicago or L. A. could launch stones from those shabby glasshouses toward anybody else is patently absurd. Lilliputians have apsychological need to make everybody else appear small, and Mississippi,too nice to fight back, is such an easy target.The International Ballet Competition regularly rota! tes among fourcitadels where there is a sufficiency of sophisticated art appreciation:Vama, Bulgaria; Helsinki, Finland; Moscow, Russia and Jackson,Mississippi.Only Mississippi has a satellite art program in which the State Museumof Art sends exhibits around the state for the enjoyment of smallercommunities. No state can point to a richer per capita contribution toarts and letters. William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Walker Percy, EllenDouglas, Willie Morris, Margaret Walker Alexander, Eudora Welty,Tennessee Williams, Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs) and JohnGrisham are Mississippians.As are Leontyne Price, Elvis Presley, Tammy Wynette, B. B. King, JimmyRogers, Oprah Winfrey, and Jimmy Buffett.(Dawn: Don't forget Morgan Freeman and Tina Turner!)Scenery? The Nachez Trace is the second most traveled parkway in ournation. With magnolia and dogwood, stately pines and moss-draped oaks,Mississippi is in bloom all! year 'round. And the state staysbusy---manufacturing more upholstered furniture than any state; testingspace shuttle engines for NASA; and building rocket motors.Much of our nation's most monumental medical progress has roots inMississippi. The first heart transplant in 1964. The first lungtransplant in 1963. The most widely used medical textbook in the world,THE TEXTBOOK OF MEDICAL PHYSIOLOGY, reprinted in ten languages, wasauthored by Dr. Arthur Guyton of the University of Mississippi.The "Case Method" of practicing law, the basis of the United Stateslegal system, was developed at the University of Mississippi.Nationally, educators are chewing their fingernails up past the secondknuckle anxious about the disgraceful rate of dropouts and illiterategraduates. In Mississippi, the state government and two philanthropicorganizations have teamed up to put a computer-based literacy program inevery elementary school in the state.

Maybe Mississippi is right to downplay its opportunities, advantages and refinement.
The ill-mannered rest of us, converging, would surely mess it up.

from the Onion

2005-08-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.theonion.com/travel/travel_restaurant.html

not for the squemish

2005-07-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/27/AR2005072701952_pf.html

and you wonder why people hate clowns??

2005-07-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

http://buffo.com/who.htm

oh my god

2005-07-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.clownsofamerica.org/

Hurricane hunter

2005-07-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

this guy is nuts. he travels the world chasing down Hurricanes, and Typhoons and shit. Pretty wild.

http://www.rambocam.com/

Baby Daddy

2005-07-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES – After spending the past two years paying child support to a woman he impregnated during a one-night stand, 27-year old Los Angeles investment banker Scott Smith received paternity test results on Friday indicating that he ain’t the baby’s daddy.According to Smith, the ordeal began close to three years ago while attending a bachelor party for a friend in Santa Monica. Although he claims to be against one-night stands on sheer principle, Smith told Reuters that the alcohol and coke-fueled binge he went on that evening led to him breaking his rule. “Man, it was a pretty crazy night. We started off at Hooters with some wings and beer, and then moved on from there. By the end of the night I was doing lines in the back of the limo, and the next thing I knew I was sucking face with some chick we were partying with.”The chick Smith was partying with, 23-year old Santa Monica resident Callie Daniels, ended up taking Smith back to her place for what he described as “some of the most drunken shitty sex of my life.” Although the two exchanged numbers along with promises of a future date, Smith discarded her number in the nearest trash bin while walking back to his car. “Yeah dude, I couldn't get rid of that damn card fast enough. No way did I want to have anything to do with her again. Talk about a total cokehead.” Several weeks later, however, Smith received a call from Daniels indicating that she was pregnant, and that he was the baby’s daddy. “Dude, I just about shit a brick when she told me that,” Smith told reporters. “I mean, yeah, we fucked without condoms, but I pulled out before I blew my load. Always worked before. I was thinking, ain’t no way I’m that baby’s daddy.”
Coming soon to a Walgreens near youFollowing the news of Daniels’ pregnancy, Smith avoided subsequent calls from her over the next nine months, before being slapped with a court order mandating that he pay Daniels $1000 a month in child support. “Man, I was so fuckin’ irritated when I got that damn letter, but I figured it was about time that I sacked up and took responsibility for the kid, ya know? My old man went grocery shopping one day and never came back.” Over the next two years, Smith remained diligent in his child support payments to Daniels, and even played babysitter on several occasions when Daniels went to Las Vegas for business on the weekends. Despite this amicable arrangement, Smith had nagging doubts about whether the baby was really his. “I have no idea what Callie does for a living, but I did find it a little weird how she would always have hundred dollar bills in her purse. Not to mention the damn kid looks nothing like me.”After a chance encounter with a former colleague who had a similar experience of being a baby’s daddy from a one night stand, Smith took the kid in for a DNA sample while babysitting during one of Daniels' Vegas business outings.Upon receiving the results indicating that he ain’t the baby’s daddy, Smith celebrated the news with another alcohol and coke binge in Santa Monica. Information is limited at the current time as to his whereabouts the following day.

ripped from thephatphree.com thanks!!

hey use guys, check it out

2005-07-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.thephatphree.com/features.asp?StoryID=984&SectionID=11&LayoutType=1

http://www.njguido.com/

Party on Garth

2005-07-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

oh my god! huffing gold paint is always a good buzz. kinda like the t.v. tuner cleaner that i used to hit while in college. this is courtesy of the smoking gun. at the end of the blurb about this dude are links to other great mug shots. I'm surprised that they don't have mine or the ex's on here??

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0721051gold1.html?link=rssfeed

this, i just don't know anymore.

2005-07-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

more from thephatphree.com

Miami, FL -- A local man was arrested this past Monday at Miami's Haulover nude beach. Charlie Wrigley, 34, was arrested and charged with lewdness, indecent exposure and a lascivious act. If convicted, Wrigley could face 1-3 years of jail time along with numerous fines.The arresting officer responded to several cell-phone calls made from disturbed beach goers. "I found Mr. Wrigley at the beach, nude of course, at 12:30 pm. He was doing a handstand, a handstand that he had been holding for well over an hour," said Miami Police Officer O'Brien. "I asked Mr. Wrigley to up-end himself and took him away in handcuffs."Officer O'Brien arrested Wrigley for two misdemeanor counts of public indecency, under Chapter 800 of Florida law: lewdness; indecent exposure. This states that it is unlawful to expose or exhibit one’s sexual organs in public... in a vulgar or indecent manner. Lewd exhibition of the genitals is strictly prohibited by Florida penal code.Stating the facts, Officer O'Brien claimed that "Wrigley did not put up a fight, but rather peacefully repeated that he was only sunbathing."Wrigley was processed and booked, and quickly posted bail. He was then released on his own recognizance. He is scheduled for an arraignment later next month.After Wrigley was released he made this statement:"I have been a taxpaying, honorable member of this community for all of my life. One of my greatest joys is spending time at this nude beach. What exactly am I guilty of? I guess I'm guilty of being a nude white man on a Monday afternoon. Perhaps I'm guilty of tanning nude at a nude beach? Is that a crime? Sure, my approach may be different, but it's effective. My proven even-tanning system requires that on some days in the early afternoon hours, when the sun is directly overhead, I do prolonged naked handstands or naked handstand-splits, so that I may get a little color on my 'taint."He then took some questions from the press...Why do you feel the need to tan your 'taint, as you put it, in public?Alright, fair question. I like to have a complete tan. For me it would be unbearable to have a 'taint that is white like a frog's belly.
I was on a killer coke binge that week, my bad dude.My apologies but what exactly is a 'taint?Oh, how presumptuous of me! A 'taint is the precious, delicate soft skin between the scrotum and the anus, in that 'taint your balls and 'taint your ass.Oh, I see. Well can you appreciate that other people do not wish to see your, er, parts?Please, call it a 'taint, the more we talk about it the more we can all understand it.Ok, 'taint then?Look, this is a nude beach. Are there other ways to get an even tan down there? I would say no. I have tried everything from squatting over a large mirror to inventing a beach chair with stirrups that aim my 'taint directly at the sun. I find that a handstand, and particularly the handstand-split to be most effective. Also, last time I checked, this wasn't Red Commie China! If I can't tan the way I like, what is the point of living here? What is the point of living at all? I'll have my day in court, and I believe that they will be hard-pressed to find a jury of my peers that won't sympathize with me, or my 'taint. Wrigley's beach days are not without incident. Just last fall, he was carried off the beach in a gurney by the EMS and was taken via ambulance to a nearby hospital. He had collapsed on the nude beach due to severe chest pains. He had taken several Viagra tablets every hour on the hour for most of the day in order to act as a "human sundial."Longtime friend and neighbor Ryan Sanders offered some words of support. "Charlie is a great guy, really. Salt of the earth. What can I say? He takes a lot of pride in his junk. Maybe too much. But I have to admit, and I'm not gay or anything, but he does indeed have a gorgeous 'taint."Dan Aykroyd, who was passing through my thought process as he often does, was in town auditioning for a re-make of the 1994 delicious classic, My Girl 2. Ackroyd added his own two cents, "Wow another story about dicks, you're sooo talented."Ah but Mr. Aykroyd, this story is true.

Happy Hour Heroes

2005-07-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

from thephatphree.com................

Here’s to those who observe strict cocktail hours, from 5 p.m. sharp until last call. Thank you, Happy Hour heroes. The rest of us owe these marathon binge drinkers a great debt of gratitude. Sustaining themselves on nothing but tortilla chips and buffet chicken wings, these Friday Night knights in coats of sport have the courage to begin their evenings hours earlier than those who feel it necessary to go home after work and change, nap or shower.If it were not for the Happy Hour hero, who would call you at 7:30 p.m. and remind you that you are, indeed, a pussy.Thanks to those who turn a few beers after work into a Grey Goose-fueled blackout, Happy Hour heroes test their limits every weekend. The rest of us should be ashamed to be content with simply "going out", as opposed to the biological feats these hardened heroes pull off week in and week out. When their ties are loosened and their sportcoats are on the floor of a corner booth, Happy Hour heroes rule the roost until they can no longer speak. These brave, drunk men are the ones who creep out any woman they approach and force them to talk to the lesser men who watched a few hours of TV after work and put on some jeans before hitting the bars.Thank you, Happy Hour heroes, for buying the entire bar a round of shots. At least that’s what we think you said. And thanks to the credit card you will leave behind at the bar, we will always remember your name.In the trenches longer than a full day’s work, thank you Happy Hour heroes for fighting the good fight against unconsciousness. By all means, rest for awhile. You’ve earned it. Lay your head down in that comfy ash tray. As God as my witness, no one will be allowed near your forehead with a permanent marker.Happy Hour heroes, your breath may be heavy and strong from a long night of Marlboro Lights and well gin, but It is not offensive to anyone who knows of your quest. That smell of decay is merely a reminder to the rest of us that you get more done before midnight than the rest of us can accomplish all night. Happy Hour heroes, even though the bartender, who you thought was your new friend, turned against you after he slipped in your vomit, don’t loose sight of your duty. He, like you say, is indeed a dick, and is incapable of understanding the life of a man with the courage to begin his night at 5 p.m. Even though he’s been serving you water for an hour, Happy Hour hero, do you think a mere bartender would be in better shape after 13 gimlets on a stomach full of nothing but hours-old cocktail wieners? Hush now, that doesn’t make any sense, but I’m sure a few hours ago you would have belted out a hearty, “Fuck no!”For all you do, Happy Hour hero, from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you. Now it’s time to go. Get up off the floor. You’ve ruined your suit.

Springer turned her down

2005-07-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/spears%20to%20give%20birth%20on%20tv

news of the really scary

2005-07-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0715051tanner1.html

obviously they don't congregate in the dental hygeine aisle

2005-07-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=940058&page=1

i'm losing it

2005-07-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

okay. let's get this straight. i do not, repeat do not spend hours surfing the net. but i think that i have really found the end all of life itself. strange how i watched the weather channel and CNN last weekend in my Hurricane frenzy. Well, i always thought that the chicks on TWC and CNN, etc. were SCORCHING.
Well now, some scumbag beat me to the punch and has a website dedicated to the aforementioned hotties.

http://www.kapturedforyou.com/

Take a Burmese walk on the wild side

2005-07-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

From the archives of my friend Robin, who is inexplicably turning 29 again tomorrow. She will celebrate her birthday yet again, watching Duran Duran prance across the Orpheum stage before she relegates herself to a drunk spin on the poles at Raifords, only to end up puking a horrid stream of Bud Light and cigs onto her boyfriend Crusty's prized home hot wing fryer....
Happy birthday my dear!! Have fun and please don't get into a fight with Spenderella if you see her................................................Now to the news,

Hlaing Thar Yar, Myanmar - Chicken-seller Thin Sandarin had always dreamt of being a man. When she inexplicably grew a penis last month, the 21-year-old treated it as an awe-inspiring omen - as have the thousands of stunned villagers who have travelled to a pagoda to see him."On the morning of the full moon day of June 21, I noticed my thing (sex organ) was not the same as before," Thin Sandar, who now goes by the male name Than Sein, said on Wednesday."And my breasts disappeared," Than Sein added. "So I called out and showed it all to my mom and dad. It was very strange."Experts have examined him, and he awaits test results from a women's hospital. - Sapa-AFP.

from thephatphree.com

2005-07-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

this is funny as shit................

"The hot dog eating contest is not only a beautiful display of athleticism, it is a fundamental way for citizens of all nations to display patriotism." - Wayne Norbitz, president of Nathan's Famous.

Legend (*cough* Wikipedia) has it that the first Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog-Eating Contest was an impromptu affair between four immigrants, staged to settle an argument about who was the most patriotic American of the group. Naturally, they chose to settle the dispute with an eating contest. The winner was an Irishman named Jim Mullen, who slammed down 13 hot dogs in 12 minutes- a modest total by today’s standards, but far too many for his compatriots to keep up with. The contest was held at Nathan’s, which was opened by one Nathan Handwerker in the same year of 1916 on the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island. I’m going to guess that the immigrant story is B.S., and this Handwerker cat dreamed up the contest to help his fledgling business. Either way, it stuck- the business and the contest, which has been held every year since 1916 save for four: 1939-41 and 1971 (as a protest against either the hippies or the hardhats, or both).Hippies and hardhats hate freedom. We don’t. We love it. Freedom to Americans means the freedom to do what feels good as much as possible while mindlessly living in a highly regulated quasi-police state, and we can get down with that. And on the 4th of July there’s nothing that feels better than eatin’ and competin’. Especially when you combine them.Now, Americans have invented a lot of things that they now get outclassed at: bobsledding and basketball are only two examples. But one would think that an eating contest, especially a hot dog-eating contest, would be right up our collective alley. Aren’t we always being told how much fucking fatter we are than any other people on Earth? Isn’t some asshole always lecturing us about this? Besides, who else eats hot dogs? Apparently Japanese people eat them, because in all but four years since 1986, and in all but one year since 1996, the winner of the contest, and the holder of the prestigious Mustard Yellow Belt, has been Japanese. Of all the people on Earth besides us fat Americans to dominate the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, it seems… appropriate that it’s the Japanese who have stepped up and done it. They are a small folk, to be sure- small in stature as a general rule. But it seems as a culture the Japanese have long been attracted to public, spectacular displays of self-abnegation, and for that reason the spectacle of an event where a man stands under a 100-degree sun and stuffs hot dogs into his body until he just can’t take it anymore would naturally hold an attraction for the folks in the Country Formerly Known as Nippon. That having been said, it really isn’t the entire nation of Japan that brutally beats ‘our boys’ on the 4th. It’s one man. His name: Takeru Kobayashi.
In 2001, Takeru Kobayashi (no relation to Keyzer Soze’s lawyer) came out of nowhere to shock the worl’ by consuming an even fifty hot dogs, annihilating the previous record of 25. Takeru’s “Solomon Technique”- breaking the 'dogs in two and jamming both halves into his mouth at once- as well as his trademark headband (a nice accessory if you plan on flying a fighter plane into an American aircraft carrier in the best kamikaze style, or performing the Crane Kick in the All-Valley Karate Tourney), were more than adequate to overcome his diminutive size of 131 pounds.
勝利は私の物である!Just in case you didn’t catch that, Takeru doubled the record. With apologies to Fran Tarkenton, John Davidson, and Kathy Lee Crosby, that’s fucking incredible. Takeru did the gastronomic equivalent of a 112-game hitting streak. And he wasn’t done. The following year he won again*, beating his own record by a half a hot dog; won again in 2003; and won for the fourth consecutive year in 2004, eating 53-and-a-half hot dogs in the process.*- Takeru’s 2002 win was accompanied by some carping over him allegedly regurgitating hot dog and liquid bun. Regurgitation is an offense subject to disqualification. The two runners-up, the guys doing the most complaining, weighed 400 and 360 pounds, respectively. And they were cryin’. Babies. It’s not Gitmo that makes me ashamed to be an American ( the Israelis have probably been using Korans as volleyballs for fifty years, so hey). But a 360-pound man getting destroyed by a 130-pound man in an eating contest, then pissing and moaning about it... now, that really chaps my ass.A couple more details on our man Kobayashi:- Won a television special called "Glutton Bowl #1" in 2002. The show aired on Fox and consisted of, among other things, eating contests involving whole sticks of butter, sushi rolls, and gallon jars of mayonnaise.
No ketchup (unless you're from Pittsburgh)- Defeated in an eating contest by a Kodiak bear named “Diamond” on a 2003 television special called, aptly, “Man vs. Beast”. “Mvs.B” was actually a show in five parts: the hot dog-eating contest; a tug-of-war between a Sumo wrestler and an orangutan (Jesus Christ, that poor guy probably got his fucking arms ripped off); a race consisting of future 200-meter gold medal-winner Shawn Crawford, a zebra, and a cheetah; an obstacle-course race between a Navy SEAL and a chimp; and- this is awesome- a team of midgets versus an elephant to see who can be the first to pull a DC-10 feet. It aired on Fox: naturally, as Peg Bundy would say.What we have here, in Mr. Kobayashi, is a man who, a.) capitalizes on the one bizarre skill he has to the tune of dollar bills and TV exposure, and b.) can eat an absolute shitload at one time. And I’ll confess, I’ve never watched a hot dog-eating contest in my life (I did watch the pie-eating contest in Stand by Me, when the Ladies Auxiliary barfed all over the Benevolent Order of Antelopes), but I like this guy’s style. I’ve always considered myself a Little Guy, and a Little Guy always roots for another Little Guy in the field of endeavor, athletic or otherwise. Doug Flutie is my favorite Heisman winner for the same reason (even though he beat out Ohio State's Keith Byars, but I digress). The way Takeru cashes in on his hot dog-eating ability impresses me as well. Anything you can do well, you ought to do for money. That’s the American Dream, right? That’s why, despite our manufacturing base going almost wholly offshore, our porn industry is still right here at home and the best in the world. I can always get down with that. So in closing, here’s to softball, whiffleball, and every other competition Americans will engage in this long weekend. Here’s to eating meat of every type, cut, and quality, right down to the lowly hot dog. Here’s to Takeru Kobayashi and his Solomon Technique. And if the nationalistic aspects of this contest appeal to y’all, we can always offer this guy citizenship. He won’t blow anyone up, and he won’t take anyone’s job, unless your job is to win highly publicized hot dog-eating contests. He’s the perfect immigrant!

Football season is just around the corner people

2005-07-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

this is the finest group of young men that I could ever imagine having on one single team.....

http://www.thephatphree.com/features.asp?StoryID=850&SectionID=2

Hollywood comes up with a plan!

2005-07-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

I don't know if Robin Williams ever said any of this, but it is pretty fucking funny, and true...

Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan What we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message. Robin Williams' plan....(Hard to argue with this logic!) I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's one plan."
1..) "The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those 'good ole boys,' We will never "interfere" again.
2..) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea, the Middle East, and the Philippines. They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.
3..) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave. We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of who or where they are.. They're illegal!!! France will welcome them.
4..) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!!!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.
5..) No foreign "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.
6..) The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.
7..) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel! for their oil. If they don't like it, we go some place else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)
8..) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides most of what we give them is stolen or givento the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.
9..) Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island some place. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.
10.) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH.....learn it...or LEAVE..... Now, isn't that a winner of a plan? "The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?' "

I wanna hire this teller

2005-07-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

That must have been one heck of a note
Bank robber gets cash with message sent through drive-up tube system

Updated: 7:12 p.m. ET July 12, 2005
CHICAGO - That was easy.
A bank robber behind the wheel of his car Tuesday sent a note through a vacuum tube to the teller at the drive-through window at a branch of Chicago’s LaSalle Bank, and the teller obliged, returning an undisclosed amount of cash, police said.
The exchange was completed through the bank’s pneumatic tube communications system, in which canisters are passed back and forth between motorist and teller.

The FBI said it was investigating the drive-through theft.
The bank is owned by ABN AMRO Holding NV.

NY Post nastiness

2005-07-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

From my friend Robin, an avid reader of the New York Post and fan of Cindy Adams. Well I aint too sure, but it looks like both sides got in valid points here. But let me say Arkansas might not be on my short list of places to live, and I work here.

ANGRY letter from a Sandi Wilkins after what I considered my funny column about visiting her Little Rock, Ark., hometown:
"You don't appreciate us, and we do not appreciate you. In New York recently, after the worst play ever, we were at our Marriott Hotel by 10:30 and told we couldn't have anything to eat, only drinks. I understand why in N.Y. it's so vital to have a drink!!! No grass, no trees, no sleep because of the constant sounds. People swarmed by peddlers with fake Rolexes. Everyone discourteous, no wonderful lawns or huge homes to relax in. Our waiter said he made $100,000 a year and lived in one bedroom that cost $3,400 a month. You should see what Arkansans have for a whole lot less. I think we will all be happy if we stay out of New York and you stay out of Little Rock."
Sandi, hon, it's a deal.
KIDDIES, mother is taking a week off to put her face up in curlers. So don't give up on me and switch to reading the Little Rock Blade or anything because I love you a lot. See you the 14th.

home science for the kids

2005-07-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.easyfunschool.com/article1141.html

Tom Cruise kills Oprah.

2005-07-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

http://mirror.randomfoo.net/memes/2005/06/Tom_Cruise_Kills_Oprah.mov