Portland Nature/Scenery Photos

Portland Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, and some waterfalls and vistas along the Columbia River. I'll get to the city photos later...

I'm surprised it took this long.

Dissent is no longer patriotic.

Will there even be a United States of America by the time we get a chance to vote this asshole out?

Starting to get entertaining.

Shepard Fairey arrested on outstanding warrants. Which is apparently part of his anarchist-lite schtick, and of course they don't say what the warrants are for.

I'm having a good laugh at the people who think some conspiracy of evil corporate Bushitler fans made some calls and had him taken out.

OTOH, I'm getting more and more disgusted by how many adult-age people think vandalism is awesome if you call it "street art."

Taking a break from making calls about my stolen identity

If I was working, I would totally buy the Obama Playing Cards from the PeoplesCube.



Maybe someday...

(Frightening that Saul Alinsky looks a little like Lombardi when you flatten him into two colors.)

Well, at least I'm keeping busy.

Someone obtained my debit card number, address, and e-mail address and made a bunch of charges since Tuesday. Kids, probably, since they're buying acne cream, tooth whitener, and memberships to tuition grant information websites. Fraud charges look nice on college apps, don't you think?

The bank is making me call all these companies myself, which irritates me, but they've given me some additional useful information to pass along to the police. (I was motivated to file a police report because they created an e-mail account with a username similar to mine for the purpose of signing up for this crap--trying to rip me off is one thing but violating my personal space like that something else altogether.)

*sigh* I wonder if I dropped a printout at PDX or something. I was really too sick to notice.

Get the popcorn...

Corporate MSM vs the socialist-chic cult. Kind of like a Hawkeye-Bugeaters game.

AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image

Actually, I think I want the AP to win, because I'm very uncomfortable with the concept that it's acceptable to steal intellectual property to benefit politicians or government:

Robin Gross, an intellectual property attorney who heads IP Justice, an international civil liberties organization, believes that Fairey had the right to use the photo, saying that he intended it for a political cause, not commercial use.

"Fairey's purpose of the use for the photo was political or civic, and this will certainly count in favor of the poster being a fair use," said Gross, based in San Francisco.

Not really in a politics-blogging mood.

I'm back from Portland, I seem to have picked up some sort of viral GI thing best left undescribed, and I'm increasingly depressed that I wasted the past twenty years reading and working and traveling instead of mindlessly pumping out fatherless babies at taxpayer expense.

Here's a picture from Multnomah Falls:


Blogger really seems to be messing up image dimensions lately.

Lichen

Photo taken in the Columbia River Gorge.

Scenic Portland, OR

My sister and I are visiting our brother in Portland for a few days before he deploys.

I have a whole lot of interesting things to say about Portland when I return.

(Also, I left my parka in the trunk of my car, and I lost my had somewhere between MSP and dinner last night, so I expect Milwaukee to be subzero when I get back--sorry about that, everyone.)

I hope this gets as much attention as PeTA...

NBC is refusing to air, during that game on Sunday with that name trademarked by the NFL, a pro-life commercial that notes Barack Obama wasn't aborted, even though his childhood was a NARAL template for "why we need more abortions, and women shouldn't be expected to pay for them--the government should."

It's quite tasteful and well within FCC regulations, unlike women masturbating with vegetables (no, I'm not linking to that).

...although with the lies and the "stimulus" and the foreign abortions and the scuttling of national defense, it's very hard to believe Stanley Ann made a good choice. Good for Barack, not so hot for a lot of other people. I'll have to think about this. God knows I have too much time to think these days.

Huh.

When you run for president as a community organizer, and a writer, or even a professor of constitutional law, perhaps it's politic to hide a few salient details about your actual lifestyle that might mess up the "savior of the downtrodden" narrative. It's important to keep up the fiction that only spoiled, indifferent, wealthy Republicans have personal servants.

I swear, everytime I read about things Michelle Obama does or says, I respect her even less. There has to be a bottom here somewhere, right?

Also some blather in the link about "locavore eating." I assume those wagyu steaks our smarter, Earth-caring-er betters were served last night were raised in Georgetown...

Heh.

Ow.

Shut up and read the lines someone else wrote for you

Gillian Anderson blogs.

And how the hell do you clean the house and make the dinner and do the shopping? I know I am sounding like a complete idiot here but I’m telling you, every last one of you from the beginning of time should be given a medal, and free health insurance, and food coupons, and a government subsidized housekeeper that comes in one day a week per child.

I thought Britain already did that for "long-term unemployed" single mothers. Maybe it's only for the wives of Wahhabist imams...

The Sarah Palin icon brings up another interesting thing I did not comment on today because there's really no point...one of my Facebook "friends" posted a link to the announcement of SarahPAC with the usual "she's so stupid, she should shut up and stay home" commentary.

I really wanted to highlight the absurdity of an unattractive woman, pushing 40, divorced after her husband preferred someone else, childless, working dead-end clerical jobs as long as I've known her--and I'm not being catty, except for "divorced" and "clerical" I could be describing myself--thinking they're smarter and less irrelevant than an attractive sitting governor with a nice family, including a son in the Army protecting us from people who would just as soon kill American women as look at them (and don't treat their own women and children any better).

But there's no point in arguing with that sort of self-absorbtion, is there?

[I would like the SarahPAC website to list some specific policy ideas related to "Sarah Palin's plans to build a better, stronger, and safer America in the 21st century." Sounds nice, but I want substance. But I look forward to seeing what sort of local candidates the PAC supports.]

The Endive

Headline: 'Doomsday Machine' Might Indeed Destroy World
Riff: Otherwise, it'd be a pretty crappy 'Doomsday Machine.'

Ooooh.

I trust you've all pre-ordered your Obama fleece panel to make cuddly no-sew throws.

I understand documenting the election/coronation with a commemorative quilt, but wrapping up your loved ones in The One is pathology.

Of special interest to me

Coach Dungy will be on Rush Limbaugh this Thursday.

Maybe Rush will ask him about his support of Obama.

Only YOU Can Save Teh Planet™

Iowahawk, of course:

As an eco-aware, planetary resource parasite, you will eventually want to kill yourself to spare the environment any further damage that your personal existence has already caused. However, it is important that you plan your suicide carefully as not to disturb the ecosystem’s delicate balance. Self immolation, while poignant, can release up to 50 kg of airborne fluorocarbons. Why not try the the hot new Malibu trend, ritual Japanese sepukku? it’s exotic, elegant, and your intact corpse will make a great compost pile addition!

Excellent advice for anyone who really believes carbon dioxide is evil.

Oh, if you're one of those drooling unenlightened hicks who still thinks that ball of fire in the sky emitting energy at the Earth might affect the Earth somehow, still no sunspot activity.

Huh.

Indiana, Michigan job losses deeper than Wisconsin's

I didn't know Michigan had any jobs left to lose. *srednop*

Meanwhile, looks like I won't be going back to heavy off-road automotive software anytime soon, now that the market has a glut of Caterpiller and Deere workers. And my friend in Bavaria got axed in the Texas Instruments purge yesterday.

Too bad I didn't get laid off a week earlier, I could have signed up at MATC to learn some sort of useful skill that can't be outsourced to Russia.

Good grief.

Youngsters of both genders avoid careers that involve math and science because they lack confidence in those topics, "despite the fact that the largest number of kids ranked math and science as their favorite subjects."

All told, 85% of kids say that they are not interested in an engineering career, according to a survey released Monday from the American Society for Quality.

The headline the J-S puts on this is "Girls shun engineering careers, ASQ study shows". As if anyone needed a survey to know that, or we already know why. But why don't boys want to pursue engineering careers? What are they being told to do instead? What's changed in the past 20 years?

ASQ cited numbers from the National Science Foundation, which projects that the U.S. shortage of engineers will reach 70,000 by 2010*, even as the nation's employers court talent from China and India.

Who cares what an engineer has between their legs if they're qualified and capable? Seriously, why does it matter? China and India don't make a big deal out of forcing women into science...

I suspect the "lack of confidence" in math and science has something to do with a) how it's presented in classrooms, in the seven minutes left in the school day after all the multicultural feel-good self-esteem social-services stuff by b) K-6 teachers who have no mathematical interest or ability. (In my weekend with Facebook, I've noticed a strong positive correlation between "couldn't pass pre-algebra without cheating on the homework" and "employed as a teacher.")

* In January 2009, there seems to be a glut of software engineers. Next life, I'm majoring in Lesbian Latina Deconstructionist Studies.

Modest proposal

It has occured to me that we could offset a fair chunk of this "stimulus"* bill by putting Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and all their greedy power-crazed followers in Congress into dunk tanks for a month or so (bonus: that's a month they can't give away more money for 'bicycle access' or 'unemployment compensation' for people who voluntarily quit their jobs).

$10 for 3 balls. Let 'em work the same sort of shifts military personnel do on deployment, and get fed the same.

Additional funds could be raised via pay-per-view.

Or a lottery to be able to pelt them with cream pies...oooh.

It's for the children!!

* "magically transforming pork into "stimulus" by sticking another three zeroes on the end"

Huh.

Someone I actually want to talk to found me on Facebook--the guy who started calling me "Radish" in high school, when we were both working at his dad's restaurant. He's living in Milwaukee, of all places, with his wife and three kids.

Small world.

In which I inadvertantly learn something from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Those winter thingies along the shores of Lake Michigan that fascinate me are called ice volcanoes.

And it happens on the other Great Lakes as well.

Apparently people in Wisconsin don't freak out about getting trapped under the ice like they do in Indiana. Except me. I can't get close enough to take a good picture because I can't convince myself that's not a stupid reason to die. :P

This needs a caption

I followed this from Kate:


You could accessorize your plastic pocket President with guns, swords, or lightsabers, if that flag is still too icky for you to have in your house.

Bloggers have been predicting plenty of spin-off merchandise will be sold to clothe the action figures, including miniaturised Chicago Bulls strips for the basketball-mad President, dancing shoes for State occasions, and even a jogging trousers and Nike trainers so the action figure can resemble Obama during his morning workouts.

He's only the second black fashion doll to become President:


but he's never been an astronaut or a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. Yet.

Change!

Well. This afternoon, I was laid off (so were a lot of people...). Obama voters: send cash, cat food, or rum, or we're going to come live on your couch.

While I was being escorted out, my manager asked if I was going to remain in Milwaukee, and I laughed, because how the hell am I supposed to know? If someone in a less socialist state needs a slightly-used button pusher, well, I'll miss Spotted Cow. I don't have enough kids for any government to offer to pay me to stay unemployed in Milwaukee, so I'll have to work somewhere...

God love ya, Chuck!

Quilt historian Barbara Brackman has "designed" two Obama fabrics (quotes because she just copied 19th century designs and pasted his face with Photoshop) you can print off at home onto your own fabric. The first is a repeat featuring The One and some unimportant blurry dead white slave-owning oppressor bastard (PDF).

The second is a medallion featuring The One and Joe Biden (also PDF).

Joe Freaking Biden!

There's about 18 other things in my quilt queue, but I *will* make a Joe Freaking Biden piece before this is all over. And NOT with the reverence intended.

I will tell the story of Obamacles through my scribe Iowahawk.
But this poem is copyrighted, so reproduce at your peril.

(Yeah, I have to deal with this internet crush on Iowahawk. Maybe if I keep reminding myself he's a stinkin' Hawkeye...)

Hey, Ashton...

This morning when I was dodging claws and cold nose to try to get an extra five minutes of sleep, I realized that I've been a servant to a big-eared small-brained rather-annoying dude who's never held a real job since before you'd heard of Barack Obama because he hadn't gotten Jack Ryan thrown off the Illinois Senate ballot yet.



I can only handle one. Y'all gotta take a number.

Promote a culture of awareness of mentoring for the education of awareness of reduction of ignorance!

I've been dragged kicking and screaming into Facebook.

I seem to be the only person there listing "Mark Steyn" as an interest.

What is WRONG with kids today?

UPDATE: and everyone one of these jerks I know "in real life" is posting anti-Bush crap all over today. When Obama taxes my employer out of business, I'm showing up on their doorstep. With Satan's Little Helper and his litter box. Sheesh.

Upon further review

I'm pretty sure this dress is the product of an Experimental Design course at any of our fine Midwestern land grant universities' Domestic Arts Home Economics Consumer Sciences Human Ecology program.

It's got that "recycled products from flyover country" vibe. Possibly melted grocery bags without printing.

None of the captions on Yahoo News seem to mention the designer (who can blame them for wanting to remain anonymous?) but about half of them have "George Bush was a poopy-head" tacked on to the end.

I thought I was kidding

when I said the whole country was going to be turned into the south side of Chicago, but it looks like I wasn't.



I laughed at "Apocalyptic Garbage Blizzard" but seriously, that looks exactly like the time my cousin came to visit me at school in Indiana and we thought we'd go to the Museum of Science and Industry and we didn't know the Dan Ryan had express lanes (our hometown has no stoplights...) and we thought we'd just take an exit and follow the map. Complete with abandoned elderly relative. Only thing missing is an iron grille on the front of the Smithsonian.

How's about maybe, instead of pledging to be a servant to your leader, you just clean up after yourself? For a change?

Mother Gaia will smile on you, or something.

Obama Voters

Two anecdotes from my day, illustrating (along with the stuff I posted at Badger Blogger) why I will spending most of the next four years drunk as a form of self-preservation.

1) At the office after lunch, five O-bots were giving each other high-fives, and then they realized none of them knew who the governor of WI was. Not a single fucking one of them. The Palin-bashing vegan knew her Congressional representative was "Gwen Something...something long and complicated" (that would be Moore...I can see how such a foreign-sounding a name with so many syllables can be hard to remember), and one of them thought there was a Sentienthauser involved somewhere (Sensenbrenner, who doesn't represent any of them). They never got around to wondering who their Senators were.

Oh yeah, you're enlightened, superior beings, smarter and better than me. I'm so glad your ilk are running the country. Assholes.


2) At the gym, two women (I think they were women...I don't like to belittle fat people because I look like Jabba the Hutt from the neck down, but these creatures outweighed me at least 100 pounds apiece, maybe even 150, and it was kind of hard to tell what biological sex they were since they had crew cuts, but I was in the women's locker room so that's as good an assumption as any) swooning--NAKED--over the TV, which was showing the coronation. And then, they talked:

Being 1: Oh my God! It's so awesome!
Being 2: Like, this guy at school said they should just cut spending. And I was like, duh! Rich people should pay for it!
Being 1: People are so suh-STOO-pid! [Yes. She made it three syllables, which is worth a bitch-slap right there.] You can't fix anything without spending! I mean, you can't cut anything! You have to spend!
Being 2: I know! Thank God Obama's smarter than that!

There was probably more, but the whole world turned misty red and I put on my boots without putting on pants so I could get the fuck out of there without screaming "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FUCKING IGNORANT YOU ARE?!" because it's generally a bad idea to get in a fight with 600 pounds of deadweight even if you haven't overworked your arms out of sheer adrenalinic pissed-offed-ness. All they would have had to do to incapacitate me was fall on me...

I should have asked them if they had any fucking idea what sort of spending Obama would be rubber-stamping, because I'm sure they couldn't name anything more specific than "health care for poor babies!" (without mentioning it would only be for the babies that weren't murdered on the taxpayers' dime) but it wasn't until after I was halfway home that I remembered "$350 million for fucking appliances."


I woke up today ready to give Obama and his supporters the benefit of the doubt, and they were all assholes (I won't even mention the whitey-bashing, because I can't do it in a half-way civilized manner) and imbeciles. The hell with them all.

Good grief.

...and after six months of hearing "women's media" (when I'm unfortunate enough to be subjected to it--please don't think I consume it on purpose!) swoon over how Michelle Obama has such style and such fashion flair, it was really funny to see her wearing a 40-year-old bathrobe made out of upholstery.

I kinda dug the polyester matelasse--I didn't know anyone still made it. I'm assuming they chose it because it was a popular fabric when Jacqueline Bouvier was still setting fashion trends. And then it died out. For a reason. Just like Harvest Gold died out...

I enjoy Frazz.

Heh.

Michelle Obama tells teens and tweens at kids' concert they 'are the future'

I'm sure they've never heard that before.

Check out the AP reporting:

"For many of you, they're you're[sic] moms and dads, right?" Obama said.

I might not resent the "elite" superior tastemakers who went to fancy-schmancy J-schools telling me what to think and who to worship nearly as much if they could write English as well as I could when I was 8. (Not faulting Mrs. O for this--transcribing her remarkers is ALL on the "reporter" and "editors".)

That paid "sick" leave thing is going federal

Too bad for the businesses in Milwaukee's suburbs who wanted to avoid getting sucked into this madness--Congress is taking it up.

Businesses with 15 employees will be required to give paid "sick" leave--up to 3 consecutive paid days off with no advance notice and no doctor's explanation needed, 7 days/year total. The "sick" person doesn't have to be the worker or even a relative, just someone with "close association."

Of course, that's less than one paid hangover/booty call per month. Seems unreasonable that employees can't take as much time as they need and still get the same check at the end of the pay period. *scoff*

Further away than it was 40 years ago...

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

And tomorrow a misogynist, Marxist, product of the corrupt Chicago machine--without the integrity or the testosterone to vote yes or no on issues relating to crime and dying babies, who thinks it's funny to throw gangsta signs and surreptitious middle fingers, who'd rather work out than visit wounded troops, who changes his promises depending on his audience--is going to be installed as Commander-in-Chief.

Character? No one cares about character.

I want a !(#*! apology

Dear people who told me George Bush was going to "round up" all the homosexuals and send them to extermination camps, and were dead serious, and called me everything but a white woman for thinking otherwise (Chele, I'm thinking of A$$wipe, but he's not the only one):

Are you an ignorant uneducated sheeple piece of shit duped by jingoist politicians, or just a lying piece of shit, or some combination of the two, so blinded by your own petty insecurities you're incapable of rational thought?

Take your time.

UPDATE: I'm doing a pretty good job of not unleashing megatons of ridicule and derision on the Coronation-obsessed Obaaaaaaaaama people I'm surrounded by in real life, but it's all gotta be vented somewhere to avoid apoplexy. Which would be here. Until I get my unicorn, and then I'll be too busy having fantastic adventures to blog.

Heh!

How soon is the Freedom From Religion Foundation going to sue Kurt Warner, the NFL, and FOX for subjecting them to Warner's post-game thanks and praise? *snicker*

Wait, bullies don't pick fights with people who can afford to fight back. Nevermind.

Cardinals in the Super Bowl, I'm pretty sure the End Times are upon us.

And now for something completely different

A refreshingly non-Obama story from Jim Stingl about a family adopting a baby given up via the Safe Haven law. Good on the mother. I hope she knows her baby is well and happy.

Human stupidity is infinite

If Obamacare doesn't cover tattoo removal...I almost said, "I bet you could make a few bucks!" but you'll probably be taxed and/or regulated out of business, so nevermind.

This is the scariest irrational human behavior I have ever seen...and I've been to a New Kids on the Block concert.

More lousy "art"

All these crude portraits (in crayons! and dryer lint!) everywhere you look--it's like the Third World around here. Except Mao would probably have you shot if your portrayal was unflattering...

I took a week-long class with Susan Shie in October 2004--she had advanced BDS even then, and she's been so focused on hating Bush/conservatives/freedom/etc in her art that the quality of it has really declined. It was delicious in the 1990s, which is why I wanted to study with her. And she was a very warm and encouraging teacher, so in the end it was a week well-spent. Anyway, when you look at her quilt here--which I recognized immediately--those aren't bullet holes in O's forehead and throat, they are "Third Eyes." Apparently we're to believe Obama has "higher consciousness". But they *look* like bullet holes, which entertains me.

Ah, The Onion.

Colts Retire Tony Dungy's Sweater Vest

No one's rocked a sweater like that since Mr. Rogers.

Interesting...

Two local residents charged in GOP national convention incident

Jan. 17, 2009 10:41 a.m. | Two Wisconsin residents and a Texas resident have been accused of throwing a large road sign off a bridge during the Republican National Convention.

Twenty-three-year-old Bradley Crowder of Austin, Texas, 23-year-old Karen Meissner of Menomonee Falls and 18-year-old Christina Vana of West Bend were charged Friday with aiding and abetting second-degree assault.

According to a criminal complaint, protesters picked up sandbags used to hold down a street sign and used them to try to stop buses carrying delegates to the Xcel Energy Center on Sept. 1.

The three are accused of throwing a metal sign off the Marion Street bridge over Interstate 94 and the 5th Street exit ramp. It landed three feet from an officer who was trying to remove a sandbag thrown by a protesters.

One of the miscreants is from West Bend, where self-styled "radicals" meet at the library to discuss criminal activity. Coincidence, I'm sure.

It's too bad they couldn't be bothered to tell officials the names of their comrades who tried to kill dozens of people with the sandbags.

Can't get enough Obama quilts 2

I hadn't realized the exhibit at the The Historical Society of Washington, D.C was only open to "Quilters of Color." I'm not really surprised, since so much "contemporary art" is deemed worthy by the skin/genitals/biography of the artist and not the actual work.

It'll be interesting to revisit these quilts in a couple of years and see if they hold up.

Meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, quilted portraits of K'Ehleyr, er, Mrs. O*.

(How does K'Ehleyr not merit her own Wikipedia page?)

* OK, I feel bad about the cheap shot. K'Ehleyr didn't deserve that.

We're having a heat wave...

Well, comparatively. The ice on the inside of the inner pane has vanished, leaving only ice on the inside of the outer pane.

Yes, I know my windows are filthy. :P

"plastic President"

No need to bother watching it on television--it's already happening at Legoland in California. Looks like they put a little more effort into it than they did in 2001.

Poor Oprah, watching her man forlornly from afar. I can't tell if she's expecting or having a serious underwardrobe malfunction.

Something you won't hear Tuesday

From Reagan's first inaugural address:

The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, causing human misery and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?

The third sentence of the first paragraph seems to be the only anachronism...

Continuing on, boldface mine, I expect we'll hear the exact opposite on Tuesday:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.

From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

All the inaugural addresses can be found at bartleby.com.

Ooooh.

Saul Alinsky's Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Make your own here.

What is WITH people?

Don't click if you don't want to see more dead animals.

And of course, if the asshole had fallen into the water, good people would have gone out to rescue him. I try not to think about that too much.

Baby, it's cold outside.

Why do they hate us?
Ricardo Montalban.

It's a bizarre old universe.

Huh.

Jim Caldwell, new head coach of the Colts, was a stinkin' Hawkeye during their 19 consecutive losing seasons. The best team he was on finished 5-6-0. The universe does this to me on purpose. *shakes fist*

At least Tom Moore was on a national championship squad...

Ronald Reagan Tribute next Tuesday

I'll be at work and unable to stream, but if you have Sirius/XM you may enjoy a tribute to Ronald Reagan next Tuesday at noon ET on Sirius Patriot 144. I would probably enjoy it. Bah.

The Oprah Channel will also be marking the day. *ahem*

Yeah, he's a puppet...

I swear, there is no hobby or leisure activity I enjoy that is uninfested by cult followers.

I liked the idea of taking 100 photos of a single object--it's an exercise in seeing the world in fresh ways. This seemed like a simple, escapist, non-Obama way to kill some time and stretch my brain.

Ha! I'm going to have to look at 100 pictures of a !(%*!#! Obama puppet. He's even wagging his finger, Michelle-style. All rights are reserved, or I would totally be using that photo as an illustration...

(I'm doing a tequila bottle I bought four, maybe even five years ago. I like the shape and the color.)

Quilts--no one blogs about quilts anymore, they blog about Obama. Travel--Obama wants to make it prohibitively expensive to Save Teh Planet™. Food--between ObamaCare and the Planetoids, all we're going to be allowed to eat is locally-grown manure-fertilized sprouts. And when baseball starts, guess who's going to be up on jumbotrons across the country on Memorial Day weekend, pretending to give a rat's ass about veterans?

I'm going to stop now before I bust into that bottle and am left with nothing to photograph.

Gary Varvel:


I'm not going to go look through boxes, but I'm pretty sure I have a 1989 cartoon from the Des Moines Register of Ronald Reagan riding off like that.

Without a Lombardi trophy, of course.

Sigh.

What is WITH people?

When they're found, they should be strapped to trees by their necks.

Knew this would happen

but I'm a little sad anyway.

Tony Dungy retires from the NFL.

Best picture ever:


He'll be greatly missed, but over the past couple of years he's been pretty open about wanting to do some sort of ministry outside of football--certainly does not lessen my respect.

Tony Dungy should be the first inductee to the Colts Hall of Fame, should they ever get one. Unless he tries to "unretire" in August, then I'll shiv him myself. ;)

DO NOT read the comments on the Indy Star link. The bandwagon has no clue what a blustering incompetent asshole Jim Mora was (despite MillerCoors reminding us during every TV timeout the past two weekends), and the hardcore Christian-bashers are out in force.

On the bright side, they should be so bad next year I'll be able to order tickets from the box office in 2011, and the people behind me will know what it means when the guy in the stripey shirt loses his handkerchief.

This pleases me.

I'm an embarrassment to Barack!


I only scored 14 on the Obama Test

Speaking of hating people

Scheiße! Several of my friends (former friends, more and more--do I really need these people?) are mocking Bush for the following. Now, I hate "compassionate conservatism" as much as anyone--it's not conservatism, to start--but of course they're not poking holes in that, they're still making jokes about Bushitler and Republicans as the soulless offspring of Genghis Khan and Cthulu. As opposed to themselves, bathed in the light of Saint Obama and yet, compassionate as they consider themselves, unwilling to let detainees from Gitmo bunk down on their couch until they can find a job. Hypocrites.

President Bush called for a "compassionate" Republican Party and warned against the GOP becoming "anti-immigrant" in one of his last interviews as president, defending his vision of the party, which has become unpopular among some Republicans.

I'm not "anti-immigrant", I'm anti-illegal alien. I'm also anti-"importing people who can't speak or read English" because we've got cities full of those people already--how is it compassionate to continue to let them sit around collecting checks in squaloriferous subsidized housing while people who weren't born here come in to work and move up in the world? Not very.

People annoy me.

You can run articles about Israel "bombing schools" without mentioning that said school was full of terrorists firing mortars at the IDF, but you can't have an article about a gathering in support of Israel without mentioning the "Christian and Muslim" protesters outside (of course there are Muslim protesters...it's a synagogue and it's still standing...).

Joyce Guinn, a Catholic who has visited the West Bank three times in recent years, was among the protesters. She said Israel is using weapons against the Palestinians that were bought with American tax dollars.

Joyce, have you ever wondered where "Palestinians" get the money they use to buy weapons? I thought not...

"This is not about rockets or self-defense, it's about continuing the 40-year occupation of people who have nowhere to run," Guinn said.

Yeah--they've "nowhere to run" because the dozens of other Islamic nations in the region refuse to let them move in. It's good anti-Israel PR to have a permanent "refugee" population, and it seems to be working. Egypt even built a wall to keep them out--why aren't you complaining about Egypt's treatment of Gaza?

Meh.

Speaking of sick-leave laws

Don't let 9 to 5 read this article from the WSJ.

Mind-blowing: Guy in Belgium gets dumped by a girl he dated six months, claims depression, and is told that instead of coming in to work, he can play soccer, drive his new sports car, and go to parties. His employer was required to pay his first month's salary, the taxpayers then picked up the bill for 80% of his pay until he felt like going back. He could have kept it up indefinitely.

I'm sympathetic to people with an actual mental illness, but sweet Barack Obama's waffle, this is disgusting.

Article is also full of examples of people calling in sick to watch soaps and sleep off hangovers--and the law says they have to be paid.

The U.S. GDP per capita is approximately 129% of that Belgium. Shocker.

I can't comment.

The Madison Beer Review has some interesting comments on the Neo-Prohibition movement in Madison.

I'm increasingly incensed at the abuse heaped on beer drinkers by teetotaling busybodies, especially now that the state government is funding and sanctioning their activities. Go get a life of your own and get the hell out of mine.

The radiant visage of The One

Shepard Fairey's unoriginal banal "radical chic" artwork is being acquired by the National Portrait Gallery*.

The collage, unlike the smoothed-out version millions of Obamabots have themselves plagiarized, contains--quite noticeably--Fairey's Soviet-styled "Obey" logo (upper right-hand corner, also below his right ear).

Nice.

O's face will also stare at you from your Metro fare card, if you're unfortunate enough to be in the DC area this month. At least that's not part of the trend of emblazoning Dear Leader's visage on any available surface--they printed cards with Bill Clinton in 1993 (but not George Bush in 2001).

If I suddenly come into great wealth, I'm going back to school to study art history and abnormal psychiatry--maybe I could make sense of this stuff, or at least write about it effectively.

UPDATE: Refreshingly faceless Obama quilt from Milwaukee artist Sonji Hunt. I'll be seeing some of her other work, which I like a lot, in person later this month at the Anderson Art Center in Kenosha. I'll be really happy when this cult stuff blows over and I can read quilt blogs again.

* Plagiarism is a path to success--just ask Joe Biden!

Why I ♥ Jonah Goldberg

And that was all she wrote for Reid, who by next week should be on all fours like Kevin Bacon in Animal House, shouting, “Thank you sir! May I have another?” as Burris paddles him.

Necessitates extra brain bleach, but my screen got a good cleaning.

Aha.

Now I know why there were squad cars blocking my usual route home from work yesterday. Murder, with mayhem.

I have lost track of how many people have been murdered along my commute in two years.

We should keep an eye on this.

Remember when they said George Bush was going to set himself up as Chimperor For Life? O hasn't even gotten his skin oils all over the Lincoln Inaugural Bible yet, and we already have this:

H.J.RES.5
Title: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.
Sponsor: Rep Serrano, Jose E. [NY-16] (introduced 1/6/2009)

Here's the whole text:

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

`Article--

`The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.'.

I give 'em props for proposing an amendment. Old school. Rule 8?

If it passes Congress--two-thirds of the Senate should be easy enough--it should go nowhere in state legislatures. Then again, they have seven years. Between ACORN, Alinskyites, and thousands of *ahem* critical thinkers of voting age, their composition can change.

How many times you think these two voted?

From Slate's "The Big Money", a thoughtful critique of the economy as imagined by liberals.

Can't get enough Obama quilts

The 60s called, they want Andy Warhol back.

I made an interesting noise when I got to "Red and blue to remind us that his election crossed party lines." My ass.

We're doomed.

At Ace, check out what's lurking under the cute reassuring titles of Henry Reid's plans for the Senate.

I particularly loathe S.3, Homeowner Protection and Wall Street Accountability Act of 2009, which will assure I will never ever be able to afford a house. And S.5, Cleaner, Greener, and Smarter Act of 2009, has us all starving to death in the dark to Save Teh Planet from Global Warming.

And no one knows what's in S.4, Comprehensive Health Reform Act of 2009, but with a name like that it's gotta be bad.

Barack Obama hates fat people.

I knew it!

Newsbusters link
Fatosphere link (they're mostly Obamatrons, so I'm surprised anyone took the time to criticize the pick)

It's bad when even Paul Krugman calls you out.

The good news is they won't have to line me up against a wall and shoot me during the Great Enlightenment (hee!) at re-education camp--after a week of eating nothing but an Obama/Gupta-approved diet I'll kill myself.

(My mother once signed me up for "Lighten up Iowa", a government weight-loss program. So I made Iowa X pounds lighter by moving. Heh!)

"When the Left asks for a classless society, now I know what they mean."*

Jay Nordlinger chronicles some abuses of non-political public occasions. The last one on the third page is especially horrendous.

I'd like to thank the MSO for not doing this Friday night. There were no words spoken at all from the stage--they just came out and played the music. And the pre-performance educational talk (which I really appreciate, since I know so little about classical music) was all about the pieces being performed. The composers, the soloist, how the conductor chose to follow the tempo markings in the original manuscript instead of slowing it down like most 21st-century conductors do.

I also love that I wasn't the only woman wearing heavy warm winter boots with dress pants. ;) How many cities in the world will let women wear weather-appropriate footwear to high-culture events with nary a eye-rolling?

* It's a pun. We all know damn well they want a two-class society: Their in-crowd of wealthy "educated" true-believers, and everyone else to do the work.

The world loves us again!

Contra John F'n Kerry, Islamists who hated America during the George Bush years still hate America, despite our election of a black man.

They even hate that black man. And he hasn't done anything yet. Wait, maybe that's why...

It's almost like some cultures don't believe that every culture is equally valuable, or something. Maybe we can air-drop them some liberal "educators" to teach them of the beauty of multicultural acceptance. Win-win, I'd say.

Harrington Beach

Kinda alien-looking.

This always cheers me up.

Achmed The Dead Terrorist.



Never gets old.

Well, I'm done with the NFL.

When you fix a game, try not to make it SO FUCKING OBVIOUS. You can't move the ball ahead for the spot and then move it back after the first down has been called. And INTENTIONAL GROUNDING. When my sister notices how one-sided you are, you're doing a lousy job of hiding it. Good grief. Next to tonight's officials, AL FRANKEN'S campaign looks like the Boy Scouts.

That's why no one watches the NBA playoffs--it's not interesting when the officials hand the game to a predetermined winner.

Huh.

Who are the cable providers in Brookfield? Apparently they carry Al-Jazeera. Well, so did my provider in Cedar Falls, and that was during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003...

At this point, I think any "peace summit" should offer the "Palestinians" their own independent state, on one condition: Neither the U.N nor any country represented therein is allowed to contribute so much as one shekel of military or "humanitarian" aid. You want to be independent? Be independent. ("You want to stay out drinking all night? Go get a job and pay your own rent, then you can stay out as long as you want.")

With no agriculture and no industry, they'll last less than six months, and that's assuming they stop shooting rockets at Israel, who will then be free to treat them as every other hostile neighboring nation.

Yeah, a lot of "innocent" children and old people will die in those six months. They're going to die anyway. But at least there wouldn't be anyone to blame but their own "leadership."

Which is why it'll never happen.

Meanwhile, I'm sick of CNN blaring DEATH FROM ISRAEL with no mention of the DEATH FROM HAMAS that preceded it. I need one of those gadgets that disables TVs in public areas.

His confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all!!

*snicker*

I thought there were a lot of games this year where the defense saved his ass with an INT in the final minutes. Melvin Bullitt did it twice. I seem to be in good company with my assessment:

"I know it's an individual award, but ... truly, in my opinion, a team award," said Manning, who received 32 votes

I thought Obama would defeat Mothra

Backlash. Entertaining. Click repeatedly.

His confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all. Where's my unicorn?

Oooh!

Mark Steyn is filling in for Rush tomorrow. *twitch*

It's like an early birthday present.

In which I seek professional help

I accidentally saw part of the Outback Bowl earlier today. One of the TV talking heads held a mirror up to the South Carolina living gamecock mascot to show it going nuts trying to peck the "other chicken" it saw. I creeped out, until I realized nothing would be more satisfying at that point in the game than to see Cocky, South Carolina's foam-head mascot, wander over to the other sideline and peck that other chicken Herky to death.

Real animals fighting to the death for human amusement? Disgusting. Giant foam chickens? Hell yeah.

(13 years ago I got to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. During the game, the Virginia Tech Hokie Bird went after Texas' silly live cow with a knife and fork. Now THAT is quality mascot-ing.)

International Year of Astronomy

2009 is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first public demonstration of the telescope, and the International Year of Astronomy.

So in addition to "drink beer" and "eat vegetables" (but only vegetables I can identify), I've added "look at the sky" to my list of New Year's Irresolutions. I spent a lot of time looking at the sky as a child (I got yelled at a lot for setting my alarm clock for the middle of the night), but not so much after I graduated from college and started living in cities. I'll have to see what's going on around here.

Lake Michigan

I'm still fascinated by the lake in winter.

Drinking Right/Cheddarsphere Party

Obligatory post-party post. :P It was great to meet everyone, and now that I know some of you I can go on Tuesdays. Heh.

I didn't catch who brought the hand warmers for the gift exchange, but thank you--I will use them the next time I go to Lambeau Field. :-D

...and it's probably bad form to stop posting after talking about a blog, but I have the week off from pressing buttons and I'm going to try to spend most of it away from the Internets--baking, sewing, reading actual books, that sort of thing. I hate to waste my break from staring at a screen all day by staring at a screen all day. If I do anything interesting, I'll take pictures.

Cat blogging

My brother's cat, Phydeaux:

I don't have his URL. I probably don't want to read it, anyway. :P

This blog powered by recycled sanctimony

Handmade gifts for people who want to Save Teh Planet!!1!, but don't care about it enough to stop drinking beverages made from beans transported thousands of miles (ZOMG, the CARBON!) and served in disposable paper cups. Sometimes it's fun to be an enabler.



"Reclaimed cotton fabric and batting" (read: tiny bits normal people would throw away) coffee cuffs. Notice how, unlike the "green" crafter linked, I did not buy brand new petroleum-based synthetic fabric for my planet-saving endeavor.

Look, a reusable sleeve! I CARE!!

Back to doom and gloom.

I never understood why "the Queen's Christmas message" needs a rebuttal. Especially when the only mention of Jesus is that he was a kind, unselfish man that some people find inspiring. Feel free to clue me in.

The irony of Britain's channel 4 giving Ahmadinejad the pulpit in the name of free speech is that as he was speaking, Iranian authorities raided and closed down the BBC's Tehran offices and, separately, in the spirit of goodwill to man, ordered Christmas trees banned from Iranian kindergartens.

By the time the tastemakers and public opinion shapers figure out that celebrating multiculturism only goes one way, is there going to be any "multi" left to celebrate?

I guess it's not all gloom; Her Majesty seems to wearing her mother's hats. I do love anachronistic millinery.

Merry Christmas!

I spammed my whole family with today's Gary Varvel cartoon. It took me about five minutes to see the face of Christ, and now I can't see the Nativity in it anymore...awesome.

Merry Christmas!

Difficult: The roadway is completely covered with precipitation. Accumulation is to the point that the roadway markings are completely obscured making it difficult to differentiate between the roadway and its surroundings. These conditions make travel very difficult. This is a hazardous environment. Some weather conditions can be severe enough that roadway treatments, such as salt or sand, will not work. Emergency vehicles and snow removal equipment may be called off of the roadway due to the conditions. In the event of an emergency, it may be impossible to get emergency vehicles to a scene.

My mother thinks I'm making this up to ruin her Christmas Eve. There is a special place in Hell for Norman Rockwell.

OTOH, I'm sure the kids would rather see Aunt Heather show up on Christmas Day than not at all. Aunt Heather certainly prefers to drive tomorrow instead of spending the night in a motel room in Dyersville waiting for Friday to roll around to get her car towed/fixed (Aunt Heather has already totalled enough cars on U.S. 20 for one lifetime).

So, what's there to do in Milwaukee on Christmas Eve Day in the snow?

Noteworthy

Mary Lundby, the Republican leader of the Iowa Senate is losing her battle with cervical cancer.

She is an uncommon Republican: She's a working-class Iowan with a union background who stands up for gay rights and the environment, yet she is a devout Catholic who is opposed to abortion and inefficient government.

A nonconformist, Lundby once wrote a resolution honoring everyone who had ever lived in Iowa, visited Iowa or flew over Iowa.

It was a dig at fellow lawmakers' fawning and self-congratulations.

Heh!

¡Feliz Noche de Rábanos!

Night of the Radishes is a tradition in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, where townspeople carve dioramas, especially nativities, out of monster radishes, then bring them to the town square for fun and prizes. More pictures of fantastic radish art here (not mine, I haven't been to Oaxaca).

Good grief.

Why is ESPN bashing Sarah Palin in the lead-up to the Packers game?

I miss Dennis Miller.

Pass the brain bleach.

Why is this photo making the rounds of blogs today (not safe for anyone who thinks "hawt" is not a qualification to be POTUS)? It was 4 degrees today. Aren't we suffering enough?

And who decided that scrawny, jug-eared, snobby, and uh uh uh effete were attractive qualities for men?!? Western Civilization is doomed.

Brain bleach, courtesy of Chele. Also, this is a nice palate cleanser.

Hasenpfeffer!

This is my 1000th post. That seems excessive.

That didn't take long...

AMES, Iowa – Paul Rhoads, a highly successful and charismatic defensive coordinator at both Pitt and Auburn and a former Cyclone assistant coach, is returning home to become head football coach at Iowa State University.

At least this one isn't gonna blow out of town on the first plane to the SEC after lying about his intentions--his parents still live in central Iowa. Heh.

What's this?

There was a building under all that scaffolding!



I think my goal for 2009 will be "try to take pictures that aren't at wonky angles."

So long, RCA Dome

My brother sent me this. Ha ha.

"Damn you!"


If you like demolitions, or just hate the Colts, there's video and photo galleries of the destruction on the Indy Star site.

“It’s a little ironic that a demolition company from Baltimore had the opportunity to take down the stadium to where the Colts fled when they left Baltimore,” said Loizeaux, a Baltimore Ravens fan.

It's really time to get over it, Baltimore. Y'all won a Super Bowl with the team you stole from Cleveland six years before the Colts won one...

"bowel-stewing self-indulgence of elite liberalism"

If you're reading this, you will enjoy Jonah Goldberg's latest column.

Wasn't there a war--a real one, with guns--fought at some point to rid America of an incompetent self-serving hereditary aristocracy? I saw a documentary about it once.

Merry Christmas to me!

“It’s been a very different season,” said Manning, who has quarterbacked the Colts to playoff appearances in nine of the last 10 seasons and who threw two of his three touchdown passes on Thursday night during the second-half rally.

Spoiled, I am.

This is pretty cool--in the postgame, Peyton talks about meeting Sammy Baugh.

PSA