Giving back...

OK, my blue-and-white funk has dissipated (it helped that WE Energies blew up a network server at my work yesterday, so I got an--unpaid, sadly--afternoon off to sew), but I'm only strong enough to consume football-free media. Like Thomas Sowell's column on NRO. Today he writes on people I like to call "bleeding heads"--it's not their heart that makes them dangerous, it's the hole between their ears.

Among the many mindless mantras of our time, “making a difference” and “giving back” irritate me like chalk screeching across a blackboard.

I have a friend who eats school lunch with "underprivileged" junior high kids once a month during the school year because she wants to "make a difference." As far as I can tell, the difference she makes is that she feels less guilty about being white and graduating from high school without getting pregnant than she did before she started doing "Lunch Buddies"--not that anyone should feel guilty about either of those things.

Very few people have mastered anything that well beyond their own limited circle of knowledge. Even fewer seem to think far enough ahead to consider that question. Yet hardly a day goes by without news of some uninformed busybodies on one crusade or another.

I miss the good old days of liberals screaming "government out of my bedroom!" instead of "ban incandescent lightbulbs to save the Earth!" Government out of MY bedroom--I need 150 unflickering watts to read without physical pain. Government out of my paycheck would be even better, but I'm willing to start small.

If we are giving back to society at large, in exchange for all that society has made possible for us, then that is a very different ballgame.

Giving back in that sense means acknowledging an obligation to those who went before us and for the institutions and values that enable us to prosper today. But there is very little of this spirit of gratitude and loyalty in many of those who urge us to “give back.”

Indeed, many who repeat the “giving back” mantra would sneer at any such notion as patriotism or any idea that the institutions and values of American society have accomplished worthy things and deserve their support, instead of their undermining.

Sowell doesn't specifically mention the U.S. armed forces, but most of the "give back!" group that wants to blind me whilst redistributing my earnings to people who didn't graduate high school without getting pregnant is vehemently anti-military. Ironically, the military would be the one group of people who truly do "give back" in the way Sowell describes--they put their families on hold and their lives on the line and volunteer to defend the "institutions and values" that have made America great and allow us to prosper.

This segues nicely into...Project Valour-IT is having a fundraising drive this week. All the money goes to getting accessible laptops to soldiers with hand, arm, and eye injuries so they can communicate with their friends and family (and read football media, if it makes them feel better). I distributed some of my earnings there yesterday (in the "Air Force" pool because that's where my dad served). It's not really "giving back"...I just feel grateful for their service and kinda schmucky for not doing more. Especially knowing how many people refuse to support--hell, actually work toward hurting--our armed forces at all.

If anyone needs me, I'm avoiding all media until the Pro Bowl. Geez.

WTF.

Was checking if the "newspaper Iowa used to depend on" mentioned native-son Sage Rosenfels at all (when Seneca Wallace, California native, gets a start it's front-page news) and ran across this lovely article about a woman who had two children removed for abuse by age 20 and had the next two--she's 22--removed immediately after birth (disclaimer: my folks work at the hospital where the third baby was born and my dad routinely gets called away from family events to give a newborn their first check-up but he only tells funny stories about cute babies and happy parents). It's really challenging my beliefs about government intrusion into people's reproductive decisions; surely the best way to keep this woman from breaking babies' bones is to keep her from making more victims (of course, "decision" implies a level of cognition about reproduction this woman doesn't seem to have...).

I'd already read a NY Daily News story about an unmarried professional woman who conceived her son with purchased sperm.

Once more, I am struck by how horribly unfair the universe is. Stupid, STUPID worthless women have no trouble finding men to live with them and father multiple babies doomed to repeat their mother's life ("Jaidan Rai"?? Can you put that on a business card or a college application?!?); responsible educated women who support themselves get nothing...and whether or not they take the turkey baster into their own hands at the end of their fertility THEY get charged with ruining society.

And yeah, I'm thinking about myself.

Paulnuts like football?

Ron Paul is running radio spots on Sirius 124, NFL Talk. I wasn't paying full attention until I heard "opposes nation-building overseas" and got confused--what's that to do with Cowboys-Eagles...?

The ads make him sound vaguely reasonable--who doesn't want Congress to stop mandating and regulating every aspect of life instead of sticking to their enumerated powers?--if you overlook the "capitulate to our nation's enemies" bit.

Zombie has some photos of Paulnuts at last weekend's anti-US rally in San Francisco, among the usual excellent and chilling coverage (note the suburban-looking kids waving the Hamas flag). If you look in the background of some of the pictures, you see a guy with an ice cream cart. Capitalism infiltrates the socialist/Communist/Bolshevik rally!

Oooh, we beat the spread.

No matter what happens tomorrow, it was a good football weekend.

Tomorrow I might need someone to remind me I said that.

Milwaukee Lakefront

More here.

Meant to take pictures of buildings; took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up down by the Summerfest grounds.

"I didn’t start the war, but I was going to finish it."

Obituary of Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets, one the thousands of people who've done more to bring peace to the planet than al-Gore can even dream of doing. I love that quote.

Back when I was a young skull full of mush I came home from school and told my dad America was bad and wrong for dropping the bombs on Japan in 1945. Took him about ten minutes to explain, in that "disappointed in you" voice no one ever wants to hear, that Grandpa fought the Japanese in the Pacific in 1945 and would have been sent into an invasion of the mainland, which most likely would have killed him and a million other American men. And then both of us would have never been born.

Couldn't argue with logic like that. Still can't argue with logic like that. Imagine what a crappy place the world would be without me. *snicker*

It's incredibly sad that Tibbets refused a funeral and even a headstone because he knew assholes would use them as a meeting place for protests. People have no shame anymore.

Note to self: Make no plans for July 25

Official release date for X-Files movie.

I'm torn between ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG and "they killed off the Lone Gunmen, so what's the point of a movie?"

Take me out to the whine fest

Filed under "call a waaaaaahmbulance":

Barry Bonds would boycott Cooperstown if the Hall of Fame displays his record-breaking home run ball with an asterisk.

That includes skipping his potential induction ceremony.

"I won't go. I won't be part of it," Bonds said in an interview with MSNBC that aired Thursday night. "You can call me, but I won't be there.

I saw this on a soap opera once. We're supposed to run after him, pleading with him to stay and promise to change our heartless ways. Someone's probably already doing it.

"I don't think you can put an asterisk in the game of baseball, and I don't think that the Hall of Fame can accept an asterisk," Bonds said. "You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history. You can't do it. There's no such thing as an asterisk in baseball."

History? A baseball is not history, it's an historical artifact, and newsflash: They can be altered (cheap Sandy Burglar joke here), and museums will still purchase them if there is significance in the original or significance in the alteration. If for some reason Cooperstown passes on owning this baseball (they won't), the Smithsonian might take it; if they pass there's a dozen smaller theme museums who'll take it.

Not to mention "altered history" is big business the past few years. Pretty much why I dropped out of school and went back to being a corporate drone--I wanted to work with historical objects and facts, and historians don't do that anymore. They "view the past through a lens" and "re-interpret their significance" via that lens, the lens being feminist, Marxist, African-American, etc. If I'm going to sit around shoveling manure all day, I'm going to get paid decently.

Trying to imagine how a Marxist-feminist historian would view this baseball. It's obviously a symbol of how evil corporate America has kept the proletariat from revolting by distracting them with superficial spectacles, and the branded asterisk is a racist reminder of antebellum slave-holding...that crap writes itself.

Back to the sad part of the story, the part that made me want to blog about it in the first place:

Matt Murphy, a 21-year-old student and construction supervisor from New York, emerged from a scuffle holding the ball. He said he decided to sell it because he couldn't afford to pay the taxes required to keep it.

Something's really wrong with this country when a kid can't keep a free baseball because it's so punatively taxed. Good God.

Shameless Self-Promotion

The International Quilt Festival opened today in Houston, so I can finally post pictures of the "Journal Quilt" I made that is in one of the special exhibits.

Ta-da!


Why, yes, those are Colts hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in Miami. That was the most interesting thing that happened to be in 2007, until the quilt went on display. As usual, I liked it while I was working on it but six weeks later I see all kinds of things I wish I'd done differently.

You can see pictures of good quilts in this year's show on their website. Most of the quilts displayed in Houston this weekend will be in Chicago in April.

Behold the power of blogs

Iowa repeals pumpkin tax after "the story whipsawed around the Internet and drew scads of derisive comments."

Here's what stands out:

"Food and food ingredients are defined as substances that are sold for ingestion or chewing by humans and are consumed for their taste or nutritional value," the release said.

I demand the tax on beer, which is consumed by humans as a source of folate, niacin, magnesium, potassium and niacin, be repealed immediately!

I like this...

Kyle-Anne Shiver at the American Thinker.

We Republican women are far, far too smart to fall for Hillary Clinton's ruse. We are not the mindless ninnies that vote with the Special-Interest Express. We think for ourselves and vote for the candidate of our choice based on merit. We cast our precious votes for the candidate we believe would be the best President, not the one with an "emotional" appeal aimed at our womanhood.

I'd love to vote for a woman for POTUS. Just not THAT woman. Even if some joker made her the Mary Louise Smith Chair at ISU...Smith was "socially liberal" for the 70s, but she wasn't a socialist.

When I attended Elizabeth Dole's Mary Louise Smith lecture in 1999, I was hoping she'd announce she was running. She didn't that day, but it was still exciting. Yeah, she was married to a Senator, but she had a long career in Washington and with the Red Cross. Certainly better qualifications than "was married to a President before buying a Senate seat in a state where she did not reside."

Happy Halloween

Filed this one under "Good grief."

Previously, pumpkins had been considered an edible squash and exempted from the tax. The department ruled this year that pumpkins are taxable — with some exceptions — if they are advertised for use as jack-’o-lanterns or decorations.

Iowans planning to eat pumpkins can still get a tax exemption if they fill out a form.

They're not entirely wrong--the orange pumpkins aren't very good for cooking and eating--but the "fill out a form" just trips my Unnecessary BS Meter. WTF business is it of the state what I do with a vegetable when I take it home?? I use them to grow fuzzy mold colonies, but they're still vegetables...

The state is collecting 20-40 cents on each pumpkin. The cost of processing the form (nevermind the cost of creating it and distributing it to retailers) is going to exceed the---OH. YEAH. They expect most people (including the retailers) to be ignorant of the procedure and/or too busy to get their dollar back (or too polite to hog a cashier lane filling out the form at Hy-Vee on a Saturday morning while a line forms behind them).

It gets better. Iowa Dept. of Revenue:

Pumpkins are exempt in the following circumstances:

* The buyer completes a sales tax exemption certificate stating they will be used as food, or
* The pumpkins are a specific variety used to make pumpkin pies and are advertised in that way, or
* They are purchased with Food Stamps.

It's OK to use taxpayer money to pay for your decorations; people using their own money to buy a pumpkin must be taxed.

And if food isn't really a food unless it's eaten, I expect to see a tax on cucumbers and bananas used in sex classes, eggs used for vandalism, and all those government surplus carrots in school lunchroom garbage cans (the barrel where we dumped our uneaten slop in elementary school still haunts me).

Gary Varvel

The first comment on the blog is priceless:
Maybe for Thanksgiving, you could draw the Democrats anxiously waiting to nominate their big turkey.

Thank you for the much-needed belly laugh, Paul Walorski, wherever you are.

Practice makes perfect

After reading Dr. Sanity for lo these many years, I think I've learned a thing or two about psychological defenses. Particularly The Wonderful World of Denial.

It works so well for moonbats I've decided to give it a try: I'll be employing them the rest of the week, in case I need to use them for real later on. New England Patriots? Never heard of them, are they a baseball team?

Cheaters, thugs, and scumbags: Not worth my time or attention.

I don't actually hate Brett Favre

I just expect ESPN to show the football game being played live in front of them instead of a Lifetime Original Movie about high school sweethearts and breast cancer.

Apparently this is too much to ask.

Yes, I know I'm the only straight woman in Wisconsin who would rather watch Jay Cutler throw to Brandon Stokely than look at Brett Favre's wedding pictures (there may be someone who wanted to see AJ Hawk in action instead of prom pics from 1987; I would like to meet her). If it was a local broadcast, I would understand the market strategy. But ESPN is a national network broadcasting to fans of all 32 teams. They own several 24-hr sports stations and they're affiliated with ABC and several other networks; surely they could have found a way to air The Brett and Deanna Love Story AND show the Packers-Broncos game in its entirety.


I don't want to see The Peyton and Ashley Love Story instead of Tom Brady getting sacked on Sunday, either; fortunately CBS usually manages to keep the sideshows on the side. Their problem is they can't keep Phil Simms from verbally fellating Brady for four hours. :P

I am anonymously famous!

This is me.

I met Jonah Goldberg after he gave a talk at UW in March; that's about the time I decided I should write my own blog instead of just commenting on others.

Anyway, a few hours later I was poking around the Des Moines Register to see if they've mentioned Dallas Clark or Sage Rosenfels, and I found an article about the Dodd ad. The owner of the barbershop where it was filmed is a Republican, and I can't believe I forgot to mention the slam on Silky Pony's haircuts!

Mostly I was bummed I didn't see any Fred signs. Or anti-Hillary signs.

36 Hours in Iowa

• Total miles: 600
• Miles trapped behind someone going 61 passing someone going 60 (in a 70-mph zone): 8.
• Dead deer: 12.2
• Hillary2008 signs: 6
• Ron Paul 2008 signs: 3
• Signs for all other candidates combined: 0 (this worries me)
  
• Points Iowa State beat the spread: 14
• Drunk Turkey fans stumbling around my hotel screaming all night Saturday: Infinite.
• (Hotel's distance from Kinnick Stadium, in miles: 23)
  
• Casey's coffee and donuts consumed Sunday morning: 48 oz, 2.
• "Thomas the Tank Engine"-themed presents my nephew got for his birthday: 7, including big-boy underpants.
  
• Candles on his cake: 3
• (Age he gave when asked: 8. Gotta see some ID, kid...)
• Bites he took out of the center of the cake before any responsible adult (i.e., not Aunt Heather) noticed: 3.
  

Heh heh heh.

That's a pretty bad ROI.

The guy who beat his sick dog to death with a baseball bat--said he didn't have the $50 or so for euthanasia and didn't bother to check the Humane Society for a reduced-price option--was charged with felony animal abuse. Bail $500; maximum sentence 3.5 years in prison and $10k fine. I'm sure he'll plead guilty to a lesser charge in return for probation. Still, could have saved himself some cash by not being an asshole.

No doubt you and I will get to pay for his defense lawyer, just like we pay for lawyers for all the scum who beat people to death.

Interestingly, was talking about this at lunch at work yesterday with a couple of guys who grew up on farms, who wondered why he didn't take the dog out back and shoot it. Merciful and cheap, and probably also illegal in Cudahy.

Check out the pictures of Laura Bush on a visit to the Middle East at A Tangled Web. I'm pleased she didn't succumb to the pressure to cover any more of herself than American standards of decency require (unlike, oh, say, Nancy Pelosi and Julia Carson).

The part that slays me is the multicultural apologists who say these women are just "modestly dressed" and it's better than the alternative, which is to dress like Paris Hilton/Britney Spears. That's always the example of the alternative to the burqa. So much for "liberals" being better at tolerating ambiguity and flexibility...millions of women around the world go out every day dressed neither like streetwalkers nor like slipcovered furniture--and I'm sure there are "sex workers" who wear more clothes to the office than Ms. Spears. I'm always "modestly dressed" in jeans and T-shirts or sweatshirts, but since my hair and face are always visible, and occasionally my arms show above the wrists, I'd be at risk for an arrest and/or beating. Even though, believe you me, the "passions" of straight men are not "enflamed" by the sight of my hair.

Bleah.

All religions are not identical.

The Dalai Lama is in Indiana.

The Dalai Lama, 72, is scheduled to deliver 12 hours of teachings and two public speeches this week. His 15-minute chat Tuesday was a teaser he used to talk about the world’s religious diversity.

It was an appropriate topic for an interfaith service that featured a procession of Buddhist monks and Dominican friars, recitations from Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh scriptures and a prayer from a pipe-smoking Shoshone sun dance chief.

Hrm. There seems to be a major world religion (with a terrorism-affiliated spokesgroup up the road in Plainfield) not represented here.

“There are differences. But these differences have the same purpose — to strengthen and educate us on the importance of compassion,” he said. “All religions use different methods and different ways of approach. But they have the same end.”

Maybe, at the level of the individual believer and his relationship to the divine. But on the earthly level, one religion has very different goals than the others. If you can cite a authentic text where the Buddha tells a devotee to kill the unbelievers where he finds them, or that he wants his followers to conquer neighboring territories until the whole world is united under a global Buddhaphate, I'll buy you a beer.

The concept of war in the name of faith, he said, brings sadness to God.

Unlike God, Allah demands war in his name.

“True followers of God must express compassion.

“The concept of war is out of date,” he said. “Killing your neighbor is not your victory but your mutual self destruction.”

Nice philosophy. Lousy national defense policy. If you roll over for the neighbors bent on destroying you for the glory of Allah, the self-destruction is pretty one-sided.

The whole thing reminds me of the Mark Steyn column where he noted that if a military power ever tried to actually free Tibet from the ChiComs, all the "Free Tibet" bumperstickers would be replaced overnight with "Invaders out of Tibet Now!" stickers.

I probably have more to say, but I have to go to work so I can pay for worthless shit around Wisconsin. Looks like brewpubs got the shaft yesterday, too. Apparently the state legislature wants to encourage folks to drink and drive, instead of getting a growler to take home.

This is the saddest animal story I have ever read.

Do not click this link if you are eating dinner or cry easily. (trust me on this)

The really sad part is the Wisconsin Humane Society or any veterinarian would try to work something out cheap/free, if you take the time to call and ask, just to end the dog's suffering as kindly as possible.

This sucks, too.

Every morning about 4:30 I tell Satan's Little Helper I'm going to sell him to a tennis racket factory if he doesn't knock off the !#*^% pouncing and meowing and let me sleep, but seriously, this close to Halloween we don't even go outside with the leash (we don't really "walk"; I follow along as he investigates the hedge and yank him back when he runs toward the street), in case he gets away and ends up in the hands of assholes.

And I should not have looked at the WHS's available cats. There's a fine line between "old maid with cat" and "ammonia-scented crazy cat woman" I'm trying to avoid crossing.


What I put up with around here...

Go Go Go Bobzilla

Can't find a picture of Freeney's safety, but I'm sure they'll be up tomorrow.

Monday factoid

Only two teams in NFL history have opened three consecutive seasons with records of 6-0 or better. The Colts could become the third tonight.

Curly Lambeau's Green Bay Packers did it by going 10-0, 8-0 and 9-0 from 1929-31. The St. Louis Rams' "Greatest Show on Turf" [my fat butt!] did it with 6-0 starts from 1999-2001.

The Colts would have the best victory total of the three. They opened 13-0 in 2005 and 9-0 last season.

The last time the Colts were at Jax I had to turn the game off at halftime.

Reason #473920547 Hillary Clinton shouldn't be POTUS

Cats aren't props.

Just you wait, Kansas...

Under first-year coach Gene Chizik, Iowa State took a major step forward in defeat.

I missed it; I was at a luncheon in Bay View for a co-worker I don't like all that much (and even less now).

I was really surprised by all the businesses on Kinnickkinnick; when I first started coming to MKE in 1998, I got dragged out to the Collector's Edge periodically, and it was the only open-looking storefront in a scary neighborhood of abandonment. Now there's coffee and antiques and tanning everywhere. On the way home I stopped at Downtown Books; I bought a German translation of Gone With the Wind. It's good to have goals.

Dungy on Whitlock, Baltimore Sun on Manning

Coach Dungy talks to Phil B of the IndyStar. Seems like Whitlock didn't get his "whitening" numbers correct, and I'm not sure Coach is up on the history of hip-hop, but otherwise no surprises. He's a better man than I am--same thoughts, less harsh words.

Don't read the comments--Baltimore fans are still behaving like spoiled children, even after the former Cleveland Browns' ignominous performance in last year's playoffs--but enjoy this article about Peyton Manning nearing Johnny U's franchise TD record. Especially the bit at the end where former players speculate about Peyton's parentage. I thought he sprang fully-grown from Zeus' forehead...

God Bless America, indeed.

I love that a 40-year-old mother of two can be a "trophy wife."

Not really sure what I think.

Until I started to analyze it, I thought I liked Jason Whitlock's column this week.

Filed under "Gee, you don't have to look far in the comments before someone calls him 'Uncle Tom'":

African-American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a justifiable reason to whiten their rosters. That will be the legacy left by Chad, Larry and Tank Johnson, Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens, Michael Vick and all the other football bojanglers.

"Bojanglers" is one of those words I wish I was allowed to use. It's succinctly descriptive. But I don't believe anyone intentionally sets out to "whiten their rosters."

In terms of opportunity for American-born black athletes, they're going to leave the game in far worse shape than they found it.

It's already starting to happen. A little-publicized fact is that the Colts and the Patriots — the league's model franchises — are two of the whitest teams in the NFL. If you count rookie receiver Anthony Gonzalez, the Colts opened the season with an NFL-high 24 white players on their 53-man roster. Toss in linebacker Naivote Taulawakeiaho "Freddie" Keiaho and 47 percent of Tony Dungy's defending Super Bowl-champion roster is non-African-American. Bill Belichick's Patriots are nearly as white, boasting a 23-man non-African-American roster, counting linebacker Tiaina "Junior" Seau and backup quarterback Matt Gutierrez.

Racial classifications are so silly. Gonzalez is Cuban-American; most surveys wouldn't consider him white, depending on what kind of point they wanted to make (he's also the next Marvin Harrison). He didn't mention how he classified Ramon Guzman...and I will buy a beer for anyone who can pronounce Freddy Keiaho's given name.

But it's not really about skin color or family name, other than race is the current, overused, (inaccurate) proxy for "culture":

Hip hop athletes are being rejected because they're not good for business and, most important, because they don't contribute to a consistent winning environment.

You don't say.

We are in the process of mishandling the opportunity and freedom earned for us by Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Doug Williams, Mike Singletary, Gale Sayers, Willie Lanier and countless others. And those of us in the media who have rationalized, minimized and racialized every misstep by Vick, Pacman and T.O. have played an equal role in blowing it.

It's so rare to see anyone in media accept blame for the role the media plays in redefining dysfunctional behavior as "just part of their culture."

By failing to confront and annihilate the abhorrent cultural norms we have allowed to grab our youth, we have in the grand American scheme sentenced many of them to hell on earth (incarceration), and in the sports/entertainment world we've left them to define us as unreliable, selfish and buffoonish.

Straight from Bill Cosby and Juan Williams. It's just shocking to hear it applied to professional football, to black men who have supposedly "made it", and to an occupation that's 70% black.

Hip hop is the dominant culture for black youth. In general, music, especially hip hop music, is rebellious for no good reason other than to make money. Rappers and rockers are not trying to fix problems. They create problems for attention.

That philosophy, attitude and behavior go against everything football coaches stand for.

I'm suddenly reminded of the clip from the Simpsons where Abe makes fun of Joe Namath's fur coat and sideburns. "Now, Johnny Unitas--there's a haircut you could set your watch to!"

If the piece was just an indictment of the hip-hop culture and its detrimental effects on NFL teams (not to mention its detrimental effects on black men who couldn't play at that level), why start off with complaining about rosters with white guys at the start of the essay? And why, for the love of all that does not suck, the unsubstantiated unnecessary suggestion at the end that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are racists???

Whether calculated or not, the Patriots and the Colts have created settings in which Brady and Manning can lead and feel comfortable.

Is that the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down??

I'm also going to deduct style points for using the word "buffoon" three times in one essay.

This is amazing.

I'm impressed.

Stuff

• Got an e-mail from my cousin letting me know that Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids is hiring a skazillion engineers. I might need a new job in a few months (I've already ridden a 12-month contract 18 months) but I don't want to go back to being the only never-married non-mother non-lesbian over 25 living in the state. Milwaukee has its downsides but at least people ask me what I do instead of my children.
  
• Speaking of, Kay S. Hymowitz at City Journal has written a piece on how women around the world love being single. I must be doing something wrong. Maybe if I didn't hate shopping...
• On the other end of the spectrum, middle-school students getting hormonal birth control without the knowledge of their parents. I spent my afternoon imagining scenarios where any of the kids I know would be 11 or 13 and asking me about ANY birth control and every single one of them involves me calling their parents (several of them also involve beating the crap out of someone). I'm not anti-pill--if someone wants to put their young daughter on birth control pills for a non-medical reason, that's their prerogative as a crappy parent--but I'm very against government agencies going behind parents' backs, and especially when there are potentially dangerous physical consequences.
  
• The Packers have a bye and the Colts play Monday. What am I going to DO this weekend?
  

Hrm.

Ann Coulter today reminds me of an incident at UIowa (recently the subject of some articles about lack of diversity in hiring) when I was in high school. Black dental students received violent threats. Uproar ensued, until they discovered the perp was...wait for it...a black dental student. My recollection is that she had a legitimate mental illness and hadn't been taking her medication; not exactly the anti-racism warrior the other exemplars are made out to be.

I was going to blog about the latest UIowa flap, but the only way to fix the place is to burn it down and start over.

Why I hate Wikipedia

Iowa State Basketball Players.

Where's PAUL SHIRLEY?? JAKE SULLIVAN? Gary Thompson??? Stacy Freese? Elmer Robinson, Lafester Rhodes, Julius Michalik, Michael Nurse, Kelvin Cato, Victor Alexander, Justus Thigpen, Ron Bayless, Megan Taylor? And that's just off the top of my head.

And why the F is Adam *spit* Haluska on that list??


(I'm pleased that the football team managed to score against UT last weekend, but it's time for basketball now.)

Fred...

"Some think the way to beat the Democrats in November is to be more like them. I could not disagree more. I believe that conservatives beat liberals only when we challenge their outdated positions, not embrace them. This is not a time for philosophical flexibility, it is a time to stand up for what we believe in."

They're everywhere...

Thoroughly enjoyed three days away from a computer. Not sure if the cat is angry I left or angry I came back...



Saturday we were driving down an unnumbered road in the middle of nowhere, central Vermont, and got stuck behind a car going about 20mph...with an Illinois license plate. Felt right at home, I did. !(%#*!

Oh dear.

I was fairly "meh" about the proposed MillerCoors merger--I only drink their products when someone else is buying--but now I'm gravely concerned:

Area craft brewers worry that consolidation might limit their access to wholesalers, distribution system

I'm sure I'll be able to get Spotted Cow as long as I live in MKE, and the Sprecher brewery is on the way home from work--yes!--but I do like to try new beers without driving all over the country. And what happens if I move??

Better send a note home to their mommies!

Peter at Texas Hold 'Em notes schools in Denver sending home notes with fat kids, telling their parents the kids are fat (I've never met a fat person who didn't know they were fat...didn't know they should wear shirts that cover their bellies when they leave the house, yes; didn't know they were fat, no...).

They're using the BMI, which is the old debunked height-weight chart disguised by a "calculator." It's touted as a "measure of body fat"--but there's no actual measurement of body fat, you just plug in your height and weight. It doesn't measure health or fitness, either. But it's good enough for government skrewls to use to label and stigmatize kids!

Using player bio information at nfl.com and brewers.com, I had a little fun with the calculator.

Brett Favre, at his listed stats, has a BMI of 28.5, which is on the high side of "overweight." Peyton and Eli Manning are both "overweight" at 27.5; Joseph Addai is pushing "obese" at 29.8; Ben Sheets isn’t far off at 29.0; and Prince Fielder’s 35.3 gets him packed off to a re-education camp.

The Prince does get thrown out a lot on double plays. But don't tell me any of those QBs are fat.

Books and planes

I joined Goodreads today. This could be time-consuming, or it could go the way of mycolts.net, I don't know.

I'm going to Vermont this weekend (nonstop, all hail Midwest) for the first time--I expect it will be culturally similar to Wisconsin, with taller rocks--and I could use some suggestions for something to read on the plane. I've already read An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England. Plenty of good tips in that one.

I have no idea about a hostess gift, either. I'm out of Iowa chops, and WI is problematic: can't get beer on the plane, no point in taking cheese. I'm down to honey (in 3 oz or smaller containers, I haven't forgotten what happened when I tried to fly with Play-Doh) or...uh....sausage?

I don't have cable TV...

Kathy Shaidle:

The so-called poor have cars and cable tv and free medical. They live in America in the 21st century, where school is free and libraries are free and a bus ticket to a better town costs less than a bag of crack. If they're "poor" it's because they were too lazy and stupid to a) finish high school and/or b) keep their pants on. Jesus had something to say about folks who didn't properly manage their money or other people's, and who squandered free gifts and good will. He told the adulteress to sin no more, not to find herself another baby daddy.

I was going to post my own thoughts, but they're not original and I have to go to work.

It's worth noting that all the girls in my HS class who had babies the summer after graduation are doing much better than I am--husbands who make enough money that they can stay home with their younger children, new houses, newer cars than I drive--and that's not counting the social capital automatically granted to mothers, even in stupid situations. Especially in stupid situations.

Is it 1787 already?

Barbara Boxers has proposed that immigration enforcement be suspended so "undocumented residents" (that would be non-citizens who aren't supposed to be here) can be counted for the purpose of doling out Congressional representation. And federal slush money, I'm sure.

I'd like to be the first to propose another 3/5 compromise. Illegal aliens can be counted as 3/5 a person in exchange for building the damn fence and stepping up other enforcement efforts. I think that's fair--the DNC gets 60% of the number of people the Census Bureau can find and ICE can't. Of course, that would only work if ICE was trying to find/process people....sigh.

Given all the pathetic, quasi-legal bribery the City of Ames did in 2000 to try to convince kids in dorms and graduating seniors to fill out census forms to be counted as permanent residents (that roommate who dropped out and went home, they count, too!) to qualify for more federal dollars, I don't feel a whole lot of love for the accuracy of people self-reporting to the Census Bureau (1 out of every 500 teenagers is a widow? in 2000??), much less the reports filed by people out looking for people to report on (see also ACORN).

Plus, it'll be fun to watch all the talking heads and lockstep lemmings pretend they've heard of the original 3/5 compromise.

...and they'll go for it on 4th and 3

If you're a Minnesota football fan looking for an inspiring team to follow this season, you don't need to lower your standards and root for the cheating, slacker-enabling Patriots.
...
How can you not like this team? The coach and quarterback are among the classiest and most accomplished figures in the game, and have we mentioned they don't cheat?

Not often I enjoy something in the Red Star Tribune not written by Lileks.

Oh, this is great.

Police urged not to check legal status

A policy Milwaukee police officials adopted recently prohibits officers from asking immigration questions or alerting federal authorities to suspected illegal immigrants, with some exceptions.
...
Milwaukee officers can question a person's immigration status or alert federal authorities only in cases of violent crimes, suspected terrorism, street gang crimes or other limited cases.

I agree that the city police have better things to do than to do ICE's work for them. But why wait until someone gets killed before turning over a name? They've been making a big deal all summer about making thousands of "citizen contacts", I'm sure they've turned up a few people who aren't supposed to be living here, why sit on this information? Given that thousands of people are killed every year by unlicensed illegal-alien drivers, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to pass on the alleged addresses of people without a valid license to ICE to ignore them as they see fit.

As illegal immigration has grown into a national issue the past couple of years, stepped-up enforcement efforts have produced deportation stories that rankled immigrant rights groups.

In 2004, a Waukesha County mother of two was sent back to India after she got a flat tire and police officers discovered that she had entered the United States illegally 12 years earlier.

Very sad for her, but the police officers did not put a gun to her head in 1996 and force her onto a plane without the proper approval.

(The J-S article used the phrase "illegal immigrant"? Someone's gonna get fired.)

They're starting to frighten me.

No Harrison, no Addai, no Sanders, no problem.

I'm disappointed Marvin's consecutive-games-with-receptions streak ended, but he's got two weeks to heal before Jacksonville, which is a) important and b) on MNF.

I've been indefinitely banned from watching football with the Real Men of Genius because the Colts have won more games than all of their teams put together--Jets (1), Dolphins (0), Rams(0), Broncos(2), and Bears(1). Heh. I didn't tell them I'm out of town the next three weekends anyway.

The stat I find interesting: the Colts are 4-0 against teams with starters who have Colts Super Bowl rings.

Blah blah SCHIP blah blah

Mark Steyn: if this is the face of the "needy" in America, then no-one is not needy.

My dad paid for health insurance for a family of six when he was self-employed for 15 years. But we had one TV, 1.5 bathrooms, and two pairs of jeans apiece. *srednop*

Basketball practice starts this week...

I'm getting a kick out of all the people complaining about how the Wisconsin football team suh-diddly-ucks this year. Top 25, lost one conference game...y'all wouldn't know suck if it walked up wearing blaze orange and popped a cap in Bucky's ass (now there's a mixed metaphor).

Here's some 99.44% pure, home-grown, corn-fed suck, for comparison.

It doesn't really bother me; I feel bad for Bret Meyer because he's a better QB than the record indicates, and I thought Chizik was too negative about the players at the halftime interview (at the post-game interview he blames the coaching, someone must have called him on it), but anyone who watched ISU football before the 2000 season just nods and hopes Kansas has a bad day so we at least get one conference win. When I say we suck, I'm about as emotional as I am when I say the sun came up this morning.

Gutfield:

The whole idea that you have to try something before making a judgment is moral laziness. This refusal to say something is wrong because you're trying to keep an open mind prevents you from seeing what's wrong with the world - or more important other cultures. Female Circumcision strikes me as wrong - but I don't need my clitoris removed to find out.... I find the whole idea of prison rape to be reprehensible. But I've never experienced that either.

He's right for the most part; I know a lot of women who went directly from their parents' house to marriage (via an all-women dorm) and I'm not allowed to point out their lack of experience with the old-maid-with-cat lifestyle when they sneer at it...and I'm not allowed to question their smugness about marriage, either.

I've also noticed people aren't even allowed to judge some stuff they may have tried and later realized was wrong, with the following exceptions: smoking, eating meat, being 'overweight' (see Mike Huckabee's plan to force us all to live his new lifestyle), driving a car (see al-Gore).

*srednop* Too much thinking for Saturday.

Department of Redundancy Department.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Governor Jim Doyle has declared Sunday as Favre Record Day in Wisconsin.

C'mon, that's EVERY Sunday in Wisconsin.

I actually think that game will be more interesting than the Colts game the local FOX affiliate refuses to show me, but I might be harboring some residual Super Bowl shadenfreude.

Heh. Heh heh.

Is it wrong of me to want one of these?

Today someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I want to get through Thanksgiving before I start thinking about Christmas, is what I want...

No crying in baseball

But this is really cool.

Besides their surprising 14-1 finish to the season, the Colorado Rockies are giving baseball fans another reason to cheer for them this postseason.

The widow of Rockies minor league coach Mike Coolbaugh, who died after getting hit by a line drive this season, will be granted a full share of the team's playoff winnings after a team vote.

Plus, they're two up on the Phillies, which pleases me in a "my brother-in-law who hates the Colts will be pissed" way.

Zombie strikes again!

The Zombster has a zillion disclaimers: The pictures from the Folsom Street Fair can be considered hard-core pornography (and Zombietime is experiencing heavy traffic; expect long load times). I admire Zombie's willingness to wade into the frays and the thoroughness of Zombie's reports (I think I know what pronoun Zombie takes, but I don't want to accidentally 'out' Zombie's identity). I would have gotten myself kicked out for hurting people's feelings with my cackling Hillaryesque laughter.

Really. The religious sex toys were disgusting (no Mohammed-shaped sex toys, I wonder why...), but mostly they all look kinda pathetic. Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!!! I'm so EDGY!!! LOOK AT ME!!!

(...says a chick with a blog. Ow.)

Dunno; if they were trying to shock right-wing cranks in flyover country, they failed. The "fetish lifestyle" is so mainstream anymore...CSI (I only watch the original) regularly has plots featuring extreme BDSM, furries, bloodsports, transvestites, perverting religious symbols, Elvisexuals, did I mention extreme BDSM? These poor deluded fools think they're being counter-cultural, and they're network TV.


Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, two gay guys have been sentenced to 7000 lashes for activities not conducted in public.

Wisconsin News of the Weird

STONE LAKE, Wis. — A man who went to a northwoods bank's drive-up window demanding money fled on his camouflage-colored all-terrain vehicle after the teller held up candy suckers and said that's all she had, authorities said.

*srednop*

This seems fairly normal to me--both the bank robber on the ATV and the teller apologizing for not having any money.

RESOLUTION

Thank you, "Jackson Bauer", whoever you are.

NOW THEREFORE, be it resolved by the Senate of the United States and its individual members that they

(1) Shall refrain from suggesting, without warrant, that our troops are murderers, liars, torturers, idiots, losers, and traitors

(2) Shall refrain, whenever possible, from making public statements about the troops, their mission or our country that are indistinguishable from statements made by Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or others who have vowed to destroy the United States of America

(3) Shall refrain from introducing legislation that would impede or impair the ability of our troops to defeat our enemies or that exceeds the powers granted to Congress under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution

Worth reading the whole thing, of course.

Scheiße!

Since I got home from work, I've had four otherwise rational people rant at me about how Bush hates children. They want free healthcare for their kid (because they deserve it, simply by virtue of spawning in the first place) and that mean child-hating bastard vetoed the bill that would give it to them.

They had no idea that the bill had provisions providing free insurance to non-poor non-children, much less that those provisions were added by Dems, and if they would have left well enough alone and just increased the money for poor children by 300% W would have signed the damn thing the way he signs all the big-government big-money bills, but even once I point this out, they don't care! They truly believe George W. Bush wants their child to DIE so he can continue spending billions to kill Iraqi children, too.

My personality disorder is acting up; I told them to move to Canada and let me know how long the wait is to see the allergist.


(My "Beginning German for Adults" class started tonight, so I now know more words than 'Scheiße' and 'Bier', but I'm all self-conscious about how I'm pronouncing all the vowel sounds.)

Clean your lint trap.

The worst part about living in an apartment is sharing laundry machines with people who are either ignorant of how to launder textiles appropriately or just don't care. If I had a dollar for everytime I opened a washing machine and found a bathroom rug, six bras, four pairs of jeans, AND a king-size sheet set, none of which should be washed together in the first place much less overloaded by that...

Anyway, when you take your clothes out of the dryer, clean the freaking lint trap.

Residents of a 10-unit apartment building evacuated safely when a small dryer fire filled the structure with smoke early today on Milwaukee's northwest side.

Milwaukee police said no one was hurt and the fire did only an estimated $100 in damage. The emergency call came in about 3 a.m. from 7105 N. Teutonia Ave., police said.

The suspected cause was a build up of lint inside the dryer, police said.

There were a couple of dryer fires around the city about this time last year that caused serious damage. I'm not just an old crank--I'm an old crank who doesn't want to get woken up and forced outside at 3 a.m.

Damn, I'm good.

Friday Michelle Malkin had a piece on underage kids being allowed into a sex fetish festival in San Francisco, and I commented "I'll bet money someone takes in a kid in a stroller."

Damn, I'm good.

I'll let everyone else handle the outrage about dressing babies up like a sex slave. Here's the comment that rankled in the original linked article:

Fathers Gary Beuschel and John Kruse watched over them closely. They were proud to show the twins off.

“They will see more than the kids with moms and dads in Iowa,” said Beuschel, who wanted to expose his children to San Francisco's diverse community.

1. "Exposing" your 2-year-old children to sexual fetishes is not a good thing no matter where you live. That really should go without saying.
2. They always go for the cheap slam of the Midwest, like your longitude is a marker of your worth as a person. Unoriginal.
   
3. On top of being a shitty parent and a drone, he's also ignorant. I've seen people exposing their small children to BDSM-type fetish stuff in Iowa City, which is, surprise, in Iowa.
   

5-10 years ago I used to attend a yearly gathering in Iowa City of people from an online community. Some of them would wear their BDSM gear to the park, and most of them would bring their children. I didn't actually see anyone masturbating, but people dropping their pants to show off new piercing was pretty common, as was leading people around on leashes and floggings. One guy made a hobby of getting a picture of every participant wearing handcuffs (there are probably still some of me, wearing handcuffs and looking annoyed; fortunately most of them are 404). One year there was a donkey. I've suppressed the rest of that story.

Not only did no one stop to think, "Maybe I should leave the kid with Grandma for the afternoon," no one stopped to think, "Maybe all these other parents using the park don't want to see the man in the fishnets lick my naked boobies." Well, I did, but I didn't have any influence over this group.

I don't even want to know what went on at some of the private after-hours parties.

So that's why I KNEW people were going to be bringing their kids to this thing in San Francisco. I understand these people. They've all got huge empty places inside and they do stupid shit to get attention to try to fill it.

Oh, and my sisters tell me that children over 2 years should not still be drinking out of a bottle.

Time to fill in the river...

Another drunk "college kid" died in the Mississippi River while drinking in LaCrosse over the weekend.

The incident marked the second straight year that a drowning occurred during the city's initial Oktoberfest weekend. Exactly one year ago Sunday, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Luke Homan disappeared after a night of drinking. His body was found two days later in the Mississippi River.

Homan, 21, became the eighth college-age man since 1997 to turn up dead in a river after going missing from a tavern. The deaths led to persistent rumors of a serial killer roaming the area, but police and the FBI continue to insist there is no evidence to suggest the deaths were anything but accidents.

Last year when this happened, there were several "town meetings" to discuss the "epidemic" and how to stop it. Telling kids to stop binge drinking by the river wasn't on the table--townspeople wanted increased nighttime patrols in the area, free cab rides, big fences, etc. Great ideas, except it looks like they didn't work. I suggested filling in the river--yeah, it might slow down some barge traffic, but aren't the lives of these "good young men" worth economically crippling neighboring states? The only way to keep drunk "kids" out of the river is to remove the river.

Blaming Oktoberfest seems disingenuous; it's not like there's no binge drinking the other 51 weekends a year.

Anyway, I feel really bad for their mothers. While the sad fact that sperm has never hit my eggs makes me unable to comment on anyone else's children (or so I'm told, daily), I can imagine that it must hurt like hell when someone knocks on the door to tell you that the baby you carried for 9 months has killed himself by his own stupidity.

Harkin off his meds again...

Still pleased to be one of 6 Iowans who didn't vote for the man in 2002. Maybe I'm naive, but basic integrity is more important than committee seniority.

Maybe Congressional committees should be randomly assigned every two years, so senators are more equal. Some people might become proficient in one area after forty years of writing the legislations, but most of them don't seem to be doing any better now than they did in the 60s. Pathetically few Congress members had a real job (and most of them were lawyers) before their first elected position back home, so most of them can't claim a science, technology, education, business, medicine, etc background that would make them more suited for one committee than another. A couple of exceptions--Tom Coburn was a practicing obstetrician until the Senate made him quit seeing patients on breaks--but not enough exceptions to make the current practice the best practice.

What do I know? I just work.

Football Odds and Ends

• Spent all day obsessing over not obsessing over ISU @ Nebraska, but it wasn't so bad. They racked up 415 yards and only lost by 2.5 TDs. Stop laughing; it's usually more like 6 TDs when they're in Lincoln.
• Also pleased the BigXII North aren't the pushovers the media painted them as at the beginning of the year; two big wins over teams from the South. Go State!
• Bret Favre needs to get a TD today so I can stop hearing about it. I don't remember Peyton Manning getting this much coverage when he broke a Marino TD record in 2004. But I was living in Kurt Warner's hometown that year; there wasn't much coverage of any QB not named Kurt. And Peyton had the bad fortune of making the TD on the day Reggie White died, and even that headline got deprecated for reports on the tsunami.
  
• I've always liked Kelly Holcomb. Nice to see him starting again.
  

Whitefish Dunes SP

My brother stood me up this weekend to go to a gay rodeo in Sioux City (don't ask, I don't know either), so I took a day trip up to Door County. Overall, I wasn't as impressed by "ZOMG! DOOR COUNTY!" as the propaganda said I should be; Sturgeon Bay seemed like a more expensive, more annoying Michigan City (note to self, schedule trip to Indiana). More rocks. More boutique crap. Less normal working people. A little too smug for my liking. Maybe if I'd had time to go further north...

OTOH, it was very beautiful. It's a good thing I don't have money, because I'd probably have given in to the impulse to buy a llama farm in Manitowoc County or a B&B in Algoma just to be out in the rocks and trees every day.

More photos here.

So much for baseball.

I knew it was going to be bad when I walked in and they handed me a white towel to throw in.

The game itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the people I was attending with don't actually like baseball, they just go to drink heavily and act like assholes (I almost said "act like infants" but the actual infants in our section were very well-behaved). They spent the last two innings smacking each other with beer-soaked towels and screaming obscenities at each other. It's weird; they're fine at bars and parties, and the tailgate was great, but once they get inside the ballpark they turn into complete wastes of carbon.

Also could have done without the row of high school girls behind us who made noises like gilts getting their first visit with a boar when JJ Hardy was up and spent the rest of the time giving each other graphic descriptions of everything they've done with their boyfriends, other boys, and occasionally other girls. Alone and in groups. Holy crap, high school girls do things I had never heard of until sometime after I graduated from kollij. They also left behind several dozen airplane bottles of flavored vodkas when they decamped just before the towel-smacking.

I feel really old.


On the plus side, Bratwurst finally won, and I brought home $55 from the sausage race pool. I don't normally profane the sacred sausage ritual by betting on it, but I let them talk me into it for the last game. Heh!

Bob isn't even his real name.

Best itty-bitty safety in the league.

I'm always weirded out when I realize I'm taller than some professional football players.

Can't live with 'em, can't eat 'em.

I wasn't going to be one of THOSE people, but this is too good to keep to myself. Meet my faithless animal companion, FUZZ. Apparently the asiago-basil foccacia I was going to have for dinner was not to his liking.

I saw this headline

2 Patriot Act provisions ruled unlawful

And I thought "YES! I can buy Sudafed without having to wait for the pharmacist to be in, showing ID, and having my purchase tracked by the stupid government like I'm sort of criminal!"

But no, it's just about a judge in Portland deciding agents of the U.S. shouldn't be listening in on terrorists overseas.


*mutter* 80% of the meth in the U.S. comes from Mexico, and people (in Iowa, at least) with meth labs have their friends steal pseudoephedrine from storerooms or order it from distributors using falsified credentials, so CLEARLY the bipartisan solution to "looking tough on meth" was to tack a bill punishing Heather and her sinuses onto a defense bill. I mean, really. It's so obvious, I can't believe people can still find meth to buy.

I could use a new ride...

Now I'm more upset than usual about being too ugly to get married. I want a house and an SUV, not to mention all that tax-free life-insurance money...

OK, that was sarcasm, but this isn't: The thing that's pissing me off about this murderer's enablers and fans--the Oprah-fication of America--is that they end up tarring all women with the same brush. Women are psychologically fragile! Women are emotional and wholly incapable of logical thought and rational actions! Women can't be held responsible for their actions--they have UTERUSES (uteri?) and that makes them incapable of self-control. Etc. Speak only for yourselves, brain-dead bimbos--some of us are better than that.

And it's WOMEN perpetrating this bullshit--the exact same bullshit beliefs that were used for centuries to keep women from voting, owning property, working outside the home (except for spinsters who were allowed to teach and poor women who had no choices but domestic work, factory work, or prostitution), having their own checking accounts, etc. All those things were debunked in the early 20th century, ladies--do you MIND?

I'm pretty sure sometime before I was born there was a feminism that said women were individuals, just like men, and should be allowed to own stuff and use their talents as they see fit, just like men, but didn't consider men an enemy to be fought and killed (probably 19th century feminism), and didn't consider the uterus to be a source of excuses for personal failings. At some point, I absorbed this attitude from my aunt, my dad, and their family (my mother's still upset I didn't major in elementary ed...just living in a dorm full of el ed majors dropped my IQ 15 points...).

Let's go back to THAT.

I will now annoy Milwaukee natives

by saying that a bronze statue of The Fonz downtown would rock!

I like the di Suervo, too.




What are ya gonna do, send me back to Iowa? :P

Blah

In the multi-cultural sensitive tolerant political correct doublespeak world, there are three classes of people you can still laugh at with impunity:

a) fat people
b) conservatives
c) women with some non-traditional success who aren't lesbian separatists.

(I've got nothing against the lesbian separatists--if that's the life you want then Godspeed--I'm just tired of people assuming that's the life I want.)

I've never complained about any man's paycheck. It's always been the opposite: they find out what I do for a living, and they can't get away fast enough. Maybe if I had looked more like Cameron Diaz than Bea Arthur when I was in college, someone might have wanted to be with me without fretting about earning potential, but the sad truth is that most men with the same level of education and professional experience as I have can afford (and seem to prefer) to date attractive young women, so I have to work with what is available to me.

And what is available falls into two categories. One group rates "providing for wife and family" very highly and considers it a masculine trait; the other group just wants someone to be their mommy and give them an allowance while they sit around on the Internet or watching TV all day. Sadly for me, I find the latter group unattractive, so I'm stuck with the first group, which finds me unattractive because I can afford my own groceries and install my own electronics.

So I don't get to have the life I want. It's my fault; I never should have gone to college.

But I'm getting really, really tired of providing the rest of society with someone to laugh at and look down on and feel smug about.

Trust but verify

Michelle Malkin has a Photo of the Day featuring a woman in a nun's habit being searched by a TSA agent wearing a hijab.

It's a revolting image (causing revulsion, not staging an uprising), but I need to know more about the participants.

a) There have been "peace activists" (yes, those are sneer quotes) who have falsely claimed to be priests and nuns to get extra media attention to their demonstrations. Some of them really did belong to a cult group, but not an order recognized by Rome; some had left the Church in the 60s. At this angle and distance, it's hard to know if this is a woman who has taken vows or a Code Pinko in her costume from The Sound of Music. I assume an actual nun would understand our need to double-check, since she took up the habit to set her apart from the rest of the world.

b) Need to know more about the "passer-by" who took the photo, as well as the person who posted it to the Internet (they appear to not be the same person). I don't put it past any multi-culti sensitive "tolerant!!" moron to stage and/or distribute the photo with the intention of bashing "reich-wingers and Rethuglicans" for our reaction to it.

c) The lighting is really shitty. I couldn't tell it was a hijab; I thought it was a Black woman with straightened hair. It does kind of look like she's wearing a skirt instead of standard-issue pants, though. Which brings me to

d) Thank God I never have to go to Detroit for anything ever. Because I absolutely refuse to be searched by anyone who is not wearing the standard uniform, especially if they're wearing some sort of hood.

It's a joke, people!!

When I say it doesn't matter if you lose every game of the season as long as you beat Iowa, I don't really mean it. *sniff*

Fortunately, my little brother is coming to town next week so I will miss the radio broadcast of the Nebraska game.

Speaking of Ahmadinejad...

I'm vaguely pleased to see there are some students at Columbia who aren't sheeple. I don't think you'd see a group like that at any Big Ten university.

I knew there was a reason I liked Fred.

Here's two.

First, at the NRA convention:

"It's never seemed to me to be coincidental that the places that have the highest crime rates tend to be the places that have the most restrictions on gun ownership in America."

You know, I never felt like I needed a gun for self-defense until I moved to Milwaukee, where of course I can't legally carry one. I got panhandled on the way in to work today, which rolls off fairly easily, but then on the way out of work there was another fight in the liquor store parking lot, and I really don't want to get carjacked for someone's get-away.

Next, Ahmadinejad (I think that's spelled right; I'm really not joking when I say I used all my name brainspace on "Vinatieri"):

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Thursday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should not be allowed into the country, much less at the World Trade Center site, when he travels to New York next week to address the United Nations.

"I know there would be ramifications in the United Nations" if the U.S. refused to let Mr. Ahmadinejad into the country, Mr. Thompson said during a brief news conference at Dallas Love Field. "I would deny this character a visa. What's he going to do, visit there to get pointers for his own activities? I wouldn't let him in the country."

I wouldn't either, U.N. or no U.N. Actually, I think it's well past time to move the U.N. headquarters to a country that all the delegates don't hate. How about Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia or Cuba? Everyone loves Mugabe and executing non-Muslims who get lost near Mecca!

(My apologies to whoever had the "U.S. out of U.N." sign up along U.S. 65 near Bondurant, oh, 2000-2001ish...at the time, I didn't understand why you felt so strongly about it that you put up a sign on your backyard fence, but now I do.)

It's always our fault, especially when it's not.

Canada is suffering from an invasion of poor Mexicans who call themselves "economic refugees" so they can collect various forms of welfare.

Canada blames...the U.S.

the suspected source of the problem -- a recently begun crackdown on illegal immigrants in economically struggling regions of the U.S. South.

Maybe if Canada doesn't want so many foreign freeloaders, they should stop giving away so much free stuff to foreign freeloaders. Or they could call up Felipe Calderon and tell him if wants to claim Mexico doesn't stop at the borders, he can come on up to Windsor and take care of his own damn people, since he can't be bothered to do it south of the Rio Grande.

Either way, the problem is NOT the U.S. half-assedly regulating its borders.

Attention cat people

I heartily recommend Two Lumps.

Today's comic is extra-great.

Signs of the Apocolypse

I got a Canadian nickel today, and it's worth 5 cents.

The Detroit Lions are undefeated after playing more than one game, the Brewers are in a pennant race, and the Canadian dollar is worth a dollar. Who are those four guys on horseback out in the parking lot?

I shouldn't even be joking about this with all the Iranian arms and soldiers turning up in Iraq lately and Ahmadinejad on his way to New York. Sigh.

A little football...

I know that between Texas and Tennessee I should really hate Vince Young, but I'm starting to respect the lad. About that Donovan McNabb race thing...

"Black or white quarterbacks, we all go through something because that's the life of a quarterback," Vince Young said Wednesday after Titans practice. "You've got to be able to handle all the pressure. You've got to be able to handle the losses. You've got to be able to handle the media. If you can't handle it, you've got to get off that position and go play something else."

Young is the third black quarterback to start for the Titans franchise. The team won a bidding war to sign Warren Moon to a contract in 1984, drafted Steve McNair with the third pick overall in 1995 and selected Young in the same place in 2006.

Young said he respects every quarterback in the NFL and that everyone is entitled to his opinion.

"That's not my fight to fight. Right now over here the Tennessee Titans, we're trying to go to the playoffs. I can't worry about all the other stuff going on," Young said.

It might help that Young plays for a team that hasn't lost a Super Bowl with him at the helm in a city that isn't known for the hostility of its fans, but I'm pretty sure all those people wearing Brian Westbrook jerseys aren't booing McNabb because he's black.

Hey, American feminists?

Where the fuck are you??

Female circumcision focus of ferocious debate in Egypt

Girls are dying, men refuse to "give up control over women," and you morons are still bitching about George Bush.

I hate writing about my art

It always makes me feel like a fraud. I don't do "profound statements about society/gender/politics/blah blah blah." But I can't write the truth--"I just kinda threw some fabric together because I liked the colors"--because that's not serious.

I don't want to write a dissertation in Gender Studies, Revisionist History, or Malignant Narcissism; I just want to put my name up next to the quilt. But I have to write a statement. And it has to be serious. And in the 21st century, all serious art is moonbat identity politics.

Drives me nuts.

You don't say....

Interesting stuff about Fred Thompson and polls from Jim Geraghty. My favorite part:

Rasmussen also noted, “We just did a poll last night that showed 58 percent of voters saying everything that has been going on with the campaign so far has been generally annoying and a waste of time.”

Can I get a "No shit, Sherlock?"

Shadenfreude and Sharia

Don't have a lot to say lately. I've been sleeping twelve hours a day trying to shake a cold. Bleah.

I love the smell of Kirk Ferentz whining in the morning.

And Dr. Sanity names something I noticed several years ago..."Leftist Sharia."

...the left's "new civil rights" philosophy. They have the right to ridicule, trash and denigrate any black person who dares to stray from the approved party line.
...the "new gay rights" agenda of the left, where it's OK to be gay as long as you follow their rules, believe as they believe, and behave as they dictate you should.

Very apt. Of course, under REAL Sharia law, gays get executed. Very open-minded and tolerant.

Interesting poll at DSM Register...

What is the biggest sports moment in Iowa this year?

* Dallas Clark and Bob Sanders winning the Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts
* Drake women's basketball is upset MVC tourney winner, reaching the NCAA Tournament
* Zach Johnson, ex-Drake golfer from Cedar Rapids, win the Masters
* West Des Moines teenager Shawn Johnson wins all-around World Championship gold medal

I guess Sage Rosenfels' three TDs for Houston when Carr got knocked out was technically last year.

The first one isn't much of an "Iowa sports moment"...Sanders is from some suburb of Chicago and both he and Clark dropped out of UIowa after two years.

The second one is kind of sad, because ISU and Iowa teams make the Sweet Sixteen so often no one's impressed by UNI or Drake losing in the first round.

Winning the Masters? Who cares?

Shawn Johnson, OTOH, impresses me. "Women's" (they aren't) gymnastics creeps me out--I was taller than most of them when I was eight--but I'm sure she's spent more of her life in the gym becoming excellent than I've spent writing or making art or anything interesting, and I'm three times her age. Plus, it's unusual for someone from Podunk (despite what West Des Moines believes, it's still the middle of nowhere important) to have their talent identified at an early age, much less have it nutured.

I spent most of my school days being an unpaid teaching assistant (I wish I'd known about child labor laws...) instead of being challenged. I think I'm kind of bitter.

Iowa, the CYCLONE State

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!










Unbelievable.

Milwaukee News of the Weird

Yes!

Milwaukee Man Sues Makers of Brut After Cologne Ignites on Camping Trip

According to court filings, Lewitzke was burned while camping with family members on Memorial Day in 2004 in Wisconsin Dells, a popular resort area outside of Madison.

He washed and shaved in a bathhouse on the camp grounds and applied Brut lotion to his face, neck and chest with his hands. He also used the aerosol deodorant. He then went to a fire pit to cook breakfast.

His face, neck and chest ignited while he was starting the cooking fire, his lawsuit says.

Lewitzke's attorney, Michael Hanrahan, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his client suffered burns on 30 percent of his body and underwent three skin grafts.

He claims in court documents that the Burt products and their packaging were the direct cause of Lewitzke's injuries and were defective because they were "unreasonably dangerous." The suit also says the products' labeling was unsafe because it should have warned about the danger of fires, and the manufacturers should have tried to minimize that risk.

Brut's manufacturers and companies selling the products should be held liable for Lewitzke's injuries, medical expenses, and the pain and disability he has suffered, the lawsuit argues.

I can't decide which part of this article is funniest:

1. Someone over the age of 13 wearing Brut! Seriously, any adult man who wants to smell like a jr. high boys' locker room might be a danger to society)
2. Someone blaming WalMart for not telling them alcohol is flammable. Back to the jr high boys...doesn't everyone try to set aerosols and other shit on fire at that age, or was it just me?
3. The word "bathhouse."
4. My friend Chele nominated "a lawyer actually took this case", but that's not funny, that's just sad.
   

The man wasn't just standing around with marshmallows when he was burned; he was starting a fire. Any halfway clever lawyer should hit that during discovery--procedure, source of ignition, accelerants--and it's QED.



Unrelated "I love this city" moment today--was walking out of work on N. Teutonia this afternoon with a friend and we saw a bowling ball lying in that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. There's no lanes anywhere near work; every day we see broken glass, bits of crushed cars, snarled strands of hair extensions, beer cans, the occasional children's toy no one cares enough to go back to look for, etc, etc, but this is the first bowling ball. Only in Milwaukee.

Football economics

Last year, every NFL stadium sold out for the first ten weeks. I blamed the "Bush economy"--tax cuts left too many people with extra disposable income to spend on football tickets, unlike earlier in the decade when people didn't have funds to spare on their local crappy team (used to be able to see the Colts for free after purchasing four weeks' of groceries from Marsh... *sob*).

This year, Jacksonville (spittle be upon them) couldn't sell out the second week.

I don't THINK that's a sign of an economic downturn. Jax relies heavily on fans of opposing teams to get the sell-out (I'm sure that's how Arizona pulled it off last year), and Atlanta fans aren't dedicated enough to drive four hours to watch Joey Harrington.

But I could be wrong. It's happened once or twice before.

Tuesday.

National Day of Sanctimonious Self-Congratulation

A friend of mine is off work tomorrow, September 11, for the "National Day of Caring."

To mark the anniversary of a catastrophic mass murder of Americans by Islamic radicals hell-bent on destroying our entire civilization, lefties are going to ignore the horrific mass murder and the Islamic radicals and make themselves feel warm and fuzzy about how AWESOME!!1! they are by painting the houses of old people, reading to children, mopping the floor at the food bank--you know, the kind of stuff every decent able American should be doing more than once a year whether anyone declared war on us or not.

I've nothing against businesses giving paid time off for charitable work; I think that's a pretty good idea...year-round.

But putting your head in the sand while you pat yourself on the back because you CARE!!1! more than us horrible conservative monsters (i.e., those who would prefer to remember why we're at war with whom and keep our civilization around for a few more years) is really fucking stupid.

(Conservatives will probably be picking up trash at our national monuments this weekend, anyway, after the big lefty-anarcho-commie-defeatist rallies scheduled for D.C. and beyond. For some reason, those who CARE!!1! can't be bothered to pick up after themselves if no one's watching to tell them how sensitive and caring they are.)

Love those Hawkeyes.

They're such good people.

I had a lot of beer spilled on me the year I had season tix to ISU, but tailgaters used the dumpsters and the port-a-johns.

Well. This ruins my weekend.

Bad beer in Brew City

Oh boy.

In Iowa news...

61 days until basketball.

Help! I'm assimilating!

I bought a Packers hat.

Yes, it would be better to just give the whole $15 to one of the troop charities, but I feel like I need a symbol to wear this week. Subtle, so I don't get assaulted by local anti-war protesters, but football fans will know what the black hat is.


Also bought a cheesehead hat for an eight-year-old I know; his parents and older brothers are all Vikings fans but he loves Brett Favre. I'm feeling feisty this weekend.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

I've already informed the guys I'm watching the game with tonight that I'll probably cry when the Super Bowl XLI banner is raised.

"You saw just how energetic and exciting that is," Colts coach Tony Dungy said, mindful of the task that follows such big celebrations. "It gave us the feeling in New England that we wanted to do that. I think it brings a sense of pride in everything, but I believe our guys will understand that's last year."

Coach Dungy is a better man than I am. I'd totally forgotten the 2004 banner ceremony, but I'm sure I bitched about it all summer.

I do remember going for a walk along the Cedar River instead of watching the Super Bowl. Twice.

Fred Thompson. Because Guliani is too hard to spell.


(Works for me. All my spare neurons got used up on Vinetari Vinaterry Vinotieri Adam.)

Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincent!

This is my favorite part:

Caponi [chief executive of St. Vincent Health] said the Mannings made a monetary donation to the children’s hospital, but that the couple asked that the amount remain undisclosed.

Google reports no children's hospitals named for Tom Brady (hat tip Chele), but I'm pretty sure he'd want everyone to know the size of his endowment.

*cough*

Great idea, Silky!

I keep thinking of more and more reasons why John Edwards' plan for mandatory doctor visits--when nothing is wrong--is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, but I think I only need one succinct point...

Out-patients in Britain wait between 4 and 13 weeks to see a "consultant." In-patients wait longer; almost 25% wait more than 26 weeks. And these are people with an actual problem they would like fixed, if the government will allow it! After the initial appointment, expect to wait a year for knee or shoulder surgery, 15-18 months for a new hearing aid, EIGHT MONTHS FOR CHEMOTHERAPY, twelve months for a referral to a urologist, three weeks to have a complex fracture surgically set...ok, I have to stop with the Google now.

I think I've made my point.

Now, imagine how long your wait for that first appointment is going to be when you have to wait in line behind the hundreds of thousands of perfectly healthy people in your area...

*shudder*

I'm sure there's a big tax increase to build new mega-clinics and hire foreign nationals to staff them (which just introduces new problems), and I'm also sure it won't be enough.


OK, two points. The "mandatory mental illness screening"--aren't totalitarians (Hitler, Stalin, etc) famous for having dissidents declared insane and incarcerated somewhere? Well, the ones they don't shoot...

Why, yes.

Um.

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying "Mexico does not end at its borders."

Uh, yeah, it does. Might want to Google "Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo."

Art and more government...

I like art. I spend my money on museums and books and reproductions instead of getting the AC in fixed in my car (which I really regretted yesterday, let me tell you).

But "art people" really put me off.

J-S has an article today about "the state of art and culture" in SE Wisconsin, where they interviewed a bunch of people who run art organizations in the area. I might be picking on it for some time, there's just so much here...

First up, people seem to think that regional events and the ballet are sparsely attended because we don't have enough public transportation. True, you can't get from the corner of Capitol and Teutonia to downtown Memominee Falls and back on a Friday night without a car. But that's not the reason people don't go. If I asked 150 people from Milwaukee why they didn't see the last community theater performance in *insert suburb*, not a single one would say, "because there wasn't a bus to take me there" (OK, we might get a smart-ass "urban justice studies" UW-M student in the survey...). A dozen might say they don't like any theater or don't like the particular musical. The rest all either didn't know about it, had some family or social event to attend, or would just rather spend their entertainment time and money plaing video games or watching a Hollywood DVD with 'attractive' professional actors (we'll file 'shit, girl, you think I got time for that shit?!' under "other obligations on their time"). In other words, the same answers that residents of that suburb will give you when you ask they didn't attend the performance.

But why admit your product doesn't have universal appeal when you get the government to build stuff with other people's money?

There's so much more, but I'm off to the ballpark.

I will say this about Wisconsin...

It's got some beautiful rocks.

The grey ones are approx. 1.5 billion years old.