Summer's end.

--Yesterday was August 31st. Today is Sunday, 1 September, 2013. Yes, the kids have been back in school for a week, but to me, summer goes June through August.

--I hope that you got in a good summer vacation, even if you had to resort to exceptional means, like Freddie Wong's vacation director did, here:

I can't help but notice at 4:56 how expensive Belizian pistol ammunition is. Ah, resort prices.

--Today is the first day of dove season in Texas. I haven't bought my hunting license. I should probably call some local ranchers about getting to hunt on their place after I've bought my license. The dove are thick this year. But it's 105.0 °F out there. I'm not really interested in getting out in the field today.

--My elder daughter turned 15 this weekend. I'm teaching parent-taught driver's education. My wife isn't so sure about this. For a $500 savings, I'm pretty sure.

--According to The Wall Street Journal, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president is planning to fight with Congress over the right to bomb Syria. Look, I'm all for deploying the "Clearly Needs Killin'" Doctrine, but I'm also a fan of the "Let's Not Go Spending Money That We Don't Have To Piss Off Other Countries In Futile Plans" Doctrine. To quote Jim Wilson: "I'm having trouble following the logic: Syria attacked Syria, so we should attack Syria. Is that about right?"
In our War On Terrorism, don't we have a page on Not Creating New Motives For Future Terrorists?

--And now we've got a little sun shower. Brought the temp down to 100. The dove are flying everywhere. I moved the chickens and unloaded 600 lbs of bagged manure from the back of the Outback, and did some other yard work for a bit.

--My wife has talked for years about putting in an outdoor shower. I'm strongly considering making that my fall project, this year. The hardest part, frankly, will be putting up the screen.

--Great maps: These show the racial segregation in our cities.

--Useful site: Why am I just now learning of this site that crowd-sources the pronunciation of words? 

--The 1972 Blue Marble photo of our planet has been updated. Check out this amazing high resolution photograph featuring North America. Zoom in. It's great.

--The creator of Comic Sans font feels no remorse.

--Sign of the times: Fake NSA pickup lines on Twitter. This followed the LOVEINT story pretty quickly.

--The Onion steps away from satire, and tells some very sobering truth about modern "news" distribution.

--Per Ambulance Driver's suggestion, I wrapped boudin in bacon, and put it on the grill. It is with the same tone of solemnity that I admonish people not to do crack or meth that I tell you: don't do this. Not even once. I myself an ruined. Please remember me as a peacemaker. And while Holmes is best in most ring sausage, we preferred the Zummo's boudin, for its coarser texture in the rice.

--MORE Great maps. (40 of them!)

--

The beauty of Valentine's Day.

Not my idea, but I'd buy that shirt.

Look, we can't all express our love like Glenn Campbell did, when he sang,

"And I need you more than want you.
And I want you for all time."

. . . . . But suppose that I just expressed my love for my wife, in the manner of Professor Elemental*.

I shan't quote it here, but it's worth pointing out that few things are funnier than a geeky man rapping in Received Pronunciation, punctuating his over-the-top similes with low moans that Barry White --and only Barry White-- could ever pull off.

The lyrics are greatness.

Happy Valentine's Day, you romantic slobs out there.


_______________________________________
*Look, I posted classical musicians playing blue-grass the other day; I can post parody steampunk chap-hop today, if I wish.

Among that which we applaud.

My old partner and I used to laugh a lot, listening to some Professor Elemental.

I had thought that we'd seen the last of that chap, though, until Jennifer tonight pointed out that the witty gentleman parody retro chap-hopper had just now produced this:

The end is the very best part. Seriously.

Haw.

Tuesday is also Tuesday is sometimes Tuesday.

• I'm ready for the Genom corporation to finish the Showham Project, so that we can get some clean power. We don't even have the Genom Tower built, yet, more less the Umbrella or the Dragon Line. Sigh. 
• The Westboro Baptist Bunch did their stuff at a Baylor football game recently, and got infiltrated. I would have to know whether they were playing the Aggies to know whether the guy in the middle was one of them, or one of the guys doing a schtick on them. This is a perfect example of Poe's Law: 

• At the tender age of 41 and with a 14.5 year marriage, the thought of separate beds doesn't sound that unappealing. The thought of separate bedrooms sounds Awesome. Anyone you know do this? Results? 
• Mixed feelings about Elmo dying because his puppeteer resigned. I'll admit that I've always hated the character he made on Sesame Street. (Whose idea was it, to have a popular character speak with subject-verb agreement issues, refer to himself in third person, and then give him his own segment on a children's educational show?). No, I'm not happy for the reason that he left. Maybe they can have him die in a fire, or something, and do another program dealing with death, like they did when Mr. Hooper passed on to that corner store in the sky.
• Friend of mine on a VERY fixed income just had her oven die. Due to dietary restrictions in her family, she has to come up with a Thanksgiving dinner menu that is gluten-free, lactose-free, and beef-free, without an oven-baked turkey. My first thought would be strychnine, but I suggested cocktails all day long. 
• It's very popular among the hipsters to remind us that Israel is disproportionately responding to Hamas rocket attacks out of Gaza. Hey, has everyone forgotten that Hamas is the ruling Palestinian party, and its platform includes the downfall of the nation of Israel? When a nation stands on such a platform, and pitches wobbly rockets into your cities, you kind of have license to go off on them. Hamas is currently demanding that Israel quit making surgical strike attacks on their military leaders. The reason that Hamas isn't throwing more bombs and rockets at Israel isn't because of restraint. It's because they don't have more to throw. 
• Two things from work keep springing up, again and again lately: 1. If your intimate relationship has devolved until you are literally physically hurting each other, get away. End it. 2. When in crisis, seek the advice of the persons you respect most, and then take it.
• Heath has a really beaut Savage Model 24 D.L .22 mag/20 gauge combo rifle added to the raffle to help out Tam with her nose. At $25 a ticket, it's a steal. Get in on it. I'm about to. Hit Tam's PayPal button,
  
  and forward the confirmation email to Jennifer ( jennifer@injennifershead.com ). Do it before Thanksgiving, QUICK!!!!!
• Jay has the rest of the stuff up for raffle here. Last chance! 
• The awesomeness of the prizes and the very real likelihood that you will win (there's not THAT many [not nearly enough!] people donating and putting in chances) can distract from the fact that you are doing my friend a solid. This is your chance, at Thanksgiving, to help out a member of your community. 
• I don't know what it's like for the rest of you this Thanksgiving, but we're getting a high of 76, and may well eat out on Mom's deck. Wearing T-shirt and shorts. But we don't eat until after I get off my 12 hour shift. 
• A very close friend of mine is going through a large police academy (evn though he's a veteran cop) at his new job. They just hit him with Sabre Green spray. Different from [now] traditional Oleoresin Capsicum (O.C.) spray, which is made from peppers, this stuff is made from wasabi, and my buddy says that the difference is amazing. He and I have both been hit with pepper spray, and the thing about it is, even though it's painful and lasts a long time, it takes a few seconds to take effect. He said that this Sabre Green is IMMEDIATE, and that it hits you hard. Think about the times that you've bitten into a pepper and said "Oh, this isn't so hot. Well, actually, I'm beginning to notice OH MY GAWD!!!"  That little wait seems to be avoided with the wasabi spray. It goes straight to effect. As a big plus, he noted that it was very quick to decontaminate from, too, which is a big issue from pepper spray. Understand: if you use pepper spray on someone, you are extremely likely to receive a secondary hit from it, too. I told him that they should have waited for December, and sprayed them with both Sabre Green and Sabre Red, and called it "Christmas Seasoning." 

Like a favorite tiresome old great aunt.

I am of course finding that Letters Of Note is becoming a daily read. (and time-sink, damn it all)

I am tickled to see that the late children's author E.B. White had quite the sense of humor, in denying his local government the information that they demanded. Good for him.

If you've been employing a troupe of glaziers to frame your house,

...then you might want to desist from viewing every stone as a hand-heaved projectile.

"We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry."

 Dare I say it twice in one week? The Republican party might want to rein in and just kinda focus on the budget, because lately it's looking like mud on social issues.


__________________
H/T to Unc.

Might want to check those stats....

According to the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, there are no cougars in the state anymore.

 

 

They have admitted that there have in the past few years been some sightings of bears in the eastern end of the state, but they're still not considered to be reintroduced.

 

 

My research, however, has found ZERO evidence that the O.D.N.R. is willing to admit the presence of Face-Eating Monkeys in their midst.

 

 

As our constant friend Phlegmmy reminds us, there are deeper traumas that can be inflicted to a person by a monkey.

And this poor man doesn't think of himself as a libertarian, yet?

Big Bear is a man who just wants to go about his life peacefully.

He happens to be gay. The government says that he can't marry.

He happens to have family spread across the nation. The government says that he must be hassled more now than ever before when he flies.

He happens to wear a kilt.

Hilarity ensues.

Go read.

The best money you'll ever spend?

$300 at the urologist's office, for a vasectomy.


______________________
H/T to Phleghmmy.

I beg your pardon for the profanity...

...but I believe I'm about to post a link up on the right, to ShitMyDadSays.com.

I could drink a beer or a cuppa coffee with this guy's dad. I laughed aloud repeatedly.

Note: EVERY SINGLE POST is profane.

Okay, wait: I found this one, which again made me laugh:
"We're out of Grape Nuts... No, what's left is for me. Sorry, I should have said, 'You're out of Grape Nuts.'"

Prepared for every exigency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZqx30OvVs

Laughing. Out loud.

My wife keeps a file on her email of things that genuinely make her happy when she opens them. Links to funny videos, digital audio recordings of our children when they were toddlers, and funny pictures and stories. We all trade these kind of things around on our email, but my wife actually keeps them in her Yahoo account in an Awesome file.

Today she sat down at the computer, and brought it up. She added the University Of Quebec's amazing single-take video (that would make Robert Altman proud), and then just picked one at random to read or watch. A few seconds later, she started howling. I mean to say that my spouse of almost 12 years sounded like a howler monkey as she read this.

Sure, I had read it 6 years ago. But damned if I didn't laugh again.

Visual Thursday

For our first nifty view, please see art made with flocks of sheep, crazy shepherds, and very, very well-trained dogs. Simply awesome, and totally worth calling your kids over to see.

For our second site, I must caution you that a few of the pictures are possibly NSFW, and merit review before calling the kids over. In my house, they came running when they heard the hysterical laughter. The site, probably known to many of you, is Picture Is Unrelated, in which they have compiled an impressive growing collection of those odd photos that you sometimes find, where the subject does not match the background. Be sure and page through their archives, and read both the headings and the captions, which make the site. Made of win.

Adventures in multiculturalism.

We're a funny lot, we Americans. Most of us speak a single language, and a good portion of us who are monolingual are actually disinterested in speaking a second one. I've got a smattering of Spanish, and can rattle off, with apparently perfect pronunciation, the phrases necessary to conduct a traffic stop. Open-ended questions are pretty much futile, though.

In Heinlein's book Podkayne Of Mars, the narrator notes that it is incredibly useful to simply be able to utter salutations, thanks, and goodbye, in any language you might encounter. People want to like each other, and hearing that another has taken at least that much trouble lets us like each other. My friends are amused that I can say howdy in Korean, and then say thank you when I get extra donut holes with my sausage roll. Sometimes using a phrase in an immigrant's home language starts interesting conversations.

A few weeks ago, I got a call to a citizen's house, regarding what would eventually turn out to be a civil issue. When I arrived, her land lady, an older Vietnamese woman, was there. My caller, who herself was quite American, had strangely decided that the very few minutes between calling for the police and my arrival (Perhaps 7 minutes? It was a low priority call.) would be the right time to wash her dogs. When I arrived and was let into the house, she was on her knees, scrubbing a pair of very nervous little useless fluffballs of some unknown breed. I tried to talk to her about why I was there, but was having trouble hearing her because: the water in the tub was running full blast, the echo in the bathroom was terrible, she was facing away from me and grunting as she scrubbed the little mutts, and she was mumbling and slurring her words from her dose of pain meds and anti-anxiety meds. I caught something about a family member having stolen a very large check that she had inexplicably written and left at the house. I told her that the first thing we needed to do was cancel the check. She murmured "Mmm hmmm..." and kept scrubbing her dog. Never so much as looked over her shoulder at the cop she had summoned to her house.

At this point, the elder little Vietnamese lady brushed past me into the bathroom, and began berating her: "You stop washin' doggies righ' naow! Stop it! Policeman is heah. You talka policeman, righ' naow!" She shouldered her way between my caller and the dogs, muttering, "Stupid dogs no needah bath righ' heah, anyhow! Usa hose in back yard! Mo' bettah!"

I could have readily kissed that little Indochine lady on the mouth. Damn, but she cut to the chase.

_ _ _ _

My online pal Stingray has unfortunately not enjoyed such pleasure, in his meeting persons from the Near East via the telephone. If you ask me, he's clearly a xenophobe. (A frickin' funny xenophobe.)

“Ok so yes you check out want to on ?”

“No, that’s backwards, and would involve time travel.”

Thinking about my friend John Shirley.

John Shirley is not as short as he likes to claim he is. (He tends to refer to himself as "a Hobbit.") He just hangs out with big guys, sometimes.

He does smile on occasion, though there is scant documentation of it.

He does love a gurkha knife.

After a lot of thought, I've decided to throw my hat in the ring.

Flourescent Simian Ensemble

I don't recall if it was over Mexican food, catfish, or barbecue (my money's on the first), when LawDog first related to our company of friends and family the story of the Pink Gorilla Suit. And since he first laid out a little teaser of the tale a couple of years ago or so, his Faithful Readers have been hounding him for the Rest Of The Story.

But he's stalwartly held out, because the 'Dog, you see, is nothing if not the consumate showman.

But he's finally caved, and now, possibly for A Limited Time Only, you can go read the full story of LawDog And The Pink Gorilla Suit.

Enjoy.

Shocked. Shocked!

Comes now promoter of the BigFoot find, who just figured out that the BFIF (Big Foot In the Freezer) was rubber. He just wants to set the record straight, and clear the air.

Seems the two LE types who brought it to him might've fibbed, a tad.

Anybody else sense a promotion to Detective?

Heh.

EDIT:
The two law enforcement types (a cop and a jail medic) have absconded with the money. The cop's been fired. No word on the medic. Fraud charges and civil suits are pending.

Friends, I've tried.

I've tried so hard to keep my online pal StingRay from straying from the path of righteousness.

"Go play with science," I say. "Do something constructive," I beg. In response, I get venal heading straight to carnal.

"Okay, take up a hobby," I say. He starts making beer, and annoying his wife.

"Uh, take up social activism. Or better yet, try shooting for a hobby," I suggest.

He comes up with a plan to be vulgar and piss off hippies while simultaneously turning it into a shooting event. I outright vetoed that one.

Well, now he comes up with this theorem of the Holy Trinity Of What Makes For A Good Guy.

Has he got enough credits for his PhD in Lunacy, yet?

How LabRat must suffer.

The joy of saying what's on your mind.

I know that I've said it before, but...

...I love this guy.

That is all.