Belated Independence Day Wishes To You All

Had a busy weekend with nothing of interest to report, so I won't. Hope all of you enjoyed your weekend and the company of your families/loved ones.

Regular blogging to resume later tonight.

update: Here's a couple of pictures I took with Sara's camera:



And, because we apparently don't need Him much in the US anymore, having elected a new Messiah last November:

Mocksville, NC

Let's Call Them What They Really Are

The National Society of Insufferable Pricks Newspaper Columnists has awarded Alaska Governor Sarah Palin its annual Sitting Duck Award, indicating that she is the most ridiculed public figure in the news for 2008. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was the runner-up.

I'll Be Gahdamned.

A cryptologist has deciphered an "unbreakable" cipher that was sent to President Thomas Jefferson over 200 years ago.

Read the whole article for the details, but the decoded message is quite appropriate for this weekend:

"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."

The Man Who Never Cashed In

A sympathetic and understanding appraisal of Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the mooon.

Read the whole thing, please. In this age of looking for a money angle to all endeavors and displaying your private life for all to see *cough*marksanford*cough* it's worth looking at an American who kept his integrity intact and never made a fool of himself in his fame.

Neil Armstrong, Modest American Hero

Just A Little Dab'll Do Ya

Two professional midget wrestlers in Mexico City died when female robbers who accompanied them to their hotel rooms misjudged the amount of drugs needed to render them unconscious.

Remember: Mini-Me only needs a mini-dose.

This may be a picture of the two in the ring:



They were both Luchadores, or masked wrestlers, very popular in Mexico. One of the two was La Parkita, and the other was Espectrito Jr.

Let's Just Exacerbate That Problem, Shall We?

A pair of headlines from UK in today's news:

The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.

And...

Call for fewer criminals to be jailed.

Very rarely will you see such willful defiance of common sense in the same news cycle, but there it is.

Say It In English, Not Gibberish

A 102-word sentence written by police is termed "gobbledegook."

Here's the sentence, judge for yourself:

'The promise of reform which the Green Paper heralds holds much for the public and Service alike; local policing, customised to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through reforms to police authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally-engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through redesign of processes and cultures, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities.'

zzzzziiizzzzzizzz*snort* Huh? Did someone say something? Must have drifted off...

Definitely stupefying.

GF's For Hire

But don't call 'em whores.

Which calls to mind an old Lefty Frizzell song, which became a hit for Willie Nelson:

Good Idea: Durable Cell Phones

The UK Daily Mail has a story about the Land Rover S1 phone, which is being advertised as the "world's toughest."

I like the idea of more durable phones and electronic devices, myself. You shouldn't have to replace them every time you happen to drop them onto the ground. Mind you, you don't need this level of durability for all phones, but it should be an option, certainly.

Separated At Birth?

Say, I happened to be reading Instapundit just now, and was struck by this image of Glenn Reynolds:

Glenn Reynolds

And was thinking to myself, Self, doesn't this man look familiar? Like someone who would offer you £10,000 for an Everlasting Gobstopper? Take a look:

Arthur Slugworth



Why, the resemblance is uncanny!* (Slugworth was played by German actor Gunter Meisner, by the way.)












*my deepest respects to Prof. Reynolds, who has always treated this blog more than fairly.

You Know What? I Agree With Ron Paul

In a Washington Times op/ed he calls for neo-isolationism, and I pretty much agree with him.

Read the whole thing. I've always been an isolationist at heart, myself. Paul tends to be a bit extreme for me, but this particular set of principles I have to say is what I think the US needs to be doing.

h/t Hot Air Headlines.

Democrats In Charge: Let's Socially Engineer The Military Some More

This time we'll target smoking in the military, with an eye to banning it. We'll institute mandatory urinalysis to ferret out the smokers, just like any other drug users, and if the resulting mandatory reeducation camps treatment programs don't work, the next step will be to penalize them by putting it in their fitness reports....

I'm not now nor ever have been a smoker, and this offends the hell out of me.

Can We Just Have Paregoric Back, Please?

A federal government panel recommended banning Vicodin and Percocet pain medications, saying that the Acetominophen blended into each of them causes liver damage.

How about pure forms of oxycodone and hydrocodone, then? Or give us back paregoric, I remember pleasant experiences with paregoric as a child.

Geez, if the goverment had its way, our doctors would have to just look at us sternly and say "Walk it off, ya pussy."

Navy To Arm Ships With Remote-Controlled Chain Guns

And the guns will have a backup feature that allows them to be fired manually by sailors.

Here's a pic:

Mark 38 Mod 2 Chain Gun.

Nigaz!

Contrary to what that title might first suggest, it is in fact a contraction of the the words Nigeria and Gazprom, according to this news story.

Lord knows I wouldn't think it was anything else...

*puts hands in pockets, saunters off, whistling "Dixie"*

Hmm, Best Pick Up More Ammo

And maybe some gasoline to make firebombs, if these things really are in the sewers over by Fayetteville:

Warning: Don't watch video if you are easily grossed out!



h/t Hot Air Headlines.

Paul Theroux On Michael Jackson

A man whose work I have always admired and respected talks of a man for whom I had neither admiration nor respect.

Paul Theroux is one of those people whom I'd be happy to sit down at dinner with, and discussion afterward. Others in that group include Christopher Hitchens and Camille Paglia. Having all three in the same room, bouncing ideas and opinions off of each other would be a delight to witness.

Feeling Over-Nannied, Maybe?

In Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (UK), retirees who had met in a public library for four years without incident were banned from the library because of the chance of their spilling coffee on children attending a reading hour.

It's for the children. If only one child is saved by having the coffee-guzzling geezers banned from the library, isn't it worth it?

No, I didn't think you'd think so, either.

Have You Asked Jesus Out Of Your Heart?

Prominent non-believer Richard Dawkins launches a Vacation Bible Atheist School.

I guess you would get ribbons for memorizing quotes from famous atheists, agnostics and skeptics, rather than Bible verses.

More On Bubba Ho-Tep

I feel the need to point out that the music in Bubba Ho-Tep, by composer Brian Tyler, is some seriously good stuff. Brian is a multi-instrumentalist in the Mike Oldfield mold, playing all of the instruments in the soundtrack music himself.

Listen for yourself:



And:



Needless to say, I've already ordered the soundtrack from the Bubba Ho-tep website. Oh, and if you visit, there's a fun little flash game there called Stab The Scarab.

What's That Smell? Must Be The Scots Attacking

Rather than the glorious kilts seen in movies such as Braveheart, medieval Scotsmen went into battle in tunics dyed yellow with horse urine.

I Love The Smell Of Horse Piss In The Morning!

DVD Recommendation

If you haven't seen Bubba Ho-Tep, it's definitely worth a rental or library checkout. It's a few years old (2004), but I hadn't seen it before today, when we found it available at our local library. It's based on a novella by Joe R. Lansdale, and is quite surreal in that the plot involves an Elvis Presley who didn't really die in 1977, a John F. Kennedy who didn't really die in 1963, and the mummy of an Egyptian king who never quite died. They all come together in an east Texas nursing home. Bruce Campbell stars, and Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) directs this cult hit.



I remember reading the novella years ago, and very much enjoyed it at the time. I'll say this about the movie: if you aren't laughing in the first ten seconds of the film, you probably don't get the humor and the film isn't for you.

Trust ol' Bob. I liked it, and I'm not even an Elvis fan.