quo vadis, republicans?

Note to Conservatives:

When the former governor of Massa-fuckin’-chusetts, the blow-dried RINO Mitt Romney, is your pick for standard bearer of the conservative cause, you can pretty much count on getting your balls kicked all the way up to your ears in the next mid-term and Presidential elections.

And, Republican base? The fact that you consider hobby exorcist and creationism supporter Bobby Jindal the next best choice just about guarantees the Republican Party will be relegated to a regional party for the next decade or two.  If carrying only Dixie in the next few national elections is acceptable to you, then keep going on your current path.

The Republican party needs a complete reboot.  It needs to shed its anti-science positions, return to conservative, small-government principles in a convincing manner, and stop pissing on the Constitution in the name of terrorism prevention, or they’ll go the way of the Whigs inside of ten years.

a headline I never expected to type.

Pelosi and Reid oppose a renewal of the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban”.

In other news, pigs have been spotted in the landing pattern at Boston’s Logan Airport.

(Could it be that the House and Senate Democrats remember that the last time they voted “yea” on a major gun control bill–the very bill suggested for renewal by President Obama’s Attorney General–an awful lot of them lost their seats and had to go looking for real jobs?)

(H/T to Stingray at Atomic Nerds.)

strange and ancient symbols.

Here’s an interesting article at BBC.com about “the slow death of handwriting”.

I’ve been writing all my fiction longhand with a fountain pen for a month now, and I enjoy the process a lot.  My body had to adjust to the mechanics of it again (especially my wrist and fingers), but now my hand is used to holding a pen once more, and I write about 1,000 words a day with ink.  My writing output hasn’t suffered in the least, and as an added benefit, I’ve started sending (and receiving) old-fashioned paper letters again.  There’s a certain pleasure in getting an envelope with a personal, handwritten letter in the mail.

What about you?  Do you still write longhand–for professional reasons (as a teacher, doctor, or writer), for correspondence with computer-challenged family members, or simply for personal enjoyment?

ask for one by name next time you’re at best buy.

Level Three Beverage Alert, courtesy of The Onion:

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work.

(NSFW due to copious use of the F-word.  Also, don’t click the link if copious use of the f-word offends you.)

with apologies to douglas adams.

Whoever designed the Apache was told, “Make it look mean. Give it angles, and facets, and ordnance racks, and a big-ass cannon underneath. Wrap it in armor plating, and then paint it flat green. Make it obvious to anyone walking up to it that this is not a traffic chopper, or the corporate shuttle to LaGuardia. Think of a LifeFlight helicopter, and then draw up the opposite.”

(Yes, I’m posting fluff, and sporadic fluff at that.)

(Yes, I’m still finishing up the novel–see previous item.)

Can someone please, please, pretty please petition the President to add eight more hours to the day?  (Also, have him eliminate three states.  We have too many nowadays.)

pandering to ignorance.

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) still doubts Obama’s citizenship.

Why am I not really surprised that a sitting U.S. senator is ignorant about our Constitution? 

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president.”

Well, Senator Shelby, the Constitution specifies that the President has to be a “natural born” citizen of the United States, which has precisely fuck-all to do with where he was born.  (John McCain, the last Republican Presidential nominee, was born in the Canal Zone in Panama, which is ZOMG! not in America!) 

If people like Senator Shelby are the best the Republicans have to offer in the intellectual arena, the conservative movement is in very deep shit, indeed.

monday search term safari XL.

raghead hussein is a muslim

And you are a drooling moron with the intellectual wattage of a brain-damaged cocker spaniel. 

(And even if that was true: so fucking what?  Ever hear of the whole “freedom of religion” thing we have here in America?  Hint: it does not mean “freedom to be of my religion.”)

waterman phileas

The Phileas is a fine, good-looking, and reliable pen, and it writes as well as (or better than) some much more expensive pens.  Their medium nibs put down a very generous, bold line.  You can snag a Phileas for about $40 from Staples.

toilet training relapse back to diapers

That’s not uncommon.  Quinn had a relapse once he figured out to time his potty-going to coincide with naptimes (when I put a diaper on him to avoid accidents).  It was more convenient for him to let Daddy do the clean-up.  I stopped using diapers on him, and it took only a few days for him to figure out that using the potty is preferable to pooping in your underwear. 

do bobcats live in n.h.

Yes, they do, and their cries sound absolutely horrible. 

alphasmart neo 1 price

Alphasmart charges $219 for a brand new one.  You can find them on eBay on occasion for a little less, but the Neos are in demand, and hold their value well.

douchebags and dimwits

If you want to get in touch with some, I’ll try to find the email address of the guy who left the first search term on this list.  Between him and his immediate neighbors at Violent Acres trailer park, you should have a good supply to get you started.

is currywurst the same as bratwurst

Yes, only sliced, doused with ketchup, and sprinkled with curry powder.  The silly Berliners make currywurst with knackwurst instead of bratwurst, but that is vile heresy.

twitter bill cunningham

I’m not sure he’s smart enough to figure out Twitter, but if he does, I’m sure the nature of the medium (140 characters or less) would lend itself well to documenting his thought processes, with room to spare.

predominant profession of congress

Lawyer.  (Does that come as a surprise, really?)

a veg that doesn’t have to be planted

Ketchup.  It grows in the Condiments aisle at Sam’s Club, in convenient glass or PET husks that can be discarded once you squeeze out the contents.

alphasmart neo or netbook

It depends on your needs.  Do you just need something strictly for writing without distractions?  Get the Neo.  Do you need to be able to surf the web for research, or send files to someone else without having to go through a separate computer?  Get the Netbook.

suicide trap for mice

Make a box that’s painted black on the inside.  Put little Nine Inch Nails posters on the wall, a tiny TV/VCR combo that runs deeply depressing European art movies, and a stereo that plays Leonard Cohen’s “Songs To Kill Yourself By” collection.  Provide a little rope tied into a noose, and a bottle of sleeping pills.  Lure the mouse in, and wait for a few weeks.  It’ll either kill itself, or come out wearing mascara and a perpetually sullen expression.

 

That’s it for this week’s edition, friends and neighbors.  Tune in again next week for a new round!

not in my kitchen, you don’t: a short pictorial essay.

what’s wrong with a damn yorkshire terrier, you stupid bint?

Here’s the full transcript of the 911 call made by the owner of the chimp who went apeshit on a family friend in Connecticut the other day.

For those of you who think that 911 will magically summon a swift response, consider how much time the dispatcher spends going through the protocol with a woman who’s clearly frightened out of her mind and under high stress.  Now imagine the call taking place with a human intruder in the house who’s determined to do her harm before she can finish her call.  A five-minute response is a lightning-fast police dispatch in most communities (out here, we’re twenty minutes from our village police station, and unless a cruiser happens to drive by at the right moment, it’s a long wait for a cop), and five minutes are pretty much an eternity when someone is trying to chew off your face, or shank you for the credit cards and the thirty-eight dollars in your wallet.  Once again, when seconds counted, the cops were only minutes away. 

This woman kept a 200-pound primate in her residence, and she didn’t keep any weapons at hand to protect herself or others in case this semi-domesticated wild animal became a hazard to anyone.  Instead, she is taken by complete surprise that her darling pet can behave like the wild animal he is, and she has to  plead with the dispatcher to send someone and “bring the guns” to shoot her chimp. 

This, friends and neighbors, is terminal stupidity all around.  Unfortunately, the brunt of the fallout in this case was shouldered by the family friend who had her face chewed off, and the chimp who got a brisket full of .40-caliber rounds.  Stupidity should hurt, but all too often it hurts all the wrong people.  The owner of that chimp is fully responsible for everything that happened, and I hope she loses her hide in the lawsuits that are sure to follow.

Ugh.  God must love idiots…he made so freaking many of them.

a rare evening out.

I went to the Stammtisch of the Dartmouth German Club last night, and had a blast.  (A Stammtisch is a “regular’s table” at a pub.)  I met a bunch of people, including a Dutch grad student who offered to babysit for us on occasion, and I made contact with a group of people who play soccer at Dartmouth twice a week for fun. 

Most of the evening, we spoke German, but I also had a chance to use my slightly rusty Dutch, and the amount of polyglots in the group was truly impressive.  There were native-level speakers of German, English, Dutch, French, and Portuguese sitting in my vicinity, and there were probably other languages represented in the group as well. 

One of the big drawbacks of being a stay-at-home parent is the social isolation.  We don’t have family up here, and I’m in the house with the kids most of the week.  I don’t really get to go out and do stuff, meet people, or have fun without the kids, and whenever I do get to socialize a bit, it reminds me how important it is to have the occasional adult conversation that doesn’t revolve around Thomas the Tank Engine, bedtimes, and dietary requests involving dessert after (or in lieu of) lunch.