Sunday, December 31, 2006

December 31, 2006

Our hike yesterday at the Miami University woodlands east of Oxford, Ohio, was pretty good. There were 8 hikers in all, including several people out for their first venture with cincioutdoors and Tri-State Hiking Club. We did about 4.1 miles, over sometimes muddy but easy trails.

Today featured pouring rains, thus no hiking. Instead, a friend and I visited the Rembrandt exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute. The place was pretty crowded, since this is the last week of the show. But it was still a great experience! We then followed up with a barbecue dinner that was pretty decent.

I ran across a couple of excellent quotes at Terry Teachout's blog, http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/

Since certainty is unattainable, entertainment value is the only justification for conversation."

Tom Stoppard, Undiscovered Country

also a classic poem by Ogden Nash,


Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.

Tonight's December Thirty-First,
Something is about to burst.

The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.

Hark! It's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.

Ogden Nash, "Good Riddance, but Now What?"

Now onwards to adventure in 2007!





Saturday, December 30, 2006

2006 runs out...

Well, this year is about to end, and much has changed in my life. My 19-month quest to get accepted by the Peace Corps for service overseas has finally gotten me an assignment as a computer applications teacher/tech in the Dominican Republic. I now only have to get a good result in a recurring eye test, and I will be reporting for service on Feb. 13, 2007!! I have decided I cannot get too excited yet, with the eye test still awaiting.

The execution of Saddam Hussein came tardily, but it is still a good thing. Too many other comments out in the blogosphere to merit my comments.

And a worthy set of observations by Dennis Miller appearing on "Hannity & Colmes" on Fox News Channel recently, posted by Noel Sheppard at http://newsbusters.org/node/9880

Looks like they found evidence of water on Mars, but unfortunately, they also found a sucker fish in water, so we're not allowed to study it any more.

Do you know why I'm no longer liberal? Because I wanted to stop my sentences one word short of the word "but." You know, as a liberal, I found myself using the word "but" more frequently than a proctologist filling out his day planner.

Then, Miller made an observation that most NBers are likely to find somewhat objectionable:

Let's see, maybe it's time for a Democratic president. Stay with me. Because the next step in the inevitable escalation in this war with radical Islam is going to involve us being appreciably more brutal and ruthless than we have been to date. And I think the left's cronyism with the mainstream media will provide cover for someone on that side of things to up the ante.

The rest of his monologue required no further comment:

You know, I'm pretty sure the phrase life is too short doesn't exist in Islam.

Castro, Castro is one true genius at keeping Cuba so far down that a Category Four hurricane can hit the island head on and they still suffer almost no property damage.

You know, the interesting thing about diversity training is that 99.9 percent of the people who are ordered to take it are white.

They say that Wal-Mart will be the death of small town America. If small town America is so great, why is every third person in Hooterville hooked on meth?

To all the eco-nuts out there, I can't worry about the earth right now. I'm too worried about the world.

Hillary Clinton can afford to decry rich people at every turn. She's been on the public's dime since the dawn of man. She's had all the trappings of wealth without all the messy earnings that it takes.

You know, the Saudis are just the grown up equivalent of your childhood imaginary friend.

I'm toying with the idea of turning all of my money over to the state of California, because theoretically, I'd have more access to it as petitioner than I do as the actual proprietor.

Once again, let me proclaim that my main reason for being pro-choice is that I am not a fetus that's about to be aborted.

And lastly, just as the Titanic ramming the iceberg led to the obvious practice of having enough life boats for all the passengers, fighting a politically correct war in Iraq will remind us that you only, only fight wars to win.

Noel Sheppard reporting somewhat live from sunny Florida.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Cartoon Laws of Physics

Some people may not have recently seen the classic Internet post on the cartoon laws of physics. A Google search shows a number of sites, one good one is at http://funnies.paco.to/cartoon.html
It incluces such good ones as--

Cartoon Law VII Everything falls faster than an anvil.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Hilarious Post on Islam

This is from September 2006, but still riotously funny. From www.jimtreacher.com, on 9/17/06,

Pope: "Islam Can Suck It"

likeyoujustdontcare.jpgROME -- In a televised statement this morning, Pope Benedict XVI lashed out at critics of his earlier comments on Muslims, referring to said critics as a "pack of crybaby snake-charmers" and recommending they perform various humanly impossible feats of flexibility and colonic accommodation.

"Fuck you," he added.

"Why don't you have a seat on my pointy-ass hat," continued the Bishop of Rome. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, Abdul? We all know how you camel-jockeys swing, out there in the desert. Yeah, those long cold lonely nights out among the dunes. You bunch of faggots. We [Catholics] might fuck little kids, but at least we don't strap bombs on them when we're done and drop them off at the bagel shop. Sure, we treat our women like shit, but if we made them all dress like fat ninjas, there wouldn't be a single full pew in the whole fucking world. I mean, it's 2006, how do you assholes get away with it? That part I kind of admire, actually. Jesus H. Christ, this stuff is good."

After pausing to drink deeply from a bejeweled chalice, His Holiness then closed his statement with, "I got your Allah right here," emphasizing his point by tugging sharply through his robes at his own scrotum.

"Pope out."

Excellent online magazine, Clarkesworld.com

I ran across this excellent tale, "The Other Amazon," by Jenny Davidson in an online magazine. Her story is at http://www.clarkesworld.com/magazine/davidson_12_06.html

It seems to be a site worth exploring. The premise of Davidson's story is that on a night when she is exhausted, but unable to sleep, she goes online to browse on amazon.com. So far, no news....who has not done the same? The amazing thing is that she is able to order books which have not yet appeared--

For a day or two I felt pretty strange. But I soon decided to keep it to myself. If I was losing my mind, this was after all an exceptionally pleasant way to do so. And what I found over the next few months was that if I sat down at the computer in the right state of bleary-eyed mental receptivity, opening my mind up to what I most wanted to read in the world and sticking a book in the cart without looking too closely, I was sure to get something good.

In this way I obtained Jonathan Lethem's massive and totally heartbreaking novel about Stanley Kubrick and Neil Gaiman's hilarious and yet also outrageously moving tale about the Wild Boy of Aveyron (the cover had blurbs from J. M. Coetzee and Margaret Atwood and a sticker proclaiming it the winner of the Booker Prize for 2009) and Robin McKinley's sequel to the vampire novel Sunshine. (It wasn't a sequel, actually, more like a prequel about the heroine Rae's father set twenty-some years before Sunshine begins, bearing a roughly comparable relation to that book as The Hero and the Crown does to The Blue Sword , but it was absolutely delightful and I wasn't going to complain about it, was I?)

After a little while I realized it could work for dead authors as well as living ones. I got the last novel in Rebecca West's tetralogy, the series that begins with The Fountain Overflows (my favorite novel of all time) and continues through two—now three, I guess you'd have to say—posthumously published volumes. I got Byron's Memoirs , and they were even funnier and more amazing than his letters. I got a complete set of the works of Jane Austen in twenty-three volumes.

Clarkesworld.com definitely a site worth going back to often.

Lisa Ragazza Lap-Dance Metro Milano - Studio Aperto 06-12-06

Now THIS is public transport. If only the Cincinnati bus system could add these delights, imagine the ridership!

Monday, December 25, 2006

OK, now to try to make the fossil page an actual link--

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/creepy-fossils-06/

hmm...it is blue, thus should be a good link, let's try it, eh??

The oddest fossils of 2006

My usual random net wanderings led me to this site, odd fossils
either discovered or publicized in 2006
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/creepy-fossils-06/

Our mother planet has produced some strange beasts over the years.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Trial Run

I have long enjoyed reading blogs obsessively, and now is the time to give writing one a try. I see it as a place to record random observations, to collect worthy quotations, and to note books, blogs, or other writings that I have long been spreading via email.