Monday, March 31, 2008
Well fuck me running
I don’t know if this has anything to do with this earlier result or not, but I’m… disappointed, somehow. 
Fuck it.
Any classic Sci-Fi fans out there?
I remember reading a book a LONG time ago, and it was a story about this group of men who were supposed to go out and fight these vortices of power, using their own genius to predict the given power of the constantly fluctuating vortex at a moment in the future, to explode the vortex with a carefully-controlled explosion of exactly the right amount of power at exactly the right time. Too much power and the excess wipes out the neighborhood. Too little and it doesn’t do anything to the vortex.
Does anyone know the book? Or the author? (I always thought it was Isaac Asimov’s “Lucky Starr” series, but I’ve never been able to find the exact story if it is indeed from that series.)
Or was it just a dream I had while under anesthesia for my tonsillectomy?
Sunday, March 30, 2008
I’m going to sound weird
I cannot find the words to express how incredible I think this young woman is. I’ve mentioned her a couple of times here and here, but I can only think that if history is any guide, we will all be hearing a great deal more about her.
Can you say “triple threat”? Actress, singer, songwriter.
- She has the vocal range of Mariah Carey and the raw power of Ethel Merman. That much I knew from listening to the Wicked Soundtrack ("The Wizard And I"/"Defying Gravity"/"For Good").
- She’s not my particular cup of tea in the looks department (I think she has a bit of a strong jawline and her nose is what could politely be referred to as “generous”, but so does Salma Hayek), and she apparently has plenty of people who would gleefully kill me for even going that far. (Sorry, guys, but I love my wife.)
- She also has quite the bubbly personality in person (based on what I can see in “behind the scenes” stuff I’ve found at Youtube).
- She can act, having been in several “name” movies - ”Enchanted” (opposite Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams), Ask the Dust (with Selma Hayek), Rent (with Rosario Dawson and Jesse Martin) - as well as some independent stuff (”Kissing Jessica Stein” ) but…
- She has also won a Tony Award for Best Actress (2004 for playing Elphaba in “Wicked"), and “Tony” is to the stage actor what “Oscar” is to the screen actors and “Emmy” is to the TV actors.
- She clearly has good taste in men, having been married to Taye Diggs for several years now (a fine actor in his own right, and my wife says he’s “good looking”, so I’ll take her word on the subject). And, finally…
- She has a new album out, released about eight weeks ago. Ten original songs, written and performed by this incredibly talented lady.
She has even released a video single for one of the sings from this album. “Brave”, from her album “I Stand”.
I truly think that this young lady is destined for big success. She deserves it, too, as talented as she is…
I don’t say things like this very much, but it’s like this: when I see something I get exercised about, I come here and rant about it and blow off steam. Maybe spread the word and get others as pissed about it as I am.
But there’s a flip side to that coin, too. When I see something good that deserves wider acclaim, I will be just as vociferous about it. And for exactly the same reasons. And when I find talent like this, I want to turn on all of my friends to it, and hope that they like it just as much (just like when I discovered Dark Side Of The Moon, but without the need for narcotics to follow the lyrics).
So, here I am. Being vociferous about a lady who has talent to spare. (I kinda like the title track, too, fwiw.)
Wow. Just… wow
I found this clip over at Ace’s HQ, and it is possibly the most incisive dissection of the Liberal mindset I have ever seen.
Watch it. Save it. Learn it.
“Anything other than indiscriminiteness is the evil of having discriminated.”
Evan Sayet is a conservative writer and producer, and clearly someone who has given this a great deal of careful thought. It’s kinda long (about 50 mins), but take the time to watch the whole thing. You’ll thank me later.
Diplomas required
I should put this on the sidebar as a warning…
Saturday, March 29, 2008
LA Times: We Protect Criminals
It just makes me shake my head and drink another beer.
We as police officers in the beautiful city of Los Angeles have a lot to deal with. We have to chase after really bad gangsters who shoot at us, try to run us over with cars, stab us repeatedly, and attempt to ambush us whenever possible. And when we finally do arrest them we have to defend ourselves against their homies in the gang, their attorney’s, community activists, the mayor of Los Angeles (Tony Villar, a.k.a. Antonio Villaraigosa), social workers, the ACLU, and the Los Angeles Times.
Throughout the civil trial this summer, L.A. Times’ stories cherry-picked information to discredit the case. One of the more egregious pieces cited by Rolling Stone was written by Pulitzer Prize winning music-biz journalist Chuck Philips, appearing 11 days before the civil trial began. It was headlined “Informant in Rap Star’s Slaying Admits Hearsay.” The only problem was that the secret informant in question, who told police that Biggie’s killer was a Nation of Islam member named “Amir” or “Ashmir,” had always told them he received the information second-hand. He never claimed otherwise. The Times story was a blatant smear, inspiring one Wallace team investigator to describe it as “tantamount to jury tampering.” Even worse, the Times revealed the informant’s street name, which led to his being beaten and threatened by gang members and causing him to disappear, making him unavailable to testify at trial.
Try going to work when you have to fight the bad guys and their willing associates in the media.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Unexpected talent
Y’know, I’m an autodidact, and when I start delving into subjects, I follow the Muse where she leads. You might have noticed the fringes of my recent study of Broadway musicals, but trust me, that’s only the fringes. (I drive my wife occasionally crazy with those mini-obsessions, but they only last a week or so.) But every now and then, I discover that the more I get into things, the more I am greeted with unexpected talents from unexpected sources. Interested in recent musicals, I was checking out “Rent”, and found that Jesse L. Martin (currently on “Law & Order") has an incredible baritone singing voice. And while I have my suspicions that the audio track was laid down after the video part was shot, I can tell that it is really Jesse singing here.
My high school choir singing days are long since behind me, and talent like this makes me realize that they were but a faint jest. Guess that’s why I never decided on music for a career…
Playing catch-up
Still smarting from the fail of my boot drive (although I did manage to save essential files, I wasn’t in time to save all of the nifty little freebies out there - such as my music editing software, my web browser stuff, download manager, and the long-since forgotten passwords for all of the various sites for which I am a “member” (I’d almost forgotten the master password for this site, which would have made life interesting for a few days...).
But life catches up, and I’m pleased to say that I am back to about 80% of what I had collected over the years. Some of these things I had forgotten where I had gotten them from and had to search for each and every one as they occurred to me. (Have you ever had to Google “free music editor” looking for the ONE program you know well, is spam- and trojan-free, and can handle all of the different kind of files you run into? Try it, and see how damnably difficult it is to find the right one.)
Anyhoo, I’ll soon be back to posting about all of the shit you’ll be able to find almost anywhere else on the web, but with that particular flair and snark you’ve come to know and loathe that you can only get here… 
Meanwhile, I could suggest a few of my favorite games to fill the time…
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Testing, testing
Is this damned thing back on?
They couldn’t keep Mandela down, and they couldn’t keep the Dread Pirate Roberts down, but all it took for me was a bad jumper setting on a boot drive that was already failing.
But one brand-new 250Gb HDD boot disk and some tweaking by some friends of mine (who also host my company’s website) later and I’m back, for better or worse, not much scarred by the struggle. Didja miss me? 
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sunrise with Simply Red
Wow.
I never would have thought that the combination of Hall & Oats and Simply Red would turn out to be something great. I heading to iTunes to get a copy of this.
(Music video below the jump)
So I hear that Dick Cheney is in the Mideast
He’s trying (like all American politicians since the early 70s) to help broker a lasting peace in the region.
As far as I can understand the current problem, the two sides can’t come to any kind of agreement.
Palestinians: “Open the borders and provide economic aid to the Gaza Strip!”
Israel: “Gladly. Just stop with the rocket and mortar attacks.”
Palestinians: “No deal.”
WTF is wrong with these asshats? All they have to do is stop killing people and they can have almost everything they want. But they would rather live in poverty and degradation, reviled by their Arab brethren, for entire generations, voting to actually elect the people that are carrying out the killings into power. That’s like the ghetto-ized regions of South Central L.A. actually voting in the Bloods and the Crips, and then wondering why no one wants to help them out. It never even crossed their minds to ask why Yassir “Thatsmybaby” Arafat was worth more than a billion - that’s Billion, with a ‘B’ - dollars when he died, or why his wife was getting more than $100K per month from the Palestinian Agency, while countless multitudes lived in the most abject of poverty, blaming the Jooooos for being oppressed.
Fuck them. They deserve a State like Ron Paul deserves to be President. As Golda Meir said, “When the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jews, then we will have peace.”
One more applicable quote: “War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”—General William Tecumseh Sherman
On another topic, I’m still fighting with the computer, but it seems to be working more ‘on’ than ‘off’ today.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Uh-oh
My computer has been acting up. Of course it’s a Friday afternoon just before a major religious holiday…
It appears to be an incipient boot drive failure. I’m frantically backing up urgent files and preparing to create another boot disk.
Wish me luck!
UPDATE: By a happenstance I have a legally-purchased copy of both Win XP Home and Win XP Professional (for the business, even though I haven’t yet opened that OS’s packaging). Does anyone out there know if it would be worth it to upgrade the home computer with the Professional, or should I just leave it? Is there an actual benefit to be gained?
Well worth a read
From the Four Wackos comes this Black woman‘s demand for an apology and remuneration.
No, wait, now… She wants that apology and reparations from (wait for it...)
From the Democratic Party. 
“We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:
Whereas in the early 1600’s 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,
Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,
Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,
Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,
Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,
Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,
Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,
Whereas Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission,
It only keeps getting better…
(Cries of “racism” to appear from the Loony left in 3… 2… 1… )
Quick bio from her page reads: “I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and retired from the Army in 1984 after 20 years of active service. I received a Bachelor of Science degree from Drury College in 1973, a Masters of Business Administration from Golden Gate University in 1976, and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1977. I became politically active in 1982 and served as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Private Sector Initiatives Task Force. I worked as a volunteer in the campaigns of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as Governor Jeb Bush. I am a co-founder of the SaraMana Black Republican Club. I am also a member of the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Sarasota County. Most recently, I became Chairman of the National Black Republican Association, an organization that is committed to returning African Americans to their Republican Party roots. Among the awards I have received during my military career are the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Defense Service Medal and four Army Commendation Medals.” Emphasis mine.
A black female conservative Republican? I think she is more qualified than a certain Senator I could think of… (Take that however you wish.)
Allah and his pedophile “prophet” must be proud
Arabs screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ attack rabbi
A police investigation has been launched into an attack in New York City on a rabbi who was kicked and punched by Arabs screaming “Allahu akbar,” the same chant reportedly used by the 9/11 hijackers as they killed thousands of people in the city in 2001.
The report comes from Vox iz Neiaas, which means “What’s News,” in New York.
The incident happened in the jurisdiction of the 78th Precinct, according to the report, and is being investigated as a possible bias crime.
The report said an 18-year-old Arab man grabbed the yarmulke of a Jew at the 4th Ave. and 9th Street train station in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, “while his friends kicked and punched the victim while screaming ‘Allahu akbar.’”
The perpetrator grabbed the rabbi’s head covering, then fled the scene only to be hit by a vehicle on a nearby street. The report said police arrested him and requested an ambulance, but were trying “to brush off the crime as just teenagers who don’t know what ‘Allahu akbar’ means.”
Israel National News identified the rabbi as Oriah Ohana, a 25-year-old from Kfar Chabad, Israel
The rabbi had chased the suspect who grabbed the yarmulke, and when the thief was hit by a car, the rest of the attackers renewed their assault, “claiming he was the cause of their friend’s misfortune,” the report said.
They all escaped before police arrived except the man hit who was hit by the car.
The Arabic declaration, translated as “Allah is greatest,” often is chanted by Muslims before or during terrorist attacks.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Somebody pop another bag
Looks like this one is going into extra innings...
About a week or so back, Geraldine Ferraro (to date, the woman elected to the highest position within any major political Party - VP nominee*) had made a comment that B. Hussein Obama was lucky to be in his position, and that he wouldn’t be in that position he is in if he were not Black.
She was right, but Obamaniacs screeched for Ferraro to apologize and throw herself off the nearest cliff as an appeasement to the Obamessiah. She went so far as to step down as an advisor to Hillary’s campaign, and Obamaland went back to camp, with much back-slapping amongst themselves for having slain yet another dragon.
But Gerry Ferraro only stepped down so as to insulate Hillary from Round Two.
“To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable,” Ferraro said today. “He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred.”
* * * * * *
Ferraro said she had “no clue” why Obama would include her in his speech, and said Obama’s association with Wright raises serious questions about his judgment.
“What this man is doing is he is spewing that stuff out to young people, and to younger people than Obama, and putting it in their heads that it’s OK to say ‘Goddamn America’ and it’s OK to beat up on white people,” she said. “You don’t preach that from the pulpit.”
My heroine! (Even though I voted for Reagan in ‘84)
* - and she will hold this title until someone nominates a woman for President
{h/t Hot Air}