I Won't Be Renewing...

... my subscription to this rag:

I subscribed a few months back, have now received four issues and only have one left to go, given the mag is a bi-monthly publication.  I thought subscribing would be a good way to stay in touch with the cigar world, read reviews on what's good and what ain't, and to just generally be better informed about one of the things I dearly love in life.  Well, so much for that.

What I GOT was a hard-copy version of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," along with an overdose of Liberal cant.  I don't need a full-page review of watches that cost $12,000.00 and up.  I don't give a big rat's ass about what any given movie or teevee star smokes (said stars bein' featured on the cover of three out of four issues I've received).  I don't want to read reviews of cigars I can neither buy nor smoke any longer... which is to say Cubans*.  The travel guide articles are mostly for tony golf resorts and I don't whack a lil white ball around a park, nor do I fancy vacationing in such an environment.  It's the same sort of thing with their articles on cars... all expensive in price, with a focus on snob appeal rather than how the cars perform.  Meh.

But here's what REALLY screwed the pooch, a scan of a paragraph from an article about the 20th greatest sports somethings in the past 20 years:

Detroit "Redwings."  Sweep of Buffalo?  Fucking poseurs.

*Full disclosure: I did buy Cubans when I lived in Dee-troit (and also while in London), so there's that.  Mebbe the mag has a big audience in SE Michigan.

Around the Horn

Just a few items...  There's this, for starters:

Lawmakers Seek to Change New Medal's Precedence: H.R. 833, a bill introduced in the House that would prohibit the Department of Defense from rating the new Distinguished Warfare Medal as equal to, or higher than, the Purple Heart, had more than 40 co-sponsors as of March 7, according to the Library of Congress' bill-tracking website. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a former marine, introduced the bill on Feb. 26, along with Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), an Army veteran, and Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), a Navy Reservist. "Combat valor awards have a deep and significant meaning to those who serve in America's military," said Hunter in a release that same day. He said while there's nothing wrong with a medal "that recognizes commendable actions" off the battlefield—as the DWM is meant to do—"it's absolutely necessary to ensure that combat valor awards are not diminished in any way." The Pentagon introduced the DWM last month, saying it would rank in precedence above the Bronze Star Medal and sit directly below the Distinguished Flying Cross. This drew criticism from some veterans' groups. "If the Pentagon will not reconsider the decision to rank this medal above the Purple Heart, the House will take action," said Murphy. (See also Rooney release.)

It's not often one can say "way t'go!" or similar about our congresscritters.  But this time?  Yes.

Here's lookin' at you, Kid...

Air Frame: A pilot sits in the cockpit of his F-16 Fighting Falcon prior to takeoff at Nellis AFB, Nev., during the Red Flag 13-3 air combat training exercise, Feb. 25, 2013. (Air Force photo by SSgt. Kenny Holston)

An interesting perspective, non?

And finally, in keeping with our aviation/military theme:

Heh.

Cheesy Videos XXVI

Nothing more to add other than what's in the video...



We have an empty chair or two, Gentle Reader, and the beer is both (a) good and (b) cold.  C'mon down!

Just for comparisons sake, here's what Happy Hour looked like in Former Happy Days, Part Two:



Much more pleasant, eh?  The cherry tree, Gentle Reader, it was all about the cherry tree.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

The inimitable Mr. Cohen...

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows (Full lyrics here)

Well not everybody wants a box o' chocolates and a long-stemmed rose.  I'll settle for a couple o' beers and a cigar outdoors on the verandah.  Coz it's a BEAUTIFUL day.  See?

Ah, tee shirt weather... at LAST.

Scraping the Absolute Bottom o' the Blogging Barrel

I much prefer the goats.  Who wouldn't?  The REAL question, though, is why did I post this?  And no, I have NOT begun drinkin'.  Yet.

It Took A Day or So...

... but the cartoonists are weighing in on the Dearly Departed:

Burn in Hell, Yew-go.

My mattress weighed in yesterday, too.

(Sigh)  Well, obviously not MY mattress, but Tina and I have much in common.

Broadening, Episode LV

We made a beer and whiskey re-supply run out to Cannon Airplane Patch earlier today and picked up a sixer o' these:

That would be a Dig Pale Ale from New Belgium, rated as "good" by my go-to guys.  I'm on the record as never having met an NB beer I didn't like and that opinion is still valid.  That said, I'm not a big fan of the pale ale genre... mainly coz I don't like the up-front hoppiness of these beers.  Or perhaps it would be the "in yer FACE!" hoppiness.  Whatever the case may be, one can certainly taste the hops in this brew but that taste ain't of the in-yer-face variety.  But oh yes... the hops are most definitely THERE.

It's doubtful that Dig will find a favored and permanent place in my fridge, but it's nice as a change o' pace.  Recommended, if you like that Big Hops thing.

Sequestration's Effect At Cannon Airplane Patch

The AF can't afford sticks for their "planes on a stick" program:

Now it's just "planes in the dirt."  See what you've done, Obama?

The Saddest of Sad Days

It was one year ago today when one of the finest gentlemen I never met died, doing what he loved to do.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Tears

Words fail me.

March 7, 2012

I received some sad news earlier today that retired TOPGUN pilot US Navy Capt. Carroll LeFon, better known as Lex of the military blog Neptunus Lex, was killed Tuesday when a jet he was flying crashed at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada.

I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Carroll in person like many other bloggers have, but I did chat with him on occasion over e-mail throughout the years and as recently as last year when he won Best U.S. Military Veteran Blog.

He was also one of the first bloggers to appear here on Milblogging.com when and I did a short feature on him back in 2006. 

When I asked him why he started blogging he told me, “I guess you could say I started blogging as a way of sharpening my writing skills. Anyone who`s been to see, or flown fighter aircraft  has stories to tell, and I was interested in getting some of mine out there as well, and seeing what interest there might be. It`s also a sort of on-line diary of thoughts, and reactions to the days events - some of those, looking back, get pretty stale in time - but in doing so you form a kind of community of interest. A fun hobby that lets you interact with other people.”

You can learn more about Carroll on his About page.

His facebook page is here http://www.facebook.com/nep.lex

My prayers go out to the family and friends he left behind.

Here are posts online by other bloggers.

USNI Blog
Susan Katz Keating
Argghhh!!!

I will update this post later in the day with online tributes.

My prayers and condolences go out to Lex's family. The milblogging community has lost its best and brightest, the nation has lost a great patriot, and I've lost my blog-father.

RIP, Captain.  Thank you for all you did, for everyone.

Committed to the Inter-tubes by Buck Pennington on 3/07/2012 10:27:00 AM 

My sense of loss is no less profound one year on.

Yet Another Re-run, But This One Has a Purpose

Those of you Gentle Readers who read the comments to our posts may have noticed The Second Mrs. Pennington made a rare and not unwelcome appearance in comments yesterday.  That appearance sparked the usual, quite customary and somewhat unreasonable exchange between the two of us, which lasted for well over an hour, if not two, and constituted a grand total of 16 back-and-forths.  Like this:

I disputed TSMP's assertion that I've been disrespectful to her on the blog and sent her a link for her perusal, challenging her to find just ONE case of disrespect.  I doubt she'll find any but... just in case... I went looking for an example.  The closest I came to "disrespectful" was this:

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Dreams

All throughout my life I've either been cursed or blessed... depending on your POV... with a general inability to remember my dreams.  I've done a little light reading on the subject and know enough to understand we ALL dream and roughly half of us remember every minute detail of our unconscious nocturnal adventures.  Not me.  Not usually.  Until lately, that is.  Over the course of the last month or so my dreams have been vivid enough to wake me up and some small bits and pieces of those dreams remain in memory.  I'll relate a small part of last night's dream in a minute, but first a digression.

The Second Mrs. Pennington was (is?) one of those types who recall their dreams in exquisite detail.  Her dreams were the subject for conversation over our morning coffee... every morning.  It was part of my duties and responsibilities as consort to listen semi-attentively to her strange and weird experiences; things would NOT have gone well if I had been less than interested.  Which, truth be told, I was... less than interested.  Some people may find it fascinating that you were trapped in a dark hallway with no apparent way out and the terror this situation inspired but I'm not among that select few.  But I did listen.  Duty and obligation.

The thing that always captured my attention, however, were those rare occurrences where I starred in her dreams and acted in an uncharacteristic manner... which is to say less than loving or outright cold, cruel, or callous... depending on the situation.  My response in those cases was "Hey!  I'm not responsible for what I do in your dreams!"  To which she would always reply "Oh but you are. Yes you ARE!"  I think she was serious, too.  End of digression.

So... last evening I was involved in a sort of French aristocratic tableau, where all the characters looked like the ones you see on the right and we were wandering around premises... both in and outdoors... that looked a lot like the image of the château below.

There were quite a few cameo appearances by people from my past but the chief actors in this dream-play were TSMP, her parents, my parents, and (of course) me.  The dream had that "endless flow of time" character that made it seem to go on forever... vignette after vignette that replayed our breakup in semi-slow motion and in the most exotic of surroundings.  There were interventions by her parents and mine, which is odd because our parents were dead when we ended, rather lengthy soliloquies on TSMP's part rationalizing her behavior and so on.  I won't bore you with more detail except for two odd images.  

The Château de Sceaux... where I played as a child.  Connections?

The first: my father was wearing an intricate, finely tooled leather cigar holster (?) from which he would periodically withdraw a lit cigar as he strode around the room, take a couple of draws on it and return it to its place.  I (virtually) thought "I need one of those!"

The second, which was the dream's final scene and the one that woke me up: TSMP was outdoors in a garden seated at a bench writing in a large gilded ledger... and this is after all the shit had hit the fan.  I walked up to her and asked what she was doing.  "This is the final entry in our book," she replied.  I looked down and saw the following... in large, bright red flowing script... "I was only playing at love."

Well.  You ARE responsible for your behavior in my dreams, Darling.  I understand where you were coming from now.

Committed to the Inter-tubes by Buck Pennington on 3/10/2010 01:47:00 PM 12 comments:

Well, now.  That ain't disrespectful, izzit?  I made sure to include the comments to that post, which are interesting.  The exchange between TSMP and I last evening was much less so, in that the conversation only served to illustrate the Liberal trope about the truth being relative.  In this case it most certainly is. 

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We took Happy Hour... still in progress, as we speak... on the verandah today, even though it's a might brisk at 53 degrees.  That temp is bearable, assuming there's both bright sunshine and little-to-no wind.  That's the case today, as opposed to yesterday when it was 20 degrees warmer and 30 mph higher, where the wind is concerned.  Yesterday was not the sorta day where we wanted to be out on the verandah.

But we digress.  We're listenin' to "Blood On the Tracks" today, an album I bought immediately when it hit the shelves in the way-back (about seven months before I met The Second Mrs. Pennington, more about which, below) and an album I constantly return to, even as all these years have gone by.  One such cut (there are intermittent pauses at the beginning o' the vid, but stay with it):

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must
You do what you must do and ya do it well
I do it for you honey baby
Can't you tell? 

That musta been a rhetorical question coz the answer in my case was "no"... she apparently couldn't tell.  As a s'matter o' fact, the girl couldn't tell her ass from her elbow when it really counted.  Still and even... SUCH a great tune!

So?

There's this in the "who gives a big rat's ass" department...



I took the vid from an article in Wired, which says, in part:

Ferrari has just unveiled LaFerrari. It’s the supercar to beat for the next decade, and Porsche, Lamborghini and McLaren are officially on notice.

LaFerrari. It’s a name that evokes … nothing. But while it sounds like something you’d ask for at a tanning salon, let’s not concern ourselves with such trivialities. After all, this is Ferrari, and the Paisans in Maranello know how to build cars capable of blasting past ludicrous speed.

If you’re going to kvetch about the styling, just stop. They’ve honed the Enzo-successor’s shape down the nanometer in the wind tunnel, using decades of Formula One expertise to shape, mold and bend its composite body to the whims of advanced aerodynamics. It’s science at 205 mph, coated in carbon fiber and sprayed in a red that only the Prancing Horse can truly pull off.

Ummm... no.  I won't stop, coz that car is butt-ugly from both the front and the rear.  Note:

Jeeze... I'll bet the motors required to open those doors have more horsepower than a Volkswagen.  We won't talk about the price, which is reputed to be somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 MILLION Yankee Dollars.  Not that that makes any difference, because all 499 of the cars are already sold, supposedly.

Me?  There are any number of Caddys, Beemers, and Jags I'd rather have at less than five percent of the price of that Prancing Horse.  Or prancing horse's ass... you choose.

Two Re-Runs

It always happens when I go looking for something specific on the blog... in this case it was the name of a tequila I knew and loved in the past.  Searching on "tequila" turned up these two blasts from our past...

Thursday, July 09, 2009

More Wisdom From the In-Box

A friend sends this along...

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine...
And those who don't.

As Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom,
In beer there is freedom,
In water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials,
Scientists have demonstrated that if we drink
1 liter of water each day,
At the end of the year we would have absorbed
More than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria
Found in feces.
In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop..

However,
We do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer
(or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor)
Because alcohol has to go through a purification process
Of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember:
Water = Poop,
Wine = Health.
Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid,
Than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information:
I'm doing it as a public service!

And we've left the formatting intact, mainly coz I like the script font. We're ALL about freedom here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington, less so about the wisdom that comes bundled with wine. But we have been known to do a glass of Beaujolais now and then... or most any good red. Never white.

In the same vein as the above... here's what My Dear Ol Da used to say about water:

You know why I don't drink water?

No, Dad... why?

Coz fish f*ck in it.

Badda-da-boomp. But the Ol' Man did have a point, ya know. And that quote is verbatim, passed on to me when I was of an appropriate age for the language used therein.

And then there's this... 

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Contrasts...

Taking the day off today. But…just for fun…here’s a study in contrasts. In the first two pics: friends Catherine, Amy and I in Santa Fe, May 2005.

First pic: On the Plaza in the morning, sober as three judges.

Second pic: (Much) Later that same day in a local cantina towards the end of the evening. Take your best guess as to our sobriety. Much fun had by all.

Pics one and two were taken by good friend Cory, who's on the right in pic three.

See all y'all tomorrow.

I think it's been waaaay too long since I've spent a night at the bar in the company of beautiful wimmen and good tequila.  I'm gonna have to work on that.

Funny, and Not Funny At ALL

First the funny...

Well, it would be funny if it weren't true.  There's that, I suppose.

And then there's this, from the Usual USAF Source:

Third Air Force Commander Overturns Sexual Misconduct Conviction: Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin has overturned the conviction of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, former 31st Fighter Wing inspector general at Aviano AB, Italy, citing lack of sufficient evidence. Franklin rendered this decision in late February. Last November, a military court found Wilkerson guilty of improper sexual conduct with a female civilian base employee. However, "after a careful, lengthy, and thorough deliberation, Lieutenant General Franklin concluded the evidence presented at trial did not amount to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and he declined to approve the conviction," US Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Baldwin told the Daily Report on March 4. Baldwin noted that Franklin "acted within his authority in deciding the conviction should not stand" and "would not have performed his duties had he taken any other course of action." Authorities released Wilkerson from confinement on Feb. 26. Baldwin said Air Force officials are now determining Wilkerson's next assignment and whether he will receive a promotion to the rank of colonel. "We're working closely with Air Force headquarters to complete these actions as quickly as possible," he said. Baldwin emphasized that Franklin "does not personally know" nor does he recall "ever interacting in any social setting" with Wilkerson.

—Amy McCullough

Good on Gen. Franklin.  A reversal is highly unusual in the military justice system under any circumstances and a reversal in a sexual misconduct case is basically unheard of, especially in the current climate.  When I say "current climate," I mean things like this:

"The Air Force and the 31st Fighter Wing are dedicated to a culture where sexual assault is simply unacceptable and will not be tolerated," said Brig. Gen. Scott Zobrist, 31st FW commander, in a release.

[...]

"I take any allegation of criminal conduct by someone under my command very seriously—regardless of the rank of the accuser or that of the alleged offender," stated Zobrist.

Allegations of sexual assault SHOULD be taken seriously, each and every time.  That said, I believe there's a difference between prompt and proper investigations and a witch-hunt.  I've been following the sexual abuse issue ever since the scandals at basic training blew up last year, and the scandals at the Air Force Academy before that.  Forgive me, Gentle Reader, but it seems like the Air Force might be overreacting just a tad.

Finally, one wonders if Lt. Col. Wilkerson will stay in the service.  A charge like this, even when it's reversed, will follow him around like a sick puppy.  As for me?  I'd be pretty pissed at the service after spending three or four months in confinement, not to mention having to endure the horrors of an investigation and being relieved of my assigned position during that time, even if the Air Force pinned eagles on my shoulder.

The Downside o' Early to Bed, Early to Rise...

... are the looks I get from the neighbors and passers-by when they see me drinkin' beer and smokin' a cigar on the verandah at 1100 hrs.  Like this:

Well, screw 'em.  We do it because we CAN.  

For the record: bedtime at 0015 hrs, wakey-wakey at 0730; I feel almost normal.  But as for that "healthy, wealthy, and wise" krep: I'm oh-fer-three.  I don't think ol' Ben knew what the Hell he was talkin' about.

It's That Time o' Year

Spring is edging ever closer (but not yet close ENOUGH) and I'm beginning to see evidence.  Case in point, this:

There are some nice photos there.  Cherry blossoms, as noted elsewhere on the blog in recent days, are a favorite of mine.  And cherry blossoms are one of the things I miss about livin' in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park.  I posted pics of an ornamental cherry tree right outside my front door EVERY year while I was livin' there, like this:

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Forgive Me...

... or indulge me.  Whatever.  Sakura... taken a few minutes ago:

I just love the delicate pinks and the contrasting copper-colored new leaves.  And no smart-ass comments about my manliness, OK?

And this:

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Spring?

or... confused? Taken about four minutes ago... the ornamental Cherry tree just outside my door.

I'm thinking the third of March might just be a lil bit... umm... early. But, Hey! We'll take it, Gentle Reader. And now it's back out to continue with Happy Hour... already in progress. It's quite the lovely afternoon here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington, what with it being 80 degrees and all. Loverly. To say the VERY least.

Note the widely divergent dates on those two posts.  I could use a lil bit o' 80-degree weather right now.

CNX

From the Usual USAF Source:

Out of the Public Eye: Due to the budget sequester, the Air Force has cancelled all aviation support to public events for at least the remainder of Fiscal 2013, and is standing down the Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team to preserve flying hours for readiness needs, announced service officials. "Engaging with the public is a core Air Force mission and communicating and connecting with the public is more important today than ever before. However, faced with deep budget cuts, we have no choice but to stop public aviation support," said Brig. Gen. Les Kodlick, Air Force public affairs director, in the service's March 1 release. Effective March 1, Active Duty, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve units ceased all aviation support at air shows, tradeshows, and open houses, unless the event includes only local static assets; they also stopped flyovers (including at funerals and military graduations), orientation flights, heritage flights, and F-22 demonstration flights, states the release. Cancellation of the Thunderbirds' 2013 flying season takes effect on April 1, according to the release. Thunderbirds and heritage flight crews will complete their certification procedures in case the budget allows resumption of scheduled events in 2013, states the release. (See also Sequestration's Disconnect.)

Rumor has it the Blue Angles (<=== not a typo) will follow suit:

Update on Blue Angels canceled rumors: With sequestration in effect, NAF El Centro, which marks the beginning of the 2013 air show season, could be in jeopardy of being nixed. Because Obama and Congress failed to prevent the sequester from occurring Friday, the popular Blue Angles (<=== typo) air show could be scrapped as part of mandatory spending cuts. However, at this time, no official word has been given. With April fast approaching, fans want clarity.

I saw this coming from a long ways off.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We took today's Happy Hour in shifts, due mostly to the early start of today's hockey game.  Our first installment was taken indoors... as we paced the living room for much of the third period, all of the overtime, and then for the shoot-out, about which, more later.

So.  It was the game, followed by a shower, and thence out on to the verandah, where we took beers numbers three and four, all the while listening to Ray LaMontagne with our windows and door open, on account o' coz it was a brilliantly warm (mid-70s) kinda day.  Like this, musically:

Kiss me before you go
I'm going nowhere lately
Kiss me before you go
I'm going nowhere lately

Ah, well... yes. We've known a few barflies in our time and we're grateful for those ladies.  Oh, yes... we are.  But that's neither here nor there.  Well, it MIGHT could be here, but we'll leave it at that.  But about the game...

It left us cold.  That's NOT to say it wasn't a good game, coz it most certainly was.  It was the ending, Gentle Reader, in which the Beloved Wings lost in the shoot-out, otherwise known as The Gimmick.  I actively dislike... nay, I HATE... the shootout.  In times past the outcome would have resulted in one point apiece for both the Beloved Wings and the hated 'Hawks, given things weren't resolved in regulation time, nor in the five-minute OT.  But no... we had to go to the gimmick and those hated 'Hawks got the winner's two points.  I long for Former Happy Days, in which it would have been one point apiece, and that's it.  Next...

The league itself recognizes the shoot-out is just a gimmick, mainly coz there ain't no such thing in the playoffs when every game counts.  Tied at the end of regulation time in the playoffs?  Well then, play a 20 minute OT and if things aren't resolved then, play another OT.  Keep going until one team or the other scores and ends it.  I'm not sayin' that should be the case during the regular season, not at all.  But I AM sayin' that if you're tied at the end of regulation and OT... well, then.  One point apiece and we're done.

That said... today's game was brilliant.  It was play-off hockey and I was on the edge of my seat... or pacing the floor... until the final goal was scored.  It's just too bad it had to end the way it did.

This Is Just WRONG

Hockey... before noon?

Hell, I still have half a pot o' coffee to drink and half the blog rounds yet to be done.  Do I start drinkin' beer before I'm fully caffeinated?  That's just wrong, too.

Let's Go RED WINGS!

What?

Ahem.  Barry, I served with Richard Nixon. I knew Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was a friend of mine. Barry, you're no Richard Nixon!*

*Full disclosure:  I was a moonbat in Nixon's day and I loathed the guy then, not so much now.  But I DID serve with him; he was my CinC.

Broadening Our Horizons LIV

I shouldn't have.  But I did, which is to say I paid an exorbitant price (12 Yankee Dollars!) for a six-pack of a beer that's only "Meh."  That would be this...

That's an Indian Wells Brewery Lobotomy Doppel Bock.  The average BA score on this brew is 71, which puts it in the mid-pack of all beers reviewed at Beer Advocate.  You wouldn't guess the beer is rated that high by reading the first six or eight reviews which, to be honest, are piss-poor.  The beer is OK, if you look at it simply as a beer.  Where I fall down is considering the brew as it's advertised and labeled: a doppel bock.  And that it is NOT... with not near enough malty goodness and not near enough taste.  The beer supposedly has a 10.8% ABV but you can't discern the alcohol at all in the taste.  Some people might consider that to be a good thing, as for me?  Not so much.  If I'm gonna drink a strong beer I wanna be reminded that I'm drinking a strong beer.  Don't be sneakin' up on me.

This beer is gonna be a "one and done."  I'll finish the sixer, but that's it.  There are better bocks out there and I'll drink 'em.

And now... out to the verandah, for it's a beautiful, sunshiny, and warmish (61 degrees) day out there.  No wind, either!

Saturday

Oh, this just cracks me UP!



The Usual Source is too cute by half in its description:

The Guardian Viral Video Chart has got the perfect solution if everyone has been getting on your goat this week, the kids have been bleating and you've been feeling a bit gruff. Just when you think you have herd everything – we've got the goat version of Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer at number one. And if that's not enough to cheer you up, here's a link to 22 more internet remixes featuring goats, with thanks to Buzzfeed – we kid you not!

The "22 more" link is good, too, even if I didn't recognize but two or three of the artists there*.  It's still funny shit.

And then there's this:



There's sumthin' about bein' a Luddite that works*, yanno?  There are a LOT more of those, here.  Good stuff, too.

*Full disclosure:  (1) Yeah, I'm an OLD Fart.  (2) I send e-cards.  A LOT of 'em.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We seem to gettin' most of our musical ideers from XM these days and today is no exception.  I heard this while I was oot and aboot this afternoon...

You are here and warm
But I could look away and you'd be gone
Cause we live in a time
When meaning falls in splinters from our lives

That would be Fleetwood Mac, of course, with Bob Welch on lead guitar and vocals.  The Bare Trees album got LOTS of air play back in the day when it first hit the stores.  I was livin' the Good Life in Klamath Falls, Oregon at the time.  Sorta.

Mr. Welch recorded the tune a few years later on one of his solo albums, to wit:



Both versions are worthy, both versions call up memories from Former Happy Days, but in radically different circumstances.  French Kiss was released in 1977 when I was livin' the REALLY Good Life in Westby, Montana... the last year of my second childhood.  The Second Mrs. Pennington and I married the following year and I settled down after that.  Sorta.

OK... Beer Me!  Outdoors!

Random Notes

Said with apologies to Rolling Stone for lifting the title to an on-going feature in the magazine.  At least it used to be but ya can't prove it by me, seein' as how I haven't cracked an RS in about 20 years or more.  But there was a time...

I subscribed to RS back in my plastic hippie days... beginning around 1969 or so... and kept that subscription going until the late '80s, or about 20 years.  I used to save my issues, too, and had about three or four or more one-cubic-foot boxes stuffed full of old Rolling Stones.  Which boxes I carted around with me when I moved... the magazines accompanying me from Boron AFS, CA to Wakkanai, Japan to Klamath Falls, OR to Yokota AB, Japan to Fortuna AFS, ND back to Oregon and then to England and then to... well, ya get the ideer.  It was in 1985... when we moved from Oklahoma City to Dee-troit... that The Second Mrs. Pennington put her foot down and made me throw the things out, along with my equally-large 20-plus-year collection of motorcycle magazines.  I kept the RS subscription going for another few years but the issues always went out in the trash when we were done reading them... TSMP made sure of that.

I told her those things would be valuable some day and she'd be sorry we threw away a gold mine; it turns out I was wrong about that.  Well, sorta wrong.  I had all of those issues... and more.

―:☺:―

The Beloved Wings finished up a two-game road trip to the Left Coast last evening, winning one and losing one... a shoot-out win over the hapless Tiburons last evening and a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to El-Eh night before last.  Last night's win vaulted the Wings from 10th place in the West to fourth.  Who'd a thunk it that two measly points would make that much difference in the standings?  Well it did, and that's coz things are pretty tight in the West, except for the Ducks and the hated Blackhawks, who are running away and hiding from everyone else.  I don't recall the previous shortened season bein' this tight, but then again I don't remember a LOT o' things.

―:☺:―

We took Happy Hour out on the verandah yesterday and the chances are pretty good we'll do the same today.  It' still not very warm here on The High Plains o' New Mexico... only in the low 50s... but that's warm enough, provided the wind stays down.  We're beginning to not like this winter thing... ENOUGH, already.

―:☺:―

And finally... Happy Sequester Day!  That's all I'm gonna say on the subject, mainly coz I'm SICK TO FUCKING DEATH of it.