WTF?

Right now:

OK, Ma Nature... this ISN'T funny.  Not at ALL.

The Beginning of the End

From the Usual USAF Source...

Final F-4 Regenerated for Use as Aerial Target
The final F-4 regenerated from storage in the Air Force's aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., earlier this month departed the base for Mojave, Calif., for conversion to a QF-4 target drone, announced base officials. This RF-4C airframe, dubbed "Last One," left Davis-Monthan on April 17, states the base's April 19 release. "It's a great feeling to see such a magnificent aircraft fly again to serve the warfighter," said Eddie Caro, the crew chief assigned to the aircraft since December 2012. BAE Systems will convert the platform into the QF-4 configuration in California and then deliver it to Tyndall AFB, Fla. This airframe arrived at Davis-Monthan for retirement in January 1989 and had been dormant until technicians with the base's 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group last year began restoring it to flying status, according to the release. The Air Force is transitioning from the QF-4 to using QF-16s as its full-scale aerial targets. (Davis-Monthan report by Teresa Pittman) (See also Three-Hundredth QF-4 Delivered.)

I suppose goin' down in flames is preferable to rusting away in The Boneyard... or, as Neil put it: "It's better to burn out than to fade away..."

"But When She Got There the Cupboard Was Bare"

With apologies to Old Mother Hubbard.  About this sign... it is to laugh:

There's not a box of .38 Special ammunition... or .22LR, .357, .45 ACP, or even shotgun shells in any caliber other than .410... to be found anywhere in Portales or Clovis.  Like the lady at my gun shop in Clovis said: "Fuckin' Obama."  That's a direct quote.

My apologies for the piss-poor cell phone pic.  But you get the ideer.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

For a friend:



Go ahead: sing along.  Because you CAN.

Well, It's Earth Day So Let's Recycle Some Pixels

From three years back:

Thursday, April 22, 2010

It's All About Mama Earth Today

Well... let us celebrate Gaia!  To begin with... remember that post last week about all the dandelions here in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park?  Well, I stand corrected.  It seems like the caretakers/groundskeepers in BLHTP are just slightly ahead of the curve, and are obviously thinking about our Earth Mom.  From Tuesday's NYT ("The Dandelion King"):

As I’ve told my neighbors, I feel bad about lowering the value of their property. I mean, it isn’t my goal to have a front yard that, by standard reckoning, is unattractive. The unkept look of my lawn is just a byproduct of a conclusion I reached a few years ago: the war on weeds, though not unwinnable, isn’t winnable at a morally acceptable cost.

[...]

I mean, sure, an expanse of green probably does appeal to the typical human’s sense of beauty. But so does a snowcapped Alpine peak — and I’m definitely not putting one of those in my front yard. The question isn’t whether carpets of green are intrinsically attractive, but whether the more natural alternative — my front yard — is intrinsically unattractive.

I think not. If it were, why would hikers pause, look out on an unruly expanse of earth and reflect on how great it feels to escape civilization for the great outdoors? Moreover, given our species’ long history of traversing various unkept landscapes, how could natural selection have imbued us with an intense aversion to them?

So I think it’s possible in principle to engineer a new ethos that allows us to fight chemical negative externalities without creating aesthetic and hence financial ones. Maybe someday suburban neighborhoods will consist of lawns that look like mine, and everyone will admire them.

Back to BLHTP's management.  In addition to being considerate of Mama Earth, it seems there's also a considerable amount of trendiness in play here.  P-Ville?  Trendy?  Who'd a thunk it?

As implied above... today is Earth Day, one of those non-holidays celebrated by All The Best People Who Really Rilly Care.  And here's the latest shot across the bow for us troglodytes who tend to turn a jaundiced eye on the whole Earth Day thing...  from "How to Green Your Parents," in yesterday's NYT...

Thursday is the 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day. Over the years, the impact of this once seminal day has lessened. Earth Day brings people together for nice gatherings and noble efforts but has, for the most part, made sustainable action more of an annual event than a daily habit. We’ve got to change that.

Here’s a move in the right direction: launching this Earth Day is Green My Parents (ed: dead link and we're prolly all better for it, too), a nationwide effort to inspire and organize kids to lead their families in measuring and reducing environmental impact at home. Not just on Earth Day, but every day. GMP’s initial goal is to have its first 100 youth advocates train and educate 100 peers (who will then turn to 100 of their respective peers and so on), with the aim of saving families $100 million between now and April 2011.

Ah.  Good on the American Young Komsomols.  You're following in some well-defined and heavily trafficked footsteps.  That said... a brief cautionary note to MY offspring:
 

Don't. Even. Think. About. It.  

I'm just being sarcastic, coz I know you wouldn't lecture me in any way, shape, or form.  It's not that we don't care about Gaia - quite the contrary.  We just don't like to wear our heart on our sleeve in that smug and patronizing sort of way.  And we hate indoctrination of any sort.

Gaia image from here.  Dang.  I need me one of these.  I think she'd look good among the dandelions, kind of a 21st century garden gnome.  Doncha think?

I STILL need/want one of those statues, just to keep my flamingos company.  Gaia looks rather Buddhist, too, which is right up my alley.

Today's Happy Hour... Soundtrack?

It's a brilliant day here on the High Plains o' New Mexico... 73 degrees, clear and calm... and we're takin' advantage o' that fact by extending Happy Hour well beyond the usual "two and done."  Evidence:

It should be obvious... but just in case it's NOT... we've been sampling a lot o' the goodness that lies within our fridge o' many charms, the latest o' which is a Shiner Hefeweizen, not the least among the many great good beers we have at our disposal.

As for our soundtrack... we're listenin' to The Last Waltz and are goin' thru our third turn (at least!) at that four-disc set.  One such track:



Ah, Neil.  He provided the soundtrack for lots o' other seminal events in our life.  But let us not dwell on Former Happy Days... let's just live in the moment, coz this moment is pretty danged GOOD.

Me Too

I notice some of my blog-buds who live in more temperate, not to mention verdant, climes are posting or have posted photos of local Spring color... ranging from bulbs (e.g., daffodils, crocuses, etc.), to wisteria, to redbud trees, and other unknown-to-me yet colorful flowers... all of which are quite beautiful.  We don't have quite that much variety here on the High Plains o' New Mexico, but we do have SOME harbingers o' Spring, which also includes some weirdness.  Witness these spiky lil things:

Makes me wanna shout "ALIENS!"

I have NO ideer what these spiky plants are called but they certainly are strange.  Those purplish shoots will eventually grow out to a height of about five and a half feet with delicate lil flowers that eventually turn into seed pods.  Like this:

Last year's seed pods, gone to seed.

Well, there ya have it.  "Local Spring color," such as it is.

Nice Touch, Bruins

A pic from the current front page of the Boston Globe:

Click to embiggen.

The Globe is free to all readers today.

Saturday

Awwww...



We're all about Happy Endings here at EIP, and that one was pretty happy.  It sure didn't start out that way, though.  Poor kid.  Apropos o' nuthin', here's what our Brit friends at the Usual Source o' these things have to say:

Isn't it amazing that you can try to indoctrinate kids into appreciating a favourite sport - but sometimes they just don't get it! Take this little lad, given a prime seat for a top baseball game. He manages to get the match ball after a foul shot – and then throws it back again. Just look at the reaction from the rest of the family …

Two peoples, separated by a common language.

OTOH, there's this:



Pretty clever, albeit with too much emphasis on very recent times (YMMV, of course).  I think that chick is prolly a great swimmer, too.

A Lil Bit o' Excitement This Morning

That would be early this morning, like around or shortly after 0100 hrs.  There I was, surfin' the inter-tubes in my office when I hear someone on my front porch stumble over the paving stones I use to anchor my doormat, followed by the sound of my storm door banging open and the rattling of the main door's handle, followed by very loud banging on the door.  I immediately did two things: (a) locked and loaded and (b) called 911.  I then went into the living room and shouted through the door that the police were on their way, at which time the banging stopped. When I say "banging," I mean loud and forceful banging... hard enough to knock the picture hanging on the wall by the front door askew.  The door frame in this apartment is pretty damned strong and that's prolly a good thing for both me (saving me from having to explain why there's a body laying just inside my door) and whoever was trying to get in (saving them from acquiring multiple additional orifices in their piece-o-shit body).

The cops arrived about two minutes later (pretty damned quick, eh?) but there was no sign of anyone in the vicinity. The officer at my front door then got a radio call that there was an adult male lurking on the north side... that would be the back side... of my building.  The officer excused herself and said she might be back, but they would get this guy.

Well, OK.  That was the last thing I heard.  You can imagine that getting to sleep was a lil bit problematic... so we entertained ourselves until about 0500 by watching the unfolding drama in Boston.

What a coincidence, eh?

Broadening Our Horizons LX

I'd much prefer to be taking this beer on the verandah this afternoon, but alas... it's another indoor Happy Hour today (some might call it "lunch"), albeit for a different reason than yesterday.  Yesterday it was high winds and dust, today it's just COLD.  And just how cold IS it, Buck?  This cold:

We digress, again and always, when we should be talkin' about BEER.  This beer:

We're kinda-sorta drinkin' local today.  This beer made it down from ABQ via I-40 and a couple o' few back roads, ultimately arriving at the Cannon Airplane Patch Class VI store and then on to El Casa Inmóvil de Pennington where it's bein' consumed with gusto.  I like this stuff and the possibility of this beer becoming a frequent guest in our fridge is quite high.  Here's what our go-to guys have to say about Marble Brewery's Red Ale:

From the sticky sea foam lacing to the stunningly clear brownish-red hue, this beer is a treat to look at. Orangey minty hop aromas wrap around a tight package of caramel malti-ness, flaunted by the very smooth, lush and semi-creamy medium body. Heavy load of caramel and a bit of juiciness meets the sharp bite of hop bitterness to make for a very balanced beer. Some toasted breadiness pushes up against the lingering orange rind hop flavor, with some fruitiness in the middle. Ghost-like roasted tone in the semisweet, bitter finish.

We love us some old-school Red Ales, all hoppy and everything, with the malt to back it all up. Seriously good beer here.

Well, yeah.  Seriously good, indeed, especially the malty bits required to offset all that bitterness that comes with a lot o' hops.  That's what we like!  Marble Brewery has done New Mexico proud.

Heh

My Buddy Ed In Florida sends this along...

In bed with..

An elderly woman comes home and finds her daughter in bed with a vibrator. She screams at her, "What are you doing?"

The daughter says, "Mom, I'm 40 years old, I'm not married and I don't have a date. Give me a break!"

The mother shakes her head and leaves.

The next day, the father walks in on the daughter and finds the same thing. He screams, "What's going on here?"

The daughter says the same thing to him, he shakes his head and leaves.

That night, the mother comes into the kitchen and finds the father sitting at the table, a beer in one hand and the vibrator in the other. She says, "What on earth are you doing with that?"

The father sits back and replies, "Hey, leave me alone, can't a guy have a beer with his son-in-law?"

Implausible but funny.

Ummm... You Must Have Me Confused With That OTHER Buck

In the in-box yesterday...

I don't know what to say, other than that dress might make me look fat.  Among other things.

Of Interest To "The Lexicans"

Another page from this month's issue of Air Force Magazine...

Click to embiggen

Note the "Famous Fliers" section.

Balad AB? Baghdad Airport?

Nope... that's Cannon Airplane Patch about an hour ago.  We're havin' another one of "those" days here on the High Plains o' New Mexico, otherwise known as a "dust event."  Like this (note the humidity, or lack o' same):

I've seen worse in that our winds are only gusting to 40 mph today.  Some days we get steady winds o' 40 mph and gusts in the 60 mph range.  So we'll thank The Deity At Hand for small favors.

Drivin' out to the base and back was... ummm... interesting.

Yeah, that's the word I was lookin' for: interesting.  Needless to say: we'll be takin' Happy Hour indoors today.

Milton Caniff and the Air Force... Both My Father's and Mine

This month's issue of Air Force Magazine has a wonderful article about cartoonist Milton Caniff, a man who was a daily read for me from about the third grade until well into my adult years.  Here's an example of his work, from a time before my time:

In the most famous Caniff Sunday page of all time, the “Let’s Take a Walk, Terry” segment on Oct. 17, 1943, Corkin walks around the flight line with newly fledged pilot Terry and delivers an inspirational talk about the war and the Air Force.This page, often reprinted, was “read” into the Congressional Record and appeared as an Air Force Magazine guest editorial in September 1985.

As the caption notes... that's a lot o' mileage for a simple comic strip.  That particular strip is an example of "Terry and the Pirates," but my boyhood hero was Steve Canyon, Caniff's follow-on strip after "Terry."  Somehow or other I just KNEW my father and Col. Canyon knew each other... I had zero doubts about that until I got somewhat older and obtained a better (or worse) grasp on reality.

Still and even, I followed the adventures of Colonel Canyon every day as a boy.  It's not much of a stretch to say the good colonel had as big an impact on my first career decision as my father did... I wanted to BE Steve Canyon, or someone just like him, at the very least.

I almost got there...

There's much more of Caniff's artwork at the Air Force Mag link above, but you have to view the article as a PDF.

Apropos o' Not Much... Plus Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We've lived in this apartment since September o' 2012 2011 (Thanks, Christina!), which is a lil over a year and a half... 19 months, if'n yer actually countin'... and we only just today realized that these apartments have a name.  We were oot and aboot today and as we made the left hand turn onto our street on our way home we noticed this sign:

The long view - I'm on the faaaar left.

Closer

Well, now... how about THAT?  "Ledgestone Luxury Apartments"... LUXURY apartments!  We always thought the place was kinda nice but we didn't realize we'd landed in the lap o' luxury.  I suppose now we'll have to begin puttin' on airs and such.

―:☺:―

In the "it's always sumthin'" category... we had to go see our dentist today on account o' because our lower bridge... a four-tooth bridge... popped right out o' our mouth yesterday morning, much to our surprise.  We were provided with a nighttime mouth guard after our latest Adventure In Modern Dentistry, which is supposed to protect those rather pricy implants from teeth-grinding, not that we've ever ground our teeth, accidentally or on purpose, in either the day OR the night.  But we do follow directions and what the hell... wearing a nighttime mouth guard can't hurt, right?  Well, sorta, if you discount the fact the mouth guard managed to pull the bridge right out of my mouth when I went to remove it yesterday morning.  So we went in to Dr. Thompson's office today and had that bridge re-glued on to its posts, this time with permanent adhesive.  It's always sumthin'...

―:☺:―

We're listenin' to The Last Waltz today, seein as how that spiffy four-disc box set hit our mailbox earlier today.  I stumbled on to the movie last week (which I hadn't seen in sumthin' like forever) and was much taken with both the concert and more importantly the music.  "Much taken" includes various and sundry observations about how very YOUNG we all were back in 1976... which is to say Van Morrison in his prime, Dylan looking not lookin' like an old man, and Joni lookin' ravishing.  We also got a lil bit introspective during the course o' the movie, comparing who we were back in '76 to who we are today... and we almost got to the point o' tears.  Ah... lost youth.  Every performer in that film/concert is pushin' 70 (I include myself in that category), some are there, and at least one has passed on.  It DOES get depressing, this growin' old thing.  But leave us not digress.

So immediately after the movie was over we hied ourself off to Amazon and ordered up the four-disc box set of The Last Waltz and O! My! are we ever glad we did.  The music is simply spectacular and it really sounds good wafting out o' my windows on this brilliant High Plains day.  A track off the album:



OK, our duty is done.  It's back outside to continue as we've begun.

Not Your Father's Air Force XXX (An Update)

From the Usual USAF Source:

Distinguished Warfare Medal Eliminated  Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday eliminated the Distinguished Warfare Medal, opting instead to create a new distinguishing device to affix to existing medals in order to recognize military personnel, such as remotely piloted aircraft and cyber operators, who have an extraordinary impact on combat operations while serving off the battlefield. "Utilizing a distinguishing device to recognize impacts on combat operations reserves our existing combat medals for those service members who incur the physical risk and hardship of combat, perform valorous acts, are wounded in combat, or as a result of combat give their last full measure for our nation," reads Hagel's April 15 memorandum explaining his decision. Hagel adopted the April 9 recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in concurrence with the service Secretaries, to forego the medal. His memo directs the Defense Department to develop within the next 90 days the award criteria and other details of the distinguishing device for his final approval. The Pentagon in February unveiled the DWM. The medal's order of precedence—above the Bronze Star Medal—raised objections among some lawmakers and veterans' organizations. Hagel then ordered a review of the DWM led by JCS Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. (See also Hagel's statement.)

Well, that's good news... sorta.   I can hear these sorts o' conversations in the future...

Q:  How'd ya get yer Bronze Star?

A:  I successfully completed 21 drone missions over The Af.

Q:  Drone missions?  You got a Bronze Star for that?

A:  Yeah... see this lil device thingie on my ribbon?  That explains it all.

Sorta. 

The Latest From Boston

From the WSJ's site, about four minutes ago:



The WSJ is providing real-time updates, here.

I'm just in from the verandah and was gonna post Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack but we're not so happy any longer.  How terrible...

Why, Yes... Yes, I Have

There was this in today's junk e-mail love note from NatGeo:

Have you ever watched the geysers erupt in Yellowstone or gazed in awe at the sweeping vistas of Arches National Park? Even if you’ve never visited these landmarks, chances are you’ve been to one of the nearly 400 parks that are cared for by the National Park Service. 

Why, yes...

Yes, I have and thanks for asking.  All of the above were taken 13 years ago at a place that should be obvious (and with a first-generation digital camera with all of ONE megapixel!).  These next pics?  The place isn't so obvious (and the photos were taken with better equipment)...

The above are from Arches National Park in Utah (except for the one of YrHmblScrb, which was taken in Poudre Canyon, CO, on that same trip) back in 2007.  Riding the bike(s)... different ones at different times... through both Yellowstone and Arches were remarkable adventures.  I only wish I'd gone to Yellowstone later in the year... coz it was still VERY cold in May.  It got cold on that road trip to Arches (among other places)... come to think on it.  VERY cold.