News

I read this lil blurb in the AFA's Daily Report this morning...

Low Flyers: The Air Force is considering establishing a low-altitude tactical navigation (LATN) area in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The LATN, which is pending an environmental impact assessment, would provide airspace for C-130s and CV-22s to conduct air combat maneuvers and low-altitude tactics training. If approved, the Air Force would fly about two sorties a day, or about 688 sorties a year. The aircraft could fly as low as 200 feet at 250 knots through the mountainous countryside. "The proposed LATN area in Colorado and New Mexico was selected due to the varied topography and weather, proximity to Cannon AFB[, N.M.,] and lack of large civilian populations," according to a Cannon release. The training would enable Cannon's 27th Special Operations Wing to "provide air combat support and would sustain combat-ready crews for worldwide deployment," states the release. Officials also are considering an alternative proposal, which includes a smaller section of airspace.

Some ranchers and oilmen are gonna be treated to their very own up-close-and-personal airshows in the near future.  Dang!  I live in the wrong part of New Mexico...  

(image from The Wiki)

―:☺:―

In other news... from a recent e-mail conversation with SN3:

so whats going on in Portales?

Oh... just the usual.

You may or may not have heard about the tsunami that wiped out the south side of town Friday night.  No one was hurt, though, as everyone (except me) was at the opening game of the high school football season and the stadium is on the north side of town.  The media never showed up to cover the massive property loss and destruction because no one died.  They're like that (the media), yanno?

Saturday an AC-130 from Cannon AFB put seven 105mm cannon rounds into a convoy of milk trucks right outside of Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park.  Three trucks were destroyed but once again: no one was hurt.  The clean-up went remarkably quick, as EVERY feral cat in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park was on the scene in minutes... and they lapped up all the milk.  But there are all those new pot-holes from the cannon rounds that need to be fixed, but we can drive around those.  There's an investigation pending; early info sez the crew had a flashback and thought the milk trucks were full of Taliban.  Me?  I'm worried about all those overly fat kitties.  They can hardly walk now... they kinda waddle instead.

I was kidnapped and held for ransom Sunday evening by a gaggle of scantily-clad co-eds from Eastern NM U.  But I convinced them to let me go with a promise of all the free beer they could drink.  They took me home, wiped out the beer supply in my fridge, and then staggered back to their trailers.  That was a close call.

Yesterday I made a beer run and re-supplied all the beer those crazy co-eds drank up.  And I cleaned up the mess on the verandah.  Those girls just couldn't hold their beer, yanno?  I think they need more practice and we've arranged for a re-match/advanced drinking lesson (it's a 500-level course) this coming weekend.  A couple of 'em are actually pretty friendly for kidnappers.

Aside from that... nothing much.  What's going on in Fort Collins?

I obviously don't share everything that happens around here with you, Gentle Reader.  But you're updated now.

We Are Excited!

Just received this...

Greetings from Amazon.com.

We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items, and that this
completes your order.  Your order is being shipped and cannot be changed
by you or by our customer service department.

Followed by this...

Dear Norman E Pennington,

Congratulations on your purchase and welcome to Amazon Kindle.

We built Kindle with the goal of creating an exceptional and hassle-free reading experience. As such, we wanted to point out a few details before you get started.

Your Kindle is automatically registered to the same Amazon.com account you used to make your purchase. This enables you to shop, purchase, and download books, newspapers and magazines wirelessly from your Kindle right out of the box.

[...]

You can start building your library before your Kindle even arrives by shopping for books, newspapers, magazines and more at the Kindle Store on Amazon.com. Amazon's unique wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet, will auto-deliver your purchases directly to your Kindle. Once you receive your Kindle, you can also shop the same great selection directly from your device. 

Oh, wow.  The anticipation is building... and we are in need of GREAT restraint at this very moment.  Because we could go freakin' wild in the Kindle store.  God save us.

Screech Engrish, Prease!

I've been overwhelmed with spam since turning word verification off, but that's OK.  Blogger's newish automated spam filter (new to me, as of three days ago) is pretty good at catching that shit and the fact I moderate comments now (reminder: against my will) means even those onsies and twosies that get by the spam filter don't see the light of your day, Gentle Reader.

That said... this lil bit of Engrish I found in the spam trap made me smile...

You already skilled in that a multitude is someone that facilitates an incident, or a raison d'etre, like the horde at a party, or an emcee on the tranny or TV.  In our in the event that, a pack involves a computer that is setup to direction the networking and communications necessary to make allowance a Cobweb Situation to flaunt custom formatted documents on the Dialect birth deliver Extensive Web.

Typically, these documents are formatted using a idiosyncratic vernacular called HTML (Hypertext Markup Jargon) that supports mouse click connections to other almost identical documents on the Area Encyclopedic Web.  These HTML documents are normally called Network Pages, and you are looking at one such page these days in your browser window. To detain track of these Web pages in an organized manner, individual and typical of areas are set-aside benefit of them called Trap Sites.

A website may hold one web page or thousands. Websites are stored on computers that are connected to the Internet and setup to communicate their contents to the lie-down of the Internet.  The people and companies that control these special computers are called Web Hosts.  The computers that manage the Web Hosting chores are called Servers, and they may serve any host of Web sites, unified or even hundreds. A spider web emcee ensures that the Web Servers that restrict the Web Sites are functioning duly all of the time.  That may incorporate adding a patron's Web sites to the Servers, pathetic Net sites from ditty Server to another, deleting dusty Spider's web Sites, monitoring the amount of Internet traffic and labour enchanting niche and a multitude of other tasks required to ensure tranquil operation.  Web hosting companies come in diverse shapes and sizes, and assorted specialize in certain types of Hosting.

That also took the cake for longest spam comment I've ever seen, left-wing trolls excepted.  Here's the whole thing:

Heh.

We're Numbah One... Again

Heh.  Via a SiteMeter hit from USMC.mil.

I Loves Me Some (i)Google

My new Google home page theme:

I had "Tea House" for ages as a nod to my experiences in Nippon... but made the change in anticipation of the upcoming season.  Only 31 days to go!

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Forgive me, Gentle Reader, this moment of self-indulgence.  We're listening to "Blood on the Tracks" this afternoon, indulging our inner masochist.  While this was never my favorite song on the album... it really fits today.

People see me all the time and they just can’t remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at
I couldn’t believe after all these years, you didn’t know me better than that
Sweet lady

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads headin’ south
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe

Full lyrics here, but the video posted above has additional lyrics not included in the original "Blood On the Tracks" version.  Life sometimes imitates art and life is sometimes eerie beyond belief.  Who'd a thunk it?

Labor Day and an Admin Note

First the admin note, which is a classic case of good news/bad news.  The good:  I've turned word verification off.  The bad:  I've turned comment moderation on.  I hate comment moderation but I have no choice in this matter because of a case of mud-slinging and disrespect last evening.  This person keeps strange hours and I do not want to read her snarky comments first thing in the morning... so: moderation.  Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.  I'll work to approve comments as expeditiously as possible.

And now the Labor Day re-runs.  Plural.  One is from last year and the other is a couple o' tunes from the ultimate working-class rock'n'roll band.  I couldn't choose which one to post for the holiday, so ya get both.

Labor Day

Today is the day we celebrate "Labor Day" which, in times past, was a true celebration of American Labor.  And by that I mean the people who manipulate the "means of production"… the guys and gals who go out and get their hands dirty making this country work, day in and day out.  But "Labor" as both term and concept has become perverted over the past few years.  Actually… Labor has become politicized and has only a shadow of the meaning it used to carry, back in the day.  Who among us doesn't think of unions when one says or hears the word "Labor" today?  Not many of us, I would wager.

I will resist the temptation to turn this post into an anti-union screed, and said temptation is strong indeed, Gentle Reader.  But let me just say this about that… I'm of the opinion that labor unions are the root of all most evil in our post-industrial society.  I'll grant you labor unions have a glorious history and were responsible for righting numerous wrongs in the early 20^th century (you can begin reading here if you're not up on the good unions accomplished during that time).  But like the buggy whip, their time has passed.  What we get from our unions today are things like "card check" —a decidedly UN-American renunciation of free elections in the workplace— and outright political intimidation (can you spell S-E-I-U?  Sure you can…).  I'm not seeing much good in that… and neither are most other Americans, as Ed Morrissey notes in this Hot Air post.  But let us not digress further; I'm sure you get my point.

I'm thinking an appropriate manner in which to observe Labor Day would be to spend a few hours watching re-runs of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs."  About which... the Discovery Channel is running an all-day marathon of "Dirty Jobs" episodes... or you could watch the DVDs.  If you don't have access to either the Discovery Channel or the "Dirty Jobs" DVDs, you might want to watch his (Rowe's) 20-minute lecture on"Dirty Jobs" at TED.com.  Mr. Rowe celebrates "labor" as it used to be… manual labor as an honorable pursuit infused with dignity.  As it should be.  And that's what I'm on about here, Gentle Reader. 

Or perhaps today might be spent reading a book like "Shopcraft as Soulcraft."  The NYT published a review of this book earlier this year, which starts out pretty well but descends rapidly into a typical NYT snarky book review (on subjects of this nature, of course.  Not all of their book reviews are worthless, just some.  Or most… depending on your POV.).  Here's the best part of the review:

It’s especially appealing when you add that Mr. Crawford has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow — he had an office next to the novelist J. M. Coetzee’s — on the school’s Committee on Social Thought. Mr. Crawford is an intellectual who can probably take you in a bar fight.

Many of the ideas in “Shop Class as Soulcraft” are deeply resonant. Mr. Crawford mourns that shop classes were largely eliminated from American high schools in the 1990s because they are expensive to run, and sometimes dangerous. He takes this as a symptom of a larger problem: We have, as a people, lost our fundamental manual competence. We can no longer fix our own stuff, and we are increasingly steering our kids “toward the most ghostly kinds of work.”

His book, he writes, “advances a nestled set of arguments on behalf of work that is meaningful because it is genuinely useful. It also explores what we might call the ethics of maintenance and repair.”

Mr. Crawford builds his framework by walking us through the soul-killing nature of too much white-collar work; he surveys the “rising sea of clerkdom” that surrounds us. He considers the work of Marx, Heidegger and Iris Murdoch, among other philosophers. He points out, accurately enough, that “when things get really hairy, you want an experienced human being in control.” He connects the current mortgage crisis to the depersonalization of white-collar work.

This is not “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” Part 2. Mr. Crawford isn’t particularly interested in the nonrational mind. “I want to avoid the kind of mysticism that gets attached to ‘craftsmanship,’ ” he writes, “while doing justice to the very real satisfactions it offers.”

You would be forgiven, Gentle Reader, if you didn't chase the link and read the rest of the piece which is in the end dismissive at best, or borders on character assassination, at worst.  I'd rather you spent that time watching the little piece below (from last Friday's "News Hour with Jim Lehrer"), where Mr. Crawford speaks his mind on what we're on about here.  It's great good stuff.



Seven minutes ain't that much time to waste, is it?

And… Happy Labor Day… Drink beer, barbeque, and have a great time!

Ladies and Gentlemen... The Rolling Stones!

“Let’s Drink to the Hard-Working People…”

You don’t think of the Rolling Stones…at least I don’t… when it comes to delivering socially-conscious messages in song. But I can’t, for the life of me, think of a more appropriate tune for Labor Day. So, it’s in that spirit that I give you “Salt of the Earth.” (lyrics here)

It’s interesting to note that Jagger dismissed this song as one written in “total cynicism.” While that may be true, I prefer to derive my own meaning from the lyrics… and in MY interpretation, those “hard working people” are indeed the “Salt of the Earth.” Screw a bunch of cynics.

On the other hand… I could have posted this tune (Hell, I’m gonna post it anyway), which is kinda-sorta appropriate for Labor Day, innit? Both of these songs are from “Beggars Banquet,” which… apropos of nothing… just might be The Stones’ best album.

Factory girls: God Love ‘Em!

Enjoy your Labor Day, Gentle Reader.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Pandora kicked this out during today's Happy Hour... to wit:

Since I'm feelin' rather charitable today... as opposed to mean-spirited... we'll post the tune.

Here's a Not-So-Secret message to a former spouse, all others should disregard.  I strongly suspect you have blocked my e-mails based on our recent, regrettable, and acrimonious e-mail exchange.  This is NOT a good ideer coz there will be times when I need to contact you concerning our son, to wit... Tri-Care issues, schooling, and the like.  I base this assumption on the fact you didn't have the courtesy to acknowledge my replies to YOUR recent e-mails or answer my questions concerning same.  I wouldn't go public with this if I thought you were reading my e-mail... see "acknowledgment," above... but I know you read the blog.  Have no fear... I will play by your rules and will only contact you when absolutely necessary.  But have some common courtesy at the very least when YOU choose to contact ME.  End o' message.

Pretty Cool

This is what my in-box looked like this morning when I fired up the 'puter:

Google's update fairies came by late last night and blessed me with g-mail's new "prioritized" in-box.  Since Google does the 'splainin' better than I could...

I don't get a lot of e-mail these days... not compared to the three or four hundred e-mails I got every frickin'  day when I was working... and I sure could have used a "priority" in-box back then.  Well, I did have a priority system, of sorts.  It was called the "delete" key and approximately half of my daily e-mail traffic was deleted, unread.  I could go off on a rant here about e-mail, stupid e-mail users, and corporate spam but I won't.  Anyone and everyone in the working world knows what I'm on about.

The only thing I don't like about g-mail's priority system is it puts your starred mail in your in-box.  I've been using the star feature for years... I use it to flag certain messages I don't want to have to search for, which is different than g-mail's "I'll get back to this later" ideer.  But: no biggie.  You can minimize the starred portion of your in-box, and I've done just that.  All in all?  I like it.  I like g-mail a lot, too... mainly coz it has the BEST spam filter, evah.

And now to read today's mail.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We delayed Happy Hour until after today's game and are pleased to report we drank celebratory beers rather than those wherein we drown our sorrows.  The Irish are off to a good start this year.  Not a great start, but a good one.  A "W" beats an "L" on any given Saturday, of course.  It remains to be seen how ND will stack up against a ranked team... but they didn't look all that bad in the home opener.  Cierre Wood was particularly impressive... that dude can run the ball.  All in all, not a bad first game for Coach Kelly.  May I have another, Sir?

Apropos of college ball... the ONLY football, I should add... leave us not forget my usual, customary, and reasonable football post, since this is the first Saturday of the season.  Without further ado...

The Rules

I missed this today before I posted, but it would have fit right in with the lead two items in this morning’s post: “Time for the new rules for college football fandom.” Samples:

1. As a fan, you have to pick a school, one school, same as if you were filling out applications to, you know, go to school there. You may not be a fan of a conference, teams from a specific state, "West Coast football" or college football in general. Nobody is a fan of college football in general, not even Lee Corso. Nor may you root for Harvard and Yale, any more than you could matriculate at both places, unless you're really, really smart, in which case you're probably building prototype military surveillance nanobots in your MIT dorm room, and/or devising a computerized ranking system* to shame Jeff Sagarin.

1a. Under extenuating circumstances, however, you may have up to three Division I-A rooting allegiances, so long as the schools meet the following criteria:

(a) Your birthplace/family school – especially if an inheritance is at stake, or if a campus library bears your last name.
(b) Al(most)ma mater – the school you transferred from.
(c) The school that actually handed you a diploma. Or would have, if you hadn't finished three credits short.
(d) Your spouse's school, especially if the program is vastly superior to your own, or your spouse cares waaaay more than you do, in which case: good call on getting married!
(e) You're a bandwagon-jumping, low-self-esteem weenie and scurry from Notre Dame to Miami to Ohio State to USC to Boise State depending on the year, the polls and the amount of water flooding into the ship.

If you can't be true to a school, at least be true to your own weaselly nature.

[…]

4. If you attended a lower-division or NAIA school, you're allowed to pick a D-I school of your choice. But you must consistently root for that school year in and year out, and it's preferred that the school be geographically close to you.

4a. Or you can just root for Appalachian State every week.

4b. Notre Dame? How very original.

[…]

9. You are allowed to root freely against the following schools for no specific reasons: Notre Dame; Notre Dame in their puke-green jerseys; Notre Dame when playing on "Triumph of the Will"-shaming propaganda house organ NBC; USC; any school that plays its fight song approximately 4,387 times per game like USC; Michigan; Miami; Ohio State; any school like Ohio State with a pretentious "the" in front of its name, because otherwise how would we know which Ohio State university they were talking about?; any school coached by Steve Spurrier; any school coached by Nick Saban. (ed: I’d add “any team from Florida” to this list, but that’s a minor quibble.)

You may have noticed that I’m in the 4b fan category. Given that I never went to college, I’m free to root for the school of my choice, under rules Four and 1a (d) above, even if that means I root for my former spouse’s school (The Second Mrs. Pennington is a Notre Dame alumna). And I have been an ND fan for nearly 30 years now and don’t foresee any change in that status on the near or far horizons. It’s way too late to change allegiances at this point in life. While we’re at it, I should mention I’m a fan of, and root for, at least three schools, depending on who’s playing whom: ND, Michigan (the ten year living-in-Detroit connection), and Air Force. For reasons that should be obvious now. The only time I’m torn is when ND plays Air Force…and I well and truly don’t know what to do during that game. Very traumatic, that.

So, to the author of “The Rules,” especially Rule 4b: Put a sock in it. I like ‘em, otherwise.

Now you know why I'm an ND fan.

Don't Tease Me, Bro!

That would be my friends at Amazon.  I was oh-so-excited to see this in my in-box a short time ago...

Hello from Amazon.com.

We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on August 17 2010 (Order# ):

  "Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6" Display, Graphite, 3G Works Globally - Latest Generation"

Estimated arrival date: September 10 2010

For more details, please visit the "Your Account" section of our web site...

Yow!  Yes... let's go see!  So I did and find this:

Teasers.  Gawd, I HATE teasers.

A Couple o' Rants

One musical, one not.  First the musical:

Occasional Reader Katy sent that along with the thought that this would be her new anthem.  I'm thinkin' a LOT of folks feel the same way.  We're gonna see the first installment of "Bloodbath, American Style" on the first Tuesday of November with the second episode of the series to follow in 2012.  The message is loud and clear:  We have had ENOUGH.

―:☺:―

I'm hatin' on Fox News today.  They pre-empted Red Eye twice this week, once for a re-run of BillFrickin'O'Reilly (all one word) to "discuss" The One's Iraq speech and last night it was all Earl, all the frickin' time.  They COULD have just put their cheesy lil hurricane tracking map in the corner of the screen and updated every half-hour... but NOOOO.  We get shots of newspeople standing on a relatively quiet beach on Long Island, waves in the dead of night on the beach in North Carolina... that you can't see... and canned statements from useless gub'mint officials. Nothing really new in all this, just the same ol', same ol' repeated ad nauseum.  I'm ALL for keeping the public informed but there's a limit... most especially when you have a relative non-event like Earl.  This ain't Katrina or Andrew, guys.

Get off my lawn.

―:☺:―

Finally... Occasional Constant Reader Kath sends along a link to a video featuring comic Tim Hawkins doin' suggested updates to a few geriatric rock stars' acts.  One suggestion is for the Eagles:  Change that famous hotel song to "I'm a Greeter at Wal-Mart in California..."  Oh, Hell... watch what you want of it.  I won't make ya chase a link.





Funny, eh?

Mebbe It's Just a Phase

I had an e-mail exchange with a friend earlier this week that went like this...

She: What exactly (or do I want to know) were you doing up all night?  Reading, watching TV, surfing the internet for porn??

Me: This will be unbelievable to those who know me well, so I will NOT blog it (well, that and I have a curmudgeonly image to uphold)... but I watched a couple of great movies. [...]  I've discovered the indie movie channels lurking way up high in the channel line-up and there's some good stuff there... which is to say a dearth of explosions but lotsa titties.  So, surfin' for porn?  Sorta.  Heh.

OK, so I lied about the "not blogging it" bits but that's only because I'm fresh out of other ideers and/or blog-fodder.  I've stayed up all damned night this week watching "little movies," which is to say the sorts of flicks that are oftentimes made outside the US, play in Big City art houses, film festivals, and on those channels no one watches but me and a few other socially-impaired geeks.  I've thrown in a few 1950s and early '60s vintage westerns, too.  I've yet to see a big-ass explosion or ANY computer-generated special effects fuckery in the flicks I've watched and that's mebbe the best part.  Wait.  No... no it ain't.  I forgot about the titties.

Like I said, mebbe it's just a phase.  The Kindle will be here in about a week.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack...

... wherein we journey back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, i.e., my high school days:

That would be the original version of "Stay," a song to which I did more than a few turns around the high school gym back in the day.  The song was the soundtrack for more than a few backseat gropings as I recall, as well.  It's a classic.

So much so... classic... that Jackson Browne covered it during the '70s.  The BEST part of his version is David Lindley's falsetto, which pays appropriate homage to the original.  The tune would be eminently forgettable if not for Lindley.  So... compare and contrast:

Pretty good, innit?  We loves us some D. Lindley... but ya know that if you've hung around these parts for a few.

Yet Another In a Long Series of Uninspired Posts, AKA a Quickie

Didja watch the President last night?  I did.  I shouldn't have; he ALWAYS disappoints.  I'll give him props for being suitably deferential to The Troops and at least mentioning Dubya without blaming him for this, that, or the other.  But his pep talk about his pet rocks programs and legislative agenda was way the Hell off the mark and had NO bid'niz being included in a speech about the end of combat operations in Iraq.  But that's Barry, innit?  Always campaigning.  

Bill Kristol liked the speech, tho.  Surprise!  The majority of pundits on the right thought Obama was flat and rather boring.  Me, too.  Like I said:  I shoulda skipped it.  There was other, better stuff to watch.

Cartoon from Townhall.

You've Prolly Seen This, but What the Hell

This was all over memeorandum yesterday and on Red Eye last evening... so EIP continues to be your best source for old news.  But.  Whatever.  There's a new study out that's fairly good news for us moderate drinkers and Time magazine ran a piece on it.  Excerpts:

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the beverage of choice is red wine) is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don't have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.

Well, now. That's us... on six out of every seven days, at a minimum. Once or twice a month I'll have more than three drinks in a single day and once or twice a year I'll throw caution to the winds and let it all hang out. Things were sorta different in past lives... the weekly Happy Hour on Fridays when I was working might could have been described as "excessive drinking"... but that was then and this is now.

Speaking of now... Beer Me! Just like the picture, please.

p.s.:  I liked what The Awl had to say on this subject:

Still, there's plenty of good to take away from this, unless you happen to be a non-drinker. Although you're probably happy to die early given your joyless, alcohol-free existence. 

Heh.

Trading Places

There's prolly not a soul amongst us who hasn't played that ol' parlor game, to wit: "if you could be someone else, who would you be?"  I'd like to modify that jes a lil bit, mainly coz I'm quite satisfied with my life, thankyaverymuch.  I'll step out on a limb here by sayin' those who play the "trading places" game aren't particularly satisfied with their status quo, whereas I am... satisfied.  We won't do a deep dive into the psychological reasons for that except to say I'd not trade my simple joys and limited problem set for someone/anyone else's.

My change:  "If you HAD to trade your life with someone... who would that someone be?"

My choice:  Mike Rowe.  I like the guy's sensibilities, to begin with.  He identifies with the blue collar crowd and that's a BIG plus with me.  I've worked both sides of that street... blue-collar and "professional"... and the blue-collar guys seem to have a much better grasp on what's real and what's immaterial to success and happiness in life.  Once again: no philosophical deep dives.

But I think this ad is symptomatic of my larger point:

OK, this is some Madison Avenue type speaking and Mr. Rowe is just playin' a part, granted... but this is a part he's well-suited for and, on the whole, makes the ad eminently believable.  I'm generally not a sucker for ad copy in any way, shape, or form.  But if anything could move me away from my beloved 501s, it would be that ad.  Well, sorta.

There was a time in the way-back when my nickname was "bunz" among the female Airperson set at Fortuna AFS.  I didn't become aware of this little factoid until much later in life when one of those female Airpersons confided in me... a good friend who was once a "friend with benefits"... she being one who bandied the term about.  Or so she told me.  But we digress.  Mr. Rowe... AND Madison Avenue... are both well aware of the important things in life, "bunz" and women's perception of such being one of those prime movers.

That resonates with me.  So if I HAD to trade places with someone/anyone... Mike Rowe would be the guy.  And I wouldn't mind a couple of few women... in my age cohort, of course... tugging on MY jeans.

Heh - USAF Division (II)

Someone from af-dot-mil in Arlington, VA (one has to believe that's the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel) went searching for images concerning "af lessons learned," and guess who is Numbah Two?

Them folks at the Googleplex have a wonderful sense of humor, don't they?  And that AF guy clicked through, too.  The last gives me hope.

South Pacific Communique

An exchange from my mailbox... be sure to read all the way to the bottom:

from: Buck Pennington  to: Blog-Bud Darryl <== That's a blog-link! date: Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 12:34 PM subject: Re: I have no access to any blogs mailed-by: gmail.com

Hey Darryl,

I'm checking your blog on a daily basis for updates -- now I know why they've been few and far between.  I kinda expected 'net access wouldn't be the best, now you're confirming it.  And I wouldn't be surprised about all blogs being blocked because of martial law.

That said... you have other, much better things to keep you occupied.  Raise a beer for me the next time you're in one of those palm-frond watering holes; I intend to raise one for and to YOU in about an hour!

Be safe!

bp

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 4:22 AM, Blog-Bud Darryl wrote:

Hey Buck;

We are about to get underway from Savu Savu, heading to the main Fiji island and the port of Nadi.

For some weird reason, I have no access to any blogs, you, me or anyone. Not sure if this is a Fiji thing or not. Sort of like the Chinese bit of possible censorship. 

Either way, internet is shaky with the access here and it is frustrating to say the least. 

Hope everything is going well, it is certainly different living the cruising lifestyle once again. 

Have a fine rest of the week!

DC

I said updates were few and far between, but there ARE a few.  Go visit and see what it's like to live the dream!

In Case Ya Missed It...

Here's a relatively old piece from The Onion...

Girl Raised From Birth By Wolf Blitzer Taken Into Protective Custody

Gawd, these guys do the BEST send-ups in the bid'niz!  But they do have a tendency to step on their sensitive body parts from time to time.  Their current headliner on the GZM/Islamophobe meme is worthless at best and offensive to about 71% of the American public at worst.  I won't link, sorry.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Little Feat (well, a Little Feat clone, anyhoo), yet again...

This version of the tune doesn't have Lowell George in it but it's close enough.  The lyrics kinda-sorta resonate on this cloudy, humid, and overcast day, with impending t-storms in the picture.  To wit:

It's a mercenary territory
I wish you knew the story
I've been out here so long dreamin up songs
I'm temporarily calmed, yes, and sinking

I did my time in that rodeo
It's been so long and I've got nothing to show
Well I'm so plain loco
Fool that I am I'd do it all over again

...


Is it love keeps you waiting so long
Makes you say I'll see you around
The forces that be, they just don't see
While your nights turn into my mornings

Is it the style?
Is it the lies?
Is it the days into nights
Or the "I'm sorrys" into fights 

This version of the tune is almost as good as the original and benefits from the added female vocalist.  Ol' Lowell was cool, indeed, but this chick adds a "certain sumthin'" to the song that was previously lacking.  If you're a Little Feat fan you'll know where I'm comin' from.

Just for the record:  this tune ain't part of my mean-spirited Happy Hour selections.  But it could be, if'n ya want it to be.  We post, you decide.

In other news... We got up relatively early this morning and hit the streets to do our semi-monthly run out to the Cannon Airplane Patch commissary and Class VI store.  We returned to El Casa Móvil De Pennington around 1100 hrs with a full complement of groceries and replenished beer stock.   The highlight of my day was when the clerk at the Class VI store smiled and said "I like your shirt" (she was cute; picture of the shirt here); the rest of the day has been pretty much downhill from there.  

But hey!  Happy Hour has been excellent, so far.  Good beer, better music, and a fine cigar... or two.  That's as good as it gets these days.

40 Days...

... until hockey season begins!  The NHL is opening in Europe again this year, with several games being played in Helsinki, Prague, and Stockholm.  Opening Day... October 7th... will be marvelous, with three games on teevee for the hockey faithful.  I'll be there, of course.  But the REAL season for me will begin on October 12th, when the Beloved Wings play the Hated Avalanche in the season's first national telecast.  Speaking of the Wings... there's this in today's USA Today hockey column.  Excerpt:

When I was at the World Hockey Summit, I was asked by an NHL scout whether I agreed with his assessment that the Detroit Red Wings might finally be on the way down.

"Actually I think they could be the team to beat in the West," I said.
 
Per my tradition, I will probably change my mind a couple of times before I make my final predictions before the season launches. But If I had to make my projections today, I would choose Detroit as No. 1 in the West. San Jose, Vancouver and Chicago still round out my top four.

Here are some reasons why I rank Detroit No. 1 in the West:

1. Once the Red Wings worked through their bushel of injuries last season, they were 16-3-2 over the last quarter of the season.  Anticipating fewer injuries this season, the Red Wings might score 30 more goals and be among the top-scoring teams again.

And you KNOW there's more.  Last year was a disappointment for us fans of The Winged Wheel but hope springs eternal.  I'm expecting great things out of Detroit this year, assuming they stay healthy.  That's prolly a reasonable assumption because last year's rash of injuries was highly unusual.  Here's hopin'.

Then and Now, III

Ya know how certain moments or dates stay with ya for-freakin'-ever?  Today is one such for me, coz I enlisted in the Air Force 47 years ago on this date.  Which reminds me... I should update my will.

That said, here's what YrHmblScrb looked like upon graduating from basic training a few weeks later...

The AF News Service press release.  USAF still does this sorta thang. 

You've seen the "now" pic previously (at least twice), so we'll not post it again.  We will link it, tho.  Coz we're so vain (and we prolly think this song is about US).

Your Wake Up Call

That would be the music piped in to your cabin to wake you up... assuming you're on board STS-133, launching on or about November first.  Choosing that music is a participatory thang, too, in that the public gets to vote on the wake-up tunes NASA will broadcast to the sleeping astronauts.  Here are the vote leaders at the moment (sorry about the formatting... I suck at HTML):

NASA's Top 40 Votes Results (1,021,571 Total Votes)

The two songs with the most votes will be announced during the mission. Updates of the exact dates and times that the winning songs will be played will be provided as launch of the mission draws closer. STS-133 is currently scheduled to launch on November 1, 2010.

Star Trek Theme Song  (by Alexander Courage) 351,327 Votes- 34.4%   Magic Carpet Ride  (by Steppenwolf) 308,027 Votes - 30.2%   Countdown  (by Rush) 214,460 Votes - 21.0%   Blue Sky  (by Big Head Todd) 59,276 Votes - 5.8%   Enter Sandman  (by Metallica) 10,655 Votes - 1.0%   Beautiful Day  (by U2) 9,180 Votes - 0.9%   Theme from the Star Wars Trilogy  (by John Williams) 8,368 Votes - 0.8%

My choice... Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly"... ain't on the list, although a couple of other variations on the "Learning to Fly" theme by Tom Petty and the Foo Fighters are there.  But seriously... doesn't this FIT?



"There's no sensation to compare with this... suspended animation, state of bliss..."

h/t for the NASA link:  Dave Bry, writing for The Awl.

Today's (Real) Happy Hour Soundtrack

Now that we've beat a certain subject to death (Thank ya, Andy)... here's Johnny Winter...

I told him NO... that will never do!
Man if you don't get the picture I'm gonna do some work on YOU!

Heh.  Johnny Winter is one of my favorite blues guitarists, mainly because of his dobro work.  As my profile sez... "Anything with dobro in it..."  And J. Winter, not to be confused with his bro Edgar... of "Frankenstein" fame, is better than most.

How ya like my tube?

Not Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack...

Let's skip the fact this tune might could be topical and focus on its relationship to the post immediately below.  I'd wager more than a few of you haven't heard this tune, Gentle Readers, given a lot of you are puppies (relatively speaking, and that would be relative to ME) and the song being over 30 years old.  So just to enlighten you... here's Jackson Browne singin' "Rosie:"

But Rosie, you're all right
You wear my ring
When you hold me tight
Rosie, that's my thing
When you turn out the light
I've got to hand it to me
Looks like it's me and you again tonight, Rosie

The song was released in '78, which was well past the time when I did all those deployments and unaccompanied TDYs to places where female company was virtually non-existent.  Still and even, I DID do more than a few extended bid'niz trips after the Air Force.  This tune was quite appropriate during those lil excursions, separated as I was from my usual, customary and (mostly) reasonable bedmate.  Just a reminder, yet again: let's not talk about the here and now, mmm-kay?

Points to Ponder...

... as I take my morning coffee.

-The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.
-If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.
-Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. 
-Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.

The points are courtesy of my Buddy Ed in Florida; the image is from a generic Google search (click for larger - I made it small coz I'm trying to keep the blog at a PG-13 level).  The last point is particularly apt, even if it is TMI.  

I shall now take the remainder of my coffee on the verandah with the oh-so-rare morning cigar.  Because I CAN.