What? ANOTHER Re-run?

I'm afraid so.  I seem to have hit that point in my blogging career where my old stuff seems much better than anything I can come up with today.  It's either that or my Muse is AWOL again.  Prolly both.

It's stuck, we are.

Stuck

Sometime right around or just before my 50th birthday I made a vow to myself, on the order of "I'll never get stuck in the past… at least where music is concerned." This "getting stuck" phenomenon is something I had noticed quite a long time ago, beginning in my mid-30s or so. My peers and contemporaries seemed to be stuck in the '50s or '60s and most had a tendency to listen to those damned Oldies stations that played lotsa doo-wop, Motown, and Elvis songs at the time… not that there's anything inherently wrong with that music — I love it to death and have a LOT of it — but as a steady diet?  No. Not us.  Not ever. We wanted to keep up, keep current, and keep discovering new stuff.   And for the most part we managed to do just that.

It was sorta easy to keep up when I was that young, given I was living in London during my mid-30s (which had the BEST frickin' music scene in the early '80s, bar none), and continued to live in major metropolitan areas when I returned to the US of A. Even Oklahoma City… where I first landed after living in London… had a great college radio station out of Norman and at least one or two "progressive rock" stations. Moving right along… I was in Dee-troit as I approached my 50th birthday and while you may not think of Detroit as a musical hot bed it did have its share of progressive radio stations and a decent club scene. It was pretty easy to keep current and the music was also pretty danged good at the time… think REM, Soul Asylum, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Cranberries, yadda, yadda… and hip-hop wasn't dominant quite yet, either. Ascendant, yes, but not dominant. We probably added four or five CDs to our music collection each month and went to many more than a few concerts, as well.

So… we remained "unstuck" through the mid-'90s and a lil bit beyond. I remember quite well when my musical life took a turn for the worse: it was in 1999 and the aftermath of  The Great Divorce Crisis. I went off pop music entirely at that time and moved to jazz, country, and classical. I simply couldn't stand to listen to pop (be it current or from the near-past) and nearly all of my music collection: too damned many memories, too much pain. We diversified our tastes and managed to remain "unstuck" as it were, given there was all this great music I was discovering (or rediscovering) for the first time. That went on for about five or six years… or so. And then we slowly but surely began to return to our pop music collection and what was once familiar and comforting.


And here we are today, and the strangest thing has happened: I'm stuck. I noticed I'm mostly listening to Pandora these days, and the stations I've defined are all from my past: Van Morrison. Joni Mitchell. Neil Young. Rolling Stones. Santana. J.J. Cale. Roxy Music. James Brown. Warren Zevon. Dylan. (There are more, but they're all in the same vein.) And most recently: The Beatles, driven by my acquisition of the first two re-mastered albums. I racked my brain and tried to come up with new artists I've bought over the last two years and can only think of a few: Jet, Norah Jones, and Diana Krall (who isn't really new… just new to me). We are well and truly stuck.

So… perhaps getting stuck in the past was inevitable but I had always hoped it wouldn't be so. Dang. I hate it when this happens. 

That's from two and a half years ago.  We're not so much musically stuck these days, but we ARE more into "roots" music.  My last three or four musical purchases have been recordings from old bluesmen, like a five-CD set of old Lightnin' Hopkins recordings and an RL Burnside "early recordings" CD, just to name two (illustrated at right).  I don't consider that bein' stuck... it's more like filling massive holes in the collection and that effort is on-going, as we speak.

Our Pandora experience has changed a lot over the last two and a half years, as well.  Yeah, we still have all those '60s and '70s stations defined, but we've added a few new ones.  So I suppose my old complaint ain't quite what it seems.  We're still pretty well-rounded, if not bleeding edge.

61398

That's not a ZIP code... it's something a LOT more nefarious.  The big story on Tuesday was the revelation...  to some... that the Chinese gubmint and more specifically the Peoples Liberation Army have long been involved in a huge and highly sophisticated cyber-spying activity.  That "61398" number is the unit designation of the PLA unit leading the cyber charge, and more about that in a moment.  But first... Chinese cyber spying was the lead item on last night's edition of the McNeil-Lehrer Newshour (yeah, I KNOW that ain't the show's name any longer, but I've been watching the show since 1983 and old habits die hard.).  Take a couple of' minutes and watch this, if'n yer interested:

Watch U.S. Security Firm: Chinese Unit Hacked Over 140 Victims on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

That's just for starters.  As for PLA unit 61398... just do a Google search on "61398" and be amazed; you get 13 pages of news articles from around the world on this search term.  Here's an excerpt from one such item, from the El-Eh Times:

WASHINGTON — A clandestine Chinese military unit has conducted sophisticated cyber espionage operations against dozens of American and Canadian companies, according to a private report that provides unusual new details about China's involvement in cyber theft of economic and trade secrets.

[...]

Mandiant said it traced computer penetrations to Unit 61398 by telltale digital signatures left in malware, the use of Shanghai phone numbers and social networking information posted by some of the hackers. The report profiles three operatives associated with the unit, including one known by the moniker "Ugly Gorilla."

The report said Unit 61398 has stolen "technology blueprints, proprietary manufacturing processes, test results, business plans, pricing documents, partnership agreements and emails and contact lists."

It said it's impossible to inventory the losses since hackers often copy, rather than remove, digital data and erase all but traces of the theft.

Mandiant, which signs confidentiality agreements with its clients, did not name the companies targeted. The New York Times first disclosed details from the report Tuesday.

We... speaking of the US gub'mint... have known about these activities for years.  The BIG question is what are we (the gub'mint) gonna do about it?  What CAN we do about it?

GOML!

So there I was... watching the Red Wings game... and THIS came on the tube:



Yet another reason why I wouldn't be caught DEAD in a fucking Honda.  For shame.

And about those Wings... this season's turning out to be a masochist's delight.  The team is riddled with injuries and can't seem to BUY a win, what with bein' on a three-game losing streak with every indication of said streak becoming four.  They're down 2-1 to Nashville at the end of the second period and I'm not optimistic.  (small sigh)

Yet More Cigar Art

Bands from some of the sticks that have made their way through El Casa Inmóvil de Pennington of late...

I especially like the band from the San Cristobal cigar; the parrot is oh-so-colorful and the cigar wasn't bad, either.  The image is embiggened; there's no need to click it.

In Which We Edit An Old Post

I originally put this up back in February of 2006; I edited the Hell out of it for this post.

Some Thoughts on Love Wimmen and Me

Joni Mitchell may have said it best when she sang:

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Perhaps it’s love’s illusions I recall. I don’t really know but what I DO know is this: I’ve been in love once; I think I’ve been in love twice. I’ve been infatuated hundreds of times and I’ve been in lust at least once a day for the past few years, which translates into "thousands."

My memories of my first puppy love are strong. Her name was Pam, she lived next door, and I spent the best part of a summer (read that: the entire summer) mooning over her. My affections were returned, at first, but then the girl got more than a little scared of my intensity. She withdrew. I didn’t. Both sets of parents were concerned about this infatuation; my behavior made life uncomfortable for all concerned. I was a mere lad of thirteen at the time; the year was 1958. My love was never consummated in any way, shape, or form. All I got out of my feelings was a boatload of trouble and I mean a boatload. My first lesson at love’s altar: Love Hurts. But Puppy Love isn’t love, now, is it?

Fast forward to the early 70s, to the time where I think I was in love. I’m still not sure, after all these years, which is why I say “I think I was in love.” What a sordid affair that was: we were both married, but not to each other. My first marriage was foundering and I was on my way out of it; I just couldn’t summon up the nerve to go, mainly because I had severe guilt feelings where my children were concerned. I had been decidedly unhappy for several years but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger; my “keep it together for the kids” feelings overpowered any desire I had to leave. But then came that affair. The affair accelerated the end of my marriage, I made up my mind to go. The affair lasted nearly two years, and it was an “on-again, off-again” sort of relationship. We never spent a lot of time together, not near enough to develop a relationship that would stand up over time. Our time together was measured in hours, and we nearly always got together for “that” reason. The sex was great, perhaps the best I ever had; certainly the second-best.

So why do I call this affair “love,” and not the all-too-obvious alternative, lust? The woman made me feel things I had never felt up to that point in my life, and would only ever feel once again. I was obsessed with the woman. I wanted to be with her all the time, forever. I tried to talk her into marrying me. I think she was quite a bit wiser than I because she ultimately rejected me and stayed with her husband... for a couple of years, anyway. She ultimately left him and remarried. Her second marriage failed, too. I have no reason to believe we would have stayed together, had we married. As I said, she was wiser than I.

I met the love of my life in 1975, in Tokyo. She was an exchange student; I was stationed at Yokota AB. There were 11 years in between us, she was 19 when we met and I was 30. We traveled Japan together, partied together, lived together for a little under a year while in Japan, and again for a summer in North Dakota. We had an extended, three-year courtship, marrying in 1978. She left me in 1998, the divorce was final in 1999. In the mean time, we had 20 mostly good years of married life, and I say “mostly” only because the last six months were absolute-frickin’-HELL. Other than that, I was happier than I’d ever been, before or since. So, what happened? Love went missing... not on my part, mind you, but on hers. (Chase that link. Best essay on the subject I’ve EVER read.)

I used to carry a huge flaming torch for The Second Mrs. Pennington.  I spent a lot o' time trying to change that and I've kinda-sorta succeeded, to a point.   I’ve finally learned to live with it at the very least, and that ain't half-bad.  Part and parcel of the learning process is the realization that there’s no going back, even if I could.  Another part is realizing that I don't much LIKE that woman any longer; her life changes have taken her places I simply do not want to go.  We don't get on very well these days. 

As Gerard said at the "Love went missing" link:

Once gone missing, for whatever reason, it can't be just taken back as it was even if it is found. For if love gone missing is found and returns, it always remains a shattered vessel.

Yes, I know that in the endless bromides of our modern Therapeutic State Religion one is supposed to find the heart, the mercy and the compassion and the patience to pick up every little shard of what has been shattered and, with our ample supplies of therapeutic superglue, painfully and tediously put it all back together as it was. Except, of course, it can never be what it was.

The man speaks The Truth. (Again: chase that link.)

I’ve dated more than a few women since my divorce and have lived with two. I’ve been open to love. But, love is strange, to invoke a well-worn cliché... and here's another: you don’t choose love, it chooses you. I have serious doubts if love will ever again “choose” me, and that’s OK. I’ve been around that block at least once, maybe twice, and the experience and memories from those times are enough to see me through until the end.  If I had the power to change the past I would have chosen to remain in love, as I knew it.  Which means...

It’s love’s illusions I recall.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

The inimitable Lucinda...

I just wanna live the life I please
I don't want no enemies
I don't want nothing if I have to fake it
Never take nothing don't belong to me

Everything's paid for, nothing's free
If I give my heart
Will you promise not to break it

I think I lost it
Let me know if you come across it
Let me know if I let it fall
Along a back road somewhere
Money can't replace it
No memory can erase it
And I know I'm never gonna find
Another one to compare

Ah, my.  How we DO relate.  The story of life, as we know it.

Well now.  THAT Happy Thought aside, it's a beautiful winter's day here on The High Plains o' New Mexico... which is to say brilliant sunshine, little to no wind, and rather balmy temps, as long as you're in the sun (53 degrees, as we speak).  Which I AM, Gentle Reader.  Oh, yes, indeed.

 

Pour me another, Barkeep... we've only just begun.

Ephemera

I went into the archives last evening lookin' for sumthin' specific... that I didn't find... but I found sumthin' else that will serve as blog-fodder, as usual.  Small-Tee tim made a comment the other day about how he saves concert tickets and has more than a few from Led Zep concerts past.  I used to save tickets as well, but the great majority of MY ticket stubs got away from me.  All I have left are these, suitably annotated.

The top two tickets are from my days at Yokota AB just outside Tokyo ('75 - '77); note the start times for the concerts, quite early.  The next two are pretty self-explanatory; Arena Bands playin' arena gigs.  The bottom tix are from the Zoo Amphitheatre in OKC, one of the nicest concert venues I've ever had the good fortune to visit. (Click all the pics to embiggen, if'n ya wanna)

These are all pretty much self-explanatory, with two exceptions.  That lil yellow thing is a Paris Metro ticket, saved for sentimental reasons.  The Van Morrison stub is from my PEAK rock'n'roll experience -- rushing the stage for Van's encore that evening, a rousing rendition of "Caravan."  It never got any better than that, ever.

One ticket, one photo, and two souvenirs.  That would be YrHmblScrb perched on his RD350LC before he modified it and my Royal Automobile Club member card.

Ah.  Former Happy Days were pretty damned happy, when ya get right down to it.

Fulfilling

Man Didn't Expect Sex With Prostitute Would Be So Emotionally Fulfilling

Heh.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Ray LaMontagne, with a tune that's simply beautiful...

Don't lose your faith in me,
and I will try not to lose faith in you.
Don't put your trust in walls,
'cause walls will only crush you when they fall.

Be...be here now... be here now.
Be...be here now...be here now.

Well, we're here.  And now what?   Enquiring Minds™ wanna know.

Jes a Couple o' Things

First...

Perfect metaphor, indeed.  And Congress ain't nuthin' if not a Carnival, too.

Second, a short article from the WSJ about the middle class, which included this graphic:

Click to embiggen

There's "insufficient data" for my county here on The High Plains o' New Mexico, prolly coz there are insufficient numbers of people to count.  I dunno about you, Gentle Reader, but I didn't find any surprises within this article.  Some people might could be surprised that a family making almost $150K is called middle class, but I'm not.  I know quite a few folks in that category.

Wait.  I AM sorta surprised that I still fall solidly in the middle class, what with my pittance of pension and Social Security income.

Saturday

This is kinda amazing... and scary:



I didn't know there was a Top Gear - Korea.  It looks like the Top Gear franchise is doin' pretty well but that said, I never watch Top Gear - America.  You just can't duplicate Jeremy Clarkson even if he IS a bit anti-American.  Case in point (from The Wiki):

Clarkson has been highly critical of the United States and more recently President Barack Obama. In an article after Obama was sworn into office, Clarkson wrote (in reference to Americans) "they have got it into their heads that Barack Obama is actually a blend of Jesus, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King." Clarkson has also been very critical of the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. He referred to USA as the United States of Total Paranoia, commenting that one needs a permit to do everything except for purchasing weapons.

I like Clarkson's wit and he IS right about Obama voters. He also knows a lot about cars. (I removed links and footnote numbers from the quote.)

And then there's "The Women of El-Eh:"



You can keep 'em. Please.

Sumthin' else you can keep:



Pretty cool time-lapse, though.

All of these are from the Usual Source. 

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

I'm up for a polka... how 'bout you?



I have an ulterior motive for this tune, in that (a) we're drinkin' a new-to-us Wit Bier for today's Happy Hour (the ubiqutous Hoegaarden) and (b) bemoaning the loss of our once-upon-a-time favorite Wit Bier, Mothership Wit from New Belgium.  I noticed quite some time ago that Mothership had disappeared from the shelves in my area but I didn't want to acknowledge what I knew in my heart to be true: Mothership had been discontinued.  Today I went searching for confirmation and found it, like this:

Note the absence of Mothership.  Well, dang.  Just DANG!  Mebbe New Belgium ran out o' organic wheat to use in this beer, or mebbe sales dipped, or mebbe they just didn't have room in their brewery to produce this particular beer, given all the various and sundry beers in production.

None the less, I am sad.  I went and searched for Mothership on the blog and found 13 different posts where I mention Mothership by name.  I can always hope NB will resurrect the beer, coz there is that "Revival" category.

But in any event:  the queen of Wit Biers is dead.  Long live the Queen!

As for the song... I want NO part of any religion that states beer will not be available in the afterlife.  None.  Period.  End of report.

Impressionists

Our Blog-Bud The Brighton Pensioner has a post up today about Amsterdam (as was his post yesterday) but he said something in passing that resonated with me, said utterance bein' this:

Now, as far as I am concerned, art stopped being art pretty much when the last impressionist put down his paint brush and palette.  Picasso and the cubists or whatever they call themselves leave me cold, but Titian, Canaletto, Turner, Constable, Manet, Monet etc are fine by me.

Brian and I have much the same tastes and given the fact Brian is British, one thing led to another and I immediately thought of The National Gallery in London, which is the home of my very favorite piece of Impressionist art... the "Bathers at Asnières," by Georges Seurat.  Here's a thumbnail:

I've spent hours (on multiple occasions), literally, sitting on the banquette placed about eight feet from this painting... just staring.  The first thing that hits you when you see the painting is its immense size... nearly seven feet high by 10 feet wide.  You MUST view the thing at some distance, and then you MUST view the work close up to marvel at Seurat's technique.

I used to have a matted and framed print of the Bathers in the way-back but it... like so many other things... got lost in the Great Divorce Debacle of 1998.

It's prolly a matter of opinion but I think the National Gallery's collection of Impressionists rivals that of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris*.  The Orsay does trump the National Gallery in terms of architectural grandeur, though.

Update, somewhat later:  I thought so.  This isn't the first time I've posted on this subject.  But that post was over five and a half years ago, so I think I might could be forgiven.

*secret message to Lou:  DON'T miss this!

Pretty Strange

It came from outer space, Part One:



That thing created quite a bang.

It came from outer space, Part Two:

Promises, indeed.  Just STFU, Barry.

Tonight's After Dinner Whiskey Hour Soundtrack

A lil blues, Led Zep style...

I-I, I can't quit you, babe
So I'm gonna put you down for a while
I said, I can't quit you, babe
I guess I got to put you down for a while

Well... that "while" is over.  What do I mean by that?  This:

I re-supplied the whiskey component of the Likker Locker today and just for grins and giggles I looked at the Scotch prices.  Do you remember this from last summer, Gentle Reader?

I'm just in from a run out to the Class VI store on Cannon Airplane Patch and was shocked at the price increases on Scotch... so much so that I refuse to resupply at those prices.  Johnnie Walker Green sold at $44.00 last week and is now $54 and change; you can find it at Amazon for $47.10.  JW Gold is worse... it's up to $84 freakin' Yankee Dollars a bottle now.  Aiiieee.

Which makes me wonder... what's up with the Class VI?  They're supposed to be cheaper than the civilian market and they are, if I shop locally.  But not on the net.

So.  We're gonna be bourbon drinkers... and that would be Bulleit bourbon... for a while, at least until I sort out my options.  I see a Manhattan in my very near future.

I haven't bought a bottle of Scotch since last July but I broke down and did so today, mainly because the price o' love malt has come back down to a place we mere mortals can afford, which is to say a lil over 40 Yankee Dollars, or pretty close to Bulleit Rye (I bought a bottle of that, too).  So... I can't quit ya Babe, especially when you're so deliciously cheap.  But NOT tawdry.

In closing... is it sacrilege to drink malt out of a bourbon glass?  I think not.

On-Line Dating, Part Deux

From a relatively recent re-run:

I went looking for an answer to a comment Darryl made about yesterday's post, specifically where he asks for my guacamole recipe.  More on that in a minute, but in the meantime I stumbled upon this, which concerns yet another post I put up recently, that one bein' about writing on-line dating ads and trolling and stuff.

Blog-buddy Morgan has had admirable success in the realm of on-line dating (see his comment here). Ah, would that I could make the same claim. In those same comments linked in the preceding sentence I gave you the “Reader’s Digest” version of my issues with on-line dating. And now for a short war-story about this sort of social activity…

I was pretty active in the on-line dating game for a few years, most notably in Rochester, NY, and during my two-year sojourn in the Peoples Republic of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. It was in SFO that I had one of my most traumatic on-line dating experiences…

It started as these things always do…I read her ad, dropped her an e-mail, she responded, we spent a few hours on several consecutive nights in instant messaging conversation, followed by several phone calls. We both decided we should meet, and we did. She turned out to be everything she appeared to be, and I was happy with that. There were distinct possibilities, in other words, for something other than casual dating. In a nutshell: articulate, intelligent, owned her own business, a voracious reader, great conversationalist, and not at all hard to look at. Fetching, if I may go that far.

So. It was on our fourth date, and we’re having coffee and cognac after dinner at one of SFO’s numerous superb restaurants. We don’t have any firm plans for after dinner, and I casually ask “Well, where to now?” She smiles and says “Your place?”

There couldn’t possibly have been a better answer.

We get back to my place and I’ll spare you most of the details, Gentle Reader, save for this one tiny thing. The lights are low, things are getting hot and heavy, we’re in a state of dishabille, and the deal is about to go down. Suddenly, and I DO mean suddenly, she sits up on my couch, pushes me away to arms-length and says with a very serious look on her face “I have something to tell you.”

“Uh, OK,” sez I, thinking “WTF?”

“I have herpes.”

Wow. Talk about mood-killers! So. The lights come back up, I go to the kitchen, freshen our drinks, and return to the couch, where we spend the next hour or so discussing her problem. “There are ways to work around this,” sez she. “Umm-hmm,” sez I, nodding. The bottom line, as she suggests, is that we should both give serious thought to where we’re going and what we should do. I agree. We finish our drinks and I take her home.

And that, save for two subsequent phone conversations wherein I explained myself in great detail, was that.

Work-arounds or no, herpes is forever. I wasn’t willing to take the risk. She understood, and we went our separate ways.

I’ll always appreciate the woman’s honesty, if not her timing. I hope she found someone because, with the exception of this one tiny (?) flaw, she could have been a potential mate.

There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them. But it’s pretty illustrative of my experiences with on-line dating. I don’t have any good stories to relate, in other words, Gentle Reader, and I have a couple that are worse. Much worse. But let’s not go there.

And now you know why I decided, in part, not to place that ad on Craig's List.

This was last year... when I was thinkin' about getting back in the pool.

And now it's out to the verandah for the first al fresco Happy Hour we've had in days, if not weeks.  Well, one week, anyhoo.

On-Line Dating? It's Gay.

And there's evidence to prove it... or so sez the WSJ in this short piece:



More troubling, from a societal perspective, is the declining rate of married couples in the USofA.

What?  I did MY bit... but now I'm DONE.

Heh

Happy Valentine's Day, if'n yer in to that sorta thang.  In other words... may the drone of love send a Hellfire straight to yer heart.

The Best Thing I Saw Today on the SOTU

This:

That's from The Guardian.  The best thing about last night's speech?  It was an upgrade on previous speeches from The One, which had an average Flesch-Kincaid rating of 9.2.  You can see the whole thing here.

Dumb and getting dumber.  That's our politicians.  But ya knew THAT, dint ya, Gentle Reader?

Update, 1645 hrs:  I guess I'm dumber, too.  I went looking for a blog-readability post but couldn't find one, even though I KNOW I've taken a quiz like that in the past.  Google is my friend, however, and I found a site that analyzes prose for readability.  I pasted the text from the post immediately below this one and got these results:

Grade Levels

A grade level (based on the USA education system) is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. Scores over 22 should generally be taken to mean graduate level text.

Readability Formula	Grade
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level	7
Gunning-Fog Score	9.1
Coleman-Liau Index	9.6
SMOG Index	7.5
Automated Readability Index	6.7
Average Grade Level	8.0

Text Statistics

Character Count	1,352
Syllable Count	436
Word Count	313
Sentence Count	20
Characters per Word	4.3
Syllables per Word	1.4
Words per Sentence	15.7

So don't come around tellin' me that my posts are inaccessible.  Do you have a blog?  Take the test and let me know how you fare... coz Enquiring Minds™ wanna know.

Miscellanea

There's this, to begin with:

February 13, 1867: Johann Strauss's Blue Danube waltz premiered in Vienna.

It shouldn't take too much effort to guess what we'll be listening to come Happy Hour.  I've mentioned this to several people over the years: there's just so much excellent classical music out there that it's hard to choose favorites.  That said, I have a very large warm spot in my heart for the Strauss family.  One of my better memories of the way-back was a New Year's concert The Second Mrs. Pennington and I attended when we lived in London.  The London Symphony Orchestra used to do an all-Strauss performance for New Years in times past (they might still do so) and we went.  Wonderful, in a word, and we saw them in their then-new home at the Barbican Center, which has a very nice bar that we patronized at the interval.  I'd still like to be in Vienna for New Years at some point, but my dreams is fading down the railway line.  (That's an obscure reference to an old Stones tune.  Which IS my favorite song of theirs.)  (Yet another parenthetical: you get a LOT of hits if you search for "Blue Danube" by the Vienna Philharmonic.)

In other news... we began our day by downloading about a dozen "important" updates from Microsnot and three "optional" updates, one of said options failing which completely HOSED my audio system.  We finally got stuff restored after about an hour of work, but now I have to download all those "important" updates yet again.  Which I may or may NOT do.

Were you expecting some sorta comment on last night's SotU extravaganza?  Don't hold your breath.  I didn't watch it, I don't care about it, and I'm sick to DEATH of BarryFuckingObama.  I would watch his resignation speech, if that should come to pass.

Plane Pr0n

From the Usual USAF Source...

Air Frame: A B-52H Stratofortress bomber leads fighters from the Air Force, Navy, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, and Royal Australian Air Force over the Pacific Ocean during Exercise Cope North 2013, Feb. 5, 2013. The annual multilateral exercise takes place at Andersen AFB, Guam. (Courtesy photo) (Click on image above to reach larger version.)

There's interesting symmetry in that photo: a pair each of F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s following the BUFF.

Broadening Our Horizons LIII

We're on sumthin' like a posting roll today, this bein' my fourth.  And My!... aren't we chatty?  I HAD to go out earlier, seein' as how the cupboard was nearly bare and we weren't in a mood to play Old Father Hubbard.  Besides that we were nearly outta beer, which is about as close to "crisis-mode" as we get these days.  So we put on our Big-Boy pants and ventured out into the cold cool, sumthin' we don't do unless pressed.  "Nearly outta beer" = pressed.

So our first stop was the Local Likker Locker where we checked all the coolers for sumthin' new and different, deciding on this:

(The bottle is capped coz I already threw the empty away)

That would be a Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, about which this:

Absolutely remarkable that this beer has flown under my radar for so long. Giving the Germans a run with this one.

That would be Jason Alström, one of the Beer Bros and my go-to guy for all things involving barley, hops, and water.  Mr. Alström rates Kellerweis as "World-Class" and I have to agree with him.  This beer has earned a place in my fridge as a regular from now on, displacing the ever-popular Franziskaner when it comes to Weiss Bier.  I really lucked out today! 

Today is the kinda day when a cigar will mysteriously experience spontaneous combustion when placed in an ashtray.  The weird thing is this ONLY happens when the ambient outdoor temperature is below about 55 degrees.  The cigar in question is a Drew Estate Undercrown, a remarkable cigar that's paired with this equally remarkable beer.  From a review by the Stogie Guys:

The resulting cigar is very impressive. It’s slightly milder than the Liga Privada, placing it solidly in the medium (maybe medium-full for some people) spectrum. It’s toasty with nutty flavors and coffee bean. As it develops, roasted tastes dominate and there’s a little spice in the final third.

I suppose our bottom line is Happy Hour is VERY happy.  This is why I'm pretty chatty today, I guess.

Ring o' Truth, Part Two

From the Shoebox blog...

Which is a more concise version of this:

There's This Old Joke...

... that goes like this:

What common words, phrases and sounds actually mean, when a woman says them...

Fine : This is the word we use at the end of any argument that we feel we are right about but need to shut you up. NEVER use fine to describe how a woman looks. This will cause you to have one of those arguments.

Five minutes : This is half an hour. It is equivalent to the five minutes that your football game is going to last before you take out the trash, so it's an even trade.

Nothing : This means something and you should be on your toes. "Nothing" is usually used to describe the feeling a woman has of wanting to turn you inside out, upside down, and backwards. "Nothing" usually signifies an argument that will last "Five Minutes" and end with the word "Fine".

Go Ahead (with raised eyebrows): This is a dare. One that will result in a woman getting upset over "Nothing" and will end with the word "Fine".

Go Ahead (normal eyebrows): This means "I give up" or "do what you want because I don't care". You will get a raised eyebrow "Go ahead" in just a few minutes, followed by "Nothing" and "Fine" and she will talk to you in about "Five Minutes" when she cools off.

Loud Sigh : This is not actually a word, but is still often a verbal statement very misunderstood by men. A "Loud Sigh" means she thinks you are an idiot at that moment and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you over "Nothing".

Soft Sighs : Again, not a word, but a verbal statement. "Soft Sighs" are one of the few things that you can actually understand. She is content. Your best bet is to not move or breathe and she will stay content.

Oh : This word followed by any statement is trouble. Example; "Oh, let me get that". Or, "Oh, I talked to so and so about what you were doing last night." If she says "Oh" before a statement, RUN, do not walk, to the nearest exit. She will tell you that she is "Fine" when she is done tossing your clothes out the window, but do not expect her to talk to you for at least 2 days.

Oh (as the lead to a sentence): Usually signifies that you are caught in a lie. Do not try to lie more to get out of it, or you will get a raised eyebrows "Go ahead" followed by acts so unspeakable that we can't bring ourselves to write about them.

That's Okay : This is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman can say. "That's Okay" means that she wants to think long and hard before paying you retributions for whatever it is that you have done. "That's Okay" is often used with the word "Fine" and used in conjunction with a raised eyebrow "Go ahead". At some point in the near future when she has plotted and planned, you are going to be in some mighty big trouble.

Please Do : This is not a statement, it is an offer. A woman is giving you the chance to come up with whatever excuse or reason you have for doing whatever it is that you have done. You have a fair chance to tell the truth, so be careful and you shouldn't get a "That's Okay".

Thanks : A woman is thanking you. Do not faint; just say you're welcome.

Thanks a lot : This is much different from "Thanks". A woman will say, "Thanks a lot" when she is really ticked off at you. It signifies that you have hurt her in some callous way, and will be followed by the "Loud Sigh". Be careful not to ask what is wrong after the "Loud Sigh", as she will only tell you "Nothing".

I hope this clears up any misunderstandings.

Note:  I'd highlighted the bits above for a reason I illuminated in the original post.  It was just a war-story.