Sunday - February 14, 2016

granny gets the chop

CNN Lead: “Man allegedly decapitates grandparents at Oklahoma home day care”

(CNN)A 20-year-old man “allegedly shot and decapitated his grandparents inside an Oklahoma City home that doubled as a day care.

Investigators who came to the house for a welfare check Tuesday afternoon found three children huddled inside an attached garage. The children were unharmed, police said.

But inside the house, authorities found a grisly scene. Sharon Reed, 59, and James Reed, 78, were dead.

“Both victims had been shot and decapitated,” police said.

Officers had spotted Quinton Laster, 20, outside. They detained him there as they ventured into the house. Now, police say Laster, the Reeds’ grandson, is being held on two counts of first-degree murder.

No motive, no reason known at this point. CNN gives us a picture or two of the daycare center play area, a fenced in area in the backyard of a decent enough home on a cul de sac. It’s a bit scruffy, but not so bad.

And that’s about all they tell us.


News web page HEAVY thinks there are 5 Fast Facts You Need To Know

Um no, your title was sufficient to tell me everything.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/14/2016 at 04:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Media-Bias •  
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A little wind, a little snow, a lot of mess

Blowing snow made it like driving into a white wall. “Within 15 feet it was clear to not being able to see our hood”

Fredericksburg PA, just east of Harrisburg, 90 minutes west of Clinton NJ:

A pileup involving more than 50 cars shut down a Pennsylvania stretch of highway amid strong winds and poor visibility, authorities said. Forty people were taken to local hospitals and there were “multiple” fatalities, an official told NBC News.

The accident outside Harrisburg on Saturday morning closed all lanes on both sides of Interstate 78 in Lebanon County, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said.

Winds of at least 30 mph were blowing at the time of the crash, according to The Weather Channel, and visibility was less than 2 miles.

Earlier Saturday, the National Weather Service issued several alerts about snow squalls in the Philadelphia area. Lebanon County is about 100 miles west of Philadelphia.

Ashley Fisher told NBC News that she was driving toward Allentown with her two daughters when they got caught in a snowstorm and were turned around by law enforcement.

“The snow just started and it was a total whiteout. The car in front of us just disappeared,” she later said. “We were able to stop, but a couple cars slid and hit the shoulder.”

According to the Associated Press, Lebanon County police said the crash occurred around 9:45 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 78 on Bethel Township. The roadway has been shut down in both directions and vehicles are being detoured around the scene.

At least 3 people were killed in the pile-up and several rescue and ambulance units were dispatched to the site, reports PennLive. Four medical helicopters were also sent, and more than 15 people were reportedly trapped in the pileup.

It just goes to show you that these things can happen anywhere. Be careful out there; always drive with an escape route in your mind, and keep some winter emergency stuff in a bag in the back seat. It won’t do you any good in the trunk.

Geex. It’s 4 here. FOUR. 4. Plus wind chill, of course. “Feels like -11”. And it’s going to get even colder. We’ll hit the subzero numbers just before dawn. Feels like a hot cuppa tea and an extra blanket. Wake me up in April please.

I sure feel bad for any outside kittehs tonight, but they do have lots of fur and we keep them fully stuffed with kibbles for heat making energy.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/14/2016 at 03:53 AM   
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
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   Saturday - February 13, 2016

Breaking News, Scalia found Dead at his Ranch

I just heard reports of this from one of my friends. Apparently news is starting to get out that Justice Scalia was found dead at his ranch. I’ll try and get more news as it pops up, but I only wish it weren’t true....

If it is, Scalia was a rock ribbed constitutionalist and one of the greatest legal minds our continent has ever seen. And one that Obama will be able to appoint a replacement for.....

Sorry to co-opt Turtler’s post, but here’s a bit of an update ...

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said.

Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.

Scalia arrived at the 30,000-acre ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people that night, according to a federal official.

He left the party and retired to bed earlier than others, according to Donna Sellers, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Marshals Service.

When he failed to appear at breakfast, a person involved with the ranch went to his room, where he discovered his body. A priest was called to administer last rites.

A federal official, who asked not to be named, said there was no evidence of foul play and it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes.

Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, of the Western Judicial District of Texas, was notified about the death from the U.S. Marshals Service. 

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said he was among those notified about Scalia’s death.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement Saturday afternoon, calling Scalia a man of God, a patriot and an “unwavering defender of the written Constitution.”

“He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution,” Abbott said. “We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law. Cecilia and I extend our deepest condolences to his family, and we will keep them in our thoughts and prayers.”

This is a terrible, horrible moment for America. My sympathies to his wife and family, of course, right now I fear for my nation. This is the man who ought to have been Chief Justice. This was one of the few people inside the Beltway who actually understood what the Constitution was all about. IMO, he rarely got one wrong; any SCOTUS decision that came down with “Scalia, dissenting” you pretty much assumed was wrongly decided. Like Kelo v. New London for example.



Can they find an honest person, a loyalist to the Constitution, to replace him with? Because just any “constitutional scholar” would give us another burrowing bilge rat like Obama, who obviously studied the system only to figure out how to subvert it. And we are that close ... one more false Constructionist justice on the bench, one more uninformed old hippie, one more racist lesbian trying to sell “social justice” as a special kind of wisdom ... and we are destroyed as a nation. 

So here comes the next battle. Unfortunately I fear it’s only going to be a Communists vs. Pussies battle. No real Americans are going to attend. Or be appointed. I fear for the future.

Posted by Turtler     on 02/13/2016 at 05:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Obama, The One • OBITITUARIES • USA •  
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no content?

"No content” he says?

Arrgh, I’ve got your content, right here.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2016 at 08:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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a touch of lace

     

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2016 at 12:31 AM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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absents make the game go faster

Two guys out on my team tonight, neither one pre-bowled so we had to take the 10 pin penalty off their averages and use that as their scores.

One guy absent from our opponent’s team, and he did pre-bowl ... a 141 pin over series. Which gets him one of those pretty lapel pin awards if he doesn’t have one yet.

Right. So we were a bit slow to get going, and lost the first game. Both of us rolled under average, but I wasn’t too much below with a 151. I think we were down about 30 in the wood.

I found the line early in the second game and did my best to be Mr. Machine. After sparing in frames 1 and 2, I started putting the in exactly the right spot, and threw 6 in a row, a 9/, and then X81 in the 10th to just miss the 250 mark with a 248. Which doesn’t suck. At all. And it was enough for us to win by 12, and take a big chunk off our wood deficit. Yeah, but a 248. A 248!! Woo hoo, yay me!

That line didn’t last for all of Game 3, but I took it when I could find it. 4 opens in a row really hurt me, but I got it together and started the strike hammer again, knocking several off to push a dreary 117 in the 7th up to a 195 at the end. Too bad the other side was bowling too, and their absent guy had pre-d a 226 game. On his 162 average. Sweet for them, and they won it and the wood.

So I managed another series just below 600, with another nice spike score over 240 for one, a “thereabouts 200” for another, and a below average warm up game.  I need to warm up more, and I need to find that special line earlier. Because I want that 700 series pin. Oh yes, I want that one bad.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2016 at 12:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
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   Friday - February 12, 2016

On This Day In History: February 11

1534: On what would be February 11th by the current calendar, An egotistical tyrant, murderer, lecher, and glory hound removes the right of Christian priests to appeal his decisions to Rome, effectively breaking with the Papacy and declaring himself head of the Church of England. God in Heaven, I am Protestant and I despise writing about that inflated bloodbag. The best I can say is that many of his successors exercised their powers far more responsibly than trying to stamp their names on any surface they could get their hands on. Another reason why I basically hate all the Tudors except for Elizabeth.....

1812:  The Gerrymander was born. This species of monster has been one of the great banes of liberty to have originated in the US since the fall of Britain’s military occupation over the Atlantic Seaboard. Long after North America basically tamed most of the animals that were hostile to human existence on the continent, this thing has not only remained strong but has if anything grown stronger and been exported off the continent. Bad mathematics and cartography helps to enable bad representation, which makes it a lot easier for things that are even worse to come to the fore. But whil a lot of people have heard of this term and a fair number of people know the name of the man who provided half the word Gerrymander, not many people know the detailed story behind it. Which I think is a shame, because I think knowing that story helps us understand how this mess- and other abuses- come to be. As well as how new, novel ones will be invented. These are threats to any free republic, constitution, or democracy just like the headhackers are, so I think it is worth discussing it.

The reason this day stands as the commemoration date one is because it is the anniversary of when Governor Elbridge Gerry (G’s pronounced like “G-uh") put his signature to a proposal for redistricting the state’s electoral districts to bring them into compliance with the US Constitution. That much was a fair and necessary objective for a new state in a new Republic. But as it turns out, the proposal was drafted by Gerry’s political allies (and cronies) in the Massachusetts state legislature. And- tell me if you’ve heard this before- in a few weeks the people of Massachusetts came to learn that compliance with the Constitution was not the only motive behind this particular bit of mapping. But the full story behind it, the political climate that saw it arise, and the man who penned his John Hancock to it go back years.

Gerry was one of the truly original Founding Fathers, serving on virtually every Patriot committee you could name in the Commonwealth years before the outbreak of the Revolution. He has the distinction of sending the colonial militia’s weapons stockpiles to Concord, and having the Redcoats march past him when they tried to confiscate them there. Throughout the Revolutionary War he became known for being one of the most prominent and honest suppliers of the Continental cause’s armed forces (and trust me when I say that supply was probably THE great struggle of the Revolution), but also one of the more statist for his early support of price controls. He served in the Second Continental Congress throughout the war, and was probably one of the key unsung figures in pushing the Declaration of Independence into approval.far more people know the name of this than they know the story of how it came around. Chances are, even those who know the basic story of what this strategy is and its’ first use do not know either the specifics of it, or about the man whose name forms the root of it. Governor Elbridge Gerry appended his signature to a proposal drafted by his political allies (and cronies) Massachusetts state. After the war he entered into state politics back home, and was called back for the Constitutional Convention.

Ironically given his most visible linguistic legacy, he spent most of his career suspicious of partisan politics and political parties- not unlike most of the Founders-. However, he was even more suspicious of the power of central government vis-ai-vis the local and state levels. Which is why he was one of the few delegates to reject the final draft of the Constitution, and as the party lines deepened he turned against the Hamiltonian Federalists in favor of Jefferson’s budding Democratic-Republicans. But this is also what led him to his role in this mess. Throughout the final years of the 18th century Massachusetts politics followed those of the nation at large in dividing between the two camps just as Elbridge was climbing the rungs of state politics before eventually getting into the Federal House of Representatives. But the final straw came not domestically, but overseas. He was one of the several sent as part of a commission to France, where they ran right into the infamous Talleyrand, who followed the finest traditions of the Ancien Regime by trying to make a bribe shakedown. Everybody refused as talks stalemated, but Talleyrand believed Gerry was the most pliable- or weakest- of the American mission. So he basically isolated Gerry for talks and froze out the rest. While his compatriots left for home, Gerry was kept there under threat of a war declaration if he left. Across the ocean it had already come to something like that; the correspondence of Gerry’s co-workers and continued French attacks on American shipping led to a Quasi-War, equaled by only a few similar conflicts in American history.

But “Weak link” or not, Gerry never gave in or broke when across the table with the most powerful diplomat in the world. Eventually, the French government got wind of what Talleyrand had done and called him to task for it, and once Napoleon took the reigns of power a peace was hashed out for the bitter naval war. Gerry went home unbowed, and claiming credit as the reason why there was never any declared state of war between the French and US governments through the bloody months of naval skirmishing and marine landings. He only found out when he got home that he was being branded a quisling or collaborator, mostly by the Federalists. He was accused of having been a tool of Talleyrand and was quite literally burned in effigy. Ultimately his own correspondence was published which cleared his name, but it would not clear the air. Understandably enraged at being labeled a traitor, Gerry openly declared himself for the Democratic-Republicans and the newly partisan grievances he had paved the way for the Gerrymander’s birth.

Gerry had a bit of bad luck; as the 19th century began and a Jeffersonian tide started to wash the Federalists away across the Union he had the bad luck of being resident to one fo the few states where the Federalists were actually gaining ground. Federalists dominated the governorship and legislature for the first decade of the new century, the Democratic-Republicans in the state were so divided Gerry could only count on the support of some of them, and just as the political troubles were mounting his brother’s financial malfeasance meant that Gerry had to guarantee a loan. It would wind up ruining him financially for the rest of his life, and so he stood out of politics. But then in 1810, he stood for election as Governor against the sitting Federalist. After a bitter and nasty fight that aired old laundry and personal accusations, he triumphed. For the first term in office, Gerry ruled as Governor with a Federalist state legislature and judiciary. So he kept his head down and charted a moderate course. But when he faced a rematch for the Governor’s seat the next year, he won again and saw a legislature dominated by fellow Dem-Reps be sworn in. Now he had a far freer hand, and he decided to use it in a way that we are still paying for.

Posted by Turtler     on 02/12/2016 at 02:37 AM   
Filed Under: • History • Iran • Middle-East • Miscellaneous • Philosophy • Politics •  
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   Thursday - February 11, 2016

celebrating multiculturalism

What goes around, comes around
It’s the camel joke, only different!

A man washed up on a beach after a shipwreck.
Only a sheep, and a sheepdog, were washed-up with him.
After looking around, he realized that they were stranded on a deserted island. 


After being there awhile, he got into the habit of taking his two
animal companions to the beach every evening to watch the sunset. 
One particular evening, the sky was a fiery red, with beautiful
cirrus clouds, the breeze was warm and gentle - a perfect night for romance.


As they sat there, the sheep started looking better and better to the lonely
man. Soon, he leaned over to the sheep and put his arm around it.
The sheepdog, ever-protective of the sheep, growled
fiercely until the man took his arm from around the sheep.
After that, the three of them continued to enjoy the sunsets together,
but there was no more cuddling.


A few weeks passed-by and, lo and behold, there was another shipwreck. The
only survivor was Hillary Clinton.  That evening, the man brought Hillary to
the evening beach ritual. It was another beautiful evening - red sky, cirrus
clouds, a warm and gentle breeze - perfect for a night of romance.  Pretty
soon, the man started to get those feelings again. He fought the urges as
long as he could but he finally gave-in and leaned over to Hillary and
told her he hadn’t had sex for months.  Hillary batted her eyelashes, and
asked if there was anything she could do for him.


He said, ‘Yes! Please take the dog for a walk.’






... and Achmed says to the genie of the lamp, “yes, please hold down the camel!”

Posted by Drew458     on 02/11/2016 at 08:00 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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   Wednesday - February 10, 2016

On This Day In History: February 10

1163: On what would be February 17th by modern reckoning, King Baldwin the Third of Jerusalem- the conqueror of Ascalon- dies childless at the age of 33, among suspicions that he was poisoned by a Syrian Orthodox Christian who was acting as his doctor. A long eight day funeral procession marked by open grief caries him from the place of his death at Beirut to his kingdom’s capitol and place of his tomb at Jerusalem. He started off his reign on a very unpromising start, which among other things featured a civil war against his own mother and going up against none other than Nur-ad-Din, Salah-al-Din (Saladin)’s mentor, including a failure to take Damascus. But that soon changed. He forged an alliance with the Eastern Romans and fought Nur-ad-Din to a standstill, but his real victories were in the South against the Fatmid Caliphate in the South.

His crowning achievement by far was the siege of the city of Ascalon in 1153. Conventional wisdom of the time in siege warfare was that you needed to block absolutely all routes of supply for the area under siege, have superior numbers to the defenders, and only conduct an assault if you had overwhelming odds. Baldwin had exactly none of these advantages, but managed to siege and storm one of the most fortified cities in the world while outnumbered.  It turned Ascalon into a bulwark of the Christian states in the Levant while serving as a springboard for attacks into Egypt, and the seal of doom for the Fatmid Caliphs and seemed to foreshadow great things.

But within a decade of that triumph, he was dead at a young age (even for then) and control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem passed to his brother, who spent his reign raiding futilely into Egypt, using manpower that the Crusaders simply did not have. Then he died and bequeathed the crown to his only son, the heroic Leper-King Baldwin the Fourth, who saved Jerusalem from Saladin but could not save his dynasty from lack of heirs. After his death the Kingdom fell victim to ugly infighting and worse leadership, which led to shattering defeat at Hattin to Saladin’s Jihadis. Saladin went on to reconquer and destroy the entire city of Ascalon to prevent it from being a Crusader defensive position, and within three decades of Baldwin III’s funeral the Crusaders were dependent on foreign leaders- most famously the kings of England and France- to avoid destruction. And which slowly led to a death spiral for the Crusader Kingdoms of the Orient, and ultimately Christianity in much of the Levant.

Baldwin III’s a rather forgotten figure in history, including that of the Crusades and Jihads, which is ironic because at the time of his death he stood among the giants of his era. He was well read in everything from history to law, eloquent, intelligent, approachable by those he ruled over, and chivalrous *almost*- almost- to a fault; a strong King who was able to fund a war on multiple fronts against far more numerous enemies without even taxing Church property and was lauded by virtually everyone, including those enemies. At the time of his death well below the expectancy of an adult male for the period, it looked like he was developing into someone who might have qualified as a Christian equal of Saladin himself. We can only imagine what might have happened had he lived, or if he would have continued to improve. But his greatest enemy Nur said

“The Franks (Read: Western Catholic Christians) have lost such a prince that the world has not now his like.”

Posted by Turtler     on 02/10/2016 at 06:23 PM   
Filed Under: • History • Military • OBITITUARIES • Politics •  
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   Tuesday - February 09, 2016

Type in a title up here. you have to have one

A hypothetical post, to show how simple the post editor is ... this is NOT what the members see when they write a comment.

Title of some article from an online source


A reasonable amount of text copied from the source that gives the flavor of the content.
Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.

A hyperlink to the source page of the information, often placed a little bit into the quoted text around the few words that are the heart of the subject.

Hey, don’t forget to pick a category to file your post under, by clicking the Categories button at the top of the editor.

DropCap thing works too, but it rarely ever gets used. It can be pretty fussy.

: these are blank lines. 4 of them actually.

  this is the symbol for a blank space. html is not “WYSIWYG”; it will not space things the way you want if you set them up with the space bar. And the Tab key doesn’t work.

and if the post is going to go on for a long time, or if there are lots and lots of pictures, we try to stick them “below the fold” which means in the Extended Text area:

Posted by Drew458     on 02/09/2016 at 11:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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It was hard, but not really worth it

Stupor Bowl Fiddy

I had to work Sunday evening, she had to work Monday day. So we taped the game had our own Superbowl party Monday night. And ya know what? 1) we made a pretty darn good pizza, and 2) Double Fast Forward on the DVR is my new best friend.

Man, what a boring game. It’s been my experience that the Superbowls are like that; it’s either a snooze fest of punting practice mixed with holding penalties like Sunday’s game, or it’s the wildest most awesomest game ever, like last year’s romp.

Random thoughts: Grampa Manning looked like he was just phoning it in, there to get his “200” statistic and then get away. The little dude Ginn Jr was fun to watch because he’s so fast and he’s really really trying. One debatably bad call by the refs early on, one seriously missed call late in the game, and half a million little BS calls damn near every play. This is the best of the best of the pros? Cheep shots and cheats? Seems more like watching a Midnight basketball game in da hood. They know the rules. Body flip an opponent by his helmet grill ... get expelled from the game on the spot. That’s how that one should have gone. No way that was an accident.

March the ball down the field, sack the QB, a couple more yellow flags. Punt. Or try for a field goal. Lather, rinse, repeat. Forever. Touchdowns, what are they, we don’t have any. Endless kicks. Hmm, when you make the goalposts 4 stories tall, how much do they sway in the wind, or splay sideways due to their own mass? Enough to doink off an edgey kick? Them’s the breaks.

And oh boohoo, my team lost because I just lost my way as QB. So let me shed some tears, then crawl into my hoodie and pout.

Right. So much for watching sports in my house, until next year’s game.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/09/2016 at 10:17 AM   
Filed Under: • Sports •  
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   Sunday - February 07, 2016

UN 5 PANEL UMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL OF IDIOTS GET IT WRONG

So here the lying unwashed ( ppl who know him say so) bastard is again, out on that balcony as if he’s addressing ……. ?  Who? A hell of a lot of photographers if you see the link.  Nothing like encouraging a rat like this. He loves it.
And what BS.  Now he’s spouting things like, his children need their daddy.  He might have thought of that before he ran.  Or before he assaulted that woman in Sweden. 

That rights council with no legal authority, is made up of five civil rights lawyers.
And guess who pays for them at the end of the day? 

Assange gave his (worthless) word not to do a runner almost four yrs ago, when a Brit court granted bail until a hearing could be held.  A number of friends and supporters put up the money for him as he claimed to be broke. They guaranteed his word to attend, said he was an honest man, when most of those who came into close contact with the turd warned he was bad.  He thanked them all and then … went to the Ecuadorian embassy and claimed asylum. There are brit police outside the embassy, should he step outside, they will arrest him.  btw, so far he has cost the taxpayers of this country millions.

Anyway, this jive ass rights council of five, may they all put their teeth in backwards and bite their throats, are claiming that Assange’s lengthy stay at the embassy is “arbitrary detention”. 
Whoa … who is detaining him?  He can walk out anytime he wants to. Who told him to go to that embassy?  Did he go in under his own power or was he dragged kicking and screaming into their building.
What he want to do is avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape charges.  He says his only worry is being taken by the Americans from the Swedes, and secretly flown to the USA to face torture and whatever else his wimp brain can come up with. 

Every so often he makes an appearance on that balcony, photographers flock to the make believe ‘event’ and massage his ego, while he continues to thumb his nose at Britain, the Swedes and most likely the USA as well.
I know it’s silly of me, I know it can’t happen but.

Oh how I hope that one day when he comes out to show himself, as soon as he opens his mouth some good soul will fire an arrow in it.  Yeah bullets are okay. But I want this piece of waste in human form to hurt first.  And hurt a lot.

Julian Assange’s ‘rape victim’ blasts UN ruling that he was being illegally detained as ‘offensive’ and says WikiLeaks founder needs to ‘take responsibility’ and face Swedish authorities

Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy since 2012
Wikileaks founder wanted for questioning in Sweden over rape allegation
Filed complaint with UN that he is being ‘unlawfully detained’ at embassy
His alleged rape victim has criticised the UN ruling, labelling it ‘offensive’
Solicitor said ruling was ‘offensive to the human rights of victims of crime’
Philip Hammond has called UN working group’s report ‘frankly ridiculous’

By Amie Gordon and Sara Malm for MailOnline

HERE FOR PHOTOS IF NOTHING ELSE

Posted by peiper     on 02/07/2016 at 09:43 AM   
Filed Under: • REALLY WORTHLESS and PUTRID PEOPLE •  
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I am going to beat it

Getting My Groove Back

I’ve had some pretty severe writer’s block lately. I just haven’t been able to hit the keyboard and throw works at this blog and get the posts out. Sure, there’s been some burnout because the stories don’t change. The Middle East is still a mess, Obama is still a traitor masquerading as a fool, Hillary is still a lying, corrupt, murderous thug. And then there’s Trump. And those damn “rapeugees” invading Europe. I start feeling like what’s his name with the rock ... Sissypuss I think he was called, although I may be confusing my mythological Greeks with Carvel ice cream cakes?

Right. Suffering from “KD”. Keyboard Dysfunction. What can you do? [ take one Sophie  Viagra Vergara and contact your doctor for a blogging session that lasts longer than 4 hours? ] I have ideas for posts. I have all sorts of links. I do background research. And then somehow it all just deflates and goes limp, and I have to go to work or do some housework or shopping or whatever.

But I can beat this. I think I can, I think I can, I know I can!

What’s easy to post on? Ah, Fun League. Our little team pretty much sucks this year, but we’re in it for fun. We manage to hit the bottom of the standings and then bounce back a few slots time after time. I think we’re hovering just below 50% wins, which means we are sinking, but slowly. This week we didn’t quite sink. None of us were quite warmed up enough in the first game, posting lousy scores way below average. I threw a 137. Yikes. A guy on the opponent’s team was having the game of his life - we always bring out the very best in our opponents, go figure - and threw a 260. Awsome. A 260 is 2 spares shy of a perfect game, so that fellow was hitting strikes all over the place. Bastard. So we went down in flames in Game 1, losing by something like 156 pins.

Game 2 we woke up, and the other team had shot their load and forgot to take their ”Sophies” or something. So we shined, and they were flat. I tossed a 214 and we won that one by 79. Look out, here we come, gonna eat up your lead and take that wood!

Game 3, not only did I have all my ducks in a row AND had them wired tight, I must have stapled their little feet to the floor so they couldn’t go anywhere [ just an expression. No actual ducks are allowed inside the bowling alley, and running in and out with a staple gun every frame is severely frowned upon. ]. You know it. It turned out that the elusive strike line was half a damn board to the outside on my approach footing. Once I moved, and kept my eye on the target, I just hammered the crap out of the pins. The other guys on my team did well too, but I threw a 240 [ a pile of strikes on the end of a game that started out as a Dutch 200 through the 6th. So we won that last game big time, I just missed a 600 series for the night, and we ... still lost overall wood. But only by 6 pins!

There. I can so post. And throw in a bunch of links, and crack wise, and tell a story.  Now, if only I could convince myself that politics was interesting again, then I could truly get all fired up.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/07/2016 at 09:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Bowling Blogging • Eye-Candy •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Friday - February 05, 2016

oh yeah, terrorism

Am I the only person who has noticed that when terrorist acts happen to people who aren’t white or at least European, they just don’t really count as news?

Remember the Russian jetliner taken out next to the Gaza strip a few months back? Killed everybody, ISIS took credit, end of story.

Today (OK, sometime on Tuesday actually) it looks like there was an almost. What’s an almost?  This is:

A Somali computer programmer has told how a suspected bomb blast tore open the side of a plane and sucked out an elderly passenger to his death at 14,000 feet.

Survivor Hassan Mohamed Nur said the blast shook Daallo Airlines Flight D3159 five minutes after take off from Mogadishu, Somalia, and tore a hole in the jet’s fuselage.

Describing the horror, he said the cabin went black and filled with thick smoke as passengers screamed in the confusion - as investigators in the U.S say a bomb ‘probably’ caused the explosion

Mr Nur said the passenger, an elderly man, caught fire before he was sucked from his seat and out of the Airbus A321.

‘I saw the passenger, a man in his early 60s, get sucked out of the plane,’ he told MailOnline. ‘There was a huge bang. A big hole appeared in the side of the jet and the man disappeared through it.

‘One minute he was sat in his seat, the next it he was gone. He’d been sucked out of the plane.

‘People were screaming. We all thought we were going to die.’

The charred body of a man, who may have fallen from the plane, was found in Balad, 18 miles from Mogadishu.

Airline officials say two passengers were hurt in the blast, shortly after take off on Tuesday.

One of those injured was an elderly man from Finland, who is in a stable condition in hospital in Mogadishu.

The Somali government says an investigation has begun.

The plane has been moved from the runway to a private hangar for inspection by forensic experts to inspect, Mr Mohamoud added.

He said that foreign technical experts were involved in the inquiry.

The Daallo Airlines flight bound for Djibouti in the Horn of Africa was able to fly back to Mogadishu and land safely and 74 passengers on board were evacuated.

The pilot Vlatko Vodopivec, 64, from Serbia said: ‘When we heard a loud bang, the co-pilot went back to the cabin to inspect the damage and I took over the commands as the procedure demands.

‘Smoke came into the cockpit, but it was mostly concentrated in the back of the aircraft.’

He added: ‘I think it was a bomb. Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport.

‘Something like this has never happened in my flight career. We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank god it ended well.

‘It was my first bomb; I hope it will be the last. It would have been much worse if we were higher.

Some are saying this was the result of bad weather. Sure, if it was raining grenades I could accept that. Or it was a faulty oxygen bottle. Sure, one that was exactly at passenger seat level height.  Sorry, it was a bomb, no matter what “officials are trying to deny. Terrorists.

But I guess it wasn’t a big enough death toll to warrant more than a passing nod from western MSM, if at all, and then they all switched back to the endless, endless, mind-numbing endless coverage of the US Presidential primaries. 

Posted by Drew458     on 02/05/2016 at 12:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Africa • Terrorists •  
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