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Great concert. A little short, and it did't start until a tad after nine, but still good.
I like the rodeo stuff in the arena before the show. Especially the calf scramble where the kids chansed down and roped the calves for scholarship money or vouchers or something like that.
Bush-41 threw down his hat to start off the scramble. I thought that was a nice touch.
I picked up a horsey purse for my wife. It's too small to put much in it, but it's still cute.
Blogging will be light today. I'll be focusing on the back-end of the site to prepare it for March.
What? It's March already?
I'm late! I'm late!
Where's my Marchproofing script? Where did I put that thing?
Am I going to have to type it in raw like I did last year?
Oh, God, I hope I can find the backups.
Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.
Last night, the train was packed like a Hick Sausage both ways. Wonderful timing, having Museum District wash out like it did.
Lots of 700's sitting along the route. Just sitting.
I'm sure one was the 25 that was supposed to be going Southbound that I'd catch going home. My wife was kind enough to pick me up along the route. Glad I had the horsey purse as a thank you gift prepared.
Missed the early 9. Got stuck waiting for the next one.
Missed the "late" 102. Got stuck waiting for the next one.
Yeah, METRO will take me where I want to go. Just not on time, dammit.
Forget the 21 seaports. Can that Dubai World company take over METRO and straighten their shit out once and for all?
If it means that METRO's run by Islamic Law, so be it. I wouldn't mind watching Frank Wilson and George Demontrond publicly beheaded in Main Street Square for their crimes against the city.
Bush landed in Afghanistan today for a visit.
Isn't it odd that during his presidency he's been to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, but one country that supposedly a strong ally in the Middle East has so far managed to avoid his presence?
Well, it looks like the motor pool of the Islamic Jihad is one unit short this morning.
A senior Islamic Jihad commander was killed in a car explosion in Gaza on Wednesday.Palestinian sources said the Israel Air Force was responsible for blowing up the car, but the IDF denied involvement in the explosion.
Police identified the targeted Jihad man as Khaled Dahdouh, 39, a senior commander of the group's armed wing.
Israel Radio reported, that the Israeli military denied attacking Gaza today and claimed they are not responsible for the Jihad man's death.
The car, which blew up as it traveled over a speed bump, was incinerated. Hospital officials said two other people were wounded.
Man, ain't speed bumps a bitch?
Oh well. I guess there's no need to worry about missing the cigarette lighter anymore, eh.
Victims of Palestinian terror are trying to fight Hollywood:
A group of Israelis who lost children to Palestinian suicide bombings appealed on Wednesday to organisers of next week's Academy Awards to disqualify a film exploring the reasoning behind such attacks.The bereaved parents said they had gathered more than 32,000 signatures on a petition against the nomination in the best foreign film category of "Paradise Now", a drama about two West Bank friends recruited to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv.
The controversial film was made by an Israeli Arab director and actors working with a Palestinian crew and locations. The producer was a Jewish Israeli and the funding was European.
Yossi Zur, whose teenage son Asaf was killed in a bus bombing, accused the film of sympathetically portraying a tactic hailed by many Palestinians waging a 5-year-old uprising.
"What they call 'Paradise Now' we call 'hell now', each and every day," Zur told reporters. "It is a mission of the free world not to give such movies a prize."
I believe that the appropriate response to Hollywood's rewarding the depiction of brutal, bloody crimes is to re-enact the brutal killing of every Hollywood star ever killed or murdered. Remind Hollywood that they too have been touched by death in a horribly unpleasant way, usually with the help of deranged stalkers or their own inner demons.
Start with a stabbing of Sal Mineo. Do it right there on the street in front of the ceremony. Wail away at the man with rubber knives and leave him spilling fake blood in the street like a slaughtered calf.
Then have someone dressed as James Dean wreck their car. Perhaps by smashing into a Jayne Mansfield impersonator who then tosses a fake severed head into the crowd.
Any Hollywood stars dead from prolonged, agonizing illnesses? Yeah, trot out people make up to look like the living, rotting husks going to what would be their last ceremony before finally getting warehoused in the Old Actor's Home, never to be seen alive again.
Maybe by reminding Hollywood that beauty is only skin deep but evil is pervasive that they'll look in the mirror and see beyond their makeup again.
(You know, if this had been a film glorifying the fight against Arab and Islamic terror, they'd just smash a plane into the Kodak Theater to stop the ceremony.)
Just in case you need more incentive to participate in next week's Carnival of the Cats, I'm offering up four valuable prizes in a raffle among participants.
Hey, it's no sleazier than local Houston news stations offering up cash prizes to viewers in shady giveaways, right? Or local transit monopolies that generate huge amounts of tax revenue offering up scratch-off cards instead of completely focusing on repairing a damaged track.
A customer wanted a DNS entry made, so he wrote me.
He remembered to include a "please" and a "thank you." Many people forget those things.
He forgot to include what IP address he wanted the new domain to point to and his account number. I probably could look him up by last name or email address, but I don't want to train these people to just toss notes willy-nilly and expect us to know who he is like he's some kind of webhosting celebrity.
At least he didn't say "thank you in advance." I hate that phrase.
I replied back nicely that the IP address would help. And I used "thank you" and "please."
I've been thinking about the neo-Islamic prohibitions against depictions of human beings and I wonder if this could be extended to X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging, and other dignostic tools necessary for basic medical care.
Don't want people to draw representations of humans? Fine. Have fun finding that tumor by smacking yourself over and over with a Quran instead of laying down for a CAT-scan.
Broke your leg racing camels? Sorry... can't X-ray your bones. Here's two sticks and some rope to tie into a splint. Hope you don't get any free-floating blood clots.
Aw... too bad about that prohibition against anal penetration. I guess you'll be cancelling that appointment for a colonoscopy and making one for dangerous invasive surgery.
And so on.
Well, the catcams are working again today. Nothing exciting going on them, however.
When I crawled into my chair after midnight and checked the archives, there were some great pictures stacked up. I've tried to post the best ones in the gallery for your enjoyment...
And finally a good one from the rocking chair...
When putting up my jacket for the day, I guess I knocked the rocking chair cam a bit and it's pointing towards the front of the chair today.
I'll add re-aiming it to my to-do list.
Another cheap-shot over at Meryl's site today.
This Abu Tir guy's orange beard is really annoying. Has he been going down on that Crunchy M&M character or something?
Houston Metroblogs is taking applications for local bloggers.
Since Htownblogs seems to be six feet under, might as well get my foot in the door there so I can help announce local happenings and work on re-establishing regular get-togethers.
Who cares what I think about kitty curfews in France, Germany, Slovenia, and Italy? It's time for a new feature of TBIFOC called Ask The Cats!
Four European countries today imposed restrictions on the movements of cats after a dead cat in Germany was discovered to have been infected with bird flu.The dead animal was found yesterday on the Baltic island of Ruegen, where more than 100 wild birds have died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus. Experts say that the cat probably fell ill after eating an infected bird.
What do you think about kitty curfews in France, Germany, Slovenia, and Italy?
 Nardo: Could you please cover your beak while you cough? |  Piper: Playing with birds is dangerous? Whatever. Toys are much more interesting to play with. Plus, they're less messy and noisy when you tear them apart. |
 Frisky: That's one reason among many to thank God that Texas is not in France. |  Adira: Is this breaking curfew? |
 Rafe: This bird is mine! |  KT: I don't play with birds, I play soccer. Can soccer balls give you bird flu? |
 Her Ladyship: Curfew? Hah! Impose one of those things on me, and I'll make you squeeze through my cat door. | does your cat think? |
Thank you, kittycats.
Does your cat have an opinion on the subject? Then send the following to askthecats (at) isfullofcrap.com:
And you'll see them up here with the rest of the kittycats!
While Houston's Livestock Show and Rodeo got started this past week, Nashville just finished playing host to National Wild Turkey Federation’s Convention and Sport Show:
Among the many events at the convention are the Wild Turkey Bourbon/NWTF Grand National Calling Championships. More than 150 callers entered these contests. Matt Van Cise of Grand Valley, Pa., finished first in the Wild Turkey Bourbon Senior Division, making him a two-time champion. Van Cise won his first Grand National last year."Winning for a second time is unbelievable," said Van Cise, of Grand Valley, Pa., who will appear on “The Late Show with David Letterman†tonight. "The second time is amazing. Holding this trophy over my head makes up for all the hours of practice."
Since I'm an expert on Turkey Calling, I thought I'd share some advice with you, the adoring public:
Have fun!
Okay, folks. It's time to play Find The Cat:
Nardo is such a goofball.
McDonalds is changing its signage to blue for Kosher restaurants in Israel.
Under pressure from the city's chief rabbi, two Tel Aviv branches of the fast food firm McDonald's have changed the colour of their trademark signs to assure diners that their burgers and fries are kosher.In a first for McDonald's Corp., the golden arches at the two branches have new blue backgrounds, replacing the trademark red ones. The new signs also display the word "kosher", both in Hebrew and English.
The changes were made after Tel Aviv's chief Rabbi, Israel Meir Lau, demanded that a distinction be made.
"I was worried people would be confused, especially tourists who do not know Hebrew," Lau said.
As for it's halal restaurants in Islamic countries, they will burn with a bright green flame instead of a reddish-yellow flame when attacked by angry Molotov-tossing mobs.
Who will call for the beheading of the editorial board of The Onion for this blasphemy? Cat owners? Christians? Christian cat-owners?
A pet is a beloved part of your family, and as a Christian, you should do everything you can to guarantee that this valued member of your family receives the glorious eternal reward for which Christ gave His very life. Think of the alternative: your cat mired in darkness for eternity because you put off a 10-minute conversation.My own cats accepted Jesus into their hearts before they even opened their eyes. The light of salvation has brightened their lives, but perhaps the most noticeable change has been in me. I am filled with warmth knowing their eternal souls have been saved.
To tell the truth, I think our dear-departed Edloe would like Jesus...
As long as he keeps multiplying the gefilte fish, of course.
Continue reading "Turning the other cheek... for a cheek-rub." »
(Via Evil Dwight)
By the way...
The Chronicle is not the most adventurous in what it blogs about...
Show me another major newspaper that publishes its editorial cartoons in a blog format and allows comments and trackbacks. I may think that Nick Anderson's full of crap for the most part, but he's opened up the site in a way that mostly-online blogtoonists Cox and Forkum, Muir of Day By Day, and Ted Rall haven't. (If Rall had an open forum with a moderator to keep things somewhat civil, I swear that would be an amazingly fascinating experiment)
It may seem simple to just script up the equivalent of "IMG tag goes here" cha cha cha and the blog is born, but I'd say that's boldly going where "old fogeys" like Pat Oliphant and Tom Toles fear to tread.
I've been thinking about the Tom Monaghan Catholic utopia project in Florida, and the one thing that keeps nagging at the back of my mind is why is he building it in Florida instead of near Detroit where he made his fortune and he's something of a civic leader.
I'm thinking about Indian reservations with mineral rights or gambling revenue to invest, self-sustaining Amish communities, and the Mormon settlement of Salt Lake City transforming into a tolerant law-abiding community. I'm also thinking about the lawless qualities of Hispanic-dominated barrios acting as enclaves to protect illegal immigrants, Saudi-funded Islamic colonies acting as seeds for sharia law within America, and overwhelmingly black communities bankrupting themselves in permanent Welfare sinkholes like Washington D.C. and New Orleans.
More good than bad will come from Monaghan's project, I believe, but there's always the possibility that obnoxious "civil rights" assholes cut from the same cloth as Peace House in Crawford will move in just to act as a nuisance and prevent any good from coming from the project.
The key, as is with all "utopian" settlements, is that they operate within the law as much as any other settlements.
As for the concept of porn on blocking cable television and other restrictions, how will they control dish-based video delivery or Internet-based video? Will they be providing Internet access and then firewalling/censoring content?
I'm a firm believer that homosexuality is a combination of genetic and social factors, but mostly genetic. There will be a portion of the children of the community that will turn out gay. How will Ave Maria handle them? Will they be ostracised, or will they be someone tolerated in a manner that still won't be good enough for the likes of Andrew Sullivan?
Nardo decided to absorb large amounts of sunlight on his furry tummy today...
He's not quite the ultimate sun-soaking capsizing cat, but he'll do for now.
Blogging will be light today.
What kind of wine goes with Jeep? I'm thinking about going for a world record in Jeep-eating, and I want to make sure I have the right wine to go with it.
The guy at the wine shop had no idea.
Some expert he is!
Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.
The Sony wireless camera was acting up and locking up the publishing process, so I turned it off and left the other five cameras going.
I'll set up that camera to post independently of the rest, which means it won't be storing the images in my computer's archive, but it will be working 24/7 posting to the site.
You win some, you lose some. (Although if you're David Carr, you pretty much lose them all.)
Just in case you need reasons to gather up for EATAPETA on March 15th, I've posted a few at Meryl's site.
One a day at Meryl's... one a day at IMAO... I swear, a few dozen more guest-blogging gigs and the Catcall site and I won't need this IFOC site anymore.
Just in case you forgot, Texas Independence Day was 170 years ago today.
I'm sure that former Houston Stadium And Corporate Welfare Czar Oliver Luck will take credit for more people remembering.
Hispanics, most of them of Mexican descent, surpassed Anglos as the largest ethnic group in the city in the 2000 census and are about 42 percent of the population. One of every three Texans is Hispanic, and they want a review of the Anglo-centric history the state has long celebrated.
Okay, fine. Instead of teaching "We won" we're more than happy to amend it.
Does "We won, you lost" sound good?
The usual billionaire bastards in bedsheets are bitching again:
Gulf monarchies called on the international community to continue giving aid to the Palestinians after Hamas's shock election win.Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers "invite the international community to continue financial aid to the Palestinians and not to punish the Palestinian people for their democratic choice," said a statement issued at the end of their meeting in Riyadh.
They also called on all Palestinian factions to "close ranks" to achieve their aim of establishing "an independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital, by negotiation", implicitly calling on Hamas to renounce violence.
Just in case you're wondering, the UAE is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Dubai is a part of the UAE.
Gee, if Dubai's royal family has billions in one of their shell corporations to spend on buying up control of 6 American ports and varying degrees of operations at 15 others, why aren't they investing it in the vibrant and complex Palestinian economy instead?
Ehud Olmert is threatening an "Iron Fist" against Palestinian terrorism:
Israel's interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to use an "iron fist" against Palestinian militants as polls showed his party's lead slipping less than a month before a general election.A spike in violence has increased pressure on Olmert to show he is as ready to take tough military action as was Ariel Sharon, who remains comatose after a stroke two months ago that pushed Olmert to the front of the election campaign.
"We will use an iron fist against any attempt to renew terrorist action," Olmert told a news conference. "We will use drastic measures on all the roads, in all sensitive areas."
Hold on. Where have we heard about Iron Fists and Palestinian Terrorism before?
From Mahmoud Abbas while the Israelis were planning to leave Gaza, of course!
In a speech to Palestinian police, Abbas pledged to maintain calm during the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer."We have to give them a calm departure," he said, according to a summary of the speech published on Thursday by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Abbas told police officers such violence could not be tolerated.
"Whoever wants to sabotage [the truce] with rocket fire or shooting must be stopped by us even if that requires using force," Abbas said. "There is a national consensus regarding the calm, and whoever departs from this consensus will be struck by an iron fist."
(Cox and Forkum had some fun with it back in April of 2005.)
So here's the big question: is Olmert's iron fist the same as Abbas' iron fist, or is this an entirely different iron fist?
There's a new $10 bill entering circulation, so be sure to burn all your old ones.
One of the most noticeable design changes is the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary. While Hamilton's likeness is the same, it is no longer surrounded by an oval as on the old bill.
Sadly, it's still the same engraved look. I was hoping that the Bureau Of Engraving And Printing would have gone all Matrix-like with Alexander Hamilton, holding up a hand like Neo and stopping Aaron Burr's bullet.
Has anyone noticed that METRO's not checking fares all that much since the METRO Fever thing on Monday?
Well, there's that and the service problems because of the washout at Museum District. No sense in making matters worse when you double-up trains and pack them like sausages.
Then there's the rodeo. I think METRO's more interested in generating Dangertrain riders than revenue right now (as if they were ever interested in revenue to begin with?) They clicked the clicker to count people, but I didn't have my ticket checked.
Heck, I havent seen a barneyfife on a train dragging ticketless bums off since last week. Are they all in mourning because Don Knotts died? Or did they accidentally drag off an illegal immigrant and get chastised for violating the Sanctuary City Policy?
I took the Dangertrain on George Strait Day, but saw lots of buses flagged 700, just sitting and waiting while the lines got long. Are they checking fares at all for the Route 700 buses from Reliant shadowing the train when it can't keep up with actual demand?
I should have gone to Trisha Yearwood last night. I like her stuff. Oh well, I'm planning on going this weekend to snap photos of the llamas and bunny rabbits. Maybe a few of the fluffy chickens, too. I like them.
Is Fogarty still good, or has he gone all Old Fogey?
Back when the office was at the old location, I told Freebirds to fuck off after they forgot my queso twice...
Fuck Freebird's. I'm not ordering from them again. Way too much good food within walking distance to be a slave to another's incompetence.
However, now that the office has moved well beyond the reach of Goode Company and other Kirby establishments, the selection is less varied. The closet option is the deli, an excellent source of salads in my cholesterol-phobic condition, but when the deli gets dull it takes a lot more effort to seek out appetizing alternatives.
Whispers... rumors... and a menu appears! Freebirds is opening up a store nearby, and there's certainly going to be a revival of Freebirds Day here at the office when it happens. I'm sure they still have the online ordering script since nothing ever tends to get deleted around here.
Yeah, they have good burritos, but... but... but will they screw me out of queso again? Will they rob me of my Right To Melted Gooey Cheese as guaranteed in the Constitution?
If they don't ferry any of the slack-jawed morons over from the old store in Shepherd Square, maybe I'll give them a chance. But if I order queso the first time I order a roasted garlic and peppers veggie burrito and end up without my beloved dipping-queso, I've got half a mind to empty out the tortilla wrap, take a shit in it, and send it back.
Continue reading "Freebirds follows me here, should I give them a second chance?" »
Just when I thought that Bush Incorporated couldn't piss me off more, his minions go ahead and do it:
The same Bush administration review panel that approved a ports deal involving the United Arab Emirates has notified a leading Israeli software company that it faces a rare, full-blown investigation over its plans to buy a smaller rival.The company was told U.S. officials feared the transaction could endanger some of government's most sensitive computer systems.
The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.
Snort's author is a senior executive at Sourcefire Inc., which would be sold to publicly traded Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel. Sourcefire is based in Columbia, Maryland.
The contrast between the administration's handling of the $6.8 billion Dubai ports deal and the Israeli company's $225 million technology purchase offers an uncommon glimpse into the U.S. government's choices to permit some deals but raise deep security concerns over others.
I could wholly understand if it's an Israeli Arab company, considering how that demographic would overwhemingly whip out PLO flags and cheer should Israel suddenly vanish one day, oblivious to the fact that they'd end up in a totalitarian Islamist command-economy worse than the worst of the Arab League's bloodiest-handed members.
But to run an Israeli company through the wringer after countless statements how Israel is a close ally... were they all just lip-service? Is Dubai more trusted than Israel in the minds of Bush Incorporated?
Maybe if the panel had done a full-blown review on the Dubai company looking to take over operations at American ports, they'd have realized that they were breaking U.S. law because of that company's participation in the Arab boycott of Israeli goods.
Nope. Gotta save the time to investigate the Jews.
Looking back, I voted for Kerry in 2004 because I thought Bush was full of shit with regards to the Iraq War and the War On Terror. If he was serious, Moqtada Al-Sadr would either be dead or in prison for multiple counts of murder.
In Texas, you kill killers. If you ain't killin' killers, you ain't Texas.
Apparently, Bush is fine with killin' killers if he can ignore calls for clemency to the mansion at Austin, but putting a round in the deranged brain of a Shi'ite miscreant holed up in a mosque is a no-go.
Flying to Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India while just sending minions to Jerusalem is starting to make sense. Supporting blocking the Taliban from running in Afghanistan, the Ba'athists from running in Iraq, and the Kahanists in Israel while sitting on his hands while Hezbollah runs in Lebanon, Muslim Brotherhood runs in Egypt, and Hamas runs in the PA is starting to make sense.
And it's not a good kind of making sense, either.
What sucks about my vote is that I'm slowly but surely being proven right with it. No, I'm no fan of Kerry, but it's absolutely sick seeing Bush Incorporated churning out madness by the gallon even without the MSM distortions.
The man's poll numbers are in the toilet, but as I've said with the Palestinian polls, that doesn't matter compared to what happens with the ballot boxes.
We'll see what happens in November when Congress gets rebooted and which Senators end up going back as lobbyists instead of officerholders.
I'm not looking forward to two years of possible Kennedy and Rodham-Clinton stalemates in the Senate with Klansman Byrd hugging and grooming Socialist Obama for his eventual run at 1600. But if Frist is shaping up to be a meaningless spineless doormat, it may not be the worst of all worlds to keep things from getting worse by the time McCain or Giuliani runs in 2008.
Does Max Soffar lose his place in line for the needle at Huntsville, or does he get a whole new slate of appeals and flim-flammery?
Max Alexander Soffar, who spent 23 years on death row before his conviction was thrown out, has lost his second bid to escape the death chamber for a 1980 robbery and murder at a northwest Houston bowling alley.A jury agreed this morning that Soffar, 50, should return to death row for killing Arden Alane Felsher, 17, during an attack that also left two other young people dead and another teenager severely wounded.
Standing at the defense table as the verdict was read, Soffar turned his gaze toward the prosecutors and slowly shook his head back and forth.
"I don't think anybody who leaves a courtroom after a death verdict is happy,'' said defense attorney Kathryn Kase.
Go ahead and put it on a Hallmark Card, Kathryn. See if it sells.
This is long overdue:
A lawsuit filed Thursday sought damages from the French government for property lost by 75,000 Jews and tens of thousands of other "undesirables" who were sent to Nazi death camps during World War II.The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan was brought on behalf of Holocaust victims and their heirs. It said France established and ran holding camps during the war where people being shipped out were forced to turn over all personal belongings.
Those belongings included cash, securities, silver, gold, jewelry, works of art, musical instruments, clothing and equipment, the lawsuit said.
Stealing the coins from a dead man's eyes is cold. Robbing him blind while willfully shipping him off to be worked to death is even colder.
What's disturbing is that the colonization of France by Islamists fleeing corrupt Arab dictatorships (which aren't "Islamic" enough for their tastes, I suppose) is rapidly transforming the country into an even more anti-Semitic society than under Nazi rule.
Unlike the Forties, the Arabic-speaking French aren't bothering with packing the remaining Jews into boxcars for "disposal" elsewhere. They're picking them off one by one, whether on the way to the synagogue, the schools, the grocery stores...
Moving the Kitty Pyramid out of the corner and putting the Kitty Pedestal in its place is shaping up to be a really good move...
I'd like to pan that camera up a tad to get all of Nardo's head when he sits there, but I'd hate to lose any of his face when he's picking up a toy to take away.
I guess I need to rethink the location and transparency of the timestamp in the upper-left corner. I'll move it to the lower-left tonight.
Got out the door from work early because I had a splitting headache and a bad case of the Idontgiveashits.
Was five minutes early to the bus stop for the one that swings by at 3:23. Didn't show until 3:45. Person next to me made it impossible to read or listen to the radio.
Got through Downtown and got to the 9 stop at 4:05. My instincts said "Maybe you should have gotten on the train at Pierce and then Wheelered to the 25" but my knee said otherwise, since it's still bothering me from the evening METRO abandoned me at Wheeler waiting for the last 25 that never showed.
The 9 didn't show until 5:05. Since it was so late, it was packed. Not as bad as a rodeo dangertrain, but there were people standing and staring ugly stares at the people sitting.
Know the scene in Brazil where all the seats are taken up my salarimen and there's a woman with one leg standing? Yeah, that kind of scene. Had to stand near the back door, which makes it impossible to read, and the interference messes up the radio.
While the 9 got caught in the perpetual jam at Holman and the Spur, another 9 got behind us. I got the hell out of the packed 9 and walked to the other 9.
"I gotta go, I gotta go!" yelled that driver as we filed in and sat down.
Got home at 5:45. Giving the cats treats now.
Are the jackasses in METRO Dispatch smoking crack all day long, or are they just yanking buses and drivers to prepare for covering the 700 route when the Dangertrain gets overloaded again?
What. A. Goddamned. Fucking. Nightmare.
Got a lead on a job nearby that would just be a bike ride to and from work when I didn't feel like walking or suffering the use of the 9 or 25. It's mindless drudgework, but anything's better than this nightmare of a commute.
(Via An Unsealed Room)
Who cares what I think about exclusionary French soup kitchens discriminating against Jews and Muslims? It's time for a new feature of TBIFOC called Ask The Cats!
With steaming bowls of the fragrant broth soon passing through the crowd, Odile Bonnivard, a short-haired secretary turned far-right firebrand, climbed atop a dark sedan with a megaphone in hand and led the crowd in a raucous chant: "We are all pig eaters! We are all pig eaters!"Identity soup, as the broth has come to be called, is one of the stranger manifestations of a growing grass-roots backlash against the multiculturalism that has spread through Europe over the past 20 years. People are increasingly challenging the care taken in Nazi-chastened Europe, and in France in particular, to avoid the sort of racial or religious insults that led to widespread protests in the Muslim world this month after wide publication of cartoons considered offensive to the Prophet Muhammad.
The movement began in the winter of 2003 when Ms. Bonnivard, a member of a small far-right nationalist movement called the Identity Bloc, began serving hot soup to the homeless. At first, she said, the group used pork simply because it was an inexpensive traditional ingredient for hearty French soup. But after the political significance of serving pork dawned on them and others, it quickly became the focus of their work.
Made with smoked bacon, pigs' ears, pigs' feet and pigs' tails together with assorted vegetables and sausages, the soup is meant to make a political statement: "Help our own before others."
The "others," Ms. Bonnivard explained, are non-European immigrants who she and her colleagues on the far right say are sopping up scarce resources that ought to be used for descendants of the Continent's original inhabitants. In other words, the soup is meant to exclude those who do not eat pork — for the most part, Muslims and Jews.
"Other communities don't hesitate to help their own, so why can't we?" she asked, noting that Europe's Islamic charities serve halal food to disadvantaged Muslims and that its Jewish charities operate kosher soup kitchens.
What do you think about exclsuionary French soup kitchens discriminating against Jews and Muslims?
 Frisky: Well, fine. Then I'm not sharing my soup with any French racist scum. |  Nardo: Here's somewhere you'll never find a Frenchman. |
 Piper: French Jews still living in France? What are they, masochistic? It's called aliyah. Make it. |  KT: After a big bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mouse soup, I'm ready for a nap. Is mouse kosher? |
does your cat think? |
Thank you, kittycats.
Does your cat have an opinion on the subject? Then send the following to askthecats (at) isfullofcrap.com:
And you'll see them up here with the rest of the kittycats!
I decided to finish off the asparagus, peppers, onions, potatoes, and stuffed jalapenos...
The pepperjack and gouda-stuffed jalapenos were good. I may try a mix of crumbled white and yellow cheddar next time.
No grilled meats today. I baked the chicken wings last night for dinner.
Maybe I'll go nuts for sea bass this weekend.
Blogging will be light today according to the Blogging Forecast Bureau.
They also predict that:
As you can plainly see, the Blogging Forecast Bureau is pretty useless.
Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.
When I turned the corner at Newcastle, the 9 was already there.
Six minutes early.
The driver actually waited at the light, but did he wait because he was early or because he saw two people stuck on the corner waiting for the light to change?
I chided him when I got in the door. "You're six minutes early."
"That's why I'm waiting."
"You wouldn't have to wait if you weren't early."
Lots of empty stops ahead of us instead of the regulars there to be picked up. Lots of empty seats.
Is METRO screwing with the 9 to poison Westpark for rail and force it over to Richmond?
I didn't think Frisky's collar was St. Patricksy enough, so...
He's much happier now.
You can find more examples of Friday catblogging by searching a blog search engine such as Technorati for "catblogging."
You can also find a roundup of catblogging posts at The Friday Ark, located at The Modulator blog. Then, when the weekend is nearly over, head over to The Carnival of the Cats for more kitty goodness. There's also a Flikr Group called Furry Friday.
Add to that Weekend Catblogging at Eatstuff.
Anybody I miss?
Now that Israel has improved the Arrow-2 missile defense system, perhaps it's time they started to market it to all of the other Jewish nations out there that are targets of Islamic state-based terror?
*crickets*
(Via BlogHouston)
Heard on KTRH 740AM that the city may not sue to recover the stolen money from the Mayor Pro Tem's office because it would cost too much to hire attorneys and go through the legal proceedings.
$100,000 has been budgeted to crush HPD Officer Tom Nixon's right to free speech and terrify the rank-and-file into submission. METRO has a fleet of lawyers fighting Freedom Of Information Act requests to avoid having the current-leakage damage program exposed to the public. But when it comes to pursuing damages against actual criminals, the cookie jar is empty?
Shire Network News is early this week. It's amazing how quickly Tom Paine can get those done when I don't have my head up my ass on Thursday trying to come up with a Full Of Crap Report. Since it's out early, you can enjoy the interview with Michael Totten, Blog Reporter At Large.
Although I'm really off my game when I get the name of the podcast right.
Check it out this week. Check it out every week. Check out each and every podcast that I am a part of.
Otherwise, the terrorists will have already won the top slot on iTunes.
Isn't there an old Norwegian curse "Go to hell and hang yourself?"
Bah. Get some air between than man's shoes and the ground, man.
Or is he doing that autoerotic suffocation thing because he's to afraid to get seventy-two virgins of his own?
Once again, the catcams are offline. Looks like the Sony SNC-M1W camera is screwing everything up again and I really need to switch it to self-publishing mode.
Here's a good one from yesterday:
It looks like he's laughing, doesn't it?
Yes, I've been playing with the layout a bit.
I really want to make that far right sidebar solid grey all the way down. Three columns, 600 and 175 and 175 pixels wide and the full length of the page. But I seem to be all thumbs with CSS and the stylesheet.
What I don't want to do is resort to tables.
Anybody have any THICK-THIN-THIN three-column examples with WHITE-LT GREY-GREY I can learn from?
How many times do they have to tell the world?
Earlier Friday, Mashaal rejected any discussion about the militant group's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, dealing a setback to Moscow's efforts to persuade it to soften its stance."The issue of recognition (of Israel) is a decided issue," Mashaal said after arriving in Moscow. "We don't intend to recognize Israel."
This isn't Bush-41 saying "Read my lips: no new taxes" folks. These are cold-blooded killers looking to kill Jews and destroy Israel, and they've made it perfectly clear that they have no intention on changing.
For those of you who think that Hamas will one day recognize Israel, I have a few questions for you:
Are you deaf? Are you stupid? Are you insane?
Or are you all three at once?
It looks like I may have been wrong about Abbas returning the $50 million:
State won't see a dime of it because it's already spent and gone.
- It's already in various Fateh officials' Swiss bank accounts, just waiting for their owners to flee the angry mobs when they realize how much has been stolen over the years.
- All those flags and election posters? Take a wild guess who picked up the tab.
- It's already in the tills of various upscale Paris department stores, the accounts held by Zarwa Arafat's private school, and in the balance sheet of her mother Suha's lovenest she shares with Pierre Rizk.
- Salam Fayyad already tapped it to pay the "security forces" salaries before resigning as "trusted" paymaster.
- It's been handed off to Al-Aqsa, Tanzim, and Fateh Hawks commanders with the various staged takeover of Fateh and PA offices in the past two months.
If McClellan and Condi actually believe that any of it's coming back, then I have a simple challenge to both of them: announce that your salaries, benefits, bonuses, and expenses will be withdrawn from the funds you collect back from the Palestinian Authority.
If any of it comes back, they get paid. If none of it comes back, they eat it. Big time.
From today's headlines:
Palestinian leaders have returned most of the money the United States donated directly to the government and will send back the rest before the militant Hamas organization takes over, a State Department official said Thursday.The Bush administration said it serves the U.S. national interest to continue some funding for the Palestinian people despite the likelihood that their government will be led by an Islamic movement that refuses to accept Israel's right to exist.
The current secular Palestinian government turned over more than $30 million on Wednesday, most of it money the Bush administration had approved last year for development projects in the Gaza Strip, State Department Assistant Secretary David Welch told Congress.
Maybe I'm not wrong after all. Abbas is $20 million short, which means that all of the money wasn't kept earmarked for the humanitarian projects they'd intended it. Otherwise, they'd either have finished the projects or they'd have not spent the money on the projects yet.
It's very likely that they spent it on the usual guns-and-bribes budget, and now they're scraping the root-cellar for whatever other cash they have on hand for sending back enough cash to keep Bush from wising up any. So, $30 million goes back, and Abbas is just waiting for EU's, Iran's, Saudi Arabia's, and Egypt's promised checks to clear before passing the money back to the Americans. Just another case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, folks.
And what will happen to that fifty million dollars returned to Washington? Why, the Americans will just shove the money back to groups like the UNRWA or UNESCO to fund their bloated bureaucracy which eventually ends up in the hands of the same terrorists, killers, thieves, and thugs.
Remember the trickle-down economy? Well, in the end, it's Jewish blood that ends up being spilled, and it's being spilled in a lot more than a trickle.
Quit the shell game, Washington. Cut off all of the funds.
I have had a miserable time of trying to come up with daily themes and inspiration for 100 word stories since the end of Les Nessman, not that the gang of Iron Writers there was 100% on the ball when it came to having themes ready each morning, mind you.
But still, it was something, and with the whole span of reality and unreality to explore, I find myself without an anchor and utterly adrift in a vacuum.
Thank goodness for the Khyber Pass restaurant on Kirby and Richmond. I pass by it twice a day, whether I take the 9 both ways or the 9 in and then the 25 home.
The sign always has something new and odd on it. Today's wisdom had to do with not taking attitude from a fish.
So when I finally record my story tonight, it will be able taking attitude from a fish. Or just a fish.
If METRO has its way, they will run rail down Richmond and rip up the signs and trees close to the curb.
Including Khyber Pass's sign.
METRO fucks me every weekday with the unreliability of the commute to and from work. Do they really have to rob me of my newfound inspiration?
Bastards.
Ted Rall writes:
Who Will Let Me Draw The World's Most Offensive Cartoon?Not most of my clients, as I've found out by asking. I want to draw a cartoon that offends everybody on every level, but I can't find a single newspaper or magazine willing to even entertain the idea, much less run the actual final art. And they call this America.
You're free to draw anything you want to, Ted. If anyone can draw the World's Most Offensive Cartoon, you, Tom Toles, and Aaron Macgruder come to mind first. Whether or not it will be published or you'll get paid for it is another matter.
When I last checked the First Amendment, there wasn't anything about a subsidy or guarantee of income for expressing your right to Free Speech or a Free Press.
Of course, who am I to say such things, having yanked Asked The Prophet because it generated lots of catcam-crippling traffic but zero revenue.
It's a beautiful day out today.
"Party Sunny, 78 degrees" says the weather applet in FireFox.
Every time I've gone outside, I haven't wanted to go back inside.
The only sad thing about this weather is that my leather jacket is going back in the closet.
Until it gets cold again, of course.
The Sony camera does not want to directly FTP from itself for some reason. What a piece of junk.
Anyway, I think I've got the Sony fixed once and for all. I've got it running wirelessly again and I'm telling the capture software that it's an M3W instead of an M1W.
It seems to be happier with the preview image URL of the M3W for some reason.
We'll get lots of green tissue over the weekend to get the cats in the mood for a certain upcoming holiday.
There have been 39 submissions from 35 different catbloggers to the Carnival of the Cats so far.
If it gets to 99, I may just count my own submission from IFOC as the hundredth.
I know we can make it, folks. Spread the word.