I Earned It, It's Mine

Image: Instapundit

Elizabeth Warren is apparently quite a fool. Unfortunately for our nation, there are many like-minded fools out there, including crazy-eyed Lucy Madison who manages to turn fascist ranting into a campaign-trail positive trait insider her twisted "reporter" head.

The answer to those who think they know better than you what to do with your money is: Get your filthy hands off my life! I refer those of you unfamiliar with the concept of personal property to this excellent essay on the topic.

Bag Mah Groceries, Biches!

I have never, ever, not once ever used a self-checkout stand at any store. Not at the grocery, not at the mega-lo-mart, nowhere. If I want to check out my own stuff I'll go to nowhere, because I don't want to check out my own stuff. Part of the cost of doing business as a retailer is hiring a minimum wage monkey to work the cash register and ring up your customers' purchases, but (and here's the killer for me):

Part of buying a bunch of stuff, as a customer, is the convenience of having somebody else put that stuff in a conveniently-transportable situation. If I buy online, the retailer ships straight to my door. If I buy a bunch of jars of baby food, the retailer [deleted] better put that [deleted] in a bag for me. And if they don't tie the handles of the bag together so the jars don't fall out if the bag tips over, they fail at retailing.

Self-checkout aisles suck the soul out of the shopping experience. Therefore, I am glad that stores are abandoning their use.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Bad Day, Worse Day

Bad day: blinded by oncoming headlights, you jam on the brakes
Worse day: the brakes don't keep you from flying 200ft. down a ravine
Significantly better day: your grown-ass children do the job the Police won't do, and find you . . . after almost a WEEK of eating bugs to survive.

Worst day: This poor guy's car was found RIGHT next to the car driven by another missing person: a DEAD old guy.

He used the decomposing dead guy's glasses to see while trying to stay alive by eating ants and drinking creek water with various broken bones. Still, all's well that ends well.

********

In Austin, the streets make no sense but are survivable (survivable AFTER they lengthened the blending lanes on IH-35 onramps, that is). Maybe, if you have two deadly careering-off-the-edge-of-the-cliff single car accidents in a week in the perzact same spot, it is time to send a traffic engineer out to the stretch of California highway? Just a crazy idea I had.

Never Believe Until Official Denials Start Coming

I hoped not to have this news to report, but here it is. Michael Shedlock says that, in general, you may go ahead and believe something is certain to happen when the Official Denials start coming fast and furious through the mainstream press. I heard it a couple of days ago when somebody made up a soundbyte compilation of Chris Christie denying any intention to run for President, even saying he would rather kill himself. I was thinking that was a step too far into improbability when I heard he would be giving a speech at the Reagan Library.

Surprising no-one, he has changed his mind and is now considering a run at the Presidency. This is the last thing we need. The Press will try to foist him off on us, but he is ANOTHER totally unknown quantity. He has done good things for just over a year for New Jersey's budget, and that is all he has done.

Herman Cain. Vote for Herman Cain in your primary elections! Christie over Obama, I am pretty sure, but Cain over Christie any day of the week!

JW Webster Saves Bacon, Amazes

My Darling Wife reported our clothes washing machine inoperable. The problem was traced to the lid switch being flaky. I googled up this page written by JW Webster. It has a video showing how to replace a lid switch.

I was surprised that the control panel flips up and out of the way. My mind was slightly blown when the whole frikken outsides of the machine came off in one piece.

Anyway, +1 for this cat and thanks Jesus for the Internet.

"I Cannot"

A man is to be killed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For his belief in Jesus Christ.

The United States' department of State has no comment.

I speak with Speaker Boehner in condemning Iran for even HAVING this law.

Look out when the last judgment comes around.

Do not hold your breath waiting for this story on the news tonight.

Silly Goose Stepper You Don't Suspend Elections!

. . . all the really hip tyrants know you rig elections.

North Carolina's (hopefully outgoing) Governess Purdue said she would like to see Congressional elections suspended so our Elected Heroes could get on with fixing the country instead of fighting during election seasons.

She forgets, perhaps, that the Congress has been totally stalled-out since the current crop of politicrats was sworn in twoanahaff years ago, and they are so deeply divided they couldn't fix their way out of a wet paper sack. Also, our country started with a war over taxation without representation and we have WAY more guns now than we did back then.

Great job, North Carolina, you elected a fool.

Madness at Work!

This is the transcript of a 10-second (or less) conversation between PI and me from earlier today:

PI: (walks up the room as I am making a neat stack of pink padding stuff from a pile of robots)
DK: Hey PI, I wonder if you might be interested in...(interrupted)
PI: Common courtesy, Dave.
DK:...some of this pink stuff to pad your...(still speaking, interrupted again)
PI: Common courtesy.
DK:...delicate stuff
PI: (walking into the next room with hands out to the sides, palms up)
PI: And then he pretends he doesn't know what I mean.

. . . except that I wasn't pretending. I asked LB if it was a bad day for talking to PI, or if we had moved something of his without letting him know, or what was the deal with PI today. LB had no clue, either.

My Wife is Good Lookin.

I just looked over at her, passed out asleep after a day's hard work tending the Zoo. She's purdy. I'm a lucky man.

That is all.

Not Desperate At ALL!

The President has floated a new weather balloon. Feel free to mock both it and him.

Herman Cain has proposed his 9/9/9 plan for simplifying the tax code. The President did not mention it during his Jobs Speech before the joint session of Congress, but surely he must have been working on it already. Surely the smartest guy in the room wouldn't make such an obvious desperation move as proposing a 19/19/19 plan AFTER polls showed Cain gaining ground with his 9/9/9 plan, right? I mean, this is certainly a sign of bold leadership from President Obama, right? Right?

*ahem*

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Is my google-fu weak or has this story been spiked already? I can't find it online and they were talking about it on the radio this morning. Or am I in some crazy freak-out time warp? Did this happen next week?

I Hope

That this man may win gives me hope. If Herman Cain does (and recent history says he will) get the Republican nomination, I think he can make it to the Office. The nation will be in the very best of hands, then.

It is not because he is black (WAY blackerer than President Obama)
It is not because he is a male
It is not because he has an R in the parenthesis
It is because he knows, and is not afraid to speak, the truth. Would that more men were willing to call a spade a spade like Cain.

This election will tell us very much about the future of our nation. "May your chains rest lightly" on your countrymen . . . may not come just yet. It seems that the Good People have let slip their (0ur) responsibility to care for our State. We may have woken up in time. Ask me again in three years.

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P.S. if the tea partiers are racist, how do you explain Cain?

New Car for my Birthday!

. . . the hard way.

Almost. We were cruising along at 50MPH on a three lane-median-three lane surface street headed home from Church. We were in the #2 lane, heading North. A green-light was up ahead at the intersection with a four lane street crossing our six lane street. The people on our right (pointed West) sucked at driving. There were actually TWO cars involved in this dumbassery today. The one was following the other, and they wanted to be going North for two blocks, then make a Left turn (West again). This means they needed to pop onto our road.

The law and good sense and courtesy all say: turn into the right lane from the right lane. This means their #2 lane would merge into our #3 lane when traffic was clear. So what did they do? They went from their #2 right lane to our #2 MIDDLE lane when traffic was coming at 50MPH! Fortunately, I saw this coming with enough time to spare that I was already saying badwords under my breath at them by the time my Darling Wife realized what was going on. Later, she told me she saw that they were totally oblivious to our presence until we swerved around them.

Have you ever seen bats emerging by their ten-thousands from a cave and a person is standing in the mouth of the cave? The bats flow around the person like water, and close ranks again on the other side of the person. That's what I did to this car. The first car had already turned into our lane and the second car was in the middle of the intersection (obviously?) in the middle of a low-speed turning maneuver. I had time to make sure the #1 lane was clear and swerved as we entered the intersection, to go around these jerks, then back around into our #2 lane as we passed them. The first car had, by this time, moved to the #3 lane. Why they did not just go there in the first place is beyond me.

The first car, around which my instincts told me I would have to swerve was, amusingly, a new Nissan Juke.

Pilot trainees have to put in so many hours behind a stick with an instructor present, before they go off on their own into the wild blue yonder. Somebody explain to me why, if we are going to require mandatory licensing of drivers to use the public roadways, we don't also have mandatory TRAINING of drivers?

YES! Time to Donate to the Cain Campaign!

In Ohio, they bus in people to vote in the straw poll. In Florida, the people voting in the straw poll are the people who will be nominating the candidate for Florida's Republican party. Herman Cain didn't do so hot in the Ohio poll.

Herman Cain DOMINATED the Florida straw poll. He got more than double the number of votes cast for Pretty Boy Perry or perpetually-losing candidate Romney.

Good.

Vote for Hermain Cain. Better yet, donate to the Cain campaign!

No Soviet Style Government Here! Here We Have Democracy!

Raise your hand if you don't think Vladimir will be re-elected to the Presidency of Russia.
.
.
.
okay, except for that one guy who raised his hand, was dragged out and shot by the secret police, does anyone else think Comrade Putin will lose the upcoming election? No? Nobody?

*ahem*

Schadenfreude

The man I disaffectionately call Crazy New Daddy may finally get his due. After ruining dozens of lives and several families including my own, he is finally facing a murder charge for what he did when he was less adept at hiding his insanity.

Good. I hope he gets to ride the lightning.

Should Have Kicked That Dog

I think I sprained my knee when I pulled the kick instead of kicking that dog's brains out the other day. I'd rather somebody have a sprained knee than they kick my dog's head in, and the golden rule is in full effect here . . . but . . . my knee hurts.

Double-Dip: Been Waiting For You! Where You Been, Buddy?!

The double-dip is upon us. When Mish calls the world economy in recession, you can be pretty sure it's there. So there it is.

Almost a Really Bad Day, Dog!

We went to a park today to let the Zoo run around with the Zoo from another friend-family we know. This park is actually pretty big and a (now dry) creek runs through the middle. We had crossed the creek and I eventually went back to Bad Robot to change the soaked diaper on #4. I jogged with him across the field until we got to the creek, and he loved it because he was bouncing and going fast. I jogged back across the same field on the way back, and he loved it again. There is a dog park associated with the people park, and sumdood had his dogs off-leash where we were jogging through the field. One of them thought I was suspicious but kept his distance as I ran up. Then all of a sudden I was running away, and looked tasty. He gave chase, and his little doggy buddy saw this and ran up also. Barking.

This, while I'm loping with a 1 year-old in arms. Spidey senses on full alert, I kept jogging. Sumdood's dogs are badly enough trained they wouldn't come on command, but kept chasing me instead. One of them, some sort of knee-high Terrier thing, decided to get close enough for tasting.

Hold on there.

You see, I have a special creed when it comes to dogs: If I'm close enough to taste, you are close enough to kick the shit out of.

But his heart wasn't really in it. One glimpse of my double-wide coming right at his snout and he stopped short. My lightning-fast reflex speed kicked in and I stopped short also. No kicking of dog head this afternoon, which was VERY fortunate for the brave hunter chasing me. I was still in my grubbies from work, to include heavy steel-toed boots. That dog would have been well and truly in the hurt locker when the kick landed, and then (as I was observing rule 2) if necessary it would have been stabbed/slashed as required by the little stinger that lives in my pocket. But hey, no harm no foul, and the little dog pack kept its distance until they lost interest in chasing the mailman.

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Which of course reminds me of this one time in Spain when I was out for a walk with my Darling Wife. The sidewalk was nice and broad, a couple of meters wide, opening up to maybe 10 meters. It was a pavilion almost. Some Spani was out walking his dog, also a rat terrier thing, also off-leash. Whatever, it was a nice day, let the man walk his dog right? Except that his dog got one look at me and it was instant hatred. It ran up on me from like 30 feet away and grabbed the bottom of my pants (about the height of its whithers). I punted that little basterd right across the sidewalk and we kept walking on our merry way. The dog decided I was no longer tasty-looking. Later, my Darling told me that the Spanish dude thought the whole thing was pretty funny, right up until I kicked his dog. Haha.

Funny Thing About "Free"

Texas just passed HB1481 (the respectful language act) into law. This was promoted as a feel-good measure so we don't hurt the feelings of retards. Representative Vicki Truitt has demonstrated herself to be somewhat lacking in mental capacity because of one sentence:

"It costs nothing to adopt verbiage in state statutes to reflect the fact that we recognize individuals and their uniqueness, without using offensive terms to categorize and label these good Texans."

"It costs nothing"

Hold on there.

• So the staffers wrote the bill on their personal time, off the clock, pro bono publico?
• The vote to pass the bill was held on members' personal time, not during a regular legislative session?
• The governor, he signed it for free also? We didn't pay him for those five minutes?
• And the memoranda that will be distributed to all the State employees, those are typed and distributed free of charge?
• When the employees are reading said memos, they will surely be off the clock?

The first part of the bill is innocuous enough. Going forward, we won't call frikken retards retards any more in Texas law. Fine, sure, whatever. Pat yourselves on the back right?

Then the Health & Human Services Commission is ordered to do a review to help with statutory revisions. This I suppose will also cost the taxpayer nothing? Then there will be a recommendation which will, again, be prepared, typed, disseminated, read, and commented-upon while people are NOT on the clock in their State offices?

The commissioners are going to "ensure" that the appropriate, nonbutthurting language is used. You know how that's done? Proposals, proposals of rulemaking, comment periods, revisals of proposed rules, preparation, writing, publishing, reading, and training on proper implementation of the rules. All this is, according to Rep. Truitt, "free."

Also free: webhosting! The State of Texas has Hosting Faries who pay to host the text of stupid laws like this on the Internet, and IT Faries maintain the servers donated by Server Fairy. You see what you did there? You cost the State money by clicking that link. NOT free. Duh?

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All of this is stupid anyway. Retarded is a word and everyone who speaks English knows exactly what it means. It is based on the word Retard, which is a VERB, not a noun. You don't base STATE LAW on the misuse of the English language, you train your children in school how properly to treat the language!

They didn't run a survey on retarded persons with intellectual disability to see if "the R word" hurts their feelings or not. This new law is only to protect the sensibilities of people who get offended on the behalf of other people who don't get offended because they're not smart P.C. enough.

And here's the dirty little secret: they get offended when you say retard, because they look down on the retards. The tools whose idea this law was, disrespect retarded persons 'way down deep in their own hearts, and they want to legislate their wicked lack of compassion away from themselves.

Really? Disclaimer Not Amusing.

The commercial on the radio sounded like this stuff is NoDoz on steroids. Get sleepy on your shift? Take NuVigil! Then at the end came the disclaimers, including:

"Nuvigil is not for chidren."

Huh, no [deleted]? Well that's a bummer then. Oh well. At least we can still give the boys psychotropic drugs, anyway. You know what children need for sleepiness? Frikken SLEEP, that's what. If a parent, doctor, teacher, or anyone thinks a kid needs drugs to keep them awake and it's a child with the schedule modern children are subjected to, they need . . . well I won't say what they need but you can guess what I'm thinking.

Do Like (surprisingly): Ford Fiesta!

I saw an attractive rear-end as I was driving down the street the other day. I got closer . . . blue oval?! FIESTA?!


image: Edmunds

You've come a long way, baby!


image: wikipedia

I haven't driven a Ford lately. But the next car I buy is very, very likely to be a Ford. Government Motors and their ilk can take a long drive off a short pier.

Government School: Not About The School Part

Because mandatory government-provided education camps for young people is all about teaching the young people, the UNION teachers in Tacoma, Washington went on strike. They have left 28,000+ students out of class for over a week now, because they don't want merit-based staffing policies, and do want smaller class sizes that the schools can't afford.

The UNION is striking even though a judge has declared the strike illegal and ordered the teachers back to work. Because it's all about the children UNION.

Stopped Clock Gets It Right.

In a move that may have been an extremely good idea for (debatably) reasons other than he may think, President Obama has blocked official UN recognition of the Palestinian state (for now). President VFD says: Here's the deal: you get your buddies to stop murdering the ever-hated jooooos and revise your national charter so it doesn't say Israel has no right to exist, THEN we can talk about statehood. Until then you're a bunch of Goblins and/or political footballs.

I Was Right.

Company Owner #2 is a photography buff. I told him about this lens and he said he wouldn't get it unless he could pay what amounts to less than half price. I scoffed. A couple of days ago, he came up with one new-in-box for . . . Just over half price. I think it may be a test to see if He wants one himself.

It is a beautiful thing. My tripod has been gathering dust and my slow-shutter jiu-jitsu skilz are about to get rusty. If you don't have a fast prime, you should get one, ESPECIALLY if you shoot in dim light.

Just Call Us Patches

I have two band-aided fingers. My Darling Wife remembers now that her hand hurts because she smashed her arm into a wall (AFTER a 2-hour doctor visit with x-rays) and she took the splint off her hand. #1 has a couple of fingers buddy-taped together because she jammed her finger on the monkey bars. #2 has a big green toe wrapping because he dragged his (bare) toe on the sidewalk bad enough to rip the skin down in a 1/8" wide strip along the width of the nail on his great toe. #3 has a finger wrapped up because he wanted a "banday" when he saw #1 getting one.

The clinic people were favorably impressed with the splint I made up for my Darling Wife's hand, causing me unreasonably excessive pride in my work. They also said not to splint it, because it puts pressure in the wrong spot for her not-broken bones. Upside: no broken bones.

#1 said her finger was getting numb an hour or less after I heard her finger was hurting and swollen, then inspected and taped it up. I checked the tips poking out of the tape: reperfusion normal. Color good. I asked what she meant by numb . . . the pain was going away, she said. I reminded her that was the point of the tape.

#2 made a huge fuss about dunking his toe in hydrogen peroxide for fear of the pain it would cause him. I finally got him to do it, and set him to count 200 Mississippies. By 89 he was getting bored and by 180 it was clear his toe no longer hurt. Bonus points on this adventure, the peroxide served its purpose. There were several grains of dirt in the bottom of the bath, formerly embedded in his skin and debrided by the bubbly bath.

Wagging Finger Too Hard at Naughty Children Leads To . . .

Please pray for my Darling Wife. She has finally (after four days) reported discomfort and minor swelling in her left hand. It looks to me like an uncomplicated shaft or neck fracture of the left 2nd metacarpal; THEN she said her hand sometimes hurts there on and off for YEARS. It could be "just another" bruising event. She's tender and delicate, you see, and when she smashes things with herself, she bruises easily*.

So I bound her up like the Penguin from the Batman comics and she took a gram of tylenol and went to bed. Tomorrow I'll have another look at her and she may be on her way to the local urgent care people. God willing, she'll be much better after a night's rest and just have a good bruise there. But I thought I felt some displacement along the shaft but it may just have been a ligament.



*She was trying to get ready for bed and kicked a drawer in the chest of drawers by accident. Jokes about a simultaneous broken toe and a broken hand were followed up by jokes about OJ Simpson's unfortunate wheelchair accident in the Naked Gun movie

Sunday Drivers

I saw enough moving violations and violations of good driving protocols to fill up a whole shift and go into overtime writing reports . . . and that was just on the way to Church and back. Who knows, maybe people are just being cautious because of the wet weather? You know, with high humidity & some clouds, you could go skidding off the road with no notice at all! Rain, of course, has no effect on braking ability so just drive normally.

Maybe the people are still sleepy, having just woken up from their naps in the pews?

Time To Go Over Your Head, Then?

Our water is full of bubbles and tastes and smells bad. Our neighbors report the same. I pay too much for it to have bad water at the tap. Last week I called, yesterday I called, and the next call is going to be the last call before I go full retard and start contacting regulatory agencies.

Totally unsat.

Pissing Outside

It's good to be a man.

I Don't Care If This Isn't Florida

My Darling Wife would probably just answer truthfully. I would almost certainly look at my kids' doctor like she had just sprouted a third, flaming eye right there in front of me. Then I would decline to answer the question and wonder aloud if it were a Boundary Violation.

In the USA (as I understand it) your doctor is supposed to ask if you all keep guns in the house and counsel you on their safe storage. In Florida it is temporarily illegal to ask, says a judge. In Texas it's like asking if the sky is blue, or water is wet. I personally know maybe two families (of hundreds) without a gun in the house. My PREACHER has more guns than he can hold in both arms all at once.

Besides which, if my kid has a cold, a gun in the house is beside the point. Break in when we are home and we'll show you just where we keep the guns. Hint: this scenario ends badly for home invaders.

Quote of the Day 09/14/2011

“Liberal Bloggers React To New York Defeat By Pushing Rumor That Sarah Palin Slept With A Guy And Did Coke. Which is hilarious because they immediately dismissed the exact same rumor about Obama in 2008.”

Quote of the day blatantly stolen (fair use! fair use!) from the Instapundit link to the actual story.

How To Lose Your Cool And Have It Go Un-Noticed

Today on the way home we needed to stop at the grocery store. I jammed the brakes hard enough to lock up the front tires and turned into the parking lot all of a sudden-like, and nobody was the wiser. But I'll let you in on a secret (just don't tell anyone). I told my Darling Wife this after my shopping was done, and she laughed her pretty head off (with me, not at me, thank you). She was in a great mood and had no idea she was pushing my button.

We were late getting home. Late getting home means late supper means late Bedtime Business which means late bed time for the Zoo. The Zoo by golly WILL wake up at The Crack of Dawn, regardless of how much sleep they got that night. If they go to bed late, they will be grumpy. Grumpy children means grumpy mommy means stress you can cut with a frikken knife already, ALL day long. This is the Iron Rule of Children Who Go To Bed Late, in case it sounds familiar.

So I wanted to go home ASAP. Problem: nothing to eat at the house* and it's supper time. Solution: stop at the store. We need eggs, bread, and milk**. Fine. I reluctantly made the turn away from the home stretch toward the store. My mind was set: I'll go in, speed walk to the three things I'm buying, pay and leave. Then she starts talking about needing baby food. I say no to baby food. She says she'll be coming inside the store in a tone that I recognized very well: she was about to dig in her heels just for fun and launch an argument*** with me, about nothing, in front of the children, while I was driving at high speed, at night, on a dimly-lit urban street . . . and I felt the top of my head getting ready to blow right off as I sat there behind the wheel. I didn't want to be freaking out driving down the road, so I JAMMED the brake pedal to the floor and headed for the shoulder of the roadway as I said "Don't argue with me, please!"

The world will never know what would have happened, what sort of epic freak-out might have scarred the children's psyches for life and sent my Darling Wife running in tears . . . thank God the first (of FOUR) entrances to the parking lot happened to be approximately exactly where Bad Robot was about to stop. My brain jumped tracks and my Awesome Driver Skilz Yo! kicked in on autopilot, and I turned in to the parking lot. By the time we got over the first (tall, scrapes the car at 14MPH) parking lot speed bump I was pretty much over it, and everybody was all smiles again.

Normally I am cool as a cucumber on the outside. This is about as big a hissy fit as I have thrown in the last 12 years or so. It is, however, very, VERY good for me that you people don't hear what goes on behind the mask.

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* I was right. There was a full meal worth of what I was thinking of preparing, but I went with her word when she said there wasn't enough left. Oopsy! LOL oh well that's okay dear!

** I had opened the last gallon of milk myself this morning. There was plenty of milk. I forgot.

*** By argument, I don't mean the kind where people get arrested and/or end up bloody. I mean the kind where she feels like wheedling a little bit to see if I will let her have her way. These are either only-mildly irritating or else with smiles all around, especially when I realize she is poking at me, and I call her on it, and she laughs and (as often as not) she gets chased, tickled, and released - still laughing.

Drug Smuggling Pro Tip: Use Your Turn Signals

If you:

• Have no license to drive on public roadways
• Have no insurance on your car and
• Have $10,000,000 worth of coke in the trunk

You might want to avoid making illegal lane changes, mmkay?

Where's That Tiny Violin?

There is a new census bureau report saying more people than EVAR are below the poverty line in America. Well boo-frikken-hoo.

You know what? The poverty line is TOTALLY ARBITRARY. If you move the line to $2000 annual income = poverty, there will be fewer people "in poverty." If you move the line to $2,000,000 income = poverty, there will be 300,000,000 people "in poverty" so . . .

shaddap!

The poor, poor, pitiful poor people in America are not poor. Get that through your head, and then roll your eyes next time you hear this line about the children starving and people living in squalor during this election season.

Now, if you want to talk about living in squalor, let's have a trip over to Kenya and have a look at how the President of the United States' BROTHER is living . . .

If Only It Worked for FLYING Rats

I found this fabulous device at Bill's Idle Mind after a bit of wandering around the internet. A squirrel or rat crawls into a pneumatic rat launching gun and automatically fires itself out the barrel. Optionally into a brick wall or some similarly lethal target.

Then, if you set it up properly, it resets and waits for the next one.

This is a beautiful solution (to an engineer) to a very ugly problem.

Frikken Cars EVERYwhere

My boys are boys. As such, they frikken love their little toy cars. I just realized as I look around I see a full dozen cars, mostly hot-wheels size, all over the place. On the floor. On my desk. UNDER the entertainment center. In a box of baby toys (#4 likes cars too!). On top of a pile of books. On the coffee table. And that's just the living room. There are also a half-dozen train cars scattered about.

Life: enjoy it. If this means toys are scattered about when you are sent to bed, so be it.

Which Bible? King James.

IF you believe the King James Bible is the one to use,
IF you want to know why you should use it,
IF you want to know more reasons than you already do WHY you should use it

THEN you should read The Answer Book.

+bonus, it's free to read online!

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IF you don't think the KJV/KJB/Authorized Version is the Bible you should use, a) you are mistaken and b) this book is not aimed at you but you might learn something from it, anyway.

Dem Translations Is De DEBIL!!!!!1!

Note the time stamp on this post. I couldn't sleep and fired up the computer, checked my messages, looked at car stuff, and then had a theological question come to mind. I am reminded the ugly way that -for English-speaking people- the King James version not being used is a good indicator* to be wary of what you are reading. I find that the newer and "easier to understand" the version someone uses in their study, the worse they will go off-track when they start drawing conclusions from "the Bible."

I have owned, read, and studied from MANY English translations of the Bible. This comes not only from the opinions of those whose judgement I trust, but also from my personal experience: If you are capable of discerning spiritual things and learning a couple of dozen archaic terms (out of a couple THOUSAND pages) then you should be reading the King James Bible. It expresses most clearly and (usually by FAR) most elegantly the intention you find if you dig through to the underlying Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic.

********

*Another good indication is that people make unnecessary use of four-dollar words. I find that excessive use of big words sometimes comes hand-in-hand with lack of clarity. I kin unnerstand all 'em big woards purty good-like and I can think straight. If you can't write in a way that is accessible to an 8 year-old, it is just possible you don't really understand your subject.

It is not necessarily bad to use endnotes, as should be obvious. Endnotes can dramatically improve the flow of a work, and give enhanced knowledge for the curious. The worst offender used end notes like they were giving a well-prepared dose of wisdom. Well, some of us check the endnotes as we read through, instead of waiting until we're done, just to be sure . . .

...the worst offender I found this morning both used big words and gave phoenetic spellings of "the original" words. I smelled a rat at first when they started out with a 'contemporary' "translation" of the Bible. I read with my KJV open, to compare - and sure enough they were getting it wrong. I carried on reading, accepting nothing but taking it all "with a grain of salt" to see where they were going with the article. I stopped reading and started writing when I was checking their references against the original (in this case Hebrew) text and the word they called out was NOT EVEN IN THE TEXT!.
********

Moral: use known-good primary sources, and check the references when you read an article. They might just be making it up!

Speaking Monster Helmet: Logical Next Step

Now that flat, light, bright, colored lighting technology is here, there has been an evolutionary step taken: motorcycle helmets that light up and can display images. It is a boringly obvious leap to put a white front, red rear, and amber turn lamps on the helmet, synchronized with the bike's lights. Somewhat less obvious ideas:

• Make the lighting removable, like a skin, so when you crash a helmet you don't lose the lights
• Police helmets light up in police light colors, and Code 3 involves a VERY bright helmet
• The statist would like to have registration information legislated onto the helmet, maybe just whenever Police are nearby
• The Capitalist puts scrolling billboards and charges a fee
• But the cool part is when the skull on your helmet tracks passing cars and freaks out kids in the back seat
• Or your flames blow back in the wind and point up at a stop
• Or your monster face talks when you speak

This has some serious cool potential. Hat tip: slashdot

Yahoo! News . . . Actually Linking NEWS Stories?!

Someone told him it was hurting him in the polls not to: T+1 Week, President Obama signs disaster declaration

Those "oopsy" coins your rare coin dealer sold you were stolen. By a mint employee. $2,400,000 worth.

I hate mandatory DNA sampling of prisoners, but it's a little hard to argue against results like life in prison for a gang-rapist convicted by said sampling.

Philipinne fishing community plans to poison 20-foot crocodile to protect fishermen. Town captures it and puts it in a zoo. PETA demands its release.

YOU Killed A Man

An informant was kicked out of the CIA's pool of informants for being a murderer. This means the FBI would NEVER hire the informant if they played by their own rule book. They hired him. The FBI gave him your tax dollars to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels. Three of those guns turned up at the scene of the murder of Agent Terry. One of those guns was more easily traced to this informant.

One of those guns disappeared. Guess which? To cover the tails of the people responsible for hiring this unsuitable informant, the cause of justice has been perverted by persons unknown.

Someone must go to prison, or there is no law at all in the United States of America. Possibly several someones must do very many years in prison for multiple felonies.

The cover up: blown wide open.

********
I just wrote my national Elected Heroes about this. Will you?

Seat Belts: Not for Armpit Hair Protection!

At the gas station today I saw something I almost couldn't believe. In 2011, with the Science well and truly In, I saw a (fat, dyed-blonde) woman wearing her seat belt under her arm. People, if God had intended for seat belts to be worn under your arms, he wouldn't have put the seatbelt upper anchor point above your shoulders. Let me be quite clear about this:

If you wear your seat belt under your arm,

You
Are
An
IDIOT

The green line is where your head stops if you are wearing your seat belt properly. The yellow line, hopefully, is not on the far side of a seat back, dash board or windshield.



If you put the seat belt under your arm, instead of a sore shoulder you are asking for broken ribs and perforated internal organs. You are also in line for head and spine injuries, including FATAL injuries, that would have been prevented by proper wearing of a seat belt.

If your seat belt does not fit, adjust it until it does. If your child's seat belt does not fit, you DESERVE to lose money when you get ticketed, and you can count yourself lucky to pay the fine. If you are not lucky, your child may be a case study or even just a statistic.

Buckle up.

You Should Do Puzzles With Your Wife

My Darling Wife and I spent some time working on a 1,000 piece puzzle together, talking.

Talking is good for married people to do.

In related news, a 1,000 piece puzzle is impossible for parents of small children to complete at a sitting. We have a felt rug that rolls up around an inflated tube, which holds the pieces in place until we can get back to it. Spiffy. Aaaaand Amazon to the rescue: Buy a puzzle keeper and get to know your spouse a little better.

Madness at Work!

After work special edition!

A bunch of us left work at the same time and were chitting some chats as we left the building; we hung out on the deck to keep talking after we locked ourselves out for the day. We were shooting the breeze about nothing much in particular when the county Sheriff showed up. There were five people standing idle on the deck looking generally unsuspicious, and the COP asked if we were with the company we work for. We answered in the affirmative as a patrol unit from the local City Police Department rolled up. We directed them in to the front door (vs. our locked side door) to talk to the company owners and somebody called the owners to give a heads-up. We guessed that an out-building's alarm might have gone off.

The two policemen's curiosity satisfied, they came back outside and stood around shooting their own breezes for a few minutes before they had to get in their cars and fill out false alarm-type reports. And ANOTHER Sheriff car rolled up!

Various jokes were made and everyone waved. I said "Hai everybody!" and "Let's see if we can't get a perfect ratio here!" and everyone laughed. LB said when he was a Detroit policeman, they would get alarm calls too, but when they showed up there would be

• Crowbar
• Open door
• Crackhead inside

But then, Detroit is a little rougher neighborhood than just-this-side-of-BFE, Texas, where we work.

The Pharisee Stood and Prayed Thus With Himself

My eyes burn and my head hurts. Also my nose hurts when I breathe. Therefore I quote a passage from the Bible:

"God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are"

Because these symptoms come from breathing the smoke from fires that burned down 800+ houses, a few miles down the highway from my The City. I rejoice at still being encumbered with my trifling "stuff" and pray I don't end up like those cats over in Bastrop.

*******
(for those who didn't get the reference)

Greece: Only 12% To Go!

Greek 1-year sovereign bonds topped 88% rate of return today. Only 12% left until you can DOUBLE your money in ONE YEAR!!!1!

I wonder why I haven't heard any infommercials about how easy this is. Just hold an investment of $10,000 for a year and it becomes $18,848! It's a no-lose proposition! Unless, you know, Greece goes into default but when does THAT ever happen? What could possibly go wrong?

My Children: Beating Your Children at Life, T-15 Years . . .

If my children spend longer than 1/2 an hour doing something in front of a video screen, it's because they went over time. My son was helping me hold wires to solder yesterday, working on some car-launching Hot Wheels thing wherewasitwheIwasakid he has. Even my daughter likes to see things taken apart and working the hand-powered drill, etc.

Because I like to tinker and am good at it, they want to be part of it. For those of you who subscribe to the "phone it in and let the school rear them" style of parenting, prepare yourselves: people like my children will be running the show, and your little snowflakes will be hating life on the bottom rung of the ladder forever . . . and it will be your fault that they can't swing a hammer.

Hat tip: Uncle

(this post was written in plain text with hand-coded HTML because I can)

Most Favored Nation Status: Bring On The Prosperity!

Well, in a way. I mean, after all it was World War II that ended the (first) Great Depression. Now we have all of China's neighbors complaining that it has its elbow on their side of the back seat.

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, China was selling arms to Qaddafi . . . while we were giving arms to Al Quaeda the "rebels" fighting Qaddafi. Raise your hhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand if this setup reminds you of something.


Hat tip: Instapundit

Thanks, Jerks.

I just posted an ad on Craigslist to tell the world we have something available. It used to be: make ad, submit, done. Last time I had to also reply to an email.

I guess the jerks with sales robots have gotten smarter. I had to

• Make ad
• Submit ad
• Answer email
• Submit phone number
• Enter secret code
• Enter Captcha code

Just to post one paragraph. Oh well.

Better Than A Trash Dump?

One can hardly expect the Right Thing to be done by New London, in light of recent history, but does anyone really think turning the woman's home into a garbage dump is better than saying "haha, woopsy!" and handing her back the deed?

Hat tip: Instapunhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdit

Police: Not The Solution To EVERY Problem.

For some things, you just go home sad and tell the children it's George Bush's fault. Take this case for instance: If your dog wraps its leash around the headrest and strangles itself to death while you eat, calling the Police is not the appropriate thing to do.

Officer Dave sez: I'm sorry your dog is dead ma'am but you're going to have to explain to the court how it's not a case of improper transport of an animal and/or animal cruelty, seeing how IT'S YOUR OWN STUPID FAULT the poor thing is dead!

Bad Week for the Boss

First Team Obama had to give ground when they had to reschedule his Big Speech next week. Then they caved again to right-wing interests by putting off implementation of the new CO2 standards.

It's funny what happens when you try to impose your whims on reality. Now President Obama's had two occasions in the same week where he was forced to back down from ideas that were ill-advised in the first place. If only he would have listened to sound council before proposing these things, he could have avoided loss of face.

Then again, before you can listen to sound advice, you have to have good advisors which he obviously does not. Oh well. It is hoped this makes a few more of his supporters stay home next Election Day.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Good

• Good: Always having a knife on your person
• Bad: Losing your knife
• Worse: At an inflatable party zone playground
• Ugly: During a child's birthday party with 30 kids running around
• Good: Having a 6th sense about your weapons
• Better: Realizing your knife is missing and telling one staff member and one friend
• Best: Finding the knife in a cranny right near where where your spidey senses first started going off

Thank God, that could have gone a lot worse. The party was good great fun, by the way. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln . . . .

War Stories

Some are better than others. You are cheating yourself if you don't read this one.

Feel free to order me a copy of the book when you're done. Hat tip: Mike

This Is My Surprised Face

Iran is developing nuclear weapons? NO! WHO would have guessed!

Bah, HUMBUG!

A fine excuse for picking a man's pocket every first Monday in September!

My Darling Wife is happy this year that I don't believe in happy communist worker day Labor Day. She is holding classes and I'll be home to tend to the younger half of the Zoo while school is ongoing. Then maybe we'll go shout our support of the workers of the world in a parade . . . or something.

Labor Day is for COMMUNISTS.

Global Climate Modles Thrown For Another Loop?

What does it do for planetary heat circulation to have a 250-mile wide river moving a million gallons per minute? How does it affect earthquakes? Well I'm guessing nobody knows, but there is one, MILES BELOW the Amazon river. Seriously.

News That Sounds Like A Joke Roundup

I shake my head and wonder when Jesus will come back. To hear stories like this makes me want to go to bed . . . or is that because it's past the witching hour? Oh well, read 'em and weep:

Illinois pays sex offenders to babysit for poor families

You can't fire an alcoholic truck driver. He's disaaaabled.

Secretary of the United States of America's Department of Labor shows solidarity with the workers of America . . . by buying a car made in Canada with Canadanadian parts.

Hat tips: Instapundit

Man dies of infection. TOOTH infection. Better pull that sumbich with some pliers!

Wikileaks takes issue with The Guardian for . . . leaking information about wikileaks

Hat tips: Fark.com

Understanding: The Refresher Course

I had

completely

forgotten that when Texas was a puppy, he stayed with us for a couple of weeks. That was a couple of years ago and we came to an understanding just between us two boys.

His family went out of town for a week, and he nipped at #3 a couple of times when #3 was messing with him. Time for some dominance training. The dog could deal with being stared down by #3, but having the boy touch his head was too much. Growling = Problem. I went to grab at the dog and he showed his teeth. BIG mistake.

Fortunately nobody had to bleed out on the carpet. He's harder to choke now and significantly trickier to get hold of but the lesson has been re-tought in a way I hope will stick for at least a day. His family will be back tomorrow. Next time (if there is a next time) this dog comes around, I'm going to make it priority #1 to make him know exactly where he stands: on the BOTTOM of the pecking order.


********
THEN I had to explain to #1 why all of a sudden her peace-loving daddy with gentle hands was visiting dramatic violence on something. She's led such a sheltered life in her formative years we're going to have to break the ugliness of the outside world to her in stages. Or we could just let the televisor do it, whatever.