MISSING BABY FOUND

Little Shannon Dedrick’s disappearance caught the world’s attention.

7 month old Shannon Dedrick

The world breathed a collective sigh of relief when, today, Shannon was found in a box under the bed of her baby sitter – who had apparently abducted the infant.

I am glad the ordeal is over for Shannon’s parents, but someone has to point out that their child is an alien.

That isn't drool.

Little Shannon is clearly a human/alien hybrid.  I am the last person on this or any world to so much as imply that there is anything wrong with that.  At one time some stygma might have attached to parents who gave birth to an alien baby, but recent high profile celebrity adoptions have removed much of that stygma.

As a consequence, caring for an alien baby has become quite fashionable.

Shannon’s parents must realize that raising a human/alien hybrid is a challenging, but ultimately rewarding endeavor.

Every child is a special gift from God.

For example, Shannon’s remarkably large head indicates that she will be telepathic.

Knows what you are thinking.

Telepathic children are unusually challenging because they know when daddy says “no” that he really means “yes” and when mommy says “just wait until your father gets home!” mommy really doesn’t mean it.

Nothing but trouble

As an alien/human hybrid, little Shannon is likely to develop the skill to levitate.

Extra care is required.

Like telepathy, the ability to levitate will be a job skill that employers will appreciate, but in the beginning, the parent of an alien/human hybrid must exercise extra care, such as making sure windows are closed at all times.

Not good.

So, we are all glad baby Shannon is back, but her parents need to pay attention to her special qualities.

 

UPDATE: THE NEXT WAR

Has anyone else noticed that the United States is actively – although quietly – preparing to support an Israeli airstrike against Iran?  The signs are unmistakable. The US and Israel are conducting joint military exercises (Operation Juniper Cobra) they both claim are routine but are unprecedented in scope and scale.

Even more telling, the Obama administration has quietly taken the preliminary steps necessary to tap into the US Strategic Petroleum reserve.

I think time has run out for Iran.

What, me worry?

 

04-11-09 UPDATE:

JERUSALEM — Israeli commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying more than 60 tons of missiles, rockets and anti-tank weapons bound for Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas.

JERUSALEM, Nov. 4 (UPI) — Hamas has smuggled scores of long-range Iranian missiles into Gaza and tested a missile that can hit Tel Aviv, a top Israeli military intelligence officer said.

HALLOWEEN AT MY PLACE

Culturally speaking, the United States has contributed two things to the world – popular barbecue and Halloween.

Why not both at the same time?

By “popular” I mean widespread.  No people on earth have popularized cooking outdoors over live fire the way we Americans have. For a more serious discussion, please to to   http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/blogs/blunt-instrument/flame-me-if-you-will-but-we-suck-at-grills/20091028-hkr7.html.

Considered good eating in Perth.

By “Halloween” I mean an unabashed annual celebration of the spooky.

Other cultures celebrate death.  They do it in China. They do it in Mexico.  But those celebrations are essentially spiritual and/or religious.  But not Halloween.  Halloween has nothing to do with the spiritual. It has nothing to do with religion.  It has everything to do with fun.

Every year on October 31st – when the wall between the worlds is thinnest and most easily crossed – kids and adults dress up in costumes and, when it get s dark, they go door to door essentially begging for candy – which they receive in large, monstrous handfuls.

This completely non religious festival is becoming part of the international scene.  American style Halloween is now celebrated all over the world.

Halloween in Costa Rica

Halloween in Singapore

My favorite expression of this spread is Sandra’s haunted balcony in Hamburg, Germany.

It makes sense that the Germans in particular would embrace Halloween.

 

Admirable Teutonic exuberance.

 

 

But I digress.  I am here to tell you – to show you – what Halloween is like here in Northern California in the small town where I live.

For me Halloween began with a knock on my door early in the morning.  My neighbor and his son came by to ask is they could install a portal into a dimension of evil in my front yard.  My lawn was destroyed when my home was remodeled, so I figured, heck, when would there be a better time to have a portal into a dimension of evil installed in my front yard?

A hole was dug.

The device was installed.

While my neighbors tinkered with the field densities between the universes, a flock of wild turkeys strolled down my street foraging and decided to spend some time on a roof at the end of the block.

It was a good omen.

I decided to carve a pumpkin, but the pumpkin bin at my local market was somewhat bare with slim pickings left.

Nevertheless, I was able to find a reasonably decent pumpkin and was able to exercise the minimal artistic talent every American is born with and which is useful only for carving faces in pumpkins.

The dirt from the hole that housed the portal into the dimension of evil made a couple of fine impromptu graves.

All we had to do was wait for darkness and some unsuspecting Trick or Treaters.

Actual Trick or Treaters who came to my door.

I went out and bought candy to give away to the little boys and gouls who would come to my door that evening.

In addition to the usual treats, I included in my selection the very finest fake glow in the dark sour worms I could find.

The perfect Halloween treat.

And then it was time to get our collective freak on.

The device in my front yard worked nicely.  I had a switch inside the house that triggered the device whenever someone rang the door bell, causing much shouting and the occasional scream.

It was a most satisfying Halloween.  But I’m beginning to wonder if that portal is going to harm the value of my property.

COMING HOME

For me the internet is a strange thing I am still not quite sure I like. Because I have cultivated a cyber beachhead reaching into the world wide web, people all over the world know that I am, yet again, in France playing the role of Professeur Boylan, drinking great wine, eating great food, enjoying great company and – somewhat as an afterthought at least and an excuse at most – corrupting young minds with worries of the looming New Cold War and the long term implications of the Franco-Russian agreement whereby a Russian company will assume the responsibility of disposing of French nuclear waste (or “nuclear bonus material” as so many of my friends in the nuclear energy industry prefer to call it).

The fact that thousands of people – both good, bad and indifferent (actually, if there are three categories, I am not sure “both” applies) – know these specific details about me and my life trouble me in ways and for reasons I cannot articulate, primarily because I am drunk, and I find it is often difficult to articulate fine, if not dicey, concepts when sufficienly drunk

ssssssssssssfffffffffffffffffffflllllllllllllllllllllllllllgggggggggggggggggggggg

[ brackets]

But I digress.  The point of all of this is that I don’t really want to be here. I don’t mean to sound like an ingrate, but I am homesick and want to go home. At the very moment I am finally comfortable typing on this damed European/French keyboard, I can think of nothing but home.

John Mcleod is credited with first saying “home is where the heart is.”  I don’t like McLeod because his last name sounds Scottish and, as evey decent, God fearing white person knows, the Scotts – as a race – are cheap. And the men  wear these dresses they call “kilts” but, hey, a dress by any other name would be just as gay, if you get my drift. And they talk funny. I don’t mean funny in a “ha ha” sense; I mean funny in a “hmmmm…” sense – if you get my drift.

But I digress.  If home is where the heart is, then my home is with my wife and son. I miss them and I want to go home.

I have three more classes to teach. Then I drive to Paris; visit the Louvre, spend the night in my favorite hotel (the identify of which I keep secret for security reasons) and then fly home.

After I’ve recovered from jet lag (don’t laugh: it is really a horrible ordeal for me) I’ll post some pics from my trip and a couple of essays.  I especially want to write about how the French are “managing” their Muslim minority and the global supremacy of (skinny) French women.  They really have “pulled a fast one” (as we quaint Americans are want to say) on the world.

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES: Taliban admit Mehsud dead

Pakistani Taliban admit leader Mehsud dead

By Rhappee Kanasta (Ass. Press) – 4 hours ago

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — After weeks of denials, two Pakistani Taliban commanders admitted Tuesday that the group’s top leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is dead.

“Okay!  He’s dead!  We admit it!  Are you happy now??” Hakimullah Mehsud asked at a press conference called to announce that the Taliban finally admit Baitullah is dead.

“Does that make you happy?” Hakimullah repeated. “He’s dead, okay? Dead. He’s pushing up daisies. He’s joined the Choir Invisible.  Baitullah is no more.  He’s gone. Kaput. Finished.  Blown to bits by a Predator drone missile.  Go ahead, rub it in. Tell us you knew he was dead weeks ago. Go ahead. I won’t stop you. You’ve won. We admit it. He’s dead,” Hakimullah added.

“You people make me sick,” Hakimullah shouted and ran off.

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES

MICHAEL JACKSON’S MOTHER LOSES CONTROL OF ESTATE

By Rhapee Kanasta, Ass. Press Reporter

Today at the Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson’s pet German Sheppard, Estate, slipped his leash and knocked down a child, shocking fans and paparazzi alike.

“It all happened so fast,” said Jackson’s mother, Katherine, who was  out walking the dog when the incident occurred.  “Michael’s Estate was behaving just fine, but when he saw that little boy, he got all excited, broke free, ran over, and began humping his leg.”

“Estate is a dog who loves children,” said Vinny Slimp, spokesperson for Estate. “It is believed that he is compensating for his deep feelings of not experiencing a happy puppyhood. He has been trying to make up for that ever since.”

“I am not sure what the humping is all about,” Slimp continued, “but I am sure it can be traced to trauma Estate experienced when, as a puppy, Joe Jackson – Michael’s father – forced Estate to perform tricks and left him alone for long periods of time with adult men.”

The dog is scheduled to be euthanized on July 8, 2009.

SEND NO MONEY

 

 

to the Extremely Poor Society (EPS). 

 

 

TRANSCENDENT MUSIC 1.3

 If this had not been released in 1965, but had been released today, it would still be a huge hit.

 

TRANSCENDENT MUSIC 1.1

Face it: this is one of the best songs ever written.

 

ONLY BECAUSE I AM FEELING OLD AND ALIENATED FROM THIS BRAVE, NEW WORLD

When icicles hang by the wall
  And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
  And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
  Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
     Tu-who, a merry note,
  While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow
  And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
  And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
  Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
     Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

*******************************************************

Yeah, yeah yeah.  So it's Shakespeare. So what.  I mean, really. So what? 

 

 

 

SWINE FLU: WE ARE ALL TOTALLY FUCKED

 

We are so fucked.

 

Forget SARS. Forget Bird Flu.  Forget the world wide economic meltdown.  We are now facing a world wide pandemic of deadly swine flu.

Unlike bird flu, this disease is transmitted from person to person.  And it hits young and old equally.

Start stockpiling canned food and bottled water. And blankets.  And batteries to run radios.  And guns. Lots and lots of guns.

This IS the disease everyone has been worrying about.

Close your doors and shoot anyone who won’t go away when you politely tell them to buzz off.

SARAH PALIN BLOWS (MUST SEE TO BELIEVE)

 

This is perhaps the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen.  This was very nearly a heart beat away from the most powerful political post on earth.

 

 

Watch her eyes.

 

 

 

ONE MORE HEAD ON THE PYRAMID

PEOPLE OF EARTH: ATTENTION

 

 

By Paul Nicholas Boylan

Columnist

[Reprinted with permission of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, where this article first appeared]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People of Earth, by now you’ve heard that still-President Bush is in the process of pardoning lots and lots of criminals.  Some of these pardons were expected.  For example, the President has commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby – the guy convicted of lying to federal officials about revealing the identity of a CIA secret agent in order to punish her husband for criticizing the President’s handling of the war in Iraq.

 

 

Scooter Libby (when he's relaxing)

 

Everyone knew that Bush would pardon Libby, but Bush is also signing some completely unexpected pardons.  For example, the vast majority of the criminals Bush pardoned so far were jailed for drug related offenses, primarily marijuana and cocaine.  Who could have foreseen that George W. Bush would have any sympathy for drug users, especially cocaine and marijuana users?

One of these pardons captured major news coverage.  The president pardoned Isaac Robert Toussie – also convicted of lying to federal officials. But then, on Christmas Eve, Bush revoked the pardon, sending Toussie back to jail.

Here is how it went down:

Mother:  Kids!  Kids! Gather ‘round!  It is a miracle!  A Christmas miracle!
Son:   What is it mom?
Mother:  Dad is coming home!  The President has pardoned him!
Daughter:  Praise the Lord!  It is a miracle!
Mother:  Now everything is going to be all right. Let’s gather around the Christmas tree and sing our praises to the Almighty for showing us His mercy.
[Phone rings]
Mother:  I’ll get it.  Hello?
President Bush:  Hi. This is the Decider. I decided to change my mind. Isaac staying in jail.  Merry Christmas, y’all!

That's right! Back to prison! Hahahahahaha!!!!!

 

 

Why did this happen? Why did still-President Bush satisfy the wildest hopes of that family only to bring them crashing down on Christmas Eve?

 

 

Bush said he did it because, after he granted the pardon, he heard the guy’s father gave money to the Republican Party.  In other words, the President sent that guy back to jail because letting him out would make the Bush Administration look corrupt.

 

 

 

Isn’t it way too late for Bush to worry about looking corrupt? Doesn’t the Bush Administration already look corrupt? Let’s review:

 

 

    During the Iraq War, the Bush Administration gave trillions of tax dollars – through no-bid contracts – to businesses and people who gave money to the Bush family (on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld admitting “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions”).

 

    The Bush Administration was defined by the high level of “cronyism” it embraced.  Bush gave high paying government jobs to his friends – even if they had no experience or were incompetent – to an extent never seen by any other administration in American history.

 

    When the Bush Administration didn’t like scientific data, it fired the scientists who compiled the data or pressured scientists to come up with other, bogus results.

    When Federal attorneys refused to start fake investigations designed to help friends of the Bush family, those attorney’s were fired and replaced with attorneys who would do it.

 

    The Bush Administration created and implemented policy designed to hide evidence of official wrongdoing, where email records were automatically destroyed or where official business was conducted using Republican National Committee email accounts. Just a few days ago, a federal court said Bush couldn’t keep secret the list of people who had been invited to stay at the White House. It was too late: the list had already been destroyed.

 

 

All of this looks fairly corrupt to me. And not just a little corrupt – it looks really, really, really corrupt. In the face of such a record of brazen corruption, it makes no sense that Bush believes that pardoning that guy would make his administration look any more corrupt than it already looks. It is like Attila the Hun worrying that one more head on top of a pyramids of human heads will make Attila look barbaric. So what is really going on?

 

 

 

I asked my good-for-nothing 17 year old son, Evan – who has a gift for summarizing complex situations – why would Bush revoke a pardon on Christmas Eve? My son blinked and said “he did it to be mean.”

 

 

"Kitten is best when eaten live, he he he."

 

 

 

 

And suddenly it became clear.  Bush and his cronies like hurting people.  It explains so much – from Bush and his buddies sitting back and watching Katrina destroy New Orleans to Dick Cheney shooting his “friend” in the face. It explains why they fought so hard to make sure people got tortured.  It explains why they lowered food safety standards, resulting in mass poisonings. It explains why they allowed the economy to collapse – why they actually did things to make the fall deeper and more painful.  It explains why they gave hundreds of billions of dollars to the people who caused the collapse and none of it was used to help people who were losing their homes.

 

 

 

 

 

I suddenly understand that Bush and his cronies like to hurt people, and now it all makes sense.

 

 

They sent that guy back to prison on Christmas Eve because they wanted to make him and his family sad.

 

 

Mission accomplished.

 

SOMETHING SPOOKY

There used to be a kind of cinema called “classic horror.”  This school of cinema emphasized psychological scares as opposed to direct threats like someone coming at you with a knife.  Those who mad these movies believed that the scarriest things were those things you could not see and could only imagine.

The last of the classic horror movies came out in 1957 and was called Night of the Demon (renamed Curse of the Demon for the U.S. Release).  Here is a small clip to give you a bit of the flavour of what classic horror was all about.

PROOF NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Even before “video” rock and rollers were trying to make rock videos.  Here is proof that, although much time has gone by, rockers were always inept at such endeavors.

 

 

This is a little film made by an English rock band called the Tornados, circa 1963, best known for their smash international hit “Telstar.”  Look closely at the psycho-social-sexual themes expressed in this little piece of fluff.

 

 

 

 

Rock and roll robots always get the groovy chicks.

WHY I LOVE CATS

Two vids for your viewing pleasure showing the two primary reasons I love cats.  In this first one, watch her tail.

The second reason I love cats is because of their emotional honesty. Dogs – well, dogs are liars.  They lie all of the time.  They pretend to like you when, in reality, they are constantly plotting our demise.  If not for their short attention span and the ease with which dogs are distracted by things like squirels, dogs would have killed all of us in our sleep by now.

But cats are different. First, they lack the intellectual capacity to plan anything.  Second, they always let you know exactly how they feel without any pretense whatsoever.  When the like you, you know it.  And when they are unhappy, you know it, too.  By way of illustration:

 

 

Isn’t that adorable?

God, I love cats.

EVIDENCE THINGS HAVE CHANGED

This is another gem I found wandering around the never-ending world of Youtube.  It is an example of “Soundies” which are the late 30’s and 40’s version of music videos.  These would be played in movie theatres between double feature movies.

All I can say is “wow.”  I could write a book about the world this thing came from.  Please enjoy.

Zombies of the Stratosphere

 

Youtube is a truly wonderful thing for an old guy like me.  All I have to do is type in words referencing strange, nearly forgotten things and – WHAM! – they are given new life.

 

 

 

Long before most of you were born, I would race home from church, turn on WGN Channel 9 and watch old movie serials.  Believe me, when you are 4 years old during the earliest days of the American Conquest of Space, this stuff was the coolest imaginable:

 

New Product – Bad Name

I just saw a commercial for a product called the “Liquid-Plumr Foaming Pipe Snake.”

The Product

That sounds like some kind of pseudo-sexual/lack of personal hygene insult.  I suspect that, in very little time, it will become part of the popular lexicon:

"Get out of my face, you foaming pipe snake!"

Yep. That’s what I think is gonna happen.

THE NEXT BIG THING

Okay, so my 17 year old son gives me this big comic book called The Watchmen. He called it a “graphic novel” but it was nothing more than a really long comic book.

 
So I read  it and was not impressed.  The story started strong but couldn’t follow through in the end.  It reminded me of the Matrix movies. The first one was great, but what made it great got lost in the sequels  along the way until, but the time the series ended, it deserved to die.

 
So I read The Watchmen and I put it down.

 

 

Then I found this on Youtube:

 

 

 

And this:

 

 

 

I am excited.  It looks just like the comic book – excuse me, “graphic novel” – with just enough differences of the right kind to give me hope that the director (the same guy who directed 300) can pull it off.

 

 

I cannot wait.