Johnny Thunders

Sometimes I wish I was Johnny Thunders. Watch this and maybe you will understand why:




Other days, I am so glad I am me.....

Too true to be funny

Bright Eyes

This is for all you lovers out there in the blogosphere.



Love the one you're with.

Celebrate Music and Dance

Aung San Suu Kyi to be charged and tried

The armed thugs who claim to be the government of Burma are, apparently, about to charge Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, along with her two live-in maids, with harboring a US national secretly in Suu Kyi's lakeside home for two days.

The Golden Land is full of nutty stories, but this is one of the nuttier I can recall.

It seems a John Yettaw, which may be a vaguely Burmese name, although I could be quite wrong on that, who is from the US, swam the lake to reach Suu Kyi's home. He stayed in the home for two days, and has since been arrested, although not charged. US diplomats were able to visit him, but haven't spoken publicly about the case yet.

The 63-year-old Suu Kyi, who has been under detention of one form or another for most of the past 20 years, has been rumored to be in poor health lately. According to her doctor, she suffers from dehydration and low blood pressure. Who knows what that really means.

There's some conjecture by the Beeb that this is an effort to put Suu Kyi away until after next year's "elections", which is as good an explanation as any. Suu Kyi pretty much is the opposition, such as it is, and locking her up where no UN or Western representatives can get a look at her would certainly prevent her from making any public noise.

Still, this represents something of a departure for Than Shwe and his minions. Up until now, they've been treating Suu Kyi with white gloves. They allow her no freedom, but they have resisted the notion of tossing her in the clink or any other drastic actions. They have to know that this is going to make some headlines in the West (not to mention spark the ire of certain bloggers, which I'm sure has them quaking in their Buster Browns), but since when has that stopped them from doing anything? Locking Suu Kyi up this far ahead of the elections makes sense, in their little dinosaur brains, in that it will have faded from attention by the time it matters.

In the pantheon of near-hopeless to hopeless situations, lost causes to causes well on their way to lost, from Zimbabwe to Gaza to GM, Burma has a place of honor: The spot on this little planet of ours furthest from any sort of hope at all.

FailBlog (extremely dark) giggle

No further comment necessary...

Swine flu funny

Sorry, I mean "H1N1", although I have also heard "Farmageddon" or "Aporkalypse"...

Daily YouTube: Morning news show prank

The local morning news show in Kirkwood MO gets pranked with every juvenile fake name you can think of in their "Birthdays and Anniversaries" segment.

The anchor realizes whats up towards the end, but his stumbling through only makes it funnier.

Such a giggle!

Keith Olbermann is my hero

I have been an Olbermann fan since the days of the Big Show on ESPN. While I disagree with a lot of his politics, I really like the guy to this day.

Now, he has taken another step up in my estimation.

After Sean "Windbag" Hannity said on his TV show that he'd undergo waterboarding "for charity", Olbermann has stepped in and offered $1,000 per second that Hannity can withstand the treatment.

No response from Hannity.

Everything I have ever read from people who have been subjected to waterboarding tells me that, regardless of your training, experience, general level-headedness, or toughness, it is terrifying. Your body believes you are drowning. I believe it is torture. Whether it's effective or not, I really have no idea.

I would LOVE to see Hannity do this. Put up or shut up, you blowhard. Hell, I'm in for $10 per second (I don't make the coin Olbermann does) to the charity of Hannity's choice.

C'mon, Sean, Put your kiester where you mouth is!

Bird humor

Have you heard about the man who did it with a parakeet? He contracted chirpes.

And the worst thing? It was untweetable.

Swine flu: Not sure what to make of this yet

Swine flu has taken hold in Mexico, killing upwards of 70 people (and many more if you believe on-the-scene comments on BBC) and spreading to a variety of other spots around the globe. The Mexicans are in a tizzy, the CDC is on alert, but I'm not sure if the bang matches the hype.

I certainly don't mean to trivialize the deaths of 70 or more people. However, I suspect snake bites take out more than 70 people per day on this lovely little planet of ours, and I don't see hordes of slithery little bastards on the front page of MSNBC.

I am intrigued by the flu story. A few things that pique my interest:

1. The rapidity of the spread, both in the population of Mexico City and the amount of geography covered by more recent cases.

2. The reported genetic structure of the virus, which seems to combine DNA from pig flu, bird flu, and people flu. Viruses are constantly mutating, and this may be all in a day's work for a virulent gene, but it sure strikes me as odd.

3. The out-of-nowhere-ness of the whole thing. Maybe this sort of thing happens, on a smaller scale, in the world of infectious diseases, and we just never hear about it. Whatever the case, I have never heard of anything like this, or presented in this matter, before.

I certainly don't want to be alarmist, or sound paranoid, or make more of this than it is. However, my little Tom Clancy-inspired brain can't help but ping on the thought that there's maybe more to this than we know.

Just suppose the Iranians, or the NKs, or someone else who has a ton of resources and a healthy dislike for the West in general and the good ol' USandA in particular (there's a lengthy list, yeah?) wanted to f**k with us in a big way? That part is not too far-fetched, right? There's no shortage of groups who would like nothing better than to go tinkle in our breakfast cereal.

Here's where I fear I am veering off into black helicopter-dom:

How hard is it to splice together your own virus? Obviously you're not doing it with a couple of test tubes and an Easy-Bake oven - it would clearly take the resources of a nation-state or the equivalent, and it's not the sort of thing you do in a cave in South Waziristan. But it can probably be done.

Next, if you were going to try to clandestinely bio-bomb the US, wouldn't Mexico be a great place to start? Especially if you had something really virulent and really easy to spread amongst humans? I mean, it's not like the security services in Mexico are in the MI-6 league, right? And its not like the US really has a grip on the border, right?

So, a couple of things are really wrong with my little hypothesis. One - Mexico City, which seems to be the epicenter of this thing right now, isn't right on the border. Tijuana, Juarez, or Matamoros seem like better places to start. Next, this virus, at least right now, doesn't seem to spread all that effectively - the cases which have popped up in the US and Canada (and elsewhere) seem to be less serious than those down south.

I'm sure there are about 20,000 other things wrong with my thought. I'm no scientist. I'm just a guy who reads too much, has a healthy dose of historical Jewish paranoia, and some well-earned 21st century skepticism.

I'm reasonably sure I am barking at shadows here. But I have to admit it popped into my little melon right away...

Movie greatness

I caught Schindler's List on HBO last night. It was certainly not the first time I've seen it, as it is required viewing for any Jew over the age of about 13 - it may have been incorporated into the Bar Mitzvah process, and if it hasn't, it should be.

This was probably the fifth or sixth time I sat thru Spielberg's masterpiece, and with this level of familiarity, I noticed some new things this time around.

Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler is pitch-perfect throughout. He has the physical presence to portray a man who will, alone and without hesitation, enter the gates of Auschwitz to pull "his people" back from the abyss. He completely sells the transformation of Schindler from womanizing snake-oil salesman to great, compassionate, righteous human - a man who starts as all flash becomes substantial enough to comfort with a gentle kiss the traumatized Jewish maid/punching bag of a concentration camp commander; a man who begins the film with no significant visible morality is, by film's end, capable of such moral clarity and strength that he is able to turn his back on everything he had professed to be interested in and care only for the victims he sees around him.

Casting Neeson was a masterstroke.

The rest of the cast is equally exceptional. The music is perfect. The little use of color in the film is perfect. Sets, continuity, staging, photography - all exactly right.

All this is to point out the perfectly obvious: Steven Spielberg is the greatest maker of movies in the history of movies.

Schindler's List is clearly his masterpiece, and, given the subject, may be the greatest movie ever made. Add to that his other spectacular success - Saving Private Ryan, ET, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indy in general), I could go on and on and on - my God, what a talent.

Sure, AI gave me a headache. Catch Me If You Can and 1941 were trifles (but entertaining trifles), and I'm still not sure what to make of Minority Report. No one hits a home run every time. Except Pixar, but that's another story - call me when they match Spielberg in longevity and production, and we'll compare notes.

I said to myself a number of times during last night's viewing, and have repeated it a number of times since: How fortunate are we to be around to see this guy's work as it happens.

The great news is he shows no signs of losing grip of his powerful gifts. Nor does he show any inclination to stop doing what he does so masterfully.

Thank you, Mr. Spielberg. Here's hoping you spend many more years embellishing your record as the greatest ever at what you do.

World's greatest business card

Genius!













And, from the same secret stash - the card you get when you meet Steve Martin on the street:

Cool picture with a downer of an explanation

I ran across this photo and was instantly intrigued. What the heck is it? A huge stadium in the midst of paradise? Some Bahrainian sheik's summer getaway?

Unfortunately, its nowhere near as cool as either of those things. Instead, it is a concrete dome which shields a crater and soil left over from H-bomb tests in the 50s.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Another example of this blog writing itself:

Sex offender found nude, self-mutilated; bit tip of own penis off: cops

Some info you haven't seen on Somali "pirates"

Much has been written about the pirates of Somalia, so I'm not going to rehash any of the recent news (other than to pass along an emphatic "well done" regarding the most-impressive marksmanship clinic put on by the SEALs last weekend). Instead, I'd like to point you at some back story that I hadn't seen before. Perhaps you have not either.

So, let's get one piece of business out of the way straight off: Some, perhaps most, of the "pirates" we are reading about lately are nothing more than thieves, hooligans, gangsters, etc. A sizable percentage of these guys are lowlifes in the truest sense of the word. The jerkoffs who are attempting to hijack ships loaded with food and supplies bound for Darfur and other African disaster areas are the worst kind of parasites. Nothing I am about to discuss applies to these cretins. These types deserve a Special Forces love-tap, and you will never hear a peep from me beyond "Bravo, boys".

However, there are some Somali "pirates" who do not fit this description.

Did you know (I did not) that, at about the same time Somalia's last true government collapsed in the early 90s, mysterious ships began dumping barrels of waste into Somali coastal waters? Turns out this "waste" was from European hospitals and power plants, and was medical and nuclear.

You read that correctly: Persons unknown were dumping nuclear waste into the water off Somali beaches.

Not surprisingly, the populace in the area started to get sick and have malformed babies. The 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami washed hundreds of barrels of this crap onshore, where more pronounced radiation sickness began to occur.

This was not the only indignity thrust upon Somali coastal dwellers.

As you might suspect, a major local industry is fishing. Coastal Somalis feed themselves from the ocean, as do coastal dwellers the world around. In the past 20 or so years, with no government to assert sovereignty over Somalia's territorial waters, Euro fishing trawlers have been illegally clearing the sea out (thanks, U2), leaving greatly reduced fish stocks for the locals. Needless to say, this threatens the livelihoods, and the lives, of said locals.

Local Somalis started going out in speedboats to dissuade the Euros who were illegally dumping or illegally fishing, or to collect a "tax". Hence, the emergence of "pirates".

Now, it's clearly devolved from there. A bunch of dirt-bag opportunists have co-opted what was a pretty legitimate activity on the part of the locals. The current situation has much less to do with real grievances, and much more to do with a bunch of thugs looking to make some quick cash.

That doesn't invalidate the original activities, though.

I had no idea. I'm thinking maybe you haven't heard this stuff either. So here it is.

Just another public service from your friends here at CIT.

A city official with a sense of humor

The natives are restless in San Francisco, where efforts to expand the use of medical marijuana are causing all sorts of furor.

I have gone on record many times in my support of the legalization of marijuana, and just about everything else, so I won't go off on rant here. Instead, I will point you to a story on the San Francisco Chronicle's site, where you will find the following gem:

"The mayor will have to hash this out with public health officials," press secretary Nathan Ballard said. "It's the mayor's job to weed out bad legislation. And to be blunt, this sounds pretty bad."

This, my friends, is genius!

A great gift idea

I think this is somewhat disrespectful of the office...

Daily YouTube: Creed is soooo talented!

I just about spit my drink across the desk at this one...

(Language warning, btw)

Something to look forward to....

My son and I have been wandering around in a daze, without purpose, without meaning.

Now we have both:




Why not have some fun, eh?