Skiers, careers, airplanes ... and other news

Climage change kills ... useless careers.

Skier falls after 5 seconds? Even a French skier wouldn't do that! What? Oh.

Been away from them Internets. Has the left blamed Bush for the guy crashing his plane in Austin? They have? Well, I'm not surprised that they're ignoring the fact that Andrew Joseph Stack is a left-wing nutcase.

You don't have to be crazy to think every crazy person is a right-winger, but it helps.

Muzz Lightyear. Heh.

Blackfive: What's really behind the Pakistani crackdown on the Taliban.

My question has been, if the Pakistanis are keeping the captured Taliban leaders, and getting intel, doesn't that mean their way works and Obama's doesn't?

Saw this headline: "Ancient Beetles Will Date Mesolithic Shorelines." Turns out that Ringo's still married, but Paul is single again.

Speaking of the Beatles...

Cloning Neanderthals? Don't do it. They'd just want health care.

NBC: No Blacks Channel?

Las Vegas mayor to Obama: Piss off (in so many words).

Wife saw Alan Simpson on Fox a little while ago. Her question: Isn't that Walter?

Voted for change...


Elton John: Jeebus wuz teh ghey. Remember when Elton sang songs & otherwise kept his mouth shut? Those were the days.

Ace Ventura loves Young Obi-Wan.

The Iraq War will be renamed "New Dawn." As in "New Dawn takes grease out of your way?"

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, unless a really bad storm hits”

One term for Obama? That's still one term too many.

Follow me on teh Twitter: http://twitter.com/basilsblog

Okay, I admit it: I watched curling today

Lots of people on teh Twitter and them Internets have been following the Laff-A-Lympics on teh NBC. But not me. Growing up in southeast Georgia, our winter sport was basketball. At least, after the Super Bowl, that was the only thing going on until baseball started.

But, on teh Twitter, lots of folks I follow have been jabbering on and on about curling. Which is sort of like horseshoes, only with brooms. And no horseshoes. Or stakes.

It's like a bunch of drunk horseshoe players got stranded in Canada one winter, and had to either invent a game or go all Brokeback Mountain. I'm still not sure they made the right decision.

Anyway, today I did something I hadn't done in a long, long time. I watched curling. But, I watched it here:


[Direct link]

And, from what I've been reading, the USA men's and women's teams learned how to play by watching that scene from Help! The women are 0-3, and the men are 0-4.

But, there's good news. My TiVo still has 129 hours of programming recorded that I can watch.

Olbermann vs Chipmunk

In a battle between Keith Olbermann and a chipmunk, who would win?


[Direct link]
Tip: Buzz Blog

I'm thinking the chipmunk could take Olbermann. But I'm sure Olbermann could beat ... well, something. Maybe a ... no. He could beat ... no.

Okay, I'm stumped. Who ... or what ... would lose a battle with Keith Olbermann?

Whatever it is, I'm against it

Conservatives -- okay, actually Republicans -- are being painted as "The Party Of 'No.'"

And, Republicans seem to want to respond to that charge.

Now, maybe it's because I'm not a Republican (I'm not a member of any party -- I am a conservative), but the tag doesn't bother me.

Obama and his Congress have done lots of damage. And it needs to stop. So, I'm willing to embrace the "Party of 'No'" moniker.

Look at it like this: You're taking a trip. Someone else is driving. They're doing a piss-poor job of driving. And they're going in the wrong direction. At a high rate of speed.

What do you do?

Well, you don't grab the steering wheel and suddenly turn it to the right. You stop the car. You remove the incompetent driver. You take the wheel (or get someone capable behind the wheel). Then you move in the right direction at the right speed.

That pretty much sums up what we need to do with the presidency and the Congress. Stop things. Put someone capable in charge. Then proceed.

We're at the "stop" point of the strategy right now. So, yes, I'm all for stopping things. Stopping things cold.

And, until we have things stopped, and until we have the right people in charge, whatever Congress tries to do, I'm against it.


[Direct link]

Embrace your inner Groucho!

Liars and Tigers and raccoons ... and other news

A CNN poll says 52% of Americans believe Obama doesn't deserve 2nd term. I believed he didn't deserve a first term.

It's not just other politicians whose popularity falls when linked to Obama. News channels suffer the same fate.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Or, as Baptists call it, Wednesday.

I saw the ashes on Joe Biden's forehead during a newscast last night. Did that increase his carbon footprint?

Best Ash Wednesday joke I saw? WordMarvin: For Lent, BO gave up jobs

A lot of people are saying Obama's policies haven't created jobs. Not true. There's a job opening for the Indiana Senate seat.

Obama's policies have helped one sector of the economy. Sales of torches and pitchforks are up.

The Federal Reserve predicts unemployment will stay high over the next two years. Anyone notice that timetable allows for it to drop in time for Obama's reelection campaign.

The Obama administration plans to spend its way out of debt.

Don't question Obama's patriotism. But, criticize Obama and they'll question yours.

Atlanta Progressive News doesn't believe in objectivity. Sounds familiar.

Tiger Woods' penis announced a press conference Friday.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA-5) killed a raccoon. PETA's Jaime Zalac says "pick on someone your own size." So, how big is Zalac?

A boy and his dog. Plus bitches.

TV chef fired for eating pussy.

A report says that warp speed will kill you. Not if the inertial dampers are functioning properly.

Video of the day: Yes, it's been around for a bit, but it's so good and so bad, all at the same time: The Yankee Prankee.

Speaking of pranks, if you want to prank yourself, there's no better way than following me on teh Twitter: http://twitter.com/basilsblog

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

Everybody's favorite nutbag, Keith Olbermann, -- who was fired from ESPN in 1997 for being a dick -- wants to know

Where are the people of color at the Tea parties?

The fact that an NBC person is asking this asking this is, well, ridiculous. Michelle Malkin has pointed out for some time just how White NBC is.

However, suppose someone else -- someone honest and with integrity -- were to ask the question. How would I answer it?

Well, I could point out the Black man -- identified as "an unidentified man" -- at the Tea Party rally in Arizona who was carrying an AR-15. You may recall that NBC's Contessa Brewer showed a close-up of his weapon, but not showing any skin (so you couldn't tell he is Black), as she narrated: "there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns."

Of course, there were Blacks present at the Tea Party in Columbus, GA on Independence Day. Blacks were in the crowd, as well as leading the protest.

But, that was in Georgia, where Blacks make up 30% of the population, as opposed to New York's 17%.

Maybe I shouldn't bother to get into such a discussion on how many Blacks are involved in the Tea Party protests. Maybe NBC shouldn't be the Peacock Network, but instead, be called the Pea-brain Network.

I have now joined the 21st century

I have finally started using a feed reader.

Yes, I know. I'm several years behind the rest of teh Internets when it comes to using an RSS reader for blogs I follow. But, I've finally decided to give it a shot. And I like it.

Now, I have tried feed readers in the past. My thoughts were: meh.

Perhaps it was just me. Perhaps I had a really sucky reader (no, I actually don't remember which one it was, but I didn't care for it). So, I did things the old fashioned way: I clicked links and went to the blogs I followed, and read.

After a while, that really becomes a chore. Sure, I could only follow a few blogs. In fact, that's what I ended up doing. Despite have a large blogroll, I found I would click on only a few blogs. I had to force myself to check them all.

And, if I have to force myself to do something, I'm not going to enjoy it. So, I eventually started just clicking on a few regular blogs. And, as a result, I missed out on some good stuff.

But, a few weeks ago, I decided to do some maintenance on my little blog, and that maintenance included updating my feed configuration -- something I hadn't put any serious effort into for some time.

Part of my standard methodology of making Web changes -- and changing the feed (I use FeedBurner) is a Web change -- is to see how the changes look in a browser. There's nothing worse than screwing up your Website and not knowing!

To view the changes in an RSS feed, I thought it would be a good idea to view it in a reader. And, since this little blog is hosted on Google's Blogger platform (they bought it a while back), and since FeedBurner is also a Google product (they bought it a while back), I decided to use Google Reader to check out the feed.

It was easy enough to set up a feed in Google Reader -- real easy in Firefox, in fact -- I decided to check out other blogs, starting with IMAO (not just because Frank J lets me blog there sometimes, but because I've been a fan for many years).

"Cool," I thought. And I added a few more. And a few more. Then, I discovered that there was an easy way to set up blogs from my blogroll (which is a simply list of blogs I added through Google/Blogger's Follow process).

"Cool," I thought. And then I discovered why many people use RSS readers. And, I'm not missing nearly as much as I used to. Everything's right there.

Some blogs use summary feeds. That means the feed contains just a teaser, and the reader must click to the blog to Read The Whole Thing. If the teaser teases me properly, I'll click through. But I don't prefer that method of feeds.

Many blogs put their entire posts there. When that happens, I can read from the Google Reader window. That's the way I prefer. And that's how I do my feed. Anyway, I'm enjoying using my feed reader.

I have now joined the early 2000s.

I've also been looking at video games. Have you seen this thing called Pong?