Shooting up Obamacare

There's a candidate for Congress over in Alabama that's getting some attention with a campaign video. Will Brooke -- NOT the guy from Montana, although you can bet some stupid liberal will try to make that connection -- is from the Birmingham area and has a business degree and a law degree from the University of Alabama, and is an executive with Harbert Management Corporation.

The sixth District is the middle of the state. It starts a little north of Montgomery and runs to above Birmingham, encompassing much of Jefferson County (where Birmingham is, but not Birmingham itself), as well as Bibb, Blount, Chilton, Coosa, and Shelby counties. It's conservative. No Democrat has received more than 30% of the vote since 1993, when current Congressman Spencer Bachus (a Republican who's retiring) unseated Democrat Ben Erdreich.

Republicans running include:

• Scott Beason, Alabama State Senator
• Paul DeMarco, Representative in the Alabama State House
• Chad Mathis, a surgeon
• Gary Palmer, Chief Development Officer of the Alabama Policy Institute
• Robert Shattuck, blogger
• Tom Vigneulle, a business owner and cattle farmer
• Will Brooke, executive at Harbert Management Corporation

I can't find any Democrats running, so whoever wins the Republican primary will likely be the next Representative for that district.

Oh, yeah. Will Brooke's video. Have you seen it?


[The YouTube]

Now, is Will Brooke the man needed in Washington? Maybe. It's not my district -- heck, it's not even my state -- so I don't have a vote in that race (unless I voted Democrat, then I could vote early, often, and everywhere).

I hope my friends in Alabama make a good decision. And, I hope that whoever is elected to Congress this fall will indeed take down Obamacare.

Sex: ur doing it wrong

According to one survey, 20% of Americans 18-34 have used a smartphone during sex.

Now, if that involved using the smartphone to look at porn with one hand while ...

I kinda don't think so. I think the survey was talking about actual two-person sex:

20% of US 18-34 year olds have admitted to having used a smartphone during sex (Harris Interactive) and Twitter users on average have shorter relationships than non users (OK Cupid) - is tech just turning us off?

A recent poll for Durex (OnePoll) on the UK's sex life revealed shocking statistics including 12% of people had answered a phone during sex, one in ten had read a text and over 5% of respondents had even checked Facebook while making love.

Answering the phone? What's that about?

She: "I'm sorry, I need to take this."
He: "Um, isn't that what you were just doing, Sweetheart"

or

He: "This might be for me."
She: "So was this."

Checking Facebook? Going at it all hot and heavy and suddenly you're inspired to see what recipes your mom has posted? I think you need to make an appointment with Dr. Freud, there, Sparky.

Promise me this. If you are one of those people who find other things to do during sex, you'll do your partner a favor and set her (or him) free. Really.

I like tech. I really like tech. But there's a time and a place for everything.

If your phone rings during sex, and you decide to answer it, trust me when I tell you it's not Ed McMahon wanting to give you a million dollars. Ed McMahon is dead. And so, apparently, is your relationship.

Don't drink and warp drive

Now there's Klingon beer.

And, no, I'm not out of my Vulcan mind.

There's a Canadian company -- that's in Canadia, I think -- called Federation of Beer that sells something called Vulcan Ale. It comes in bottles (in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan) and cans (Alberta and Ontario). And, it's officially licensed by CBS Studios, who owns the rights to Star Trek. It's brewed by a Montana company, Harvest Moon, although Vulcan Ale isn't for sale in the U.S.

Now, if you look at their Website, they have a little blurb up about Klingon beer coming soon. It will also be sold by Federation of Beer, but it will be brewed in the U.S. (by Tin Man Brewing in Indiana) according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The beer's flavor draws from blending rye malt with a traditional clove character, creating what CBS calls "a bold beer suited for the harsh Klingon lifestyle."

The beer will be previewed at the Nightclub & Bar Show in Las Vegas on March 25, before being released across the U.S. and Canada later this year.

Though I'm a Star Trek fan -- Kirk>Picard -- I'm not a beer drinker. So, this won't impact me much. Even if I was a beer drinker, I don't know how much it would impact me. I mean, if they made Star Trek cereal, I might, as a kid, want a box of that. It'd taste like veQ, but begin a kid, I'd eat it up anyway. But, as an adult, I wouldn't buy Star Trek cereal. I'd still stick to Raisin Bran, Cheerios, or Mini-Wheats.

But, a beer-drinking Star Trek fan? "Mom! Did you remember to pick up some Klingon Beer? And some Cheetos?"

Okay, maybe that's unfair. Some of us that grew up on the original series actually moved out of the basement years ago. And, who knows. You might actually be able to pick up a green woman with it.

Little Worlds art, No. 5

A little while back, I received some art from 4of7, regular visitor and commenter on IMAO. He is an artist, and has his own blog, Little Worlds, where you can view some of his art.

Here’s another one of the pieces of art 4of7 shared, and that I’m please to now share with you.

Fun With Cubes #5 – 3 Nature Favors the Hidden Flaw. Copyright © 2013 Don Scholand. Used with permission.

I have more to share in future posts.

Classic Doctor Who Season 13

The 13th season of the classic Doctor Who series saw the departure of some major characters. The last regular appearances of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), Mister (nee Sergeant) John Benton (John Levene), and Lieutenant (Doctor) Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter).

The 6-serial, 26-episode season began with the return of The Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry to the present, following up the distress call The Doctor received from the Brigadier at the end of Season 12. The first serial, Terror of the Zygons (4 episodes), introduced -- you guessed it -- the Zygons. In this serial, the Brigadier receives a call from the Prime Minister, whom he addresses as "Madame." At the times the episode was recorded and aired, Harold Wilson of the Labour Party was Prime Minister. He was succeeded by fellow Labour Party MP James Callaghan a year later. When the episode aired, Margaret Thatcher was leader of the Conservative Party, but wouldn't become Prime Minister until four years later. However, since the series was, at the time, set in the near-future, commonly accepted to be five years from the then-present, the writers got this one right.

The serial was also Nicholas Courtney's last regular appearance as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Though there would be two more serials involving UNIT, the Brigadier wouldn't be in either. Courtney was unavailable, so they wrote his character as visiting Geneva.

Planet of Evil (4 episodes) was similar to Forbidden Planet in that an invisible creature was killing members of an expedition to a planet. And, kinda like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in that a character kept transforming from normal-looking fellow to an ugly, hairy, evil killer.

The third serial had an interesting plot. It was called Pyramids of Mars (4 episodes) and dealt with a connection between Egyptian civilization and extraterrestrial aliens. And, if you're familiar with Richard Hoagland's whole pyramids on Mars thing, keep in mind that's from after the Viking landings in July 1976. This serial aired 8-9 months before that. No one had seen images from Mars that kinda looked like pyramids. So that whole face and pyramids on Mars thing? Nobody came up with all that nonsense until later. Probably a deranged Doctor Who fan.

Oh, and The Doctor got some math wrong. He mentioned that it would take two minutes for radio signals to travel from Mars to Earth. That's wrong. At their closest approach possible, it would take over three minutes. At their greatest possible distance, it would take a little over 22 minutes. So, The Doctor had even more time than he said to defeat Sutekh.

The Android Invasion (4 episodes) featured UNIT, but as I mentioned earlier, the Brigadier didn't appear. Harry appeared, as did Benton, as well as their android duplicates. Benton's fate is left unclear at the end. At least, I wasn't sure what his fate was. Benton wouldn't be in the later serial involving UNIT.

We met yet another renegade Time Lord in The Brain of Morbius (4 episodes). There seem to be a lot of them. Morbius was a Time Lord that was sentenced to death a zillion years ago. Though the sentence was carried out and his atoms scattered across the universe, he survived because his brain was stolen and it wound up in a bowl in some lab. Kinda like Jan In A Pan from MST3K. His brain was eventually put in a fish bowl on top of a hairy critter. Kinda like Ro-Man from Robot Monster.

Morbius and The Doctor eventually had a battle on something that looked like a game console. The battle involved images of their various incarnations. We saw the faces of The Doctor (Tom Baker), The Doctor (Jon Pertwee), The Doctor (Patrick Troughton), and The Doctor (William Hartnell), plus other faces that could have been The Doctor, or Morbius. That wasn't really clear. Anyway, The Doctor won and the fish bowl sparked and smoked and Morbius fell over, ran away, and then fell off a cliff. The Doctor died, but was revived without regenerating by some elixir of life that came from a flame that The Doctor had fixed by dropping a firecracker down the chimney. Or something.

The season ended with The Seeds of Doom (6 episodes), which was sorta like The Thing, in that an intelligent plant life from another world was found in the Antarctic and was going to get loose and take over the world. It wasn't exactly like The Thing (any version) or Who Goes There? (the story on which The Thing was based), but there were those elements. The serial also marked the last of the stories to involve UNIT for some time. None of the UNIT regulars appeared. And, while I was anxious for The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) to get back into time and space in the TARDIS, now that The Doctor (Tom Baker) has done just that, I am gonna miss the Brigadier, Captain Yates, and Sergeant/Mister Benton. At least, we still have Sarah Jane. For now.

Speaking of whom, on to the 14th season, her last as a regular.

Mystery solved!

Back in 2009, a man in Hampshire -- the old one in the UK, not the New one that lives next to Vermont -- found a Dalek head in a pond.

They don't really know how a villain from Doctor Who ended up losing its head in a pond, and this mystery has been simmering for five years. There were some episodes filmed in Hampshire in Season 22 of Doctor Who, but apparently not at the pond where the Dalek head was found. In a recent follow-up news story from earlier this month, there was still no confirmation of it being from that Doctor Who serial. Or any.

Well, after reading the follow-up, Harvey put me on the task of finding out where it came from. And, in the time since, I've been reviewing episodes involving Daleks, hoping to find evidence of the origin of the Dalek head. But, it remained a mystery.

And then, I looked at IMAO. And I found the answer. Frank had the answer the whole time: the Navy SEALs did it.

Think about it. What did they do with Osama? They shot him in the head and chucked him into the water.

Those Somali pirates? Shot them in the head and chucked them into the water.

It's what they do: shoot the bad guys in the head and chuck them into the water.

According to the documentary I've been watching, the Daleks have invaded Earth several times, and were defeated each time. We saw The Doctor defeating them. But really, could some guy wearing anything from frilly shirts to overlong scarves to celery stalks to funny hats hope to bring down the Daleks by himself? Or by himselves? No. But, with help from the Navy SEALs, the Daleks could be defeated. The Doctor would do some silly thing involving a clever turn of a phrase, while the Navy SEALs would shoot them in the head and chuck them in the water.

The Navy SEALs method is a little more effective. Just ask Osama. Or the fish that ate him.

Start Walken and End Up Dancin'

This amused and entertained me. And so shall it you.


[The YouTube]

Told ya.