Well, President Barack Hussein Obama has released his long-form birth certificate.

Trump wins.

Now, if anyone can get his transcripts and medical records... you know, the stuff every other presidential candidate provides.

Heck, the stuff anyone applying to work in a warehouse or at a McDonald's has to provide.

So, has anyone sussed out that the amazing "NO HASSLE, NO HAGGLE!!" pricing the dealerships are shouting about really means "You pay what we TELL you to pay."?

Just like always.

..........................................







Loen's Fa-CHAYBook status:

Dear Royal Family:
Nobody cares.
Sincerely,
The World.

Thirteen J.B.Hunt Trucks
(or)
The Birth of a Superstition
---------------------------

On one of our junkets to Florida anime conventions, Riatsila and I got behind a truck with a dreadful yellow faux-Spencerian logo as we exited to fill up with gas. I commented on how not-fond-at-all I was of the artwork. It seemed like someone's nephew got a-hold of a graphics program and said "Look, Unkie! Look what I can do!"

Of course, once noticed, the ubiquity of J.B.Hunt became a terrible reality. Yellow logos everywhere!

Somewhen over time, we started counting Hunt trucks. They were all over the place. Then, self-consciously, we began to relate the number of trucks we saw to how well we did at the cons we attended, and a superstition was born!

We recognised that we were establishing a superstitious mindset, and were doing so purposely to explore the dynamics of the thing. My thoughts on the horrors of superstitious thinking may be found here.

We began to notice a 10-to-1 ratio of sales to trucks ($100 per each truck). This fell down when we saw 78 of them on the way to G-Fest in Chicago. Of course we had the need to rationalise the drop in the ratio (much as the ancients would try to suss out the why of drought or plague).
Then, from rationalising to the rational, I would suppose that a preponderance of Hunt trucks indicated an upturn in the economy (bless Ben!) so of course our sales would improve!

Bottom line, it appeared that the more J.B.Hunt trucks we saw on the way to the con, the better we did. The nature of a superstition looks for reasons and repeatability. Not reasonable reasons, necessarily, but reasons nonetheless. The Canaanites figured out that if they had sex with consecrated prossies, the gods would be titillated by the theo-porn and get busy themselves, fertilising the land.

Understand, this was undertaken as an intellectual exercise to examine the formation of superstitious thoughts and attitudes. We are firm believers in God's provision, and realise that every good and perfect gift comes from Him.

It just makes me mad when I see a bunch of J.B.Hunt trucks on the way home from the con!

ZOMG!!!

Jay Sekulow, that ever-ready barrister for God, called Chez 'Vark this morning (I know, right. Called US! Rush Limbaugh was late calling for his talking points, too!)

Seems the militant atheists are challenging the National Day of Prayer, and Sekulow is warning that if the NDOP is struck down by Godless judges, then Christians will be unable to pray for the nation. This catastrophe can be averted if we send panic money NOW, because without a government-sanctioned National Day of Prayer, we cannot possibly pray for our nation.

I am a conservative Christian. Color me stupid.

(C) Basil Wolverton

I am comforted that we have been brought from the brink of catastrophe by the courageous action of Mssrs. Boehner, Reid and Soetero. The governmant did NOT, in fact, shut down. WHEW! I was losin' sleep over THAT one. Knowing that the watchful eye of the Givement continues to glare balefully down on me gives me hope for Another Day! O, Hallelujah!

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I am weary of the snarky little comments by non-nuclear people about how dreadful atomics are, how dangerous, how deadly. Then they point a quivering digit at the quake-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Next they will be invoking Godzilla.

In their zeal to do a hatchet-job on The Offending Atom, they overlook the small fact that nuclear power isn't dangerous.

Earthquakes are. The earthquake is wot done it, an Act of Gaia. Our precious Earth-Mother shook, rattled and rolled the Japanese atomic plant to death. Without the earthquake, Mr. Atom would still be our friend!

The radiation released was reported breathlessly by the Green newsies, who clearly did not have classes on Atomic Readiness on the 4H TV Action Club in elementary school! They would know that the vast majority of the radiation released consisted of short-lived alpha-emitters, the type of radiation easily shielded against by the sheet of paper I am not typing on now.

Here is a neat little piece on radiation. (You will need to provide an email to continue the lesson for 10 minutes.)

Radiation has dangers, yes, but there are different types of radiation, and the differences in them are dramatic. Learn about them, and have less fear when CBS or NPR begin to bleat that attack by giant radiation-monsters is imminent.

Your Aardvark is in LO-O-O-O-VE!

Yes, friends, I am in love! Well and truly in love...

with the animations of Jessica Borutski! (Her still art ain't bad, either!)

Here is her first cartoon (well, not really...she animated for John K. on Ren and Stimpy, but this is what put herself on the map):



More later!

If I hear another lie from the pretending Liar-in-Chief, I am gonna explode. In fact, I just did, screaming at the radio.

Screaming, like a feminist who just dropped her bucket of Ben & Jerry's on her favorite cat, killing it.

He was blathering about the "drill, baby, drill" or somesuch, and he said that if we were to get every drop of oil from our resources, that "it would not meet our long-term needs".

His misdirection is breathtaking, but not as asphyxiating as the credulous listeners who hear and do not perceive. Certainly, it will not meet our long-term goals (however he defines them), but increased domestic oil production will currently fulfill our current needs, which is our entire problem now. We need fuel NOW, while we work out the solutions for the future. It is like saying that we should sit in the dark, because our lightbulb production cannot possibly meet future illumination needs. We need a man or woman in the Oval Office who has the clarity to see NOW, because we have to move through now to get to then. Obama's thousand-yard stare is of no use either to us or those in the future. To put it shortly, Barack Hussein Obama is of no use to us, period.

He almost makes me miss Jimmuh Cahter.

President Obama seems pathologically unable to practise strategic thinking. He apparently only deals with Things Tactical. There are people who play chess with their next fifty moves planned ahead, then there's the way I play: just responding move-by-move. I don't win much.

Libya appears to be just one more isolated chess move in a dreadful first-term game for Barack Hussein Obama. WHY are we there? WHERE is a declaration of war by the Congress? WHEN will we get out?
--------------------------------

Tennessee Valley parents are apparently suing the State in Federal Court in Huntsville, blaming the Alabama's low property tax rates for the poor schools here.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Alabama property owners pay the lowest property taxes in the country.

A federal lawsuit set for trial here Monday argues that isn't simply a coincidence or a reflection of an anti-tax electorate, but designed to discriminate against black schoolchildren.

The case is Lynch v. Alabama, named after one of the plaintiffs...

The suit is being brought on behalf of families of black schoolchildren in Lawrence and Sumter counties and families of white schoolchildren in Lawrence County. The plaintiffs range in age from preschool to high school.... --The Huntsville Times

The irony is palpable. They were at least smart enough to include a few white kids in the suit, to fend off accusations of "reverse discrimination".

It is instead taxpayer extortion in the Name of Civil Rights. All of the property money goes into a pool, where it is divvied up. Birmingham and Madison County apparently get more than "their fair share" except that they also pay a large percentage of the tax bill. Should property taxes increase, I will be curious to hear the howls from property owners in Sumter and Lawrence counties.

I wonder how many of the plaintiffs rent?

This made me happy.

Hooked from Character Matters on Vimeo.

STOP COAL PLANTS NOW!!!


We must stop the HORROR that is coal electric energy production.

The destruction, the terror, the loss of property!!

Is 45% of domestic electric generation WORTH the danger posed by ASH?!

IS IT?

---------------------

In other news, the Department of Energy has discovered the existence of Electric Fairies. Efforts to utilise them for domestic power production has been hampered by the EPA's placing them on the Endangered Cryptids list.

Pictire from: omarsinc.com/goodteachers

EVERYBODY WINS!

Wisconsin Congressional Democrats have taken their soccer ball and gone ho...wait, they haven't gone home; they've run away! They have joined The Beaver, Dennis the Menace, and hordes of other five-year-olds who didn't get their way, or who went to Dad's study, but didn't learn their lesson.

What lesson? YOU LOST! You are no longer the majority. In a representative government, the Majority has more clout than the Minority (apparently Beav didn't learn his math OR civics lessons, either). Having a tantrum won't change the numbers. This isn't American kid's soccer, where EVERYONE gets a pizza party. Unless, of course, you throw an especially excellent tantrum, turn that exquisite shade of blue, appear on CNN, and get Jesse Jackson to declare the whole "collective bargaining" thing a "Civil Rights Issue".

It's easier to win the soccer match if you have some adults to move your goal around.

BTW, has anyone noticed the Marxism inherent in union-speak? Collective bargaining...struggle....

So, it is time to go home, WI Dems, and represent your constituents. You are the minority, and do not have the clout you once did. You will likely lose this issue. Mensch up, guys 'n' gals. Do your job, even if you lose.

Smile and enjoy the pepperoni!

Jews Forgive Glenn Beck...Film at 10!


Isn't it time to maybe lighten up a tad? Everyone is tired of the Eternal Victim drumbeat.
There has been no black slavery in the YouEssofAY since the late 1860s. There have been no Nazi slaughters of Jews in over sixty years.

But, no, The ADL and other organisations spend their time, electronic antennae a-quiver, hoping to see or hear something, ANYTHING, that can be remotely seen as anti-Jewish hate speech, and then issue press releases and Threats of Reprisal.

They may not have learned as much from History as they ought.

Being a burr under society's saddle does not endear a group to that society, and tends to encourage fringe groups to take action. Sometimes fringe groups take center stage. If YOUR group is twitchy, or touchy, or just weird, then YOU may be the Star Trek red shirts when the Revolution comes. This has played out on the world stage time and again.

Mr. Foxman of the ADL, et al, Mr. Beck was not comparing Judaism with Islam. He was comparing The Reform tendency to Be Political with an Islamic group's tendency to Be Political.
You are smart enough to understand that. But, no, you have to play your Eternal Victim card, and savage a man who is a staunch supporter of the Jews. Whether one is a Zionist or not, your greatest fans and friends are evangelical-types. If you allow polemic to get in the way of that friendship and support, then you may not be as smart and clever as you think you are.

Another thing. Using "Nazi" as an historical comparison to stated practises and goals in no way diminishes the horror of the Holocaust. Knee-jerk "That's OUR victimhood! You can't use that word." attitudes DO in fact diminish it, cheapening it to an editorial page riposte. Between the madness that is in the world, and the victim card-playing of an entire people (or their self-anointed spokesmen) the oath of "Never Again!" becomes hollow whistling past the graveyard. Beck's point in using "Nazi" examples is not as a lame polemical barb, but rather is to show that the political and practical underpinnings of the German National Socialist party in the 1930s and 40s exist clearly and in abundance today, even in our current regime and its advisors. Beck provides ample historical and documentary evidence, using their own words. Perhaps your alarm should be better aimed at the current administration and its supporters.

Reform leaders also accepted Beck’s apology.

"I would welcome the opportunity to meet personally to introduce you more fully to the Reform Jewish Movement, to discuss the concerns about this incident and about the concerns that many of my colleagues (half of them Reform, half Orthodox, Conservative and Reconstructionist) expressed in the open letter to you regarding the repeated references to the Holocaust and Nazis, so that you may better understand the pain and confusion that language evokes," wrote Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in a letter to Beck.

Beck's comment on Tuesday stemmed from an open letter to him on which almost all the signatories were non-Orthodox rabbis. They criticized him for repeatedly comparing those with whom he disagrees to Nazis.

"There are the Orthodox rabbis and there are the Reform rabbis. Reform rabbis are generally political in nature. It's almost like radicalized Islam in a way where it is just -- radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics," Beck said Tuesday.

Jewish Funds for Justice, a liberal group that calls for Beck's censure for his frequent use of Nazi comparisons on his program, said the apology was "welcome but incomplete."

"We reiterate our call on (Fox News chief) Rupert Murdoch to end Mr. Beck's tenure at Fox News…. Anything short of this reflects an unwillingness to take seriously the harm Mr. Beck causes to many in our community and beyond," the group said.

"Harm" "Pain" "Confusion". "They criticized him for repeatedly comparing those with whom he disagrees to Nazis. "

This is schoolyard bickering, and unworthy of the line that had Moses the Lawgiver as its head.
Ooooooh You said "Nazi". THAT'S HURTFUL!

Mr. Beck does not call people with whom he disagrees "Nazi". He refers to those who display doctrines and practises congruent with the National Socialists "Nazi". There is a difference, and you know it, unless of course you only hear what he says through his critics, and haven't actually listened to what he says. He is issuing a warning of the cyclical nature of history, that if we do not learn from history, then we shall surely repeat it. You may do well to train your antennae onto that one

As the Dread Dormomoo said this morning, "If you act like a victim, you will be one.".

Inversion: Part Deux

This business of inverting or flipping tunes to parody or give the same "feel" in a non-royalty-costing way does not necessarily entail every single note or phrase...just enough to bring to mind the tune being invoked. The beat does the rest.

Here is an anime inversion of Barry Gray's "UFO" series theme. It is by Toshihiko Sahashi, and despite the whingings of the great unwashed on YouTube, it is an homage to Gray's work, not a "ripoff". It was the theme for the second season of Big O, a wonderful anime series from the early "aughts". First, Barry Gray's "UFO":



Next, the "Big O" second season piece:




Great stuff, and very mood-setting.

I have had an interest in soundtrack music ever since I was a little feller (3-4 years old).
One type of incidental music writing involves what I call "inversion". There may be a music theory term for it, but I do not know it. The method involves taking an extant piece of music and flipping it. One of the most obvious examples is Barry Gray's piece "Formula Five" which was a pop music tune set in far-off 2062 or so on "Fireball XL5". When Gray wrote it, the hot jazz craze of the time included "Take Five" performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It was the record that put jazz on everyone's turntable, and transformed Space-Age Bachelor Pads forever. Here is Brubeck's work, with Barry Gray's inversion below it.




FORMULA FIVE:



See how it works? I have another one for tomorrow, where a Japanese composer inverts a Barry Gray piece.

OK...spent the weekend in Atlanta at AnachroCon, the third installment of the steampunk convention. The entire cast of characters did an amazing job putting on the con, with some 600 attendees partaking in the Victorian SF goodness (I say that to tweak my new friends at Frenzy Universe, fellow hucksters, and purveyors of gear-ey, vacuum tube-ey decorative wonderment for steam enthusiasts. Their blog is cheerful, and informative, too. Their last post corrects the manifest belief that all steampunk is British, or at least revolves around Merrie Olde. They quite correctly remind us of a vast swath of Industrial Revolution history exists this side of the Pond. Hello, M&K!
Safe journey, and Good Hunting!

Mark Helwig is a fun neighbor to have, and a good artist to boot. I say good in the correct sense, not the "he's OK, and uses his colors well" sense. Click his name to be amused. Be sufficiently amused to plunk down the shekels for a print of your favorite. I did.

There were other dealers there, who are also many other places. Wolfhome was there. Jennifer and Kip were well, and their entourage. They sell excellent genre clothing, at SF and anime cons, and at Ren Faires.

It was a great con, and I look forward to next year's!

Alabama
Jihad

I have long tried to stay out of the Alabama / Auburn rivalry because I don't like messing with other people's religion.

(Pauses a beat.)

"Al from Dadeville" called in to the Paul Finebaum show on Jan 27, bragging about his act of fannjish terrorism:

"OK, let me tell you what I did the weekend after the Iron Bowl. I went to Auburn, Alabama, because I live 30 miles away and I poisoned the two Toomer's trees. I put Spike80DF in 'em. ... They're not dead yet, but they definitely will die."

Ahhhhhhhhh, sportsmanship.

The rivalry between the two schools has been bitter, but an egregious act of vandalism like this is unacceptable in any sense. "So what?" you churlishly retort, "It's just a coupla trees."

Yes a couple of 130-year-old oaks that are a community treasure. The trees are regularly mulched with toilet paper. The locals roll the trees mightily after Auburn wins. They are beautiful landmarks, especially when not so festooned.

Harvey Almorn Updyke Jr., 62, of Dadeville, AL, is the miscreant "Al" who poisoned the trees. One defense attorney has already recused himself from the case. This will be interesting.

Mammoth effort is being put forth to rehabilitate the toxic site and save the oaks, Perhaps Toomer's Corner will be blessed with the trees for a long time to come.

"Tide for Toomers" is a Facebook page put up by Crimson Tide fans who deplore this senseless act, and who are raising money toward the effort to save the oaks.

The Plumbline's
BLACK HISTORY MONTH VIGNETTE

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.
Frederick Douglass

But was there EVER a question?

Socio-Sexual Hierarchy Quiz

My Results:

Sigma

You don't give a damn. You are off doing your own thing, with or without anyone's approval. You radiate cool and intrigue, and women find you intensely interesting, despite you not trying or noticing. You don't go to parties or social gatherings, but if you do, you're usually with a friend and a gorgeous woman you brought. You're the lone wolf of the hierarchy, almost as attractive as Alphas. You shun leadership in favor of getting the hell away from everyone.

Vidad and Mr. McLeod may giggle as appropriate.

SO, the Dread Dormomoo and I were talking, herself in the throes of the viral orgy, having unspeakable things done to her cellular integrity: aches, fever, chills, do the math. She is still clearer-thinking than I on my best days. The business of Ron Paul's straw-poll win at CPAC came up, and Fox's love affair with Anyone-But-Paul. The big-big-BIG news apparently is that Mitt Romney came in second, that meaning in anybody's lexicon that he lost .

The question of the day is, If a polygynous Mormon were to make it to the White House (and yes, I know it would take an event equivalent to an asteroid strike -read Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer - for this to happen) who would be First Lady? Or First Sister-Wife?

Perhaps the fever has affected her summat.

"Herbalife Reviews -- 98% Of Herbalife Reps Get Burned Discover Why. Get the Free Report"

Why?

Because it's an MLM, THAT'S why.