This one's for YOU, Ted!

The Dread Dormomoo and I trekked to Mobile, AL to attend MobiCon this weekend. A GREAT time was had by all, and my stint as Fan Guest of Honor was a pleasant one. Congratulations and glad-handing all around, plus people attended my panels on what got you into SF fandom, and a 30-year retrospective of being a huckster at SF conventions. (That one may not have been as dreadful as it sounds.)

The image above was the design I did ESPECIALLY for the weekend in celebration of the prophetic Rapture follies of Camping and Co. I was secure in the belief that I would have to issue no refunds. We sold ALL of the ones we took (two dozen), plus I had mail orders to print when I got home.

PLUS, the whole rapture stupidity opened the door to share some biblical truth in a comparatively hostile environment. (SF cons rarely have chapel services, f'rinstance, nor do the attendees sing "Kum Ba Ya" at the end.) It was a sweet time all around. I got to see old friends, new friends, AND I got to sell them things, too!

We did half again as well as at past MobiCons. Their attendance was WAY up, too!

Wayne, Don, and all the rest, thanks for an amazingly wonderful weekend! You, too, Tex!

Next year at Mobile!

I went to MobiCon, and all I got was this lousy autograph.

Isn't it AWESOME!!?

Robert Picardo is a great guy, personable, self-deprecating. I do not usually buy autographed pictures of actors, except as gifts for others, but when I saw this Hirschfeld caricature, it was a done deal.

Thanks, Bob!

Well, the week begins, with MobiCon at its end! The very convention that is featuring Your Humble as their Fan Guest of Honor is upon us. (My brief bio and stunning picture may be found here. Scroll down past Ethan Phillips.) See you all in Mobile, AL.
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I have to say, as much as I like Herman Cain's FairTax allegiance, AND as much as I like Godfather's pizza, I really have a problem with his having been a Fed governor.
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Sadly, I heard the doubtable Hannitoad and his stuffed panda Dick Morris on radio.
Morris was mumphing about the diminishing Repub field of Gingrich, Romney, Trump and Huckabee. Not a peep about Paul (and no, I wasn't surprised.)

I think Morris must still be working for the Clintons.

FOX News is every bit the MSM as CBS, et al.

The Very Conservative Restoration preachers have tended to be a grumpy lot, and have developed some tropes to fall back on. The above banner appeared in local newspapers during the 50's and 60's on the religion page, often sponsored by a local funeral home, since few things shunted your mind to The Eternal Verities like reminders of your mortality.

The aforementioned grumpy preachers excelled at Us vs. Them rhetoric. This was, after all, during the Cold War, and we knew Who our enemies were: The Russkies on the geopolitical stage, and the denominational ecumenicists on the religious front. Adding a jot or tittle beyond what the Bible said (or what the grumpies preached) pretty well landed you into the latter classification. If you had a church HQ, you were in the enemy camp.

(Allow me to interject my view that the divisions in Christendom are not a good thing, that the almighty insistence upon MY way rather than God's is abhorrent, and lends itself to divisiveness which in no way honors nor obeys Jesus Christ.)

One of the doctrinal windmills at which the grumpies liked to tilt was that selfsame banner "Go to the church of your choice." With polemical fervor they would cry "There is only one church, the church that Christ died for. You should go to the church of Christ's choice, not the church of your choice!" Such grannying fuss played well to the audience, who perceived "church of your choice" as being ecumenical "any brand will do-ism". It was a reliable rant, which reliably missed the point. This was, after all, during the Cold War, and our Great Enemy was Godless Communism. They had the Church of the State's choice. Period. Here in the free good ol' YouEssofAY we had jillions of churches on jillions of street corners! All that, and you could choose which one to attend; no commissar pointed your way. The ad was not a celebration of errant denominationalism...it was a paean to religious freedom in the West. If you have trouble with that, you must be a Commie, too, and we may question your fondness for apple pie as well.

No-one ever saw through to that last bit. Apparently, they never saw the freedom bit either.
To paraphrase the Space Quest games "What a smart person I am!" Wonder if I could get Gary Owens to record that.

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Those that note the time stamp on my post (and I have so many reader that someone is bound to notice) will see that I am playing the hypocrite, and that I Am Not At Church. Yesterday your Aardvark was shanghaied into being a judge at a local BBQ cookoff.

Yes, I know. Weep for me.

I got to enjoy four pieces of chicken, and five pork ribs. Then we had BBQ sandwiches for supper.

Are you still weeping?

Having done this, I have discovered a new syndrome: Acute Barbecue Poisoning. Maybe I can start an ABP telethon. Let's just say that digestive time-dilation is involved and leave it at that.
Unfortunately, like the drunkard in Proverbs my response to the next cookoff may be "when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.".

Bin Laden's Big Love didn't work out maybe?


Usama/Osama bin Laden's five wives were not quite enough.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said Friday.

The pornography recovered in bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Just sayin'.

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On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer threw some oil execs on the barbie with his demands to remove "taxpayer subsidies" from "Big Oil". What in the world does that mean? Oil Execs are Washington's favorite menu item when gas prices go up. Grilling them makes for good PR, 'cos the senators are seen as looking out for the Littul People. Screaming about tax breaks for oil companies is great fun, and not listening to the oil company heads' answers is a laff riot.

One of them, in a clearly self-serving move, repeatedly said "we get no subsidies".

Turns out using real-world language, this is true.

In the U.S., companies are taxed 35 percent on earnings of $10 million to $15 million or on all earnings over $18.3 million. That’s one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world... (FactCheck.org)

Companies that operate overseas pay no taxes on money earned overseas, if that money STAYS overseas. This includes, but is not limited to, oil companies. The "tax breaks" in 2005's H.R.6 actually wound up raising oil company tax bills.

So what could Chuckles Schumer possibly mean by "taxpayer subsidies". Ah have had a rev-uh-LAY-shun!

Taxpayer subsidies mean any money a business is allowed to keep beyond current tax liabilities. In the Wonderland of Washington-speak, all money that business makes should be Washington's, and it is by the sufferance of the taxpayers, by their "taxpayer subsidies" that any business is allowed to keep a portion if their "obscene profits" at all, and that grudgingly.

To our brave leaders-from-behind, the rubric is: "all your cash are belong to us.".

This ad makes me so happy!

I am agog at the dependability of dispensational stupidity. Jesus is ostensibly Lord, yes? You spell Lord "B-O-S-S", yes?

So why, if our Boss says regarding his return:

"No one knows when that day or hour will come-not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Matthew 24:36 NIV

do people insist on setting a date?

Why? Could the answer be MPAI? What part of Jesus' statement is hard to understand?
I will not even go into the fact that the whole "Left Behind" scenario is a load of heretical dingo's kidneys. Not even a little bit.

We'll see on May 22nd.

One of the reasons that the public backing of The War Effort is on the wane-and I am NOT a backer of the war on Terror- is that we have no clear enemy. If terror was the killer from the SCREAM movies, we could get a handle on it. How about the bureaucrat Hengist, who turned out to be a Piglet-voiced Jack the Ripper in the original Star Trek? THAT'S an image we can get our brains around. We have no such image of our enemy in this pathetic hoedown of a war. No, THREE wars.

Political Correctness in all its Marxist glory has stripped us of our most potent weapon. Mark Twain said "Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.". Caricaturing the enemy, subjecting him to ridicule, makes him less fearsome, less formidable, and more defeatable. Because we are fighting by Emily Post's Rules of Warfare, we cannot use the impolitic, or the impolite. If Bin Laden had been cartooned as a goat, or Mohammed as a camel (PBUH), we would have gone a long way toward having a despisable, fightable enemy.

Propaganda cartoons make the Enemy less than human. This may not be nice, but it is War. A dehumanised enemy is a defeatable one. I am not advocating the wholesale scoffing and fun-making of other humans, but in War, the point is To Win. Propaganda Cartoons are a potent tool for winning. We need to have a raft of cartoonists to puncture the pretensions of our enemies. PLEASE, let's be sensible, and do this thing to win!

Of course, this assumes a sane national wish to actually win. It has been clear since Viet Nam that we have ceased as a nation to have the desire to crush our enemies. It's as though Nagasaki and Hiroshima used up the national will, and we must atone by being losers forever.

Been away for days, bereft of electron flow. The N. AL tornadoes of Wednesday last took lives, property, electricity, and the Internet. We got power back on Saturday, and the 'net today. Our lives and property are intact, thank The Maker.

I have been going through io9, and learned that the architect who brought Googie to the world passed away last week. He brought soaring optimism for the future, and cast it into brick, mortar, glass and steel.

One of the commenters, otakuoverlord wrote:

People were so amazingly confident that the space age would transform humanity into a (...yes, predominantly white) utopian society amongst the stars. We went to the f**king MOON at the same time you could grab a shake inside a giant polygon primitive. That's awesome.

Racism removed, why can't we feel that way about the world again?

There it is again, the ever-present need to peel open the scab, make the wound bleed, apologise for past errors, real or imagined, one more time. My response was (this is not the first time I've dealt with this issue):

This makes my horse-pummeling point of weeks ago for me. "Race" did not even have to enter this discussion. We cannot feel the optimism of the past precisely because our faces are constantly ground into (real and imagined) social sins of the past. The caricature of "church" ("You filthy sinner" messages, like that) is alive and real right here in post-Christian Sci-Fi-dom.

Keep picking the scab. Of COURSE it will heal without a scar.

The book of Proverbs says "A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping 19:13" One of the symptoms of a contentious wife is that she will not forgive...she will not let something go. She rabbits on and on about it. There is no peace, because there is no forgiveness. Herein lies the reason for our doldrums of pessimism.

The cartoon church that the world despises has old ladies of both sexes pointing bony fingers of indignation and intoning condemnation upon the miscreant. While there is no dearth of people who raise their own esteem by lowering yours, the church for whom Christ died does not operate that way. Forgiveness in Christ washes away, expunges, cleanses you of all unrighteousness and guilt. Little wonder that baptism is such a potent command for entry into the Kingdom. Once the sin is pardoned, as far as God is concerned, it never happened. He forgives you, and doesn't bring it up again.

Enter our racially-sensitive society, with a guilt-mill cranked by so-called "reverends" Jesse and Al and all. The nation has confessed and repented endlessly for the acts of our forbears, things that we have not done, but their guilt has been imputed to us by a political transubstantiation, making us the slave-owners of the 1800's and Southern Democrats of the 50's. These alleged ministers of the gospel do not have the grace to forgive; instead they lay the same sin at our door year upon year. There is little wonder that there is so little optimism. You cannot feel good about the future when weighed down by guilt, real or imagined, from the past.

The gospel teaches that we in Christ grow from faith to faith, reflecting Christ from glory to glory. The picture is one of upward growth. The modern mavens of the racial anti-gospel, anti-christs like Jackson and Sharpton, smear undeserved guilt on our society, and profit thereby. "But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." the prophet Amos said, and Martin Luther King Jr. quoted the vision. The current crop of race-baiters and guilt merchants have trampled and repudiated that vision. Proverbs also says that without a vision, the people perish. Denied forgiveness by the wealthy and politically powerful merchants of race, how can our nation expect to have optimism about the future?

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.

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Loen's Fa-CHAYBook status:

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

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

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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!