The « AARP » has its own « Typepad » blog out; it’s dedicated to fighting the « disgusting and reprehensible Fascist campaign to discredit AARP and elderly supporters of Social Security ». What a sad statement about American today that it’s even necessary. Why is the blog necessary? Consider: ’… with GOP support and the plan’s arithmetic looking equally shaky, Bush’s allies aren’t taking chances....

         « Our Life in Michigan – Miscellaneous Beagle Pics »

In which Beagle gets some Salon Treatment and takes a snowy walk in Winchell Park: « Our Life in Michigan – Miscellaneous Beagle Pics »

Then: ‘They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.’ — Benjamin Franklin Now: ‘Protecting national security must take precedence over civil liberties because Britain faces the prospect of “terrorism without limit” that could result in “thousands” being killed.’ — Tony Blair

Here’s how AirBeagle works: There are six domains in the AirBeagle family, AB.US, AB.org, AB.com, AB.biz, AB.net and AntiFascist.US, but only two are really used — .US and .biz. AntiFascist.US automatically forwards to AB.US, as does AB.net and AB.org. AB.com automatically forwards to AB.biz. « AirBeagle.US » contains the following ‘blogs: « Ask »: Here’s where you find out all you want to know...

There’’s been a very curious transaction this week; « a Canadian company bought three Boeing plants in Kansas and Oklahoma » ‘Toronto-based conglomerate Onex Corp. is heading for the potentially turbulent skies of the aviation industry with a $1.2 billion (U.S.) purchase of three Boeing Co. commercial aircraft plants in Kansas and Oklahoma. “We have come together around a vision, to build...

E-Mail « Send us a note via e-mail  » Snail Mail Steve Pollock 1443 Wisteria Drive Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4643 Phone 734 / 846-6498

AirBeagle is best viewed in Mozilla’s Firefox or Apple’s Safari or even Omniweb. It works in Opera and Netscape, just not as well. You’re on your own there. And for you Internet Explorer users: Break the shackles of Microsoft and get a REAL browser! AirBeagle works in I.E., but not that well … because I.E. is a bloated piece of...

1. I was born in Roswell, NM, almost 20 years to the day after John Denver. Yes, THAT Roswell. No alien jokes necessary – I’ve heard ‘em all. 2. I am a Sagitarrius, but think it’s all mostly a buncha harmless hooey. 3. I was baptized in the Church of the Nazarene. 4. I spent several years in a church...

News from California: « An experiment with RFID badges for attendance purposes fails for a community school »: ‘It started with a girl who went home from junior high saying she felt like an orange. Lauren Tatro, 13, told her parents the plain facts. Every student at Brittan Elementary School had to wear a badge the size of an index card with...

    John Wooden of Chickenhead Productions scores big parody/satire points with two new websites, Sex is For Fags and Iron Hymen — abstinence-only sites for, respectively, boys and girls.

Well, that’s quite a pic of « a guy I’ve had a crush on since It’s Your Move », eh?

I don’t know much about rugby, but I know « these boys are wearing nothing but socks » and said socks are not on their feet!

« V-Day » came and went this year; next year, I hope we all pay more attention to it. ‘Because of your efforts V-Day, and the spirit, energy and movement to end violence against women and girls, has spread wildly around the world. Last year there were 2300 events, celebrations, in over 1100 cities, villages and towns. From Delhi to Detroit women...

An excellent new blog, « Secret Simon », joins the fray; this one is about a ‘happily’ married man who decides he can’t suppress the truth about himself anymore and shares that truth with his wife. And then blogs about it: ‘We will be separating. No two ways around it. Reality has set in. Her two conflicting minds have started to reconcile....

Boy, Ohio (or, to be more accurate, its loony legislature) just « doesn’t know when to stop », does it?

I’m taking a blogging/web break. It was forced on me, but I’m actually not quicking much about it. A bad software update on my Mac from Apple (Motto: ‘Love the Computer, Hate the Company’) has royally fouled things up on my beloved Ti-Book. It’s been dead for two days and my backup software restore disk is apparently bad, so unless...

Sad news today: Another passing from the 20th Century American intellectual landscape. « Playwright Arthur Miller, 89, is dead »: ‘Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died. He was 89. Miller, who had been hailed as America’s greatest living playwright, died...

Since I’m a total A-type (a for anal, that is), I created a spreadsheet with statistics on what the Jeep has cost us in gas. Just over the two-month mark and we’ve gone 1,061 miles, used 99.418 gallons of gas at a cost of $143.50 and paid an average of $1.81 per gallon. That’s an average 212.3 miles per tank...

Caution: If you don’t like vitriolic, angry political rants, skip this entry. Consider yourself forewarned. Thank you. The Ann Arbor News (Motto: ‘We Have the World’s Worst Website’) is reporting today that the « Thomas More ‘Law’ Center (For the Promotion of the Fascist FunDumbMentalist Authoritarian Vision for the Empire) launched a direct, personal and vicious attack on Michigan’s gay and...

25 Short Stories   Stephen Vincent Benet     The Sun Dial Press, Garden City, NY, ©1943     University of Michigan Libraries     Dewey 828 B465     572pp. I’m reading 25 Short Stories, a collection of seminal American works by « Stephen Vincent Benet », one of my favorite authors. Two of the works are Doc Mellhorn and the Pearly Gates and By the Waters of Babylon. Both...

Adbusters.org has the true American Imperial Corporate flag. The government might as well go ahead and adopt it; it’s more true than anything else flying. Let’s let Adbusters say it: ‘Corporate America is revelling in a Golden Age. A shrinking number of the planet’s biggest businesses—AOL Time Warner, Shell, Nike, Microsoft, McDonald’s—are the money behind presidents, the power that drives...

Tired of living in loser countries that want to round you up in concentration camps and stone you to death based on fictional 5,000-year-old Jewish scrolls? Well then! « The Gay Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands » just might be for you! ‘Alone, unaided, neither seeking nor requiring help the Gay & Lesbian Kingdom rose in self defence, so long as...

Fascinating stories about ‘33-’45 still crop up even today. This time, it’s from a « former Nuremberg trial guard who says he helped Goering escape hangman » ‘A former guard at the Nuremberg trials has come forward to say he believes he provided the poison that Nazi Hermann Goering used to commit suicide hours before his scheduled execution for war crimes, the...

Cafe Ambrosia was Cafe Hungry Like the Wolf this afternoon. The guys behind the counter were apparently (from what I could gather) striking back at the pretense of a « rockist » critic from earlier in the day by playing what sounded like « Decade » (nothing after 1988 was on the disc, which was just as well) from beginning to end — much...

The audacity, ignorance and outrageousness of « men like this » never cease to amaze me: ‘Marcavage never uses slurs to describe homosexuals; rather, he turns the word homosexual itself into a slur, using it as a sort of branding. He is a deliberate speaker, careful as any politician. But if he is diplomatic with his words, he uses them to advance...

On the AP wire this afternoon we see a charming story about a « Four-year-old Michigan boy who drove to the video store » (and back) in the middle of the night: ‘A boy drove his mother’s car to a video store in the middle of the night, police said — and he’s all of 4 years old. Even though he was...

Early detection of testicular cancer is vital and being ‘body aware’ is an important part of that. Thanks to early detection, testicular cancer has a 95% cure rate, if caught early enough. So some UK athletic lads got together and took a lovely little picture in order to boost the « Tackle Testicular Cancer Campaign* ». Very hot for a very worthy...

I’ve seen a few of those colored bracelets promoting causes around; I’ve even confiscated one from a fourth grader who was using it to highly annoy the girl in front of him. But there’s so many of them that it can get confusing as to who is promoting what cause. Thank god I stumbled across « Buggery.org’s Guide to Colored Bracelets...

The Grand Iraqi Election Which Proves the Emperor is Always Right has passed in a putrid fog of press adulation and fawning-ness, plus some ‘Ohmigod, what if he was right?!’ spineless sniveling among some liberals we won’t link to here. But, as is usual with anything the Boy Emperor does, reality is about to rudely intrude on his carefully constructed...

Fancy that. An article on Page 3 of yesterday’s New York Times arts section on, of all things, little old Ann Arbor. Nothing laudatory or complimentary, of course; just the usual snide satisfaction the Times gets from giving the upturned-nose treatment to anything west of the Delaware River. The hed: “Sure, You Can Watch the Oscars, but Can You See...

Some woman from the committee for Super Bowl XL (here in Detroit in February 2006) was just on the news saying she knew Detroit “has some image problems.” I guess she meant the cold weather, because she went on to insist that everyone from out of town will be fine in Michigan February weather “if you wear a hat and...

So, yes, it was 16 degrees when I left at 11 a.m., but I rode my bike to work today anyway. It’s only a mile-and-a-half, one-way, and I’m a big fat cow who needs to get in shape. I made it just fine, there and back, thank-you-very-much. But just had to note: Despite Ann Arbor’s $1,000 fine for not clearing...

Okay, so this layout is the last one I’ll do. I’m really happier with it. Like it? [By the way, just a pissy note from a crotchety ol’ toot: I’m fed up with Internet Explorer and it’s ignorant inability to properly handle web standards, particularly the way it fails to add up the numbers properly to display boxes. I mean,...

Yes, I changed the template again. And the header photo. Love it? Hate it? Hit the ‘Sound Off’ link below and let me know what you think. And yes, things might look weird or something in IE for Windoze. But then … well, you use IE for Windoze and you pretty much deserve what happens to you. Switch to Firefox!...

I missed my opportunity (thanks to my annual January bronchitis) to comment on the fool prince’s costume party thing. Even though it’s sorta blown over, I’ll contribute with this: my version of Prince Harry’s Official Coat of Arms: Actually, « the real one is here ». I just couldn’t resist. Oh, lighten up! It’s a parody folks!

« Gore Vidal » is back in the Empire and telling it like it is, thank god: ‘He said that he can foresee the war going so badly that [the Emperor George II] will be forced to resign or be driven from office. “I can’t believe the speed with which the entire republic fell apart. The U.S. Bill of Rights fell apart...

Here’s the REAL Pledge of Allegiance, as written by Non-Sequitor: ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the corporate states of America. ‘And to the Republicans for which it stands, ‘One nation, under debt, easily divisible, ‘With liberty and justice for oil.’ — Non-Sequitor Amen.

         « Our Life in Michigan – 2005 North American International Auto Show »

Here are some pics taken by Frank and by me that I’ve been meaning to post: « Our Life in Michigan – 11- and 22-Jan-05 Miscellaneous Wintry Pics »

         « Our Life in Michigan – 11&22-Jan-05 Miscellaneous Wintry Pics »

I was in Kroger last night picking up some groceries. The place was packed, and one of the checkout lines extended past the newspaper rack. I reached over one woman’s basket to grab a copy of the Ann Arbor News. First she gave me a sour look, then she chuckled and said, “Read it and weep.” Usually I’m at a...

I added « Reality-Based Nation » to the blogroll because of wonderful, kick-the-fascists-in-the-face entries like this: ‘Earlier this week, we noted a pending appeals court case in Indiana (article) in which the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was being challenged. Yesterday, while Mr. Bush preached to the world about freedom and liberty for all people, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the...

As we slog around in the weeks of snow that have been dumped on southeast Michigan, it’s mordantly amusing to see what happens in parts of the country that aren’t as used (inured?) to snow as Michigan is: A mere inch of snow was all it took to cripple North Carolina’s capital—and prompt plenty of finger-pointing Thursday as the city...

« Airbus A-380 photos at Airliners.net » Looks like, at long last, &laquo the official rollout of the Airbus A-380 », the world’’s largest commercial aircraft, is finally at hand: ‘Airbus, which has delivered more airplanes than Boeing for the second year in a row, is about to unveil another No. 1: the world’’s largest passenger jet. The A380, a four-aisle, four-engine, double-decker “superjumbo,”...