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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
« Airbus A-380 photos at Airliners.net » Looks like, at long last, « 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,…
Although it’’s not likely that the Emperor’’s anti-union and anti-worker administration is likely to heed it, «
It seems more details have emerged about « Delta’s new pricing strategy » this weekend. ‘Under Delta’s new structure, prices for last-minute walk-up fares have been cut by as much as 50 percent, the long-unpopular Saturday night stayover requirement for lower-priced fares has been eliminated, the fee for changing nonrefundable tickets has been dropped from $100 to…
Another 3-4 inches of snow fell overnight; it was soft and fluffy, with no ice. So this afternoon, we took a ride downtown. The Grand continues to perform admirably; you have to do something really stupid to make it fishtail and it simply refuses to skid if you apply heavy brake. I’m loving the heating…
The weather has been abyssmal. Haven’t been able to get outside on the book since New Year’s, since the sidewalks and streets are just treacherous. Since I want to average 5 miles per day all year, I’m already in the hole and have lots of catching up to do. Blast it all.
I love how taken aback the “old school” newsgathering operations are that blogs scooped them, and in many cases surpassed them, in covering the South Asian earthquake and tsunami catastrophe. The best quote I’ve heard in this regard was today on NPR: a “technology contributor” named Xeni Jardin said, breathlessly, that bloggers aren’t just “fat…
Details are still slightly hazy, but « United’s pilots are fighting the weird backroom maneuvering » which resulted in us taxpayers getting soaked with the responsibility of the pilots’ pension fund, thanks to United’s epic and clueless executive mismanagement: ‘Pilots at United Airlines will fight plans for an involuntary bail-out of their pension scheme, threatening to unravel…
I was going to get a good start on my riding program by biking every day, but alas, it was not to be. I biked five miles on Saturday the first, but as I was returning, I noticed the rear tire was low. So I went to the gas station at Packard/Stadium to air it…
I enjoy all the year-end lists that pop up on the WWW around this time, mostly because they demonstrate that if there’s one thing the Web’s good at, it’s making lists. I also enjoy realizing that there’s about a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll get around to reading, seeing, and listening to all of…
Today comes news that « the Emperor is planning permanent gulags in a number of countries to hold persons merely suspected of … well, doing something of which the Emperor does not approve »: ‘The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence…
It’s 55 degrees outside ….. the snow has almost melted ….. the radio announcer just said that if this isn’t a record warm temperature for New Year’s Eve it must be close. Sigh.
While the Emperor stubbornly sits on his ass in Crawford and turns a Norwegian official’s comments about rich countries being stingy into a fascist agit-prop campaign against the UN, « donations via Amazon to the International Red Cross are over $2.3 million and rising ». With the death toll topping 80,000 today and climbing, every penny will…
It’s hard for me to write anything about Christmas without coming across as cynical and bitter and old and jaded and all that stuff. So I won’t. I’m thankful for Frank and for Bayley and for David and all my other friends. I’m thankful for my nice, comfortable warm home and a full stomach. I’m…
Looks like « USAirways’ CWA unit is the latest union to cave to bankruptcy/liquidation threats » ‘Reservations and gate agents at US Airways approved a new contract Thursday that cuts pay by 13 percent and provides the airline some of the relief it says it needs to avoid imminent liquidation. The Communications Workers of America, which represents…
Looks like United wins another one; « Independence Air is about to scuttle its independence »: ‘Independence Air, which has struggled since its launch six months ago as an independent low-fare carrier, has been asked by bankrupt United Airlines to return as a feeder carrier, a company spokesman said on Thursday. Rick DeLisi, a spokesman for Independence…
2004-12-26 01:04:59 We spent quite a bit of time driving around in the Jeep today. The seven inches of snow and hard-packed ice on side streets were quite fun. The Grand was rock-solid and never slipped or slid unless I forced it to. In some ways, it’’s a bit boring. But I’‘ve never been accused…
Well, I see that, on a day which is supposed to be the holiest to ‘Jesus is my hero’ types like himself, the « Emperor delivers his most hypocritical Christmas message ever » ’[The Emperor] on Saturday urged Americans to help the neediest among them by volunteering to care for the sick, the elderly and the poor…
On Christmas Day, the one day of the year when ‘Goodwill Toward Men’ is supposed to prevail, comes news that « our post-retirement future is in the hands of a buncha nuts and partisan political hacks »: ‘Nearly everyone agrees that it will be hard, perhaps impossible, for [the Emperor] to overhaul Social Security without bipartisan support….
I switched the tires on the Bobcat today from the smooth good-weather ones to the knobby snow/mountain tires for winter. It’s time to go try the thing out on the snow and ice. I’m eager to get back in shape and get things going so I can be ready to do some serious riding this…
« Our Life in Michigan – Christmas Day 2004 »
« Our Life in Michigan – Christmas Day 2004 »
« Our Life in Michigan – First Big Snowfall of Winter » It’s really grand out there, but this stuff is so dry and fluffy, one cannot make a decent snowman [sniff]. Still, it’s about time we had something fluffy and white on the ground. The beagle, however, much prefers the couch …
It took a while … a very long while … but finally a « Florida appeals court has upheld an award to a flight attendant who blamed secondhand smoke on airliners for bronchitis and sinus disease »: ‘A state appeals court upheld a $500,000 award to a flight attendant who blamed secondhand smoke on airliners for her…
