A nice way to stay in touch with loved ones, and a convenient way to share my opinions without having everyone just walk away...wait a minute, where are you going? I wasn't finished..

Thursday, August 30, 2007

John West Filmfest

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Makes me hungry for some salmon.

I accidentally hit the Next Blog button

and went to a blog named Dog Jokes. Here's a sample

This guy sees a sign in front of a house, "Talking Dog for Sale." He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the back yard. The guy goes into the back yard and sees a mutt sitting there.

"You talk?", he asks.

"Yep", the mutt replies.

"So, what's your story?"

The mutt looks up and says "Well, I discovered this gift pretty young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running. The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to settle down. So I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. Had a wife, a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. The owner says "Ten dollars."

The guy says he'll buy the dog but asks the owner, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him?"

The owner replies, "He's such a liar."

Go Hill

I took time off from ND football and the markets today to read the news, and one item caught my attention. You guessed it - Hillary's campaign funds. Some Chinese gentleman named Norman Hsu is one of Hillary's big campaign contributors. He's been identified as having been convicted in California of defrauding investors out of a million dollars. After his conviction he forgot to show up in court for sentencing and there's an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Now he lives in New York and is said to be in the garment industry. (garment industry? Imports from China maybe?)

Besides his own contributions, as a leading fund raiser ("Hill Raiser"), he supposedly collects checks from other people who he contacts for donations. I'm sure investigation will prove he was making the "bundled" contributions himself by reimbursing the check writers. One Chinese family in California have been identified as the third biggest family of contributors to Hillary's campaigns: more than $130,000 since 2005. Paw, I think his name is, is a mailman whose son is supposedly a "business associate" of Hsu's.

Tracking down all Hsu's associates making large contributions shouldn't be too hard.
and it shouildn't be too tough to review their financials to see where they got the money they contributed. Nothing like a few indictments to get people cooperating. Of course the Republican controlled Federal Elections Commission and the Attorney General's office would probably like to wait until after Hillary has the Democratic nomination to bring these matters into court, and into the headlines.

I don't hate Hillary for being a liberal or a feminist, I hate her for pretending to be those things. The Democratic Party should be the champion of the working people, the Clintons have been the champions of outsourcing. The trade deals Bill engineered could have been written in Peking (Beijing) and I suppose parts of them were.

Remember the Bhuddist Temple party in 1996? The Clinton campaign received a hundred thousand dollars from Califiornia Chinese contributors. After an investigation most of it was identified as having come from a trade agency of the Chinese communist government.

One would have thought that experience would have made the Clinton's a little suspicious of Chinese American contributors. I suppose Hillary was as shocked and disappointed then as she is today. At least in '96 they were smart enough to send Al "Inconvenient Truth" Gore to the party at the temple to pick up the money.


Oh and one other thing - She'll try to donate Hsu's contributions to charity and hope no one presses too hard on the fraudulent "bundled" donations. Why not just return the money to the donor? Because then she wouldn't get the tax write off for the charitable contribution. She's just as sleazy as her husband.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I didn't know what to post

so I posted this. Kind of different but pretty funny.

As kick off time approaches my brain starts to shut down.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Would you like to meet someone who swears a lot?

Well here he is.

I had a nice day today. Kim came by around noon, We had a nice visit. Then Mom and I went to Best Buy to buy me a new keyboard. I spilled iced tea on my old one. It was not my home-made iced tea. It was a store-bought mix with a lot of sugar and some lemon flavoring. It sure made a mess of a perfectly good key board. My first thought was "Thrift Store" for a $4 replacement. Mom seemed skeptical, so I proposed Walmart for a basic bare-bones model for $12. Mom suggested Best Buy so I lifted my target to $16. But the cheapest they had was $20 so we took it. Did you know you can pay close to $200 for a keyboard? Well, you can. The only keyboard that would be worth $200 would have to be hermetically sealed and sweet drink resistant. But the one I got has 10 extra buttons down each side. I used three of them to adjust the volume while playing Risk. I think two others are for home and mailbox when on the internet. I plan to learn and use the other fifteen as well, having spent all that money. On the downside it came with a little pad to rest your hands on while typing, which I attached. The problem being that it throws me off a little and I sometimes hit the control key instead of the shift key. As you may know, the control key can be a nuisance. When I started to type the title above I must have hit control W and boom I was out of my mailbox back to my home-page. The price of progress...

But, anyway, there at Best Buy Mom found a three disc Neil Diamond anthology which contained the excellent but hard to find stuff from 35 - 40 years ago, like Glory Road, Porcupine Pie, and You're so Sweet (Horseflies Keep Buzzin 'round Your Face). She was so happy after we got home and she listened to a couple songs she came over and hugged me because I helped her find it. Well, nothing's ever quite perfect and sure enough she observed a couple of gross-lookin' fingerprints on the striated side of one of the disks, which as it turns out makes six of the songs unavailabe for listening.

Show of hands - Who thinks the gross fingerprints were imprinted at the factory? Ok, and how many think some Best Buy customer stirring his or her chocolate milk with their fingers while playing with the discs, realized the grave consequences of their carelessness and returned the package to Best Buy, who reshrink wrapped it and put it back into inventory? OK, and who thinks the customer got out their hairdrier and put their own shrinkwrap on and returned it to the store as though it hadn't been opened. Maybe we'll never know.

Much more happened today, like

driving through West Dundee where the storm last night blew down some trees including the old fir tree at village hall where they've traditionally hung the Christmas, oh excuse me, I meant holiday, no, I meant Seasonal Lights.

walking down by the river to see how high the water level was, and

babysitting little Malachy tonight who did NOT throw any Leggo's at my head.

But I'm out of space.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

A Musical Treat

8 days to footbaw. In the mean time. You guys know Johnny Cash, right? But do yo know Carl Perkins? He sang Blue Suede Shoes before Elvis did.

Edit with update: I listened to this again tonight and I really like it. Yardbirds, Blues Breakers, Cream, Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie - I liked Clapton where ever he showed up, but for me Derek and the Dominoes was the definitive work. For the real flavor though you have to listen to the recording because Duane Allman's slide guitar on the album was great. Duane Allman was great and I read somewhere he always paid the roadies before he paid the band.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Being There

Remember that movie with Peter Sellers? Then you can figure out why Irish fans refer to Ty Willingham as Chauncy, especially after reading this quote from his press conference today, when asked about his teams opening game against Syracuse next month-
(Posied by Ditka03 at Rock's House):

Lionel (Oh yeah, sometimes they call him Lionel too. I'm not sure, but that may be from the movie Radio. Sorry.) was asked at his press conference today if he was preparing differently for Syracuse given that the game is at the Carrier Dome. Below is his response, taken word for word:

"I think its going to be different. Anytime you’re indoors, its different. Ya know, I don’t know the drafts of the building, and really I can’t remember what the drafts of the building were, OK, and every building has one, depending on which door they open, OK, so we’ll try to figure those things out the day before. But the overall heat, we know the east is usually associated with humidity. We know that humidity is the killer, not temperature. Its humidity that makes all the difference, and that is something that is very difficult to do. Most people don’t do well breathing water. And especially if you got a lot of people. Because I’m imagining where they draw their air from is the outside, and if the outside air is humid, its got a chance."

Whaaat?

I'm posting a lot of ND stuff because, believe me, you don't want me to get started on the economy and the markets. That stuff I told you about, it's here. You don't feel anything? Good. Say a little prayer, knock on wood, and throw some salt over your shoulder. Then duck,

But the family news is all good. The extended family is planning a week-end get together in October at my sister Mary's cabin in Wisconsin. That'll be great. My nephew Bill and his lovely wife Courtney are expecting in February. Betsy gets to be a Mommo. That's so cool.

Pagan Ritual at ND

Friday Night before game at midnight

Here's what you didn't see!

Friday, August 10, 2007

Back in the day

Corwin Brown, ND's new defensive coordinator, was quite a hitter. I can't wait to see our defensive backs lay the timber to some receivers like this. Heck, it'll be a nice change if they're close enough to the receiver to be on the screen at the same time.

Thanks to FightOnforMorrisey at Rock's house for the clip

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Links

I added a link to CounterPunch. I thought I already had one.

I'm not deleting my link for the Edwards campaign, I still favor him. I'm getting to like Obama better though as he takes the heat for saying he would talk to Chavez and Castro (instead of having them assassinated as the less "naive" candidates would prefer to do.) He said he wouldn't drop an atom bomb on Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Duh! So Hillary ripped him for taking that option "off the table". I really hate that bitch.

State and local govt's will feel pinch

From Counterpunch:

The Politics of Pain

“Pain starts to spread as state shuts its wallet…” (Los Angeles Times headline, August 3, 2007.)

“The budget standoff is forcing California to cease funding hundreds of health-and child-care providers. Some are hanging by a thread.” (Los Angeles Times subhead, August 3, 2007.)How about “The budget standoff is forcing California to cease funding highway construction, or prison construction, or subsidies for poison spray programs, or SWAT munition enhancements, or …

Nah. Stick it to the kids.

Not everyone loves Jane Austen

"Jane Austen? Why, I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."

MARK TWAIN

Friday, August 03, 2007

In case you haven't gone there already,

here's andther Onion News report

Wow, it's Friday already

I haven't gotten around to posting about our trip to Champaign. It was great. Noah and Lauren are doing really well. Lauren likes her job taking care of wayward kids at a correctional facility. Noah finished his summer school with good grades and has a month off before school starts again. Their house is cute and comfy, and sleeps seven as we found out.
We'd been up in the air about whether to drive down and back on Monday or stay there Monday night. We were having such a nice time we couldn't tear ourselves away, until after Lauren fixed biscuits and gravy Tuesday morning. (Thanks, Lauren)
Sam and Maxie (the poochies) are doing fine. Max must remember his days as our house-guest, because he was very attentive to me. Audrie, the cat, was torn between a desire to just hide someplace til we left and the need to assert her territorial prerogatives.
Mark, Steffie, and Malachy drove down separately, and ended up spending the night too. So it was real quality family time. Noah got Mally a cute stuffed dinosaur to carry around and sleep with, and I got to go to Sonic - for a coney dog. Yummm!

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

I'm still here.

This one has me really upset