This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Pointless blather

  • Still Silly Sunday

     

    You’ve heard of the Early Bird… Meet the Late Bee.

    The Wife took this picture here today. Not really funny, but….

  • I’m Bored – You Lose

    Common sense elements as defined/described by verbose folks

    Occam’s Razor is defined as:

    a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

    I call it The KISS Principle.

    The Law of Unintended Consequences or The Butterfly Effect.

    the sensitive dependence on initial conditions where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state.

    I call it Murphy’s Law.

    Those are a coupla my easy favorites.

    “Nuance” is akin in some ways. When I see that word used I start getting paranoid as in “you just don’t comprehend the nuance”.

    I call it not speaking clearly.

    Any thoughts?

  • So Sad…

    When I read this I was concerned. Jonn works at this… It’s his hobby but he’s really not very good, I feel his pain.
    60 Elvis impersonators flee fire alarm

    The lookalikes were attending a charity function in Rochester, Kent, when the fire alarm sounded late on Saturday night.

    It is believed that it was set off by a faulty smoke machine that formed part of the Elvis act at the fundraiser.

    Guests leaving the hotel were stunned to see a group of around 60 impersonators, dressed in wigs and full rhinestone costume, gathered in the car park.

    It happened in England and that helped alleviate my concern.

    TSO impersonates Gerry Garcia, but that is less likely to make international headlines.

    You really don’t wanna know how I can prove this. The pictures might land me in jail.

    One way or another.

  • Too much leisure time

    Samuel Gompers advocated the 40-hour work week because it would give workers the time they need to improve their lives by reading and studying. I guess we’ve lost sight of the benefits of a shorter work week;

  • A Pitiful Few Here Will GET This?

    Seems some Jarheads are in the Philippines… doing what Jarheads do.

    SAN ANTONIO, Philippines — More than 200 U.S. Marines and their Filipino counterparts staged an amphibious assault on a beach in a combat drill Sunday near a South China Sea shoal disputed by China and the Philippines.

    China is our friend and financial benefactor. Checked the source of your latest Walmart purchase?

    On the world stage this is important. We’ll see how it develops.

    Meanwhile, me in Subic Bay:

  • Is Obama running Netflix?

    I started with Netflix when I broke my ankle a few years back. They were fairly cheap and convenient. but then they raised their subscription prices a few months back, and I decided that they weren’t going to coherce me into paying more, so I went to strictly online movies. So last month for some inexplicable reason, they sent me a note telling me they’re sorry they didn’t ask me before inflicting their new policy on me, so even more inexplicable, I was supposed to be enticed back to DVD deliveries because they split off the DVD company. It didn’t make sense to me so I ignored them.

    Today I get an email from Netflix explaining that they decided that there wouldn’t be a second company because some people were confused.

    So my question is; who is making their policy? It looks like it’s coming straight out of the White House – charge me more money for the same service I’ve always had, make the bureaucracy bigger, then reduce the bureaucracy, but still charge me the higher price for what I had before at half the price. And now they’re telling me it’s better than it’s ever been.

    Has Obama leadership crept into corporate America?

  • Can you be dumber than me?

    Yeah, I just figured out, after being at work for three hours, that today is Columbus Day. In my defense, sort of, I’m usually the first one there when I work in the office, and the people I work with are mostly in DC and one is in Georgia – so the only way I “see” them is in email.

    Sorry, I just had to own up to my lack of consciousness today.

    As long as I’m blathering, if you haven’t noticed, spam is kicking my ass this week. I’m pretty sure it’s not the hippies’ fault as some of you have suggested. I doubt they’re that bright and we’ve been getting about 10k spam comments/day since September.

    If your comments get lost in the flurry, I apologize ahead of time. I’m pretty much deleting everything that mentions what a wonderful, informative blog this is – even I don’t believe that shit.

  • Mea Culpa: I Was a Weekend Hippie

    Yet another ME post. I’ve covered parts of this before here and there, but in honor of the various Occupiers it is time to distance myself from that lot once and for all.

    1967: The Navy, in their wisdom, sent me to Mare Island Naval Shipyard for a school. It was the beginning of The Summer of Love in ‘Frisco. Needless to say weekend liberty found me, in civies,  at the corner of Haight and Ashbury observing the nubile, female, dispensers of Free Love. I don’t recall exactly how many, but I spent several weekends doing the same. My opinion of the hippie culture was NOT in any way negative. Make Love Not War made perfect sense  to me? And some of the music was outstanding.

    1969: I once again found my self  in San Fransisco. I’d flown into Travis AFB and was leaving via SFO. At the latter a group of hippie looking folks decided to spit at me and my brethren and/or our uniforms. Most of us had just came back from a war and were a bit testy – fun ensued . Interestingly none of those hippies looked particularly nubile or sexy?

    I out processed and came home to West Virginia. I ran into some high school pals and found out they were heading to Cape Cod for the summer so I joined up with them, hopped into my newly acquired ’69 Buick and headed out. I planned to go to school in the fall, so why not? We had a nice house there, and I found a job renting sailboats and giving sailing lessons.

    Then we started hearing about this concert down in New York. I bought two tickets, made arrangements to get that Friday off, loaded up my current lady friend along with another couple and off we went.

    I won’t bore you with further details except that most of the hippies there were akin to those I’d first came into contact with and I wondered about those at the airport? I had to be back at work Monday so we left early Sunday morning walking behind the stage while the Jefferson Airplane was playing.

    Aside: I tore up my two tickets when it was announced the concert was free. I’ve been kicking myself in the ass about it since.

    A year or so later I hitched across country a time or two, was educated (disillusioned) about communes, and developed a even more jaundiced view of ‘hippies’. There were some good ones, but fewer with each encounter. I wasn’t sure if I was changing or they were?

    Flash forward to 2007.  Some friends and I organized some folks to go to DC to counter some “hippies” who said they were gonna target Our Wall.  Some of us had met at The Kerry Lied rally on 2004 and had stayed in touch.  At GoE I saw first hand what passed for hippies in the 21st century.  There and at subsequent similar events I developed something more than simple distaste for what Jonn now calls hippies.

    So I will maintain that there were some good, well meaning, hippies once… myself amongst them. Now they are just shitheads who call themselves hippies.