Miss Anne Elk presents her Theory on Brontosauruses. She reminds me of someone….hmmmm, who could it be…?
This is our daily open thread, please feel free to complain about two Palin open threads in a row. 🙂
TheZoo
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
TheZoo 
This is one of my favorite Monty Python bits.
And it’s mine.
Wayne, I had never seen this Python bit before. My son bought a “Best of Monty Python” DVD set yesterday, and this bit came on. OMG, we started laughing so hard! My son said all Miss Elk needed was a red suit. 😀
Shall we discuss the Levi-Bristol child custody case today, or save that for tomorrow’s thread? 😀
Since I’ve only had MSNBC since the Comcast deal with GE, is there more paparazzi stories overall, or just on Morning Joe?
Ezra Klein on Senate Reform
Ezra Klein’s Online Follow-Up Forum on Senate Reform
Senator Arlen Specter calls out Senator Jim DeMint on Republican Obstructionism
Well Snowy Owl and Glaucous Gull are decent birds…
You can say what you want about Arlen, and I suspect at least half of it would be true, but he has been one of the few rational voices sounding from Congress these days. So far it appears only a few rookies and one old reliever are willing to step up to the plate and attempt to play the game as it should be played.
(I still don’t really trust him)
Did Cruise Missile Attacks Spur NW253 Bomber?
Yemen, A Third War?
Al Qaeda-Arabian Peninsula Claim Credit For NW253 Terror Attempt
Both of these UFPPC articles give text from the New York Times articles that require a subscription to view.
Correction on the middle link above:
Yemen, A Third War?
Is this the same Fuzzy Slippers as at TP?
Damn it!!!! If we had just gone another 30 minutes south I would have landed the Dovekies! Shit I am really starting to hate that bird!
Is that 30 minutes afoot, or as the crow flies?
as the Japanese import somewhat efficiently burns fuel. Damn it! It seems there were lots of them. I am so pissed!
Db, are you on some kind of alert network, like e-mail or such?
Based on the pictures on tv of the explosives sewn into the underwear, the NW253 bomber was rigged up to blow his balls off! What good are 72 virgins to the man who arrives in paradise “sans package”?
House, they usually arrive in paradise “sans whole body.” I’ve never worked that out.
Db, are you on some kind of alert network, like e-mail or such?
—
Loosely. I got this info a day late from an internationally known bird conservationist that happens to live in the area we gave up on based on the fact that it had been a slow day and shifting weather. Just bad luck.
Yeah, I thought part of that was having all the parts in one place. I guess exceptions are granted for martyrs?
Zooey, on paper, the skit probably looks like it would last one minute. But all the throat-clearing and repetition make it last much longer. This is silliness at its best.
Apropos of me….me, me, ME! It is freaking cold in NJ at the mo’—22F but wind 25-40MPH, so it feels like 5F and in my neighborhood we’ve been having a DUST STORM, from the railroad tracks–not what you expect in December.
House of roberts.
All I watch on MSNBC is Olbermann and Maddow. Morning Joe is a waste of time, as is Chris Matthews.
You might like The Ed Show, but he has “an excess of personality” which grates on me.
Re: The Underpants Bomber.
1) IN HuffPo/Media today, some post about how MSNBC wasn’t covering the “Butt-Bomber” story every two minutes like CNN and FOX.
The criticism really had to do with it’s daytime ratings/news strategy rather than proposing some kind of political conspiracy behind their ;ack of coverage,
BUT
I for one think MSNBC’s reticence, intentional or not, was a good thing. First reports of such incidents are ALWAYS hysterical and ill-informed, leading to much misinformation and pointless random yapping from pie-holes.
2) In the press I’ve seen.heard the attempt has been described in the worst possible terms. “Sophisticated” ( really?) and a note that 5lbs of the EPTN (?) explosive was tested a while back and found sufficient to blow a hole in an aircraft fuselage. The Pants-Pyro had soething like 8 pounds of the stuff on him. OMFG! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIE!!!( thank you , Catherine Tate!).
Now I’m no expert, but whilst this stuff is very powerful, the trick to a successful explosion is its initial containment
I suspect that if the ignition had been successful, the worst that would have happened to the aircraft would have been that the nearest window would have been blown out (from the sudden shockwave generated.
In short is doesn’t sound like a very good way to bring down an airliner. Had he put the stuff in something like a metal traveling thermos with a screw on lid ( thus like a pipe bomb) the result would have been worse–but presumably that wouldn’t get past the metal detectors.
3) Yemen
Under Bush a new North African Command was established (early 2008?) but I recall it was ‘small’ and motivated in part by the Somali Pirate problem and keeping an eye on China’s growing commercial interests in the region. It would appear that establishing a new Regional Command there was a rare moment of competence by the Bush Administration.
. .
god damn son of a bitch…
5th,
I don’t know how you tolerate the cold up there. I’ve been ferrying firewood home from my (future-ex) wife’s house. It is predicted to rain tomorrow and Thursday, then turn cold for the weekend. The pile of wood is outside and it finally stayed dry long enough for me to go get some of it. I started the woodstove last night and I’m already addicted to the comfort.
I keep the MSNBC on almost all the time, but I listen to Progressive Talk all day. I just noticed the Charlie Sheen story and Bristol-Levi custody story are on an awful lot. I like Ed Schultz, even though he has an “excess of personality”, he seems genuine to me. I choose a tape delay of Ed’s radio show over a live Randi Rhodes now. You’re right, Matthews is mostly a waste of time. I have a college bowl game right now, so I won’t even have Tweety on the monitor today.
house,
Aaaah! There’s nothing like a wood fire!
Not that they are particularly efficient, but they are so comforting.
Back in the early 70’s my mother decided our house should have a fireplace, which Dad wasn’t too keen on because of the expense–but he couldn’t say no Mum, and besides, our all-electric heating was quite pathetic.
Then we got the fuel crisis and the coal-miner strikes that went on for up to two weeks at time.
No electricity—no lights, no cooking and no heat.
All the houses down our street were the same.
BUT we now had a fireplace, the only one in the street, so we could warm ourselves up a bit, and have hot stew and soup and baked potatoes.
We shared with some neighbors coming over but the fire was pretty small so it was a little hard to actually ‘entertain’.
Though our house was on a small plot (50′ x 150′) we had a lot of trees. We ‘culled’ an old oak and a beech, both of which had been debilitated by ivy, and those gave us something like 5 winters worth of wood.
I learned to be pretty handy with a chainsaw, axe and hatchet, and chopping wood well became something of a matter of pride (and the exercise was warm work.)
Having a real fire was just glorious, and the cats loved it.
.
fuzzy slippers,
could be!
This isn’t a fireplace, it’s a plate steel woodstove lined with firebrick, called a Fisher Baby Bear. It’s the one in the upper left photo. Once you get the wood burning, and rotate the damper for less air, it just radiates heat. A ceiling fan distributes the heat pretty much all over the house. It has a stack temp gage, but I use the Raytek Minitemp infrared thermometer for readings on the top and sides as well. Running a stack temp of about 200F keeps the pipe from building up too much creosote, using good dry hardwoods. The sides run about 350-375F, and the top reads 400F. I can’t even run it unless the daytime highs stay in the 30s, like most of today.
My wife cooked on it for several days once during a big ice storm in the 1980s, before I met her. It kept the house warm enough the pipes didn’t freeze, even with the power out.
That’s a nice looking stove, House. I sometimes wish my place was outfitted for a fireplace or small stove.
5th, I love the fact that now we have the “Underpants Bomber.” 😆
Just watched the story about the Underpants Bomber on yesterday’s Rachel. Wow.
house,
that’s pretty flashy.
When my cabinet business moved to PA (before i quit for the last time) our new workshop was a practically empty 2,000 square foot sheet-metal barn.
We had a converted horizontal 55 gallon drum with a smoke stack to try and keep warm-with whilst we began to fix the place up.
Eventually we replaced it with a 175,000 BTU oil powered heater with ducting run through the insulated ceiling we installed.
Zooey,
I recall after the Shoe Bomber, that people began to joke about the possibility of an ‘Underpants Bomber’ being next.
And Lo and behold….!
Somebody was paying attention!
What’s next? A Nursing Bra Bomber?
it’s cold, it’s late, and conservatives are getting on my nerves.
I;m going to bed.
Goodnight all.
Goodnight, 5th.
I wish I could promise it would be different tomorrow.
Sorry I forgot to mention it sooner, but I recorded a Special New Year message with the webcam sitting at my desk at work, figured out how to upload it to my YouTubes account, and posted a link to it on my blog: (quicker to give a link here) http://pickwaynesbrain.wordpress.com
Those who haven’t already done so can now find out what I look and sound like, when I’m being, more or less, myself. If things work out, I may just make videos of the stuff I normally would have typed out. Of course, that would end up meaning I’d have to perform it in some way, which makes me nervous, but, what the hell, as near as I can figure out, my purpose in life is to make a fool of myself, which somehow serves as a warning to others. At least, as most religions explain it to me.
It’s a very short video (13 sec), and there’s a second short video explaining the end of the first video. I hope you enjoy them both.
Wayne, you look just like I’ve always pictured you — except you can’t manage to be in shadows on a Youtube video. 🙂
Don’t start getting self conscious about “performing” on the vids. I think if you just state your case in a reasonable and interested manner, it will come across fine. You’ll never be that dull wit that who was concerned his whiskey flavored chewing tobacco would be restricted or taken away by the socialist fascist uppity presidunt. 😀
Now I’m off to watch several episodes of Doctor Who, Season 4, with Catherine Tate as the companion, on Netflix instant viewing. I won’t have to buy the series on DVD if I can watch it instantly! Yay!
Thanks, Zooey. You da best! I’ll give the matter serious consideration. I would want to do it right, and try to put the effort into it that I do for my song parodies. And I would like it to be entertaining, if not a little informative, too. I was even thinking of picking a topic from TP and just recording my response to it. It would probably sound similar to how I would write it out. Except I would be adding the new element of voice inflection (and sometimes in other people’s voices), which is where it would start turning into a performance, instead of just a blog video. I want to do this carefully. I will announce the first of these videos here. Thanks for the support. 🙂
Definitely *not* commenting on yet another Sarah Palin thread.
Ah, the links to Palin interviews.
Ya know, I think she done pretty well, considerin’ ‘merican isn’t her 1st language.