The Horn of Helm Hammerhand…

 dumbassery, humor  3 Responses »
Jun 272010
 

… was not a vuvuzela.

 vuvuzela.gif

Gandalf Goes To The World Cup

vuvuzelashining02.jpg

Honestly, if the worldwide soccer community wants to keep this kids game from becoming terribly popular in the US, they could not have come up with a better weapon than the vuvuzela. Well, except maybe soccer itself. Ye gods it’s dull.

 NOTE: The vuvuzela is not some ancient bit of respected culture. It was invented – and the name trademarked – in two-thousand-friggen’-one.

Vuvuzelas even ruin one of lifes true joys, Free Boobies:

vuvuzelaboobies.gif

Play the game! Vuvuzela Hero: Legend Of Africa

 vuvuzelasonata.jpg

vuvuzelasymphony.jpg

And leave it to the British to figure out a way to ruin *any* website with vuvuzelas. Here’s a go at The Unwanted Blog.

And the Mormon church might want to start rethinking some of their symbolism. Once it becomes general knowledge that the Angel Moroni is blatting away on one of these damned horns, a lot of people are *really* not gonna be interested when the nice young men in the suits and bicycle helmets show up…

vuvuzelamoroni.jpg

 Posted by at 10:56 pm

Meanwhile…

 aircraft, critters, photography, Utah  2 Responses »
Jun 272010
 

While the last few weeks have seen me slowly grind to a halt, with a complete collapse in anything resembling productivity around Wednesday, the Swallows have remained busy and industrious.

dsc_2885.jpg  dsc_2886.jpg  dsc_2887.jpg  dsc_2892.jpg

And then there’s THIS asshole:

dsc_2865.jpg  dsc_2884.jpg

If it’s summer, if it’s the weekend, and if the weather is clear, chances are good you’ll see this feller tooling around the sky, sneering down on us mere earthbound mortals, flaunting his ability to fly…. grrrrrrrrrr….

 Posted by at 7:52 pm

Editorial Spell-Check FAIL

 blather, dumbassery, science fiction  2 Responses »
Jun 272010
 

http://gazetteonline.com/breaking-news/2010/06/26/trekkies-go-for-new-record-at-riverside

A fluff piece about Star Trek fans in Riverside, Iowa. Yawn. But where it reaches Spectacular Epic FAIL is in the caption to the photo that leads off the article:

Bryan Detamortore, of Indianapolis, raises his drink as he portrays a Cling On Star Trek character named, “K’Rad Zanti Makura” during the TrekFest costume contest in Riverside on Saturday, June 26, 2010 as he is rooted on by Cling Ons Dennis Cox (back center) and Adrienne LeBlanc (back right), both of Ottumwa. After the parade there was a Star Trek character costume contest, followed by an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people gathered in one place dressed as Star Trek characters. The official record that had been previously set was 99 – and the final count in Hall Park on Saturday was 153. (Julie Koehn/SourceMedia Group News)

Cling Ons?

I’m not sure which is worse: an editor who doesn’t know what a “Klingon” is, or an editor who relies too heavily on a spell-checker that doesn’t know what a “Klingon” is.

 Posted by at 4:21 pm

Recovery

 blather  3 Responses »
Jun 272010
 

While nowhere near back up to standard specifications, I seem to be on the mend. The chills still come around, but absolutely *nothing,* in terms of intensity or duration, like they were a few days ago. However, most of the rest of the time I continue to sweat buckets.

This has been *exhausting.* Not to mention unprofitable.

 Posted by at 7:30 am

Hospital

 AARRRGH, blather  21 Responses »
Jun 252010
 

My hopes that this little medical adventure was coming to an end on its own have turned out to be premature. So, off I go. Hopefully not for too long and hopefully I’ll get some clear answers as to just what the hell is attacking my system. Until then – hours or days, who knows – feel free to discuss among yourself. A suggested topic: “Who can donate the largest lump-sum?”

UPDATE: I’m home. Finally got a diagnosis… “community acquired bronchitis.” More pertinantly, I got a shot of some sort of go-juice and a prescription of antibiotics. Theoretically, I should be feeling better within 24 hours.

As mentioned before, I had bronchitis a *lot* when I was in California. And the symptoms were *nothing* like this (mostly just gooey lungs. Bleah.). So… shrug.

I cannot stress the psycho-somatic value of having a doctor look at you, give you a pretty complete inspection, and say, “Oh, yeah, I know what this is.” While physically I feel much the same as before (hammered dogshit), it’s a hell of a stress reliever.

“It’s not a toomah!”

 Posted by at 7:32 am

Today: not an improvement

 AARRRGH, blather, cats  7 Responses »
Jun 242010
 

Went to bed last night feeling *terrible.* Massive headache and high temp. Woke up about 5 AM feeling ok. Headache mostly gone, temp seemed a bit more under control, just a lot of fatigue. Which seemed understandable given the limited sleep. So I felt I was over the hump.

Then noon came. And I spent the next three fricken’ hours shivering violently, muttering incoherently, passing in and out of consciousness and delerium. At various points I came to to find both Koshka and Raedthinn staring me dead in the face with wide-eyed looks of alarm… either they knew something was wrong with me, or they were just startled at the unusual behavior. “WTF, dude? This ain’t like you.” I’ve had the chills before, but this episode was truly astonishing. About three hours later it seemed to end. I really, REALLY hope this is the end of it. Right now I’m sweating bullets, which I greatly prefer to shaking uncontrolably.

I had intended to head out to the post office today and mail a few things, but that sure as hell didn’t happen. I *really* don’t want to be behind the wheel if the chills come back. And this had damned well better not interfere with Futurama tonight…

 Anyway, I’ve managed to be somewhat productive today. Check out the latest updates HERE.

 Posted by at 5:34 pm

An Ethics Question

 blather, politics, religion  7 Responses »
Jun 232010
 

Here’s a thought to discuss:

1) “I don’t like Group X because it’s an icky ethnicity:” bigotry

2) “I don’t like Group Y because it’s an icky religion:” bigotry

3) “I don’t like Group Z because it’s an icky political ideology:” not bigotry

 OK, I get #1. Despising a group for their genetic heritage, something the members  can do nothing about, is at best silly. And I get #3… some political ideologies are so obviously horrendous (Stalinism, Maoism, fascism spring to mind) that despising them makes all kinds of sense… in part because the believers in that ideology *choose* to believe and can change but don’t.

 But how about #2? Why is disliking a particular religion considered to be necessarily bigotry on the scale of racism? There’s no such thing as a religion that people are born having. Every single religion is a set of beliefs and principles of no greater “depth” than political beliefs and principles, and there’s no such thing as a religion whose adherents are physically impossible of leaving.

Discuss. I’m kinda busy fighting off some horrible plague, so I’ll leave it to y’all. Feel free to ask others to join in. I’d really like to know why it’s ok to hate Nazis and/or Nazism  (based on facts) but not ok to hate Whateverology (based on facts).

 Posted by at 6:19 pm

Back Pain Relief

 blather  13 Responses »
Jun 232010
 

My father suffers from back pain. A friend of his does as well, and has to take meds to control it. One day without meds, he happened to try one of those “5 Hour Energy” drinks, and his pain went away for some time. Told my father about it; he tried it, and it worked for him as well.  I haven’t a clue as to what would cause this, but this anecdotal evidence may be of some value to some people. I’ve tried the stuff myself in recent days, as I’m getting sicker’n hell with something that produces whopping great headaches, fatigue and joint pain; so far I can’t claim any great pain relief from it, but is *seems* to *maybe* help a little. Doesn’t get me amped up any, though it has reduced the fatigue.

There don’t seem to be any particularly nasty ingredients or side effects, so if you’ve got pain, give it a shot. YMMV.

 Posted by at 11:34 am
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