Contests, Quizzes, Trivia, Esoterica
And so it begins; at first a trickle of rocks falling down a steep mountainside; then more and bigger rocks, and then half the mountainside comes away and falls away in a mighty roar, the earth trembles, and White House spokes-minion Jay Carney is probably looking around desperately trying to figure out what hit him.… More »
This last weekend we were up in Boerne, where they were celebrating an all-American fabric art form – the patchwork quilt and all it’s variations. They actually had quilts hung up on the fronts of stores, in the store windows and from lines string around the edge of Town Plaza.
At the Belmont Club, a very apt comment by BC Alexis on the the absence or presence of mainstream media with regard to the Kermit Gosnell trial; I have bolded the bit that I found the most amusing: “It takes more than mere assertion for a media outlet to become legitimate. The Washington Post and… More »
This is has been one of those weeks where – in the words of the late Molly Ivins – sitting down and powering up the internet of a morning was kind of like opening the refrigerator and seeing Fidel Castro sitting inside. You can’t help thinking there was something mighty strange going on. The current… More »
Ok, so it looks like North Korea, in the person of Li’l Pudgy Kim has upped their game in the routine and semi-annual national unity game of chicken. (The Norks do this every six months, usually when they want to squeeze some concessions out of the outside world. It’s like an overgrown toddler throwing an… More »
It is apparently not news to anyone that the office of the President of the US involves a degree of security – to include an official food-taster, as medieval as that sounds. Been going on for years, apparently, so having a designated expert to cover food safety with regards to the President isn’t something to… More »
Such has been the sad state of our very own dear media creatures in these United States lately that I have begun again to read the English newspapers, or their on-line iteration – mostly the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, and mostly because the worthy reporters for those establishments don’t seem to give a damn… More »
So another week in Chez Hayes, sportsfans; Blondie and I are both creeping back to something resembling health after a bout with the current crud, which may or may not be this years’ flu. Whether or not – it’s a hum-dinger. The comprehensive exhaustion, lack of appetite and the racking cough are something special, and… More »
But not so bad a case as Bob Woodward is having, I’ll bet. So the automatic spending cutbacks are set to take place tomorrow, and the dominoes begin to fall. Slowly, I think at first, and then faster and faster. Will John Boehner hang onto his newly rediscovered backbone? Will the citizens of this great… More »
In the foundation-legend of the Swiss confederacy, Alberect Gessler was a cruel and tyrannical overlord installed by the Austrians, who installed his hat atop a pole in the public marketplace and decreed that all should bow to it … to his hat, not merely his person. Such a declaration was, I think, a way of… More »
So, sometime last Friday afternoon, my author email address was hacked and used to send out several different kinds of spam to simply everybody on my contacts list, for which I apologize abjectly. It’s some small comfort that a good many of the addresses in it were no longer valid. And at least the spammers… More »
…and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings — and commoners too, for that matter. The great William Shakespeare wrote many such sad stories, some of them more protracted and dramatic than others, some of them mercifully taking place offstage, as it were. The other night we watched the current episode of Downton Abbey,… More »
It’s been most unsettling, over the last month or so, watching as the ship of state powers straight towards the reefs of financial meltdown, while the Dems and Pubs – establishment ruling class, with just about every one of them grubbing snout deep in the trough – do nothing much but squabble over the arrangement… More »
Cynic that I am, I am deriving a great deal of amusement from some of the media-political-general public storms whipped up in the wake of the horribly tragic Newtown shootings, and the deaths of two firefighters in an ambush set by an ex-convict in upstate New York. As if the shootings weren’t horrible and tragic… More »
It was a gradual process … the place grows on you, even back before it became clear that it was one of the states – out of these occasionally United States – which has a good chance of emerging comparatively unscathed from impending economic disaster. I don’t know why Texas should be so fortunate among… More »
It looks really weird to me, this last Veteran’s Day weekend … not even a week after the election results came in. A couple of days after General Petreus put in his resignation as head of the CIA – conveniently for the American news cycle – on a Friday before a three-day weekend. So, kind… More »
As I contemplate the coming election, I do wonder if a sort of cultural turning point hasn’t been reached, which was elucidated lo these many decades ago by Huey Lewis and the News – that it’s soon might be seen to be hip to be a square. Or to put it in standard English –… More »
So, a week after the debate and stuff is still happening. Well, I think the preference cascade has well and truly begun. Once someone – or several influential someones came out and said that our esteemed resident of the White House has feet of clay and several other shortcomings, and didn’t get struck by lightening,… More »
Well, that was interesting – Blondie and I watched about the first fifty minutes or so together, and then she watched to the very end, as I had already pretty much given up hope of the Obaminator melting down entirely … the consummation that I have been devoutly wishing for since his administration began. Well,… More »
(A bit of topical political humor, from one of those emails, going the rounds.) President Obama walks into the Bank of America and says to a cashier, “Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me”? * * Cashier: “It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please sho w me your ID”?… More »
So, Mika Brzezinski thinks that a train-wreck of a reality show that I have never, ever seen, “sums up everything I have to say about America.” OK, then. A smug television news personality like Mika Brezezinski sums up just about everything I have to say about smug, judgemental, fundamentally isolated television news personalities … especially… More »
To come out? Oh, no – probably not yet, with the Dem political convocation going on. Well, as long as they are having fun, the bed-bugs are biting, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is still conditioning her hair with mayonnaise (Deb, sweetie … you’re supposed to rinse the stuff out, after it sets for a bit), and… More »
… that there was some kind of secret high-sign or signal that we could give to other conservative-libertarian-Tea Party adherents in casual social situations. Even in Texas, a mostly red-state and stronghold of prickly independent free-marketers, there is enough of a leavening of blue-state Dems and Obama worshippers that one need be constrained in discussing… More »
You know, I meant to do this on Monday, for part of my Monday Morning Miscellany series, but I had a deadline or two, and the time and writing energy just got away from me … but all to the good, for the last five days have actually provided something to muse upon, in these… More »
OK, so it’s Sunday afternoon. I’m just planning ahead, ‘kay? 1. So the Supremes upheld Obamacare … well sort of. Is it a tax, or isn’t it? Dessert topping or floor-wax. All that I can tell from here is that the closer and closer it gets to being implemented, the more unpopular that the whole… More »
“I have never made but one prayer to God; a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God answered it.” I have a feeling that Mittens Romney, the heir-apparent to the Republican Party nomination in this year of our Lord 2012 also made that prayer in the last couple of weeks –… More »