Got passed by this guy on the way to work the other day. I thought of a number of appropriate post titles for this Austin Powers wannabe (”Your goolies aren’t that groovy, baby!”), but you can only use one. I guess this would probably fit over at Tacky Raccoons, where Bunk has an entire category devoted to cars apparently intended to attract women. This one certainly looks better, apart from the license plate.
As is usual, click for larger.
So, my daughter took me out for dim sum this morning, and then to see the new Indiana Jones movie. Silly and stupid, but fun. I do have a slight problem with one of the actors - every time I see his name, I think of this guy. It’s only a resemblance in the sounds of their names, but …
I spent the rest of the day packing - I’ll be moving soon. Not leaving the Denver area, just buying a different house.
Via The Line Is Here, we have photos of President Bush’s appearance as the graduation speaker at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy when I was in high school. My father was career Air Force (enlisted), and I had the idea that I wanted to be a pilot. As things worked out, I went to Annapolis and eventually served on a submarine, but I got to stay in the dorm one weekend when I was part of the contingent that attended an away Navy-Air Force football game. That’s a somewhat-amusing story I haven’t thought of in years; maybe I’ll tell it sometime.
Graduation from a service academy is a pretty exciting occasion. Apart from throwing the hats in the air, which is common to all of the academies, I don’t know what traditions USAFA has concerning graduation. Navy has a number of them, one of them being to give a dollar to the first person who salutes you after you’re commissioned. I still remember Gary Bennett standing up in the middle of the seating area of the field and saluting John Theeuwen. John had selected the Marines as his service option, and the Marines were commissioned first during the ceremony.
Be that as it may, the Daily Mail staff reporter who wrote the article considers it to be “bizarre” behavior on the part of President Bush, but I think it’s great. These young people are celebrating a major accomplishment in their lives, and they’ll have the memories of the president “letting down his hair” and joining in their celebration for the rest of their lives. I’m certain GWB got a kick out of it, too.
The speaker at my graduation was Nelson Rockefeller, who was vice president at the time. I have no distinct memory of anything he said or did at graduation, although I do recall one of my classmates doing a back somersault off the front of the podium. My main memory of “Rocky” himself involve the stories about his death. What is it about New York politicians, anyway?
… that make the big media concerns more professional than bloggers. That’s why, in this ABC story, scramming a nuclear plant is referred to as “scrambling” it (that’s part of a direct quote, but I wonder which word Ballard actually used), they “hone in” on a debris field, rather than home in on it (gotta keep those debris fields sharp, I guess), and a link to a related article refers to the “Titantic,” as does the headline of that article:
Click image for larger.
Other than that, it’s an interesting article.
All is well.
Via Ghost of a Flea.
Dick Martin is dead at the age of 86.
I remember one of the skits on Laugh-In had Dick Martin as a wine connoisseur who had become a drunken bum who was on his last legs. He got involved in a wine identification contest (at the behest of Dan Rowan’s character, I believe) and won it. According to Dan Rowan’s character, he identified the last wine after his death. I doubt that Dick Martin’s real last words were anything like that.
I couldn’t find the skit, but there’s some good stuff here.
I remember the old Bensen gyrocopter ads in the back of magazines. I used to want to build one. I wanted Little Nellie the moment I saw her. Somewhere, I have instructions for building a gyrocopter kite.
Which lets you know why I want a Magni.
Learn to play an instrument online.
Practice drills for music theory.
An impressive version of One Note Samba on ukulele by James Hill:
Finally, just because there are occasions when one is needed … an instant rimshot.
If you don’t already have plans on how to spend it, you might be able to find something in the Acme catalog.
Well, I guess you can, because someone did.
My youngest brother likes spy stuff: Bond movies, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and the like. I just picked up a book for him at a local used book store. It’s The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T #2: The Million Missing Maidens, by Mallory T. Knight, printed in 1967.
The cover blurb reads:
Under orders to deflower every virgin he can find, T.O.M.C.A.T Agent O’Shane comes up against evil beauty Gisela Vultch as he seeks the secret of her strange orgiastic cult.
I’ve only given the first chapter a quick once-over, because of that and the back-cover blurb, a portion of which is:
The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. could not have devised a more stimulating assignment. Until, hoisted aboard Merdalor’s mystery-ship, O’Shane found himself the only man on a vessel carrying two hundred virgins, five hundred monkeys and a pair of armed Lesbians.
The character names are horrendous: Merdalor is the bad guy of the story, a brilliant biochemist who was an associate of Heinrich Himmler during WWII, and is now head of a cult known as Systemology. Merdalor’s companion “was Hund Scheiskopf, mathematician, physicist, and ardent Nazi.” O’Shane’s boss is Duncan MacSwiver. The Willick sisters, Fanny and Hilly, show up again (they were apparently in the first book).
I tell you, I don’t know whether to give my brother the book or burn it to save his sanity.
It’s too late for me, now.
