Father Jake wonders if anyone out there is listening to the “smoking gun” revelations of the Downing Street Memo, which reveals that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a foregone conclusion. Well, as pointed out in his comments, bloggers have been listening all along. In fact, I thought one of the whistle-blowing books that came out last year detailed off-the-cuff comments by Bush in the months following 9/11 that Iraq was on his radar. He reportedly stuck his head in a policy wonk’s office around March, 2002 and said “we’re going” in connection with the Iraq “problem.”…
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From Boing Boing: 2005 Risks in Global Filmmaking Map is a likely first stop for the producers of TAR to start mapping out places to take people around the world and torture them for our amusement. I sat up until 3 friggin’ 30 last night watching the webcast from the Emmy awards that featured Dennis Miller, TAR producers, and former TAR racers in a panel discussion. It was mostly a stitch, but Bertram Van Munster really didn’t want to talk about that car accident in Botswana when the cameraman got hurt. Assume “out of court settlement,” I guess. And they’ll…
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Ah, Memorial Day memories from ginmar’s new neighborhood…she regrets no longer being able to fire warning shots at obnoxious people. Includes this observation: When I got back to my house, my day was copleted by finding that despite the parking spots on the street, somebody had seen fit to park in my spot next to my garage pad. Before I could call the cops, she arrived and I started to wonder: Is tackiness a sign of character flaws? I took one glance before her outfit burned my retinas, but I wondered if I was eyeing, say, the future of Scarlett…
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Seen at ***DDtB: BBC NEWS | Health | Blondes ‘to die out in 200 years’ Do I believe it? No. As a natural-born redhead myself, I’d be more interested in knowing if the gene responsible for redheadedness is “dying out.” The funny thing about recessive genes is that they lurk, and then spring out unexpectedly, pouncing on their helpless prey and making them the butt of jokes. So even though for centuries, non-redheads tried to kill us off or burn us as witches, we keep coming back. Like a bright, shiny copper penny. Not bad at all. 😉 So no,…
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I’ve added some more images from last week’s trip to my gallery and now that takes us up through the end of the festival weekend. The actual festive activities start with this photo; I took a bunch of pictures of the mostly-inactive revamped fountain before there were actually people at the site. This time I tried to take more images of people and interesting things rather than just pictures of static performances. Take a one man band, a bunch of guys in Utilikilts, some dancing girls, some singing groups, and an incredible array of fascinating characters and long-lost friends, and…
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One of the rare treats being a digital cable household in this area means we get BBC America, and thanks be to St. TiVo, I get to watch one of my favorite “Britcoms” when it occasionally shows up on the local PBS channel, The Vicar of Dibley. This show came out about 10 years ago, and following the British model, it aired 3 series (that’s “seasons” but with several years’ lapse between each) and several holiday specials. Recently, TiVo snagged the Christmas and New Years‘ specials – the Yule special before we left on vacation, and the New Years’ one…
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Yeah, I’m still milking that Episode III “worst line” joke. Deal. 😉 In my job as a corporate travel deranger, I often have to listen to airline hold music and “infotainment.” In years past (and in another lifetime and job entirely) I used to have to call international and domestic airlines a LOT more often, and I got to be something of a connoisseur of the stuff you have to listen to while waiting to talk to someone at an airline. I was reminded of this yesterday on my first day back at the office after vacation. Why? Because Southwest…
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Well, here are a few hints. First: And another one: And finally: And there are hundreds more where that came from, plus many pictures of rocks, flowers, trees, people, and emergency services personnel and vehicles. It was an exciting, exhilarating, exhausting trip, and we’re glad to be home. More to follow in the coming days. I’ll be uploading a few gig’s worth of photos and trying to remember whether it was 3 or 4 beers we had that night at McMenamin’s, when every sea-chantey singer and Morris dance musician not actually performing at Folk Life stopped by to play, sing,…