"Your one-stop source for improper ideology and freedom seeds."
I’m packing for a motorcycle trip to Nevada and Utah, tomorrow through Monday. In Las Vegas I’ll stay with a friend, visit with the kids and grandkids, and take some day rides around southern Nevada; on Sunday my son and I are going on an all-day out & back ride to southwestern Utah, with Gregory […]
Donna saves change in a decorative wooden box, which I’m raiding this morning for quarters. It’s take-the-motorcycle-to-the-car-wash day. I’m going on a cross-country ride to Nevada and Utah later this week, and it just wouldn’t feel right to start a big trip on a dirty bike. I read somewhere that the coin-op car wash industry […]
… but I am, these days, a little more down than up. Particularly over the union-busting going on in so many states, and peoples’ refusal to see what lies behind it. Republican governors and Republican-dominated state legislatures aren’t trying to save money by busting public employee unions and cutting back on education and services funding. […]
Headline to an article about the third reactor explosion in Japan: “Spewing radiation prompts warning.” C’mon, journalists, does radiation always have to spew? Can’t it emanate, spread, propagate, or otherwise pour into the atmosphere? Why must it spew? When Nevil Shute wrote On the Beach, did he make his radiation spew? No, he didn’t, and […]
“So it’s you and a syringe against the Capitol? See, this is why no one lets you make the plans.” — Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi This was a Hugo or Nebula sci-fi award winner in, I think, 2005. It’s what I would call nostalgia sci-fi, written in the Robert […]
Nancy Nall on today’s earthquake in Japan: “I’m touched by the grocery-store employees whose first impulse is to try to protect the stock from falling off the shelves. We give our lives to our jobs and we take pride in even the smallest ones. We deserve a few benefits in the bargain, Gov. Walker, you […]
“And will you, for the love of God, put on a fucking shirt?” — Steve Carell as Phil Foster in Date Night. Whiteout (2009) A cheesy movie with a made-for-TV feel. Two of its central gimmicks, in fact, are lifted directly from popular TV shows. From Law & Order: the cop characters, a US marshal […]
I’ve never liked entrapment. Not when the police do it, not when civilians do it. Not when the right does it, not when the left does it. I particularly don’t like it when people are tricked into voicing their personal, non-job-related opinions on things, then lose their jobs as a result. But you know what […]