Hussein and terror

Right here. I lost track of where I found it.

Yeah, that too

Yeah, it's fashionable for Yankees to pick on Alabama. If you've never been there, about all you've ever heard of are civil rights issues. (They aren't so big on Communism either, but there's nothing questionable about that.)

Anyway, I've lived in AL, and there you'll find some of the finest people anywhere. But I still couldn't help but chuckle when I saw a recipe for a special kind of barbecue sauce found around Birmingham, Decatur and thereabouts. It's the only kind I've ever seen that was white.

High maintenance

Beware, Doghouse Day is coming. Well, most of the world knows it as Valentine's Day, but you know what I mean. Mindreading Day might be a good name too.

Was this a creation of marketing people at the expense of lovers and wannabes? Perhaps. But if you're some hapless South Korean it's even worse:

There are up to 21 anniversaries, special days and celebrations a year for couples to shower each other with affection and gifts, and as a result some relationships are crushed under the weight of festivities.

Ouch!

Web 2.0

You've probably heard of Web 2.0 by now, if only as another buzzword. Google has for sure - recently it showed 9.5M citations of the term.

But how did this term arise, and what if anything does it really mean? This is as good an explanation as any I've seen.

Making the desert bloom

So you've got this little bitty country, and much of that is desert. You want something to grow, hopefully with high value added. What to do? If you're the Israelis, you grow algae for pharmaceuticals.

Sock Puppets

Yep, that's what this page is about.

But beware - the page has a page counter, and might conceivably even issue cookies! As such devices have been pronounced sinister by various media outlets,, I must warn you that you follow the link at your own risk...

Prerequisites for success

As usual, Megan is right - this time about the NY transit workers' strike. But this post is really just an excuse to link to this parable.

Sorcerer's apprentice

Recently I took a 13 year old greatniece (K), her 11 year old brother (M) and her 13 year old friend (C) Christmas shopping at Woodfield Mall in exurban Chicago. Once the largest indoor mall on the continent, it's still #3 to my knowledge, so I figured that my downstate relatives would enjoy it.

I set some ground rules before we set foot in the mall. We'd split up - K with C and M with me. Both girls had cellphones, and we preprogrammed all of them with each others' numbers. We synchronized watches and agreed to check in at a certain time, after which we'd reunite and take it from there.

Some might doubt how good an idea it was to turn the girls loose like that in a huge mall 100+ miles from home during Christmas rush. But with both of them armed with cellphones and sticking together, and with blessing from both sets of parents, I figured we had everything covered. As it turned out they played by the rules and everyone seemed to have had a good time.

K and C might have had even more fun if they had had credit cards, but hey, I'm not a total idiot. After we regrouped and ate, we made a second pass to pick up what K and M had picked out for Christmas (C was on her own, and her parents had sent plenty of cash with her - everyone knew the plan).

M wasn't too much trouble - a couple of computer games, some cheap clothes at JCPenney and that was it. But his sister...nothing but Abercrombies or Hollister's would do. Merely passing through JCP on the way in and out of the mall was as much as she could be expected to bear.

And then we got to Victoria's Secret. It turns out that K wanted to take a look around.

Hey, I like the scenery too, but today I'm in Daddy mode and well remembering a generation ago. Then I had K's aunt and her friend with me as I drove them around shopping for prom dresses. It seemed that about every time I had young girls in my car I'd get pulled over for something, and that night I wound up in jail (long story later). With that vivid memory in mind, the thought of being seen paying for some clothes for an underaged and overdeveloped 13 year old girl (the little squirt is already sporting a C rack on a small frame, and she knows it) just didn't appeal to me.

Well, I could have sucked it up and gone into the store with her. I'm no coward or prude and my pants were baggy. But I told her that I wouldn't be buying her anything from there, and that was that.

I can hear it now. I just can't deal with "budding sexuality". I'm repressive. I'm treating a young woman like a child. I'm part of a patriarchy seeking to deny women power. And so on.

No. But I'd like to see the kid happily married before she gets knocked up, as disgustingly quaint as that sequence of events might seem nowadays. We don't need another sorcerer's apprentice toying with things she doesn't understand yet. She'll attract enough attention without Victoria's Secret togs. And if by chance VC sells anything that isn't particularly provocative, I dare suggest that she can find it cheaper somewhere else.

Anyway, K didn't pout or anything when I stopped short of VC. She already had plenty of swag in any case, and from what little I see of her she's a good kid.

And whenever I get a chance I'm gonna help her stay that way.

Words of love

That old charmer Garrison Keillor...

Policy proposal

Perhaps we should hire children to be govt officials. They'd work cheaper, wouldn't perform any worse in many cases, and there's always the chance that they won't be as immature and utterly selfish as some of the bastards we have now.

Victor Davis Hanson notes that 3 of the biggest critics of the conduct of the Iraq war (John Murtha, Richard Clarke and Wesley Clark) have another thing in common - they didn't get enough strokes from the Bush Administration. So the creeps did what creeps do.

LBJ used to say that he didn't trust a man unless he "had his pecker in my pocket". Let these men be rendered trustworthy at the earliest opportunity.

21st century Etiquette

Right here

If you must know how I found out about this, I got it from Jane Galt.

Welcome Back Acidman!

Yep, he's back and ornery as ever. Read all about it here.

She's Back!

Give up, Michael Eisner - richer and smarter villains than you have failed to kill Kim Possible.

Another day on ScrappleFace

I read Scrappleface a lot more often than I link there. Good grief, what to pick? - this guy always has something good. I'd probably do better just to rename this blog "Scrappleface West" or something and to link to all of his posts.

Well, one day won't hurt. Go to the top and scroll down.

Consolation prize

You don't have to be a doctor to know that getting fat is bad for your heart.

Of course this can lead to heart damage.

Certain types of heart damage can be treated effectively with adult stem cells.

And it appears that these adult stem cells can be derived from.....fat.

Long distance dedication

No, I'm not Casey Kasem. I don't know if LDDs were his creation or not, but he used to feature them on his weekly radio show "American Top 40".

Alright Casey, I'll dedicate this song to you and the peaceniks currently being held hostage in Iraq.

Y'all may be scared, but don't lose your heads. Better people than you are working to get your sorry asses out, so you can spread more nonsense like this.

Engineers get horny too

There's a website for everything, and now Boing-Boing points us to Homemade Sex Toys and their instructions for expanding the entertainment potential of an old Atari 2600 controller.

Radioactive consumer products

I'll bet that there's a lot more of them than you think. Check it out here.

Attention gay Iraq War vets

How about dating Ted Rall?

Never mind - you've sacrificed enough already.

Stolen from The Corner.

Lest we forget

Greyhawk has put together a timeline from 1998 showing events from Iraq and the Clinton Administration. As usual with Greyhawk, there's a lot there - keep it for reference.

Via RSS (Reynolds's sloppy seconds).