Short Shots

Good to see Improved Clinch back up and running on new (Spam proof?) software.

** Landed a laptop recently, and have been spending a great deal of time geting it working right. It’s not a new one; I managed to find a whole bunch of IBM 760’s used… and cobbled together an “uber’ 760 out of the parts. Frankly, the IBM is the only laptop I’ve ever wanted to use; the keyboards are great.  It’s limited on RAM and drive space, but will help me when I’m in a writing mood in the truck.

** I’ve pretty much resigned myself to losing around 40lbs, and so have resigned myself also to bunny food. This is (Pardon the pun) no small matter for someone who likes to cook. I’ll keep you posted.

** Blog hit numbers continue to rise. I’m now only marginally behind where I was last summer.  I’m noticing a larger number of visits than usual from people coming in from the search engines.  Some tracing has shown that my positioning in about every engine i’ve sampled, is improved rather nicely of late, for reasons I don’t understand.  I’m still toying with hte idea of going for a domain of my own, because of this increased traffic. One thing that bothers me, though is the idea that if/when I move, I lose the seach engine positions.  Another more pressing matter for the shorter term is space.  I’ve no idea how large the blog is… It’s be up two years as of this June and I’d hate to have to drop a lot of the earlier stuff due to space restrictions… the earlier work seems to be getting around 15-20% of my engine hits of late.

I think that I shall never see
a sight more forlorn than an old Christmas tree
Sitting on the curb… not green, but brown
waiting to be picked up by the town.

Well, that’s the holiday season. Kill the lights, strike the decorations. That’s a wrap, folks. 

All we’ve got now to look at is weather, and none of it good. Between now and spring time… we here in Rochester have got several weeks… around 3 and a half months… of some of the nastiest winter weather for several hundred miles around. (Sigh) Well, we won’t be going out much for a while, I guess. There’s a lot to do around the house, though, so we won’t exactly be doing nothing… but it’s a sure bet we’ll be stir- crazy by springtime, if the usual holds true. No wonder depression gets going after the Holidays.

Saturday, New Year’s day, was a day of recovery from Friday night; which, of course was New Year’s eve.  No, we didn’t even have a drink On New Year’s eve.  Not by particular choice, mind, but it works out that way when you celebrate the New Year as we’ve been doing the last few years…. On the road… as I’ve described to you last week.  But, the time factors still fouled us up pretty badly. We got home very late indeed. By the time we’d slept our fill and got up again, it was after noon, which basically trashed the day. Jet lag, without the jet, is what a friend calls it, and I guess that’s as good a description as any.

(Shrug) It’s OK. No place to go anyway on New Year’s day… everything’s closed. We spent the day taking down the Christmas stuff. Now, usually, we wait until the 6th of January, which is the day tradition considers that the Wise men visited the birthplace of the Lord. This year, we didn’t, since we’re supposed to get some freezing rain at least, if not snow, during the week. Upwards of 6 inches in fact… followed by rain… likely, freezing rain. We’ve been caught out a few times like that and were unable to removed the decorations… lights, particularly, until spring, by which time, none of them worked anymore. The ice gets to ’em. This ran into a rather largish bill come fall, to replace all the lights.  This year, we decided to avoid that problem, by taking them down as the weather allowed us.

Which of course means that there’s a decided lack of lights outside now… (Twice I’ve caught myself going out to the garage at dusk to turn on the lights that aren’t up anymore…. duuuuhhhh) It also means there’s a smallish looking pine tree at the curb. That’s such a sad sight. That sight has often caused me to wonder if there wasn’t a way we could get a potted pine tree, that lived in the living room year round. We could decorate the thing in season… and the cats could use it as a scratching post, and a high perch to launch attacks against their hapless human victims the rest of the year.

No, I guess that doesn’t work, does it?

The image of a cut down tree aside, removing the decorations is always been a bit of a sad occasion for us. I don’t know as this will describe why for you, but I’ll try.  See, I’ve played several hundred wedding receptions over the 20 years I was doing them, and a few dozen more office/group parties, and bunches of charity events. At the end of each one I was faced with the task of tearing down the show… which is my least favorite thing to do. Not the physical aspects of the job… which were formidable, given the equipment… but also the aspect that the celebration is over.

Melenie Safka, some years ago did a pretty fair description of the feeling, with a song she did on her first album, back in… what, 71 or 72, I think…

What do you do when the people go home
and what do you do when the show is all done
I know what I’ll do in the alone of my time
but what will I do with the leftover wine?

Jackson Browne expressed that feeling as

“..the sound of slamming doors and folding chairs…and that’s a sound they’ll never know”

There is always, at the end of any celebration… if you’re performing or not, some leftover celebration that doesn’t get the chance to come out.. and a feeling of letdown. I guess that the decorations going away signals the end of the celebration. It’s the biggest party of the year in the whole of the western world… so, I suppose it shouldn’t be a big shock that the biggest of letdowns is therefore attached to it… The higher the top, the farther the drop, as the saying goes.

It really shouldn’t be so… Christmas is supposed to last all year for those who understand the Christmas promise and have accepted it.  But still, it can’t be denied that Christmas is a special time, even if the promise doesn’t go away when the season itself does, and that the end of that season is a bit of a letdown.

(I’ve been looking for an excuse to promote a favorite of mine.. Doctor Fun)

I even noticed a similar situation here at work; You’ll recall I wrote about the decorations going up, and how that was kind of a landmark in time. The reverse apparently, holds true for that, as well. It’s a rather depressing landmark in time to see them take it down. Usually, given the size of the tree…(35-40 ft) they tend to use a chainsaw to take it down. They were doing this today. It rather made me consider and be sad about the passage of the season, and of time. I guess I still qualify as human, huh?

One bright spot.. as soon as the guy cutting up the tree with his chainsaw was done, someone at the other end of the big area here in the Mall piped up with a little Monty Python…. “He’s a lumberjack and he’s OK”….  to peels of laughter from the remaining workers.

But, anyway, that’s done for another year. See ya, Santa.
(sigh)

In answer to some E-mails…. and as I mentioned on BitsBlog last week, The American side of the falls had no fireworks display at all, this year. In all honesty, I was only slightly disappointed by that lack. I’ve long since begun to think that the New York side isn’t interested in trying to upstage the Canadian side, in this. It’s sad; the NY side of Niagara Falls has been a long-running joke. Even the display I wrote about… a few years ago… and posted last week, was a bit less on the American side. The Canadians can’t claim they’ve upstaged us in much of anything of late… except the ‘Falls. Seems they do know how to establish and maintain a tourist trap. (Shrug)

I was right last week, by the way; Goat Island was still closed… I did, however get a bright note about that; Turns out it’s closed only to cars and trucks, according, at least to a park cop I spoke to. You can, I’m told, find a place to park on the mainland and hike over to the Island… an interesting notion. My younger boy is still too young for that long a hike, though. So, this year, we parked in the parking lot directly across from the Hard Rock Cafe on the American side (Which they were not charging for, thankfully… I didn’t bring the cash)

Oh, well. We had a good time, though.  My younger boy in particular thought it was the best fireworks show he could remember. Which is likely true, given he has trouble remembering we were here last week, much less last year. It amazes me how much he’s grown, though.

We did have a spot of worry getting to the Falls. My van’s out of commission for the moment… (broken window, which oughta cost me around $150 or so…) so we ended up taking my wife’s SUV, an Escape. Nice little rig, that, but by no means is it really meant for over the road use. Fuel mileage is about what the van gets, but it doesn’t do so well in the wind.

And windy it was…. we spent the trip out there, driving directly into a headwind of about 40 mph, at times. We gave serious consideration to the idea that given the wind, they might not have the show at all. We needn’t have worried. Not only did the winds die down a bit, but the show was better than usual. Fireworks displays try to make use of a smoke background to draw their light against… much as an artist on a canvas.  One concern in such windy conditions is that the smoke will be cleared as soon as it gets into the sky.  As I said, I needn’t have been concerned. Turns out the river gorge is an ideal place for a display even in the wind. The smoke got so heavy, we couldn’t make out the Skylon from where we were standing at the end of the show.

When the show was over, we went back home, without bothering to stop, this year. (Do not pass flying J, do not collect dinner, do not spend $200.) We were all rather tired, and had a late dinner anyway, so we weren’t really hungry. So, it was jump in the Escape, drive to the Falls see the show, drive back. I can’t imagine doing that kind of driving for any other fireworks show… but then again, I can’t imagine not doing so for this particular show, either. And the boys had a great time, so did my wife, so it was still well worth the $20 or so I invested in fuel.

But now, it’s all done. Thanksgiving to New Year’s… the span of time we usually refer to as the “Holiday Season’ is gone.

Football season’s gone… My Bills missed the playoffs by one game… far better than most people, myself included, figured they’d do… so next year ought to be a pretty fair season, barring unforseens… so other than a marginal bit of interest in the playoffs, and the super bowl, football season’s done…. As I suggested a few weeks ago, I couldn’t care less about the NBA if you paid me to care less.  Hockey is out, given the strike.

It’s going to be a long wait, I think, before I can plan on anything outside again. Yes, I guess technically, it’s true… the days are getting longer… at the abysmal rate of about a minute per day, at this point. It’s still dark and drab out, even during much of the daytime.  Sunup at around 7, sundown at around 5, means I drive into work, and drive home from work, in the dark, never seeing the sunshine, except on weekends. No wonder I kill my truck battery. The lights are always running!

Welcome to Mid-winter, in Western NY.

So, my big thing between now and when spring decides to show up, is simply keeping warm, working on my home network systems, which I’m building up again… and doing some things around the house… inside.

Hmmm. Maybe it’s time to deal with those nasty little website issues…..

Jonah Goldberg, today:

“When it was still just a rumor that Gonzales would replace John Ashcroft as attorney general, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos opined that ‘even that kind of a cosmetic change’ – appointing the first Hispanic attorney general – ‘would suggest a change in tone.’
That’s right. What offended people about Ashcroft’s tenure at DOJ weren’t his policies, his intelligence, or his skill as an administrator. It was the deafeningly ‘white’ tone emanating from everything he did. And, besides, we all know those Hispanics are just plain nicer.
It seems, however, that Gonzales’ ethnic force-field couldn’t fully protect him from reality, as he faced tough questions in his confirmation hearings about his role in the treatment of ‘enemy combatants,’ as well as in the phantasmagorically exaggerated horrors of Guantanamo. (For all of the talk about how Ashcroft was the mustache-twirling evil mastermind behind these things, it took Gonzales’ nomination to make Ashcroft’s critics realize that the outgoing A.G. had nothing to do with them. That stuff was all run by the Department of Defense and the White House Counsel’s Office.)”

Well, isn’t that the truth. Read the whole thing.

Staples has apparently backed off it’s pullout of ads on Sinclair Broadcasting stations.

Amazing how these things happen when the real public has a say in things, not just a few far left nutbags.

Those who say I never am critical of Mr. Bush take note of this story.

THIS tees me off no end. This is a bad move… a cave-in by the Bush administration of the first order.

Says the Financial Times:

“The ?core group? of nations announced by US President George W. Bush to channel aid to victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami will be dissolved on Thursday after only eight days as the United Nations takes control of the international relief effort, delegates to a donors summit said on Wednesday.

Oh, great. Good move, bonehead. You’re going to turn all this money over to an org that has clearly demonstrated it’s ability to screw up falling off a log.

After the Oil for food scandal, you really have to wonder how much of this money is now actually going to make it into the hands of the people who really need it. Certainly, SOME of it will get there… with the UN logo all over it… The UN never ceases to amaze with it’s ability to self-promote.  But how much of that money is going to end up in Kofi’s pocket? And we’re now being forced to turn over tax-raised money to support an org that on so many occasions has been anti-American, and has publicly stood against American sovereignty.

And what of the goodwill we could have been spreading, in the name of the western nations, to the Muslim peoples of the world?

Once again, I say to Mr. Bush: Good move, Bonehead.
Your father’s biggest problem was that he was too prone to backing down when the Democrats wanted something. Will this be your problem, as well, I wonder?

Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales is being questioned incidental to that nomination, today.AP has posted the text of his opening statement.

Of course the moonbats are in full flower, today.
Moveon, for example, saying Abu Graibe was his handiwork.
Of course the investigation run on that subject showed that situation was criminal-driven, not policy driven. But since hwne has MOVEON ever been affected by the truth?

It’s my take that Gonzales should be installed without further argument.

I can’t complan about the way the readership of this blog is going. I’ev been rather pleased by it all. And yet, I look at some of the big guns, and have begun to notice a few trends about what it is that makes a first circle blogger, a first circle blogger, in terms of readership. Apparently, it helps if you’re from the area surrounding the great Liberal Panacea of Madison Wisconsin, for some reason. I’ve no idea why. But,Hugh Hewitt Captain’s Quarters,Fraters Libertas,Lileks,Power Line,Shot In The Dark, and Ann Althouseare all from there. Or perhaps, as a substitute, Tennesee, where Reynolds and Hobbs hail from. Gotta be something to do with the Midwestern way of thinking that attracts people. Hmmm. Wonder if I can fine another job in Tennesee?

*However you cut it, you find that the group of people who are loudest , both domesticaly and internationaly, who are making idiots out of themselves over the amount of up-front money being given the UN for aid, are those still TBAR’ed (Teed off Beyond All Reason) over George W Bush’s re-election. It makes you wonder if all this complaining isn’t just political posturing at the expense of those suffering.

* Of course, the same is true of those trying to play the Socialist security card, saying that benefits to Seniors will be cut if W gets his way. That’s not even on the table, yet, gang, and I doubt it will be. So why these tactics, huh? Same reason as with the Tsunami Aid…. political posturing

* I see a lot of ruffled feathers over Turkeys that were supposed to go to the poor, apparently ending up in the hands of the political freinds of John Conyers. Reynolds has that story, and so do CQ and OTB.

I wonder if Conyers is on record as saying we weren’t given enough to the Charity effort that is the Tsunami victims?

Bill Buckley in watching the events surrounding the Stnami relief efforts, notes, in part:

“(3)There has been, of course, major taunting of the United States. This was triggered by the president’s mention of $35 million as an initial contribution to the relief and reconstruction of the stricken areas.

All the world denounced this as piffle, a sum of money embarrassing in its meanness, given American wealth. One observer thought to spotlight our niggardliness by contrasting this with posted commitments by other nations, prominent among them, Spain. Spain is allocating $68 million. The question crosses the mind of the solon: How much money has Spain saved by withdrawing from the collective effort to curb Saddam Hussein? The difference between the bloody chaos brought on by the tsunami and the bloody chaos brought on by Saddam is that one of them was the wicked force of nature, the other, the wicked force of someone who is still alive and who continues to serve as patron of daily bloodbaths in the insurgents’ war to deprive the Iraqi people of life under freedom.

(4) Any appraisal of American contributions to the planetary commonwealth properly takes into account the cost of defense. Europe, outstandingly — given that it is collectively richer than the United States — is the primary leech here. For decades it has relied on the United States to look after it, whether by matching Soviet nuclear missile strength, or moving to tranquilize Kosovo; and now, of course, the major effort in the Near East, in which only Great Britain shares the cost. “

And this is a telling point, I think.. and it’s certainly one the left… and the UN… and the US press (Redunacies abound!) has missed; The arguments about direct aid dollars aside, Buckley’s quite correct, here… when addressing the generousity and positive impact on the world of the United States government… and more particularly, it’s people, one cannot exclude it’s military. 

This is a point slammed home by Michele Malkin as she points up what our military is doing there. Read it.

Part of the reason such matters don’t get the play they desrve is a reluctance on the part of some that military deployments can EVER gain a good. Says Michele:

“A few readers have grumbled this morning that they don’t like seeing these unparalleled military assets used for this humanitarian mission. For heaven’s sake. This wasn’t some minor thunderstorm. And the U.S.S. Lincoln was in port in Hong Kong. Its crew was ready, willing, and able to help. If not for one of the world’s largest natural disasters, when? “

So, the obvious question pointed at those complaining about how stingy the US has been in this entrire affair… who’s going to bring all this to the table? Canada? No. Their supposed leadership suffers from the same kind of anti-military nonsense our own left does. The result? They can’t even get their relief teams out of the country, for lack of equipment to do the job.

No, people…the US is the only one. The ONLY one willing to put these resources on the table. Don’t these count for something?

From Channel 10 in Miami, comes word that another of Ashlee Simpson’s performances has gone somewhat amiss…

“Ashlee Simpson’s Orange Bowl halftime performance ended with the screeching line, ‘You make me want to scream,’ but all the crowd wanted to do was boo.”

It wasn’t so many years ago that Milli Vanilli got clobbered for doing lipsyncs. The charge was they couldn’t sing. My thought at the time was the charge was a little off base, but… and I certainly understand better than the average music fan that there are times when the technical aspects make such a move a requirement.(shrug).

Now, here we have a girl who for the life of her can’t lip sync, for whatever reason. Is it the girl’s fault? I dunno. The sad part is, we’ll NEVER know… not really.

The really WEIRD part of all of this is she’s due to play the Ryman Aud in April.
Not at ALL sure how that’s going to work.

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH notes this morning that the French seem…. well… vexed at the idea that the US is in the lead role in the Tsunami aid.

But what have they got to bitch about? The French coughed up $135,000, right?

DRUDGE has a flash up reporting Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi has been arrested in Iraq.

Good news, if true, but there’s been no official announcement as yet.

Update: The WH and the Pentegon are both downplaying this report, saying al-Zarqawi’s more likely in Bagdhad.

Ace of Spades HQ notes It’s JRR Tolkein’s Eleventy-Second Birthday

If you have to ask, you won’t understand my telling you either.

Over at the Daily News, Stanley Crouch notes, regarding hip-hop…

The most successful black women’s magazine, Essence, is in the middle of a campaign that could have monumental cultural significance.
Essence is taking on the slut images and verbal abuse projected onto black women by hip hop lyrics and videos.
..
At a listening session that Weathers and the other staffers had with entertainment editor Cori Murray, “We found the rap lyrics astonishing, brutal, misogynistic. … So we said we were going to pull no punches, especially since women were constantly being assaulted.”

Come on, gang… I’ve written about this stuff for the last decade and more, in various venues. This stuff has been going on for well over a decade… and black women are just now figuring this stuff out?

And note the lean, here. Cops, Pols and other leaders have been under the same kind of verbal assault for a decade, now.  (Can YOU say “Cop Killer?” Can You say “David Artest?”) All that’s OK, apparently. But suddenly to attack women per se’… That’s a major issue? Where the beep have you folks BEEN for the last 10 or 15 years, hmmm? Hell, these people have been attacking anything that doesn’t move too fast. That’s what it’s all about… Attacking Anything they can.

I mean, look, if it serves to clamp this business, I’m OK with it. I agree that we have reached crisis proportions. But we did that 15 years ago. Don’t let anyone jumping on this current bandwagon tell you they’re anything but late to the party, and therefore part of the problem.

Yahoo! News – Bullock gives one million dollars to tsunami relief operation

AP is reporting : “About 2 feet of snow shut down Interstate 5 at Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles, stranding some travelers, and the California Highway Patrol said the state’s main north-south highway was expected to stay closed there all day. The elevation at the pass is about 4,200 feet. ”

Yikes.