The least embarrassing embarrassment I've ever endured

Barack is very disappointed with me!


I only scored 27 on the Obama Test

It gets worse: I have eight children, not one of whom has ever been partially aborted and then left on a shelf to die. I can't believe he'd want to share a country with me.

Note to Judy

For the record, I'm well aware that you and your husband were lawfully married in 1967. I spoke metaphorically, and in terms my mother would have disapproved of as well. Please excuse the slight hint of Irish Spring on my breath.

And it came to pass in those days...

All the stress, all the overtime, all the lost sleep and dread of not making everything perfect in time... this is what it was all for. Well worth it.



A blessed Christmas to all!

It's too late for this year

But maybe next Christmas... if madness doesn't seize us all first!

If you wish to inspire dreams of non-Euclidean madness into all of your holiday guests, then take home this ageless, indestructible creature from Beyond the Stars. The Great Cthulhu yule tree ornament.

Sure, he'll destroy all mankind, but in the mean time you’ll get a whole house-full of fanatical cult of believers ready to do your bidding during the holiday season. By the time they clue into what’s going on, they will already be tormented by visions of this Ancient One.

I want!

You go, Dad!

Humiliate: [Late Latin humiliāre, humiliāt-, to humble, from humilis, humble; see humble.]

Dennis Baltimore Jr. was caught vandalizing school property at Long Beach's Wilson Classical High School.

He was sentenced by his dad to walk the streets of Long Beach and Signal Hill on Tuesday for five hours in two locations wearing a sign saying, "I am a juvenile delinquent who should be punished. I have wasted your tax money with dumb acts of vandalism in the public schools."

The lede asks "Cruel and unusual punishment or just good, old-fashioned discipline?" as though there were necessarily a difference. A punishment that's "usual" soon becomes ineffective, and an effective punishment requires a certain measure of cruelty. It can be overdone easily, of course, but the point is to make him really, really not want to be in that situation again.

The kid's not suffering any permanent harm. He's just learning some desperately-needed humility. My parents would have done this, too. The fact that he accepted his punishment even though he's too big to use brute force on, indicates that he's been pretty well raised so far. He did something stupid and destructive, and his dad is reacting appropriately.

I'll bet anything we don't see this kid on America's Most Wanted in ten years. Way to go, Dad!

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil

My best friend from childhood, Nate Hilman, the Greatest Photographer in the Northwest, doesn't read this blog much, but on the off chance he does:

Happy birthday, you elderly [person of irregular birth]! Now you know what it feels like to be this old! Ha ha ha... ugh! Hack! Wheeze!

Careful what you ask for

We're off to go ice skating for my Excellent and Virtuous Daughter's eighteenth birthday. So I won't be here to face the recriminations and slurs on my Christian witness that will inevitably follow from this video. Caution: Hilarious but very bawdy. You have been warned.



Hat tip - and wagging finger - to the wonderful Miss C.

Holy cow!

Two buses slid down an icy hill and are now hanging over I-5 in Seattle.

Turns out they were full of kids from Moses Lake's Job Corps center. Everyone seems to have gotten out all right, praise God, but the paper has been getting call after call about it from worried parents. Hardly surprising.

I've driven on those hills in the winter, and it ain't pretty.

Update:Here's another picture that kind of captures the topography a little better:

The weather outside is frightful

Actually, it's not bad here, but the rest of Washington got snow dumped on it as if with God's own shovel. For some reason, Moses Lake got passed over. Which kind of sucks, because I have small children, a large hill, and several saucer sleds just crying out to be combined.

Meanwhile, there's nothing like a good snowfall to bring out the Norwegian in all of us.



Uff da!

What's in a name?

I know there are a myriad comments to be made on seeing these two stories so close together, but I'm not going to be the one to make them. No siree. Not this little gray duck.

Reasons to stop bellyaching

About the incoming administration.

About the economy.

About the ex.

God's been good to us. I need to shut up and just be grateful.

If this is the '09 model, I dread the 2010 one

Cassandra seems to get it as regards the auto bailout. Just a link, as the language isn't universally suitable. But it's worth the click.

Submitted without comment

A jolly, red-nosed tip of the Akubra to Protein Wisdom.

Goodbye, good guy

Van Johnson travels in elephants.*

Nobody would ever mistake Johnson for a dashing leading man, but whatever character he played always seemed to me like someone I'd enjoy sitting down and having a beer with. He came across as the quintessential good guy, whether he was Bogart's not-too-bright but fundamentally decent exec in The Caine Mutiny or Gene Kelly's cynical, tippling sidekick in Brigadoon. Those two roles are what I remember him best for, but he has an impressive list of credits under his name. Time and again, he plays the second banana in an aw-shucks sort of way. (Ack! In looking at his bio, it looks like his marriage was kind of a sordid one arranged by the studio. He married his best friend's wife the day their divorce became final, and Louis B. Mayer paid off the jilted husband with career favors because the marriage enhanced Johnson's own career. Sick and shameful.)

I hope he's somewhere now where I can meet him someday and find out if he's really as nice as he came across on screen.

Cheesy Christmas Movies: Miracle on 34th Street

No, not the famous one with Maureen O'Hara and Natalie (drift)Wood. This one was a made-for-TV version from 1955, condensed into an hour-long format. I haven't seen it yet, but I will as soon as I get time. (Right now, we're decorating the house for Christmas and I just stepped away because the noise was getting overwhelming.) I notice a few familiar names in it, but nowhere near the big names the feature-film version had. Still, it's a story that could probably benefit from being condensed. Leave opinions in the comments.

This year, give the gift of Death

Murder, Inc. has gift certificates. How disgusting is that?

Although I can think of some slogans they could use:
The gift that keeps on giving makes giving obsolete.

Why share your stocking space?

From our family to your lack of one

For unto us a child is torn into tiny pieces and stuffed in a dumpster

What blob of cells is this...

We wish you a saline scalding, we wish you a saline scalding...

Or even a simple
Merry Deathmas!

Feel free to fill in your own in the comments.