August 28, 2004

I am not up to answerin' any questions

^{Category » Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™}

Is that thought runnin' through so many minds out there? I again posted a quiz for your purview on this fine rainy Saturday and have not received a solitary sign that any of ya'll took time to check out the questions. I actually 'tempted to formulate the subject material on this one with somethin' nearly ever'one should be familiar: water. Come on, ya'll. It is only 10 questions.

I have spent considerable time examinin' my navel this evenin' attemptin' to discern even the most minuscule changes that might have occurred since the last highly in depth examination. I found none. End of report.

Payin' homage to a masterful use of snark in a title

^{Category » Quotable Quip™}

Kerry beats dead horse; horse files for purple heart - Jay Tea

A pretty smile turns Glenn's head

^{Category » Off The Cuff}

Indeed! From a casual observation of the placard she holds, one does wonder upon what career path the object of his adoration has chosen to embark.

I did this one jes' for Susie*

^{Category » Off The Cuff}

I was bored and glommin'** here and there to find and check out some of the new blogs that have joined in on the munu universe when I came across this post penned by Mad Mikey of the appropriately named Mad Mikey's Blog wherein his eloquent prose urged me to visit the Political Quiz Show. Although I most valiantly fought my urge to do so, I finally could hold out no longer and made my selections. My answers were tabulated and I scored a 27, such score placin' me somewhere 'tween George Bush, Dubya's daddy, and Jack Kemp. At least I wasn't pinned under Jesse Ventura.

*It seems that ya gotta put forth a lot of effort to turn her head, anymore.

**This word derives from my youth when my great-granny used to chastise me for "glommin' through all the drawers in the house", lookin' for whatever I might find.

Wooohoooo! We're NUMBER THREE!!!!!!!!!!

^{Category » On My Soapbox}

Yep, the USA Men's Basketball Team finally all pulled their respective heads out of the their asses to win one they had to win. Yep, they amazin'ly and, in my patriotic stance, thankfully, whooped up enough on the Lithuanian team to have won the Bronze Medal. They still played pathetically poorly to be a group of actual professional players from the NBA, and while it is true that there are several NBA players on most of the other teams, we still invented the damn game and here we are supposedly puttin' up our best team in the 'Lympics, the regularly scheduled International Contest, so as to compete against the best teams from all the rest of the countries in the world and find ourselves comin' out in THIRD PLACE? The real question, I suppose, remains: will we ever know how it affects the Silver and Gold Medal winnin' teams to know that we didn't even bring close to the best team we could come up with to the contest because our NBA players are so selfish they don't consider the Olympics even worth the effort they might be required to put forth as jes' to represent their country. Not the players from the USA, that is.

I know 't'warn't Steven den Beste but 'twas den Beste I could do. Go ahead and groan. I did when I thunk it up.

Diff'rent strokes 101, havin' nuthin' to do with Willard

^{Category » The Full Story}

I hadn't been over at G'Day Mate for what seems like forever, and what did I find right at the top? A link to this Steven den Beste post where he says he is packin' up his boxin' gloves 'cause he is tired of the scrappin'. I have to admit that I did not drop by USS Clueless very often, usually not unless one of my regular reads linked to somethin' to be found there that seemed to be involvin' subject matter in which I might have some interest. I 'spose what was intriguin' to me was the reasonin' given for his haven laid down the quill:

For the last few months, each time I published a post, I mentally cringed a bit, thinking about all the kinds of letters I knew I'd get, things I could predict. You've sometimes seen me try to preempt those with DWL's.

Several times in the last three weeks I thought of something which would make a good post, and then I stopped, and said to myself, "Better not."

I've learned something interesting: if you give away ice cream, eventually a lot of people will complain about the flavors, and others will complain that you aren't also giving away syrup and whipped cream and nuts. I put together this page which contains two days worth of my email, just so you could get some idea of what it looks like. It isn't all bad; it isn't all unwelcome. Very little of it is abusive. But the majority of it is burdensome.

To slice the email a different way, here's a collection of email regarding my last article about terrorism. Again, it wasn't all unwelcome, but much of it was more burden than pleasure.

Far too much of it was from people who knew better than me what I should have written, and wanted to tell me how to rewrite it. Those are the people who have made me cease getting pleasure out of my writing.

I 'spose I have got to be sorry to see him go, 'cause from what I saw from his writin', he always seemed to have a clear, concise and rational opinion about thin's. Still, I guess the vacuum he leaves could easily be filled by a snarky inaniac, right?

The barkin' moonbat alarm seems to be momentarily out of order

^{Category » One Hand Clappin'}

I don't know how he did it, and surely don't know how he got past the security system, but OldCatman has done invaded barkin'moonbat.com.

More thoughts on the 'Lympics

^{Category » Jes' My Take}

I was wonderin' if those superstars in the NBA are angry at themselves for not volunteerin' to play for the USA in this Olympiad now. Also, surely there is no such thing as men's rhythmic gymnastics, is there? I cannot hardly see any real men wantin' to be involved in such a fracas as that.

I am of the opinion that such event should have been showcased on A&E;, as all of the competitors seem to be wearin' ballet costumes and all of 'em look like they want to be ballerinas or somethin' from how tight they have pulled back their hair and from the way they have painted their faces. This jes' don't seem to be a sport so much as a dancin' event.

The perfect quiz for a rainy day

^{Category » Tiger's Tuesday Saturday Trivia™}

Water in our bodies:

Regulates body temperature
Keeps salt in the body from building up
Carries food into the organs
Carries oxygen to body parts
Conducts electrical nervous impulses
Aids in digestion
Removes wastes products
Cleanses the blood in the kidneys

Today's quiz is all wet! It's all 'bout water! Splash it Up! or Check out the Swimsuit Competition!

My idle thought upon facin' a new day

^{Category » Off The Cuff}

Do you awake each mornin' with a thought already in your head? I am sure you do, jes' as we all do. I mean, sure, there are those thoughtless people 'bout here and there, but even they are not actually thoughtless, they jes' didn't think to be the sort of person we expected them to be. I 'spect it is really rare that anyone could ever clear their mind of all thought. Despite my best attempts, I have never ever been able to completely have a blank mind, although, especially of late, I have had extreme periods where my mind is occupied with thoughts concernin' my inability to come up with whatever idea it was that I was drastically attemptin' to conceive. Anyway, now that I have prefaced with an over adequate explanation, let me share my initial thought of the day with you:

I awoke thinkin' of that women's 4x100 relay matter, where the USA team was disqualified due to a failure to properly hand off the baton, and I was thinkin' of the old catch phrase used on ABC's Wild World of Sports: the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. I thought surely that was a good example of the agony of defeat.

Now I never said I had a really profound thought in my head when I awoke. I do, however, have some really profound wakin' thoughts on occasions.

August 27, 2004

The end of a long long day

^{Category » Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™}

Yep, this is it, my day is gonna grind to a halt without much of anythin' at all bein' accomplished. Why? Well, days have to end. Oh, why was nothin' accomplished? Hmmm, that is a question that has plagued greater minds than mine.

My navel is pinin' for some attention, so if any of ya'll lovely females wants to send it a few kind words, I suppose it wouldn't hurt. I am afraid that if none do, my navel may be damaged beyond easy repair. I 'spect that might be a really ugly sight. End of report.

Another idea I wish I had come up with first

^{Category » Quotable Quip™}

Every time this [the murder of civilians by Islamic terrorists in an attempt to get their home nation to pull out of the multi-national anti-terrorism coalition] happens, the government of the man killed should send more troops in. Even if it’s just a few, it would make a point. - Kathy Kinsley

The bizarre twists and turns of humanity

^{Category » Pullin' Your Leg}

It seems there has been quite a few turnabouts in the news of late. 1) The plane crashes in Russia were due to terroristic acts, as was initially suspected then dismissed when no clear evidence of such was found. 2) Kobe Bryant will be goin' to trial, although it was reported that due to a very cherry deal that had been offered to him, the whole incident was over and done with. Seems said Kobe has decided to roll his dice with the jury in hopes of gettin' an acquittal. 3) John Kerry admitted that he lied about his Viet Nam experiences.

Oh, wait! That last one ain't happened ............. ^yet! O' course, showin' the lack o' backbone the said Mr. Kerry's past record has disclosed, it likely never will. Remember my discussion of plastic people? Ain't he such a good example.

Weekly World News says that Bush is controllin' Kerry's moves through VOODOO!

Aug. 27, 2004

^{Category » Friday Funny™}

A Polish immigrant applied for a driver's license. He had to take an eye sight test. The optician showed him a card with the letters C Z W I X N O S T A C Z. "Can you read this?" the optician asked. "Read it?" the Polish man replied, "I know the guy!"

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved package, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand, strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming, “WOO HOO - What a ride!”

August 26, 2004

Goin' back in time

^{Category » Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™}

OK, I know this post was back timed so as to show it was posted at an earlier time, but, what the hey, here's the scoop. I was IM'g with George, no, not that George, the George that sends me the jokes, my former blogchild Cherry's dad, and he was askin' me why I was no longer displayin' my picture on the MSN IM'g mechanism. I checked all the options and preference settin's and didn't find nothin' that would allow me to initiate such function. I checked my version number against his and found I had an ancient version of MSN IM. Now, in ever' other situation, I seem to have gotten notices to update such programs from time to time, but had not 'member ever receivin' such with any programs on this laptop. I also have received some browser compatibility with attempts to access certain sites using MSN Explorer. I started checkin' 'round tryin' to access Windows Update, and found that I was havin' quite a bit of trouble with the link in the program listin' on start menu, but somehow easily got to it through the "help and support" links. It suggested that I download SP2, which took 5 hours on the dialup. It has now been downloaded and installed, but I still have MSN IM version 4.7? I am 'spectin' that another check at Windows Update will show that there are still a few other updates I need to download.

The navel was and is fully exposed in all of it resplendent glory although with the expansion of my Buddha belly, the little cherry mole seems to have gotten trapped and is slidin' down the slope into its depths. End of report.

Smack dab in the middle of the target

^{Category » The Full Story}

I don't really like most of these quiz thingies, but ever' once in awhile, one tickles my fancy. This one did, mainly 'cause the graphic presentation was apropos for the quiz theme. Without further ado:

What internet acronym are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Found at Always Victoria

Pat, I'd like to buy a vowel comment

^{Category » Jes' My Take}

Is the comment function broken? They seem to come so rarely these days, and yet I am without a clue as to what to do. Maybe I jes' ain't posted anythin' comment worthy of late, ya think? Let me see:

Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™: I'm feelin' like I'm fallin' off of my pogo stick -- yeah, likely no reason to comment to this one 'ceptin' maybe some mention about the visual created in the title.

Jes' My Take: Who are you? Who? Who? -- Who? Who? -- Other than havin' one of the snappier musical lyric titles I have used lately, I thought there was a bit of good discussion material in this one.

On My Soapbox: Let me count the ways - yada yada -- I definitely thought this post was comment worthy, as the topic seems to be among one of the most popular topics to discuss that does not involve John Kerry whinin', wafflin', lyin', or otherwise pretendin' to be somethin' that he is not - leadership material --- oops, I digressed, and I seem to have a really bad habit of doin' that lately. Guessin' it is that lack of feedback that is throwin' me off my game.

Pullin' Your Leg: This mornin's 'Lympic interlude -- I jes' thought someone would find the humor I intended when I created this post.

Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™: The Dark Side* rears its ugly head -- I figgered the Star Wars reference would draw a lot of activity to this one, 'specially when a footnote quoted prolly the best scene of the whole series.

Off The Cuff: Another thought on the 'Lympics -- I dunno, I was thinkin' there would be a lot of agreement with this post. Maybe there was -- jes' no one felt it was necessary to let me know.

On My Soapbox: What I want to say about the Paul Hamm/Yang Tae Young affair -- I climbed out on a limb and gave my opinion on a controversial situation after havin' given it the benefit of some long thought and yet found not a single peep in recognition, whether in agreement or disagreement with the viewpoint expressed.

The next post in this succession into the last few posts actually received the last comment received on this blog all the way back on August 24, 2004 at 01:44 PM. Also, I do not intend to rehash all the activity that has not gone on in relation to this blog forever and ever, as the next post is the end of this foray into the recent activity on this blog.

Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™: As close to open mike as it comes 'round here -- This was a post I created specifically for your comments as to things you liked and things you didn't like about my bloggin' efforts in my ongoin' endeavor to make this one of your favorite blogs. I got nary a peep.

Hello? Is anyone out there?

August 25, 2004

I'm feelin' like I'm fallin' off of my pogo stick

^{Category » Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™}

Up and down, up and down -- thoughts driftin' to deep dark places then briskly floatin' to places on high. The navel ain't moved an inch. End of report.

Who are you? Who? Who? -- Who? Who?

^{Category » Jes' My Take}

When I was younger, we had a sayin' ‘bout people who kinda went around hidin' themselves behind false personalities - plastic people, we called ‘em. Ya'll know the kinda people I'm talkin' ‘bout. When I originally entered into Internet adventures a half-decade plus a year or two ago, I readily detected the rash of fictitious personalities that preyed within chat rooms lookin' for whatever. I have recently noticed the quickly growin' supply of superb ways to create customized avatars existin' here and there. How close are we, I wonder, to a world where our most wondrous creatures exist totally within the electronic realm?

Let me count the ways - yada yada

^{Category » On My Soapbox}

Some putz named Josh Belzman, whoever he may be,* is makin' the statement that all the controversy over the gymnastics judgin' stuff means that there is really no fair way to judge the sport and as such, it should just be dumped.

This is not sport. It’s a circus act.

Sports have rules that govern play. Competitors know the rules. Officials know the rules. In the case that a judgment call is required, legitimate sports offer ways to challenge, review and resolve a decision.

But more than that, the contests of raw athletic skill that comprised the first Olympics offer objective criteria for determining a winner. Victory in these sports is decided by who runs the fastest, jumps the highest, hoists the most weight. Whatever the measuring stick, in genuine Olympic sport there is a winner and a loser and little room for argument.

Whereas, I can admit a bit of logical basis for the argument made, by the same token, subjective judgin' is also used in divin', synchronized swimmin', rhythmic gymnastics, figure skatin', as well as scored events such as boxin' and wrestlin'. Jes' 'cause there is room for some controversy about the way some of these events are scored ain't a great basis for scrapin' them.

First of all, gymnastics is a very popular sport and I surmise that the DVD of the gymnastics competition will sell well despite the controversies mentioned. Secondly, the 'Lympics is not the sole showcase for gymnastic events, as there is International Competition in the sport on a regular basis, as is true in almost every other sport in this day and age. Thirdly, it is nothin' short of draconian to suggest that the only way to cure a problem in scorin' a sportin' event is to dispense with any further efforts in such sport.

whateva

*In the spirit of the Internet, I Googled his name. Nothin' of a nature with regard to anythin' of major renown surfaced. I 'spect that, even on this subject, our Bill** is a more significant source of opinion.

**O' course, it still amazes me that, despite the fact that I relocated my blog over six months ago, the link on his blog still points to my former location.

This mornin's 'Lympic interlude

^{Category » Pullin' Your Leg}

An Israeli won the gold medal in windsurfin'.

Iran immediately issued a public proclamation that 1) no such sport existed, 2) no such windsurfer existed, and 3) such news story was nothin' short of another hoax created by a non-existent wannabe usurper of some other Arabic people's country.

August 24, 2004

The Dark Side* rears its ugly head

^{Category » Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™}

I forget whether I have told ya'll they were workin' on the road in front of my house, although I am pretty sure I did so. Well anyway, they cut right through the phone line at some point today, hence, such equals a really good excuse for my havin' not posted anythin' today. O' course, there is still that other reason, bein' the general bit of apathy that seems to be goin' 'round the blogosphere,** that funny thing that seems to have dampened my spirits to the point where I am startin' to feel that continuin' my bloggin' efforts will only increase the amount of wasted efforts in my life. O' course, the decline in average daily readership on my blog is not the only factor in my decline of amorous feelin's 'bout my current life situation. It is bad enough that I remain alone, widowed, childless and have already lost both my parents, but several of my other ventures have seemed to come to a standstill here of late as well.

The navel still remains unaffected by the deluge of mundane problems that weigh so heavily upon my shoulders and amount to enough to almost break my back. It acts like the only job in which it was involved was finished years and years ago. End of report.

*

Darth Vader: If you only knew the power of the Dark Side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
Luke: He told me enough. He told me you killed him.
Darth Vader: No. I am your father.
Luke: No. That's not true. That's impossible.
Darth Vader: Search your feelings you know it to be true.
Luke: Nooooo. Nooooo.

**Or maybe I am jes' assumin' there is a general case of apathy goin' 'round due to what I have seen here on this blog. People like Michele, James and Kevin seem to get their fair share of readers no matter what.

follow the tracks »

Another thought on the 'Lympics

^{Category » Off The Cuff}

Havin' swept the medals during the 400 meter race, is anyone bettin' against the US taking the top spot in the 4x400 meter race?

What I want to say about the Paul Hamm/Yang Tae Young affair

^{Category » On My Soapbox}

Ya know, I am all for fair play in sports and such, and I understand the upset the Koreans must feel over the affair over the Men's All-Around Gymnastics event, but in all honesty, if you watched Yang Tae Young and Paul Hamm's performances through-out the whole series of men's gymnastics events, especially the High Bar event where the mistake was made and you see that Paul Hamm, despite the problems with quietin' the crowd down so that he could even start his performance, had a much better score than Yang Tae Young. I feel for Yang Tae Young and for the whole country of South Korea, but in all fairness, everyone performin' in the whole Men's All-Around Gymnastics event seemed to be a bit off their game that night, and Paul Hamm, Yang Tae Young, and his countryman, Kim Dae Eun, ought to feel pretty glad for havin' come out with those medals with as poorly as all three performed. They should thank their lucky stars that so many of the others made more mistakes than they did, as, in my opinion, none of them were actually all that worthy of claimin' that top pedestal for the event. Maybe, in all fairness, they should just award all three the bronze medal, and say no one was worthy of either silver or gold.

follow the tracks »

There ain't nuthin' to report

^{Category » Nightly Navel Gazin' Report™}

Ya thought I was joshin'? End of report.