Evel Knievel has died from natural causes.

You’ve probably never heard the likes of before.  Much more here.  Nothing like a good steampunk Christmas from airship pirates.

Thanks Flea for all the good music.

A retired Italian wine maker went to the village church to make his confession for the first time in many decades. When the priest slid open the panel in the confessional, the man said, “Father, during World War II, a beautiful woman knocked on my door and asked me to hide her from the enemy. I hid her in my attic.”
The priest replied, “That was a wonderful thing you did, my son! You have no need to confess it.”
“It’s worse than that, Father,” he continued. “She quickly started to repay me with sexual favors.”
“People in wartime sometimes act in ways they wouldn’t under normal conditions. If you are truly sorry for your actions, you are forgiven.”
“Thank you, Father. That’s a great load off my mind. May I ask a question?”
“What, my son?”
“She is pretty old now, should I tell her the war is over?”

What non-IPod mp3 players do people have that they really like?  I’m looking at a few options such as the Sansa or maybe the Zen.

I’m not one that has to have these things plugged in every waking second.  So I’m not looking for the ultimate player of all time.  I have a few things that I want to see.

• Sturdy, doesn’t feel cheap.
• Doesn’t require software to sync tunes, works with Windows Media Player (WMP) playlists.
• Doesn’t require a special cable, can use a standard miniUSB or microUSB connector.

Now I know most fail when it comes to using a special cable.  But no special software is a must.  Which is what rules out an IPod.  I don’t even want to take a chance with any company using my listening habits as market research.  WMP lets you turn off any Internet connectivity which is great.  But since Apple thinks they’re on a holy mission, they’re likely to add something like that to ITunes without letting anyone know.

So far the winner seems to be this.  The Sansa express.  Plugs right into a USB slot.  Looks like flash memory.  Reviews are mixed just like anything else. 

Anyone have a favorite they use?

Parents: Our pour little babies have to fly by themselves.

(AP) — Susan Cole wanted to fly her 12-year-old son Danny from their Maryland home to Houston so he could catch a football game with his dad, who was there on a business trip.

Susan Cole and her 12-year-old son Danny work on the family computer at their Mt. Airy, Maryland home.

Danny had only flown once or twice, and never alone. So Susan, plenty nervous herself, last month took Danny to Baltimore-Washington International Airport three hours early and accompanied him to the gate.

“I assumed Southwest would let him on early, before the herd of passengers gets on, because I’m not even sure he’s tall enough to reach the overhead luggage,” Cole said.

Cole said a succession of Southwest employees not only refused to let Danny board early, but wouldn’t promise to help him meet up with his father.

A Southwest executive says the employees were just following company policy.

Southwest escorts children 5 through 11 who are traveling alone, but “once you hit 12, you’re considered a youth and not an unaccompanied minor,” said Teresa Laraba, the airline’s vice president for ground operations.

I’ve flown while under 18 by myself.  It was going to basic training.  Thank god my parents weren’t like this woman who would have asked the airline staff to sit next to me and make sure I had my bottle.

We’re going through the process of adopting a kid out of foster care.  I wonder if this woman realizes that at age 12 a kid in that situation has the legal right to approve of any arrangements?  That they can veto what foster parents or potential adoptive parents they get?  12 year olds have the responsibility to make a decision this huge. 

But the super-mom in the story won’t let her little one board by himself.  And of course I’m sure the son is now being rightfully harassed by everyone in school for being a momma’s boy.  Yeah, you worry about a kid that age.  But you let them start making their own way in the world too.

Pink Tools.

So now she can fix her own damn faucet.

Hehhehh.. just teasin’.  This looks like a great gift to get more girls interested in fixing things around the house and learning how to be self sufficient.  They’re good quality tools in a very nice case.  And proceeds go to help breast cancer research.

I had forgotten until yesterday just how bad the Comcast propaganda commercials are.  They are so terrified of losing customers to DirecTV and Dish.  With good reason I’d say.

They’ll set up commercials where some guy who can’t even work a remote control finds a satellite dish confusing.  Yeah…

So lets hear it for the new Comcast motto:

TV for Morons

That seems to be how they’re selling themselves.  Not “We have the best customer service.”  Well, yeah, their customer service blows.  Not “We don’t mess with your internet packets” either, since they pretty much stand convicted of that.  They lose on the signal quality compared to pure digital.

About the only plus for the cable company is that you get… local cable access channels.  Wayne’s World aside, those shows are scary.

So yesterday I left the house and picked up Bill.  We went to the gun show.

While there, we talked about guns.

Then we went to Best Buy.

While there, we talked very loudly about how the hell anyone would pay one hundred frickin’ dollars for a 6 foot HDMI cable.  Very loudly.  When you can get one from amazon.com for 31 cents.  I mean seriously, who is so ungodly stupid as to buy anything from Monster cable?

Then Circuit City with the same cable pricing.

Finally back to his place where we hooked up his new LCD flatscreen just in time to watch Battlestar Galactica Razor.  During commercials we chatted about that.

I come home to the wife who asks how’s Bill’s new girlfriend working out and all sorts of other things.  I of course replied that during the course of going to the gun show, Best Buy, Circuit City, and watching BSG, we never mentioned that kind of stuff.

What did we talk about she asked?  Well, guns, electronics, and BSG.  Because that’s what guys talk about.

From current events over at the Beeripedia

So where did the fable of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer, or the notion that the first Thanksgiving was a cheery, beery good time come from? Once again, a look at Beer & Food: An American History gives strong clues.

In the early years after Repeal, the U.S. brewing industry was running scared. What if the feds reenacted Prohibition? Since saloons were frowned upon (including even the use of the word, “saloon”) and replaced by taverns, and draft beer was on its way to being replaced by containerized beer coming into homes in bottles and finally cans in 1935, beer also had to shed its image as either an insidious instrument of the old German Kaiser (a popular bit of lingering Prohibitionists’ nonsense) and the more contemporary negative image as a dirty money maker of bootlegging/mobster groups. In other words, beer had to be “gussied up” and made respectable.

The United Brewers Industrial Foundation stepped in to make beer “friendly,” once again touting it as the “drink of moderation.” The U.B.I.F. was funded by the United States Brewers Association after the U.S.B.A. had conducted a survey of Americans’ attitudes toward beer and the brewing industry. The survey’s disheartening conclusions focused the ultimate goal of the U.B.I.F. on the paramount need to establish an extensive public relations campaign on beer’s benefits. As part of their national PR effort, the organization began to publish a series of informative booklets and run extensive ads in popular magazines on beer and its positive aspects. Part of the U.B.I.F’s effort was evident in the blossoming of recipes that made use of beer as an ingredient, as explained in Beer & Food.

Another approach was a series of informative cartoons that were offered to media outlets for free that demonstrated how beer was so interwoven with the history of the U.S.A. In Part III, we’ll take a look at some of these cartoons and point out some of the biggest white lies that the U.S.B.A. and its propaganda arm, the U.B.I.F. could muster that helped bridge the connection between beer and the history of our nation, the portrayal of the country’s most influential forefathers as lusty beer drinkers, and the organizations’ claims as to how important the brewing industry was to the tax revenues of our country. At the time, the word “propaganda” was not as pejorative in meaning as it is today, and was widely used by both trade organizations in expressing what the mission of both organizations was— selling beer.

After almost 14 years of Prohibition, can you really blame the brewing industry for sowing the seeds of today’s beer folklore? I say their efforts worked, considering the fact that most of you readers probably have a beer or two in your refrigerator right now.

Thanksgiving is here. Time for tradition to be first and foremost once again.

Mayor Resigns, Claims Abduction By Satan Worshippers

The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.

It was a double-life he had never acknowledged, Williams said, because he didn’t even realize it existed until he had recently taken a truth-serum injection.

As Williams regained his memory, he said, he realized that he had a wife and two kids but that he had decided to leave and take on a new identity to protect them.

Since the media never identified the party of the mayor, he must be a Democrat.

So anyways, this guy ran a website dedicated to the memory of the man he used to be.  And his former wife found the website, and this led to the unraveling of his former life.

Abney Park

The turkey’s in the brine.

We’re ready.

Over at Dodgeblogium

It is only the race-obsessed Leftists who get hysterical over statements about groups. Conservatives have always held that it is the individual that matters. The KKK were Democrats, not Republicans. And Hitler was a socialist, not a conservative.

 What’s all this about?  And why was a Nobel prize winning scientist shunned over it?

The Jawa Report publicized that not all the current crop of “rock” musicians are drug addled moronic leftists.

Thank you to 3 Doors Down.

You simply must visit The Ministry of Propaganda.

And oh yeah, boycott Google.

Don’t forget. 

Buy some even if you don’t have a gun… yet.