Clerics on a Plane

No it's not a sequel, the Boston Globe has reported this gem Muslim clerics urge US Airways boycott
Group says bias caused removal from jetliner.
bias? ok i admit, i don't want to fly with people who intentionally act like terrorists. call that bias if you want, but i learned years ago that there are things you don't do in an airport. You don't joke about bombs, and you don't act like a terrorist. That's just common sense people, i don't care what your skin color is or what your religion is. The constitution grants freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but you don't yell "Fire" in a crowded movie house, and you don't act like a terrorist in a plane. Yeh, i'm biased against assclowns, sue me.

p0nk - tastes like chicken...

...at least according to our hero, Angry Ferret Jones. Little does he know how right he is.
One of the more enlightening things about family get-togethers, like Thanksgiving, is that after the first 10 minutes of dissing each others sports teams, music taste, and politics, we fall into discussing family.
My parents now live in Grass Valley, CA, not too far from the infamous Donner Pass. There has always been some vague oral tradition that we had some family involvement in the historical debacle. Recently, my parents visited the museum commemorating the historical event and the pieces finally fell into place.
What a lot of people don't know about infamous Donner event is that there was another group traveling with them from Missouri to Salt Lake City. The Cyrus family parted ways with them in Salt Lake, leaving several days earlier. As the early storm approached, Pleasant Cyrus, 21yo son of Enoch Cyrus went back to warn the Donner group and push them to speed up. Traveling alone, he was able to catch back up to his family who all arrived safely in the Napa valley. When the storm hit full force and the Donner group was clearly in trouble, the Cyrus men were part of the search party to go out looking for them.
And you probably know most of the story as how to how things went for them.
In the aftermath, John Cyrus, younger brother to Pleasant married one of the survivors, Lavina Graves, and a picture of the two of them is in the museum.
Enoch Cyrus was my great great great great grandfather via one of his other sons, William, making John Cyrus my great great great uncle, and Lavina Graves, a Donner Party survivor, my great great great aunt by marriage.
The significance of this was all lost on the little p0nks of course, and learning that we had Cyrus heritage, I was tasked to find out if my children were related to Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana), daughter of famous country-western singer, Billy Ray Cyrus. As it turns out, Enoch Cyrus' father James Cyrus was brother to Jesse Cyrus, great great great grandfather of said Billy Ray. Little P0nks, especially p0nkette, were estatic to learn that they shared great great great great great (5x great) grandfather with Hannah Montana. I am now a hero in my children's eyes.

p0nk update

survived thanksgiving with the 'old p0nks' but now I've got a nasty cold bug that is determined to take over my entire body. I'm staying home today and i'll be back in bed as soon as i finish reading everybody's posts.

Treasury Dept Just Doesn't Get It

Yes, they're at it again! In their infinite wisdom, the Treasury Dept will make yet another attempt to issue $1 coins. (U.S. mint pushes new $1 coin) The plan is to issue 4 different faces per year until each president shows up on the coin.

"We think Americans are going to want to collect the series, and that will drive the coins through the economy," said U.S. Mint Director Edmund Moy.

I'm guessing Edmund got his Phd from James Madison High University, so Edmund, I only minored in Business Administration but let me explain a few principles I learned in my business classes.
1. Collectors do not circulate coins. Collectors collect coins, that's why they are called collectors.
2. Susan B. Anthony and Sacagewea were not the 1st and 2nd attempts at a $1 coin. In my short lifetime, I witnessed both the Eisenhower dollar and the bicentenial dollar (another hot collector's item). In fact, the US Silver Dollar dates back to 1804. You could put Jenna Jamison on the coin and it will still fail.
3. Changing the shape (Susan B. Anthony) or size or color will, likewise, not improve circulation. The bottom line is: penny, nickle, dime, quarter. It is frustrating enough digging through a pocketful of change and having to distinguish between a penny and a dime. Adding more coins to the mix will only add to the confusion.
4. The unrealistic hope that a $1 coin will go like wildfire as prices in vending machines continue to rise, is only further complicated by adding yet one more variation of the $1 coin. As long as a vending machine takes a paper dollar, manufacturers are not going to bother with coin mechanisms that have to distinguish 4 different $1 coins in addition to all of the other change. If I can accomplish with 4 standard quarters what I could with a $1 coin, I'm going to use the quarters just to be safe.
5. Real men don't carry coin purses. When the Treasury Dept can figure out a clever way to put a $1 coin in my wallet, I'll think about using them.
6. Just as an aside here, what happens in 2020 when we've used up all of the Presidents?

"I don't need change baby, I need folding money" - Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Assclowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right...

I've been running an MP3 Share community on LiveJournal for over a year now. I try to do my part to pass along good music to the computer illiterate who haven't yet figured out how to get everything for free. In the 'rules' for MP3_Rock, i state:

General Rules:
1. This is ROCK. Do not post or request Hilary Duff or your favorite Disney channel stars.

Up until today, it has been pretty good. With 60 subscribed members, posts and requests have always been relevant, although not always my favorites, at least they're on-topic. I was amused this morning, however to find this request:

requests
the smurfs theme song
the smurfs theme song remixed
guys and dolls original broadway cast recording
mary poppins original london cast recording
le stat original broadway cast recording

WTF?! I simply responded to their request with, "good luck with that".

Thank God For Federally Mandated Holidays

Weekend was way too short, so I'm glad this will be a short work week.
Saturday morning I was woken/awakened? much too early by the ambulance/fire crew leaving town (small town here). I remember making a mental note at the time how seldom we hear that in a small town. About 10 minutes later I got a phone call...SHIT!
My soon-to-be 16yo (if he lives another month) spent Friday night with his buddy and their family was heading out early to get firewood. They didn't get very far. On a 2-lane stretch heading out of town, some 17yo assclown in a Nissan Frontier decided to pull a UTurn right in front of them. After slamming into the Frontier, the full-size pickup my son was in went over the embankment. Adrenaline kicks in and JesseP0nk jumps out of the pickup, scrambles up the embankment, ready to tear this kid a new one and his back gives out.
This is not a particularly new experience for JesseP0nk, twice before he has tangled with cars on his bicycle, and quite frankly, too many other hospital visits to recall them all. It's been like a yearly pilgrimage since he was 2. The hospital really should dedicate a new wing in our family's name.
Now I have to commend my son's friend, for being very responsible through the entire ordeal. He was quick to call his insurance and make sure they were on top of any hospital bills, etc. Which brings me to my next point...
Have you ever seen the Progressive commercial where they ask "If we're this helpful when you're buying car insurance, just think how helpful we'll be once you're a customer"? Without getting into the logic fallacies of that inference, I will simply share just how helpful they were. I called the number, ready to give the claim number and all of the hospital information for my son. And after 30 minutes of waiting on hold, I finally gave up. And by "waiting on hold", I mean 5 minutes of holding the phone to my ear, and then 25 minutes with the phone on speaker-phone so the entire house could ring with the merry holiday tunes of elevator music and a voice saying, "Your call is very important to us, please hold until our next available service representative can take your call", cycling through every 30 seconds.

Ah the joys of having teenage sons. It's going to be a long thanksgiving break listening to a 16yo boy rant about assclown drivers, watching cheesey Christmas movies on TV, and trying to avoid getting caught up in discussions with my conspiracy theorist brother.

Death to Extremists

It was the Fall of 1980 when I saw this slogan graffiti'd on a walkway at Humboldt State University where I was a new freshman. Being truly on my own for the first time, and finally exposed to some new thought, I laughed pretty hard at the irony.
Sadly, there are so many people today lost in the rhetoric of Secular Progressivism (thanks to DMarie for the heads up on this new label), that they can't see how irrational some of their ideas are.
Elton John recently came up with a winner recently when he was quoted "I would ban religion completely...Religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it is not really compassionate."(story here)
Yes, Sir Elton, let's ban religion for not being more tolerant.
I'd really like to know what religion turned Sir Elton the John into a 'hateful lemming' when he told photographers at the Cannes Film Festival back in May "You should all be shot."
Damn all you hateful people!