But Yogi, the Ranger's not going to like it.

Wild bears of the D.C. wilderness with their Latin names.

This isn't the real Mexico.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

If you're not too busy celebrating the victory of the Mexican army over the worthless frogs or working your way towards the worm at the bottle of a bottle of mescal, I'd point you towards the following diversions--

* Today is also anniversary of the sole lethal attack by the Japanese during WW II on American civilians on the mainland of the United States. It happened right here in Oregon.

* Swinebread, my kids spent Saturday watching Iron Man and partaking in Dim Sum and Free Comic Book Day. Once in a while my kids will tell me how cool I am. It's really not me. I just have cool friends like Swinebread.

* I caught Gordon Smith's new tv ad this weekend and it really gave me a chuckle. Smith doesn't have a challenger to his seat until after our primary on the 20th. Rather than wait to see which of the two democrats will be running against him he instead ran an ad attacking them both. This doesn't exactly exude quiet confidence on his part. Good.

* I'm going to pick-up Mario Kart Wii next weekend. Now if I can just figure a way to keep the missus away from it and the television. I can't afford to replace another flat screen.

* I continue to be scared by the growth of ocean dead zones. Besides the other side effects of global warming this is one that hits home for me directly. We going camping and crabbing off the coast every summer and the areas where coastal sea life can survive are shrinking at an alarming rate.

Shall we play a game?

Jess tagged me with the Six Questions virus. Just remember Jess that on the internet revenge is a dish served electronically. That may not make much sense, but I typed it just the same.

* The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.

* Each player answers the questions about himself or herself.

* At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Ten Years Ago I Was

About 50 pounds lighter and not as thin on top.

Five Things on Today's To Do List

1. Purchase tickets to Iron Man.

2. Give wife, kids and chihuahua hug.

3. Pick up a pizza on the way home from work.

4. Call lawyer for update about accident.

5. Enjoy my favorite meal of Scotch, Waffles and Steak.

Things I'd do if I were a Billionaire

Buy a bigger blog with HUGE fonts.

Give more money to charity.

Buy a Unicorn.

Use the money to become self-sufficient (wind/ solar power, crops/ livestock, firearms and a tank.)

Three Bad Habits

1) Does blogging count?
2) Living like a hobbit sometimes especially when it comes to diet. "Elevensies anyone?"
3) Too much coffee.

Five Places I've Lived

Dorms, apartments, floors, bedrooms and in front of a computer at work.

Six Jobs I've had in Life

1) Shoe Clerk for Nordstroms.

2) Chippendales Dancer.

3) Production Assistant for low budget Kung Fu movie.

4) Manager of Temporary Employee franchise.

5) X-Wing pilot.

6) Manager at a Law Firm.

I tag Swinebread, don snabalus, Overdroid, Digby, Atrios and Kos.

I want you to find a body!

Happy Friday! The mystery continues...

Chapter Five: Fugu About It.

Sean O'Hallahan sat down at his desk, pushed aside the large stack of files on unresolved murder cases he'd been assigned, and opened the toxicology report on Doctor Qwacken.

Qwacken was murdered. He'd known that the first time he'd seen Qwacken's lifeless body up to his neck in a toilet in the stall of the Men's Room at Sushiworld. Accidental death was improbable and suicide extremely unlikely. Doctors never committed suicide by cranial toilet immersion. Attorneys; maybe. But doctor's; never.

The toxicology report told him what he'd suspected: there were lethal levels of Fugu in Qwacken's blood. So much so that O'Hallahan was surprised the doctor had been able to make it as far as the bathroom. The blowfish was the fatal blow.

So it was simply a matter of who killed the doctor. And why. Okay, maybe it wasn't that simple.O'Hallahan had ruled out the wife almost immediately. Qwacken's life insurance was minimal which immediately eliminated that as a motive for her to have killed the doctor. She was better off with him alive.

He supposed there could have been another motive for her to off Qwacken but that would've probably been something like an affair with his receptionist or with that young, strapping Hispanic boy that worked at the car wash on Elm who always wore a shimmel shirt and a blue bandanna and who got so very wet and sweaty when he was washing your Taurus, with the water and sweat running down his thighs in little silver beadlets...

O'Hallahan realized he'd let his mind wander. Focus man. Focus.

No, it couldn't have been the wife. If she had killed Qwacken it would've been a crime of passion. This was a crime of blowfish. It had been meticulously planned. In O'Hallahan's experience when a woman wanted to kill her husband she either did it quickly with a gun or slowly through alimony.

Then there was the cat. What was it's name? Snowhell. It was the thread running through this whole thing he was sure of it. There was just too much coincidence between the death of Charisma Ponderosa and the man who bought her stupid show-cat. Ponderosa's husband had said her sister Eunice had wanted the cat for some time.

It was time to pay a visit to Eunice Ponderosa.

Chapter One: Charisma Hits the Dance Floor.
Chapter Two: Death Punches Back on the Clock.
Chapter Three: Usually it's the Usual Suspects.
Chapter Four: Death by Wasabi.

If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I don't have the strength to live in a world like that.

Tristero gives the National Day of Prayer the sucker punch it deserves over at Digby's place. James Dobson's wife and Ollie North don't sound all that "christiany" to me. North is a traitor, after all. I don't recall him apologizing for that at any point in the last twenty years.

It's odd that they've picked May 1st as their National Day of Prayer. A day which has traditionally come to signify the efforts of the workers of the world. A day that has also come to signify the folly of a President starting a war and then prematurely declared it won with "Mission Accomplished."

Still- I have enough fundamentalist Catholic in my old atheist self to not feel a little left out. With that in mind I would humbly suggest that if we're going to pray today to God, the FSM, Zeus or whomever that we use the prayer below which, as far as I can remember, was actually included in that bible thingy.

If I make use of the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am like sounding brass, or a loud-tongued bell. And if I have a prophet's power, and have knowledge of all secret things; and if I have all faith, by which mountains may be moved from their place, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I give all my goods to the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it is of no profit to me.

Love is never tired of waiting; love is kind; love has no envy; love has no high opinion of itself, love has no pride; Love's ways are ever fair, it takes no thought for itself; it is not quickly made angry, it takes no account of evil; It takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, but has joy in what is true; Love has the power of undergoing all things, having faith in all things, hoping all things.

Though the prophet's word may come to an end, tongues come to nothing, and knowledge have no more value, love has no end. For our knowledge is only in part, and the prophet's word gives only a part of what is true: But when that which is complete is come, then that which is in part will be no longer necessary. When I was a child, I made use of a child's language, I had a child's feelings and a child's thoughts: now that I am a man, I have put away the things of a child. For now we see things in a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now my knowledge is in part; then it will be complete, even as God's knowledge of me. But now we still have faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

(1 Corinthians 13)

So while Ollie North is like sounding brass in D.C. and while this is not a bible-quoting blog nor I a bible-quoting guy, I still think THAT'S a prayer I can get behind.

I've been having this nightmare. A real swinger of a nightmare, too

Obama Pig Spotted!

Apparently it's really getting around...

I suppose this means Zaius gets the $10,000 dollar reward. Lucky ape.

Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

This front page story in the Big O about an awesome act of sportsmanship this last weekend left me a little choked up--

"At the plate, Tucholsky concentrated on ignoring the wise guys. She took strike one. And then the senior did something she had never done before -- even in batting practice. The career .153 hitter smashed the next pitch over the center field fence for an apparent three-run home run.

The exuberant former high school point guard sprinted to first. As she reached the bag, she looked up to watch the ball clear the fence and missed first base. Six feet past the bag, she stopped abruptly to return and touch it. But something gave in her right knee; she collapsed on the base path.

"I was in a lot of pain," she told The Oregonian on Tuesday. "Our first-base coach was telling me I had to crawl back to first base. 'I can't touch you,' she said, 'or you'll be out. I can't help you.' "

Tucholsky, to the horror of teammates and spectators, crawled through the dirt and the pain back to first.

Western coach Pam Knox rushed onto the field and talked to the umpires near the pitcher's mound. The umpires said Knox could place a substitute runner at first. Tucholsky would be credited with a single and two RBIs, but her home run would be erased.

"The umpires said a player cannot be assisted by their team around the bases," Knox said. "But it is her only home run in four years. She is going to kill me if we sub and take it away. But at same time I was concerned for her. I didn't know what to do. . . .

"That is when Mallory stepped in."

Mallory Holtman is the greatest softball player in Central Washington history. Normally when the conference's all-time home run leader steps up to the plate, Pam Knox and other conference coaches grimace.

But on senior day, the first baseman volunteered a simple, selfless solution to her opponents' dilemma: What if the Central Washington players carried Tucholsky around the bases?

The umpires said nothing in the rule book precluded help from the opposition. Holtman asked her teammate junior shortstop and honors program student Liz Wallace of Florence, Mont., to lend a hand. The teammates walked over and picked up Tucholsky and resumed the home-run walk, pausing at each base to allow Tucholsky to touch the bag with her uninjured leg.

"We started laughing when we touched second base," Holtman said. "I said, 'I wonder what this must look like to other people.' "

Holtman got her answer when they arrived at home plate. She looked up and saw the entire Western Oregon team in tears.

"My whole team was crying," Tucholsky said. "Everybody in the stands was crying. My coach was crying. It touched a lot of people."

People like to quote Vince Lombardi's "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" speech at every opportunity. I've never agreed with that sentiment (neither did Lombardi who insisted he was misquoted.)

These young women at Sunday's softball game exemplified what sports are really about. It's a hell of a lot more than just winning. Among other things it's character. They have it in spades.

Rex, he's just a little pig.

Anybody seen the Obama Pig?

"Roger Waters and his former band, Pink Floyd, have been known for years for using floating pig balloons as part of their stage set. At Coachella over the weekend, Waters' newest pig (covered in anti-war slogans and a Barack Obama endorsement) escaped from its leash and flew away. As the balloon drifted away, Waters reportedly remarked, "That's my pig." The Coachella organizers are offering a $10,000 reward and four lifetime passes for the festival if you can get the piggy to go wee, wee, wee all the way home to Waters."

What's happened?

Bush will never be a real little boy if he keeps telling lies. Just look at his nose in this picture from the Washington Post...

Original Page Here.

Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass.

I'm not happy that Barack Obama went on Fox this last weekend.

Who the hell is his audience here? Certainly not the base of the party which is PISSED that he broke the Democratic Fox boycott. Check out Markos' comments today raking Obama over the coals.

Along those lines Hillary Clinton is once again off her nut.

"My opponent, Senator Obama, opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax," Clinton said at a firehouse. "I understand the American people need some relief," she added, implying that Obama doesn't get it.

Gas tax? Are you fucking kidding me?

The biggest reason progressives like myself think McCain's cut the gas tax idea is stupid is that there's absolutely no guarantee that will transfer to a price cut at the pump. The current tax is 18.4 cents/ gallon. Does anyone really believe that cutting that temporarily will mean the price of gas will drop accordingly?

Gas companies will drop the cost of gas by a couple of cents and pocket the difference. And the deficit will grow...

Hillary/ Barack please, I'm begging you - STOP PANDERING TO THE GODDAMNED RIGHT WING FRINGE OF THE COUNTRY!

The dead-enders that make up the FOX viewership (Dick Cheney) and the knuckleheads who think cutting the gas tax will really help consumers represent the radical extreme of American politics today. You don't need to suck up to those crazies. They'll never vote for you anyway.

Please bring you respective campaigns back to a focus on actual, red-blooded Americans.

Conservatives don't count.

Update-

Spirula points out in the comments that Shell and BP just posted records profits. Amazing that they can do that with gas taxes as high as they are.

Arkonbey linked to another blogger's take that a federal gas tax holiday sends the wrong signal to consumers and is "tantamount to feeding chocolate bars to a fat kid to make him feel better about his weight." Crass, but true.