So, anyway.....

I'm not much of a gardener. We generally start out with the best of intentions each spring and plant a full garden. We've got a tree adjacent to our garden which puts too much shade over it, so half the garden generally doesn't grow well. And then the summer starts, and its hot, and it takes effort to keep things alive, and we lose interest. I really need to get my rototiller into the garden soon.

However, one of the biggest reasons that I don't (besides this being low on my list of priorities) is that despite the time of year and the fact that we largely ignore this section of the yard, believe it or not, we still have live plants in the garden.

More surprising is that these plants are still producing!!

There are three bell pepper plants which are at least three years old, and the peppers above came out of the garden today.

Likewise, the Sweet 100's tomato plant planted in the spring is still thriving and producing tomatoes.

Yikes!!

It looks as though the TSA is gonna have to find a way to see this thing on their x-rays.

H/T: Mxpatriot51 at AR15.com, who has other pictures that you ought to check out, seen via SayUncle.

Nope......

You could not possibly make this stuff up.



This is Susan Rice dressed as Goofy.

That would be United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice dressed as Goofy.

And they wonder why they're not getting any respect around the world.

h/t Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog.

Obama-Weather.....

Via Gerard, I see that this site offers an Obama which will tell us what to wear for the week.

And for the record, I do have cargo shorts (and pants) that I wear when the occasion suits. I even have casual sandals, although mine are a Cabelas knock-off of Teva's, and there was a day when I wore Birkenstocks. But I have never worn a t-shirt with an Obama image (or for that matter, a t-shirt with an image of any politician).

This, along with another site I found via Gerard, The Art of Obama, are either very clever commentaries on the adulation of Zero, or they are unwitting part and parcel of the same.

Hoookay.....

Just when you think you've seen just about the dumbest thing ever, along comes someone else plumbing a new depth.

How to Build a Bluetooth Handgun Handset for your iPhone.



I guess the question of "Why" doesn't occur here.

Darwin awaits, fool.

h/t: hell in a handbasket

A little late at....

....Getting to this, but Chris Muir nailed things down pretty securely with this one....

[Click image for a better view.]

Geez, Geez, Geez.....

There are some very smart people out there on the intertubes who can speak of horrors coming our way beyond imagination.

The Virginian: Protection against hyper-inflation. Do read the whole thing, but here are a few quotes....

"...In the middle of 1914, just before the war, a one pound loaf of bread cost 13 cents. Two years later it was 19 cents. Two years more and it sold for 2 cents. By 1919 it was 26 cents. Now the fun begins.

In 1920, a loaf of bread soared to $1.20, and then in 1921 it hit $1.35. By the middle of 1922 it was $3.50. At the start of 1923 it rocketed to $700 a loaf. Five months later a loaf went for $1200. By September it was $2 million. A month later it was $670 million (wide spread rioting broke out). The next month it hit $3 billion. By mid month it was $100 billion. Then it all collapsed...." [Dollars have been substituted for Marks, but the point remains.]

"...People’s savings were suddenly worthless. Pensions were meaningless. If you had a 400 mark monthly pension, you went from comfortable to penniless in a matter of months. People demanded to be paid daily so they would not have their wages devalued by a few days passing. Ultimately, they demanded their pay twice daily just to cover changes in trolley fare. People heated their homes by burning money instead of coal. (It was more plentiful and cheaper to get.) The middle class was destroyed. It was an age of renters, not of home ownership, so thousands became homeless.

But the cultural collapse may have had other more pernicious effects. Some sociologists note that it was still an era of arranged marriages. Families scrimped and saved for years to build a dowry so that their daughter might marry well. Suddenly, the dowry was worthless – wiped out. And with it was gone all hope of marriage. Girls who had stayed prim and proper awaiting some future Prince Charming now had no hope at all. Social morality began to collapse. The roar of the roaring twenties began to rumble. All hope and belief in systems, governmental or otherwise, collapsed. With its culture and its economy disintegrating, Germany saw a guy named Hitler begin a ten year effort to come to power by trading on the chaos and street rioting. And then came World War." [my emphases, obviously.]

And that is my fear.

But speaking of....

The intertubes, and linkery, and my meager readership, I was looking through my readers, and found a guy who came to me through Theo Spark (who has kindly, and inexplicably, included me on his blogroll).

I'm not much of a "totty-blogger". I don't mind looking every now and then, but really don't focus on it too much. That said, I had to have a chuckle at this book shown in a post at Theo's house.



Yes, there are things better than boobs, but damned few. October, of course, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and who doesn't love breasts? Even bad breasts are good.

Yessir.....

That's my Congressman who went all Chuck Noland on me....

"My diet was coconuts and a lot of crabs. I lit fires with a magnifying glass and a coconut husk, too."

h/t Hot Air Headlines.

Buzz Aldrin: Hip Hop Artist......

Making of Buzz Aldrin's Rocket Experience w/ Snoop Dogg and Talib Kweli from Buzz Aldrin

h/t A couple of clicks past the sidebar at Ace's Place.

In yet another act of rank copying of some else's work.....

I present this, from Kevin over at The Smallest Minority. Can I say that I am rightly impressed that Kevin would remember and/or have a way of keeping track of a piece by Peggy Noonan from nearly 4 years ago, and be able bring it back into relevance today?

"...Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal." At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

Mr. Lawford continued, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family--that it might "fall apart." But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.

And--forgive me--I thought: If even Teddy knows . . ."

Don't these people know we're in economic trouble here?

I'm out on a trip and on a layover. Today, I'm downtown in Atlanta.

And what do I see as I returned from dinner?

The hotel is hosting a convention from the United Federation of Doll Clubs, Inc.

There are a number of folks here, primarily middle-aged women, who apparently have not grown out of playing with dolls.

The idea that some of these folks would come together to form a club so they can talk about and show their dolls is odd enough. But, moreover, that these clubs would feel the need to band together to form a Federation just boggles the mind.

This country is in the deepest economic trouble in decades, and these people are playing with dolls.

Somehow you had to know this was coming.....

Mrs. Obama bringing glamor to Moscow this weekend

This Independence Day weekend, if you hadn't noticed.

On The Occasional Perks of a Bad Schedule

I don't often write about my work life. If done well--or at least as I define "well"--being an airline pilot is boring and lonely. I like the work, but am tired of the travel, if that makes any sense. If I ever find myself making a call to my wife to tell her about my exciting day at work, it will be the last thing either one of us wants. And because she is my best friend, not seeing her half the month brings a sense of aloneness.

The system by which we bid our schedules was changed recently. "Change" may be too harsh a verb..."tweak" might be better. I had had my bidding strategy pretty much on "automatic pilot" month-to-month, and have gotten used to a schedule which fits my needs. I haven't put the time to understand these new tweaks well enough to make use of their strengths...maybe next month. Anyway, this new change/tweak, in combination with the regular seasonal variations of an airline schedule (summers are always busier than winters) and the industry trying to react to a declining economy has left me with lesser quality schedules than I have been used to. I'm not complaining, mind you, just noting that things aren't as good as they once were.

Anyway, this month has been especially taxing. I have a flying schedule of 16 days...which is about normal. On top of that, however, I was away for 4 days for our annual recurrent training. I spent the two days immediately preceding that recurrent in a financial seminar. (And I finally came to understand the material well enough to think that I am done going to these seminars. Now to translate that knowledge into my trading accounts!) And rather than go home after recurrent, I spend the Father's Day weekend with my ailing father for what I believe may be his last Father's Day. Immediately following that, I launched off on another trip.

All told, I have been able to be home 6 days this month. Wifeof- and Sonof- and Dau#2ofAzlib have been wonderful for me. The chores I normally take care of--the yardwork, the pool care, the ironing--have been taken care of by my family. If you're a reader who works 5 days a week and has 8 or 9 days of "weekend" a month, then 6 days may not sound like much, but my life is structured on 14-16 days off each month. Six days of down time hasn't been enough.

And because I'm not bidding well, the trips I've flown this month aren't particularly great either. By that I mean I am flying all-night trips. Some guys totally hate this type of trip, but I'm not one of them (yet). We have a "Quiet Room" where I am based, and I've found that if I can spend an hour or two in a recliner in a dark room with my earplugs in, then I can function for an all-night flight. Its not easy: That nap is crucial, and I have to drink coffee, and plan to eat and stand up to get my blood flowing in order to stay awake, but it is "do-able". I've had three of these all-night trips this month which have had me leaving my west coast base some time between 10pm and midnight and arriving in New York between 5:30am and 8am.

Anyway, last night we found ourselves watching the sun rise in the last hour of our flight. I'm not much of an astronomer, but I have flown enough at night to recognize some of the bigger constellations, as well as Venus and Mars. But last night, right before sunrise, and as we were over western New York, we were able to see what we took was the International Space Station. You can track it here.

A busy month half-full of crappy trips does have it's opportunity for a perk.

"Stop spending our future"....

Ummm, Yep. Can't argue with one word.




h/t Sine Nominee, seen via Glenn, so he doesn't need my traffic.

Good Gawd.....

I had one of these as a kid.

Yep. That was one fine Christmas, I'll tell you.

At one point, I also had a toy meant to be a version of one of these.....



No wonder I'm a bit twisted (like the barrel of a rifle. I keed! I keed!)and have a gun-safe full of metal.

However, those were the days when boys did not play with dolls, so for as macho as they were, Dad didn't allow my brother and I have any G.I. Joes. They were little more than Barbies, and I think I have to agree. It is better to emulate adult life with toys than to imagine toys playing with other toys....if that makes any sense.

I guess that today's video game generation makes that point even more pointedly....what with middle and high schools using the Wii platform in their gym classes, we have accepted the idea that we can simulate doing something as well as actually doing it. I mean what's better: Handing a kid a tennis racket and a ball, or handing him a video controller so he can simulate playing tennis?

Anyhoo, this trip down memory lane is all thanks to a small item I saw at DirectorBlue having been pointed there by Gerard.

Pakistan....

A couple of days ago, I was involved in an email exchange with an internet-friend who has long said that the next big war--and perhaps an apocolyptic war--would begin in Pakistan.

I responded that what is really needed is a plan to go in and grab up their nukes. However, I added that I don't think that Zero has the stones for any such thing. It is not his style in the least. He is too busy spending money that we don't have for programs that we don't need, not to mention his penchant for nationalizing wide swathes of our economy. [I digress.] More to point, SecState Clinton has said that "'we can’t even contemplate' the consequences if the Taliban were permitted to overrun nuclear- armed Pakistan". But, according to one of my favorite milblogs, we had better be contemplating precisely this possibility.

I pointed out in my email that given the risk that a Taliban nuke would give to the world and the West, perhaps a wise military unit would be preparing for just this sort of mission--with or without West Wing approval. And, that brings up a whole new set of unsettling, or "unthinkable" questions.

So, what do I see this morning in a HotAir headline?

"Petraeus: Next Two Weeks Critical to Pakistan's Survival"

"...Petraeus also said wearily that "we've heard it all before" from the Pakistanis and he is looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counterinsurgency training and foreign aid...." [my emphasis]

Question: Are we telegraphing/threatening just this sort of move? Is Petraeus reading my mind?

Another in a series of scenes from a Layover....

So there I was, checking into the hotel in Orlando, when the first thing I see is.......

A Pokemon convention.

A roomful of 8 year old boys playing a game with dice and cards. However, two sub-groups caught my eyes.

• The 14-16 year olds who brought out the question: "Do you guys ever expect to get laid? Ever?"
• The 30-somethings who brought out the question: "Are you some kind of pervert, or what?"
  

A Little Gun-Bloggin'.....

So anyhoo, yesterday I had the chance to make it out to Dillon Precision for more "stuff" for the RL-550B that Mrs. Azlib got me for Christmas.



I picked up a couple of sets of dies and caliber conversion kits, an extra quick change assembly, and a video detailing how to assemble and set up the press.

I can tell already: Reloading is requiring a steep up-front investment. The press ran the Mrs. $390 or so, and I spent $355 yesterday, and I'm not nearly done. To complete the Dillon hardware I have in mind, I've still got to get a scale (prolly electronic) and maybe their case trimmer, not to mention the odds-and-ends like a bullet puller and a reliable set of calipers (at a minimum). I'll have a $1000 into this thing before I reload the first round. Once I've got that taken care of, I've got to finagle a space to do this work. My first choice (outside building the backyard workshop/storage shed that the wife and I discussed last week) will be to use the "bar" area of the house. That idea prolly isn't going to float (she's got plans for that space already), so I'm left with recovering some garage space for a decent reloading bench. And that will require getting rid of crap cleaning up the things that have accumulated in every corner of my garage.

And then come the components, which have been lately hard (read: "impossible") to find.

The savings of reloading vs. buying factory ammo is substantial, but I still have to get up that slope. I imagine I'll enjoy the reloading, and will certainly enjoy the more-frequent shooting that reloading will allow (not to mention missing the frustrations of ammo unavailability), but this will require some work to get me there. Ah...just what I need: Another project.

However, I also had the opportunity yesterday to stop by the Scottsdale Gun Club.



If you've never been, the SGC is a first-class operation, as you would expect to find in tony Scottsdale. They too are suffering from a shortage of ammo, but otherwise were quite busy. The reasoning behind why gun shops across the country have been busy has been well discussed.

But along these lines, I ran across another in a series of Things-I-Never-Thought-I'd-See....



You can click this cell-phone photo to see what caught my eye. There, in the lower left window of the Suburban in the foreground, is an Obama/Biden sticker. The folks who got out of the Suburban, looking to be a grandmother, a mother, and two teenaged kids, are either the most-clueless fools on the planet, or some of the bravest. I really don't know what to make of their California license plate (which I have obscured). Are they vacationing/visiting from out of state and hoping to take in some forbidden taboo? Was one of the kids researching the guns that are available in nearby Arizona for some term paper? Or are they just generally clueless about the connection between the idiots that they support and what goes on inside the SGC?