40th Anniversary

It's been 40 years since I became a free man again. After almost 4 years of servitude at slave wages (this was before they eliminated the draft and starting pay in the military was less than $100 a month), I was out of bondage. At least that's what it felt like at the time. Tricky Dicky cut the budget and they couldn't afford to pay me, so they kicked me out early. Still didn't vote for the crook. Hadn't been for him, it's possible they could have ended the war earlier and I might have gotten out even sooner.

I had carried a few check stubs in my wallet from when I had been a free man before the military. I had 3 jobs from the beginning of the year until I enlisted and in approximately one month I had earned more than I did in the first 5 months in the military. So I was looking forward to earning a living wage. Was I ever naive. But first I was going to draw unemployment, I figured Uncle Sugar owed me a nice long vacation (when I got out, I was entitled to 26 weeks of benefits at $45 a week). I had to wait the same number of days as the number of days leave that I sold back to Uncle Sugar before I could sign up for unemployment. I took my time going home and signed up exactly x number of days after my discharge.

Those were simpler times. The electronics in my house were a black & white TV, a clock radio and a portable Hi-Fi record player. It had a flip down turntable and speakers that swung out or you could detach them and get a little separation. My car had an AM radio and I added an 8-track player. Still have a few 8-track tapes somewhere, don't know if any are from that time, would have to carbon date them!!

Good Question

AWACS

Looks like someone had too much time on their hands!!

I Thought It Was An Addiction, Now I Know!!

Christian Addiction
Biblical, Christ-centered, safe and structured addiction recovery

Saw this ad in a banner on another website. If it is Biblical, Christ-centered, how can it cure Christian Addiction??????

The Joke's On Us

The Old Lady says the name "Trickle Down Economics" says that they are pissing on us.

H/T to PENolan at Menopausal Stoners where I stole this picture.

Christianist Cliques

A company with a contract to supply rifle scopes to the military has been casting "Secret Jesus Codes" on the scopes. These should have been rejected as being out of spec, and whoever accepted these scopes should have been fired. They should have asked the company what these letters and numbers meant.
Got the picture from Raw Story


"One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament." "Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12"

After this came to light, a company spokesman whined, "The issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." "

This scandal of the company casting "Secret Jesus Codes" on rifle scopes for the military is another example of Christians acting like the "Cool Kids" in Junior High cliques. If you are one of the "Cool Kids" you know what the code is and will understand the reference. But sooner or later one of the "Not So Cool Kids" will find out about your secret codes and use it against you. In this case it would be the Jihadists who could then claim that our military is on a "Crusade".

The company has since announced it will no longer put the Jesus Codes on the scopes and will also provide the military with kits to remove the codes from the scopes the military has in use. IMHO this is not enough, the company should be made to pay a substantial fine and their contract pulled and banned from ever doing business with the government!!

Thirty some years ago the leader(Brother Don) of a Pentecostal prayer group told me about having worked somewhere with Jim Bakker before he became a TV personality. He said Jim Bakker would go around the workplace (don't remember what kind of place it was, could have been a warehouse or a machine shop) always saying "PTL" to everyone. Someone asked Jim Bakker what did PTL mean. He said PTL meant Praise The Lord. Brother Don thought that was pretty chickenshit that he didn't have the balls to come right out and say "Praise The Lord".(My phrasing of words, but his sentiments. Brother Don wouldn't use such coarse language, but that is the best way I know to express how he felt!!)

The thing I don't understand is why the Christianists have a martyr complex. (Oh, that's right the one they worship was one!!) They go around acting like they have to meet in the catacombs and hide from the Romans, when in reality most of the laws of this country have been written with their beliefs in mind because almost all of the politicians claim to be Christians!!

New Check-In Procedures

Thanks to the Diaper Bomber (or is it the Panty Bomber), there have been some changes made. Coming soon to an airport near you???

H/T to Badtux the Snarky Penguin for the video.

Obama's First Year

This sums it up pretty well. All the Republican'ts say No and the Dems can't get their shit together in one bag!! (I had my shit together in one bag once, and then couldn't lift it!!)

T-Shirt

This t-shirt is one I bought at McClellan AFB, CA when I was there working as a migrant aircraft mechanic in the late 80s. The interesting thing about the shirt is that it has the silhouette of a B-52 on it. The base has had a variety of aircraft from when it started in the 30s as Pacific Air Depot 'til it closed in 2001 (the Coast Guard still operates HC-130 aircraft from McClellan). One plane that has never been stationed there is the B-52. If there has ever been a B-52 on the base it was just passing thru.

This is kinda like a shirt I heard about at Isle Royale National Park. As the story goes, they told the company that was to make the t-shirts that they wanted a Bull Moose, a Cow and a Wolf on the shirt. The first batch of shirts had a Bull Moose, a Holstein Cow and a Wolf on it. They got bought up real quick as collectibles by those working at the park before the company was notified that what they wanted on the shirts was a Bull Moose, a Cow Moose and a Wolf.

Shortly before I got out of the Air Force on Cape Cod, I got orders for McClellan. I was in the 551st Airborne Early Warning Wing and as they were shutting it down, they gave me orders for the 552nd Airborne Early Warning Wing at McClellan. Both units were using EC-121 and RC-121 Super Connies. When I went to the orderly room and was told about my new orders, it felt good to be able to happily say, "I'm too fucking short!!!!" (Didn't have enough time left to do a move.)

Side note: I was at McClellan in the late 80s as part of a team of contractors doing an inspection on WC-135 aircraft. After inspecting 5 aircraft and finding problems on a couple of the WC-135s, we got sent to Hawaii to inspect a couple of KC-135s and a couple of C-135s, then to Andrews AFB in the D.C. area to do the General of the Air Force's plane and back to McClellan to do the last of the WC-135s.

Who Says Finns Don't Have A Sense Of Humor??

Back in the nineties, one of the early search engines was WebCrawler. Turns out it is still around. Now it runs searches using Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. Back in the mid-nineties Timo Metsälä (at least that is the name of the owner of the domain name) developed a search engine for Finnish websites called "Hämähäkki". Hämähäkki is Finnish for spider and a spider is a webcrawler. I happened to stumble across this while playing around on the Intratubes in the late nineties, while on dialup no less.

Recently I wondered if either one was still around and what info could I find on them. I found the info above fairly easily, but when I tried to use the links on the info page about Hämähäkki, I got a page in Finnish saying "Page Not Found". When I tried typing it in where the url goes, I got a web page for a used book store in Helsinki.

Breeze Card

Last month The Old Lady went to a meeting on public transportation at work and received this Breeze Card. That is what MARTA calls their cards.

Anywho, the card is supposed to be good for 90 days. Yesterday I was going to try it out. It was expired. Never did find out exactly how much the card was worth, how many trips could you make.

This one is a paper card and you can't put more money on it to continue using it. They have plastic Breeze Cards that you can reload.

Playing A Kazoo

If they had something like this on American Idol I might watch.

H/T to The Peach Tart for the video.

Butter Knife

Just now as I was slicing a banana to put on my cereal, I noticed an interesting thing. I was using a butter knife and I turned it so I was cutting with what would be the cutting edge if it were a sharp knife. But a butter knife is just as blunt on both edges and I could have cut the banana just as easily with the back side of the knife. Must be an ingrained habit that knives are to be used only one way.

Bob Barr The Voice Of Reason?????

"Yes — the not-so-bright, would-be terrorist from Nigeria got though international and domestic security mechanisms supposed to have stopped him long before the jerk lit his underwear afire before landing in Detroit. And yes — the incident happened during the administration of President Barack Obama. But the sniping at the president by Republicans, including former Vice President Cheney, and by conservative radio and TV commentators, borders on — if not passing into — asinine.
The criticism has included such childishness as blasting Obama for waiting a few days before making a national speech on the incident. For heaven’s sake, the president was briefed on the incident from the moment it occured; he made statements almost immediately indicating his concern and that he was being regularly briefed; he took time to gather the facts and meet with his national security team; and then he appeared publicly to give a rational, measured, but hard-hitting response. And for this, a former vice president criticizes him.
Partisanship truly has pervasively infected our political system when a reasonable, measured, factual, timely and substantive response by a president to a single security incident — the roots of which clearly indicate long-simmering problems that predated his tenure in office — is publicly blasted as irresponsible. In point of fact, those levelling such counterproductive attacks are the ones engaging in irresponsible behavior."

This is Bob Barr's post from his blog in the AJC. Bob Barr is about as far Right as they come, when he says Cheney et.al. are being asinine that tells me that the Never-Right are just being assholes.

Bob Barr was one of the ones that pushed the impeachment of Clinton, so he isn't one to cut a Democrat any slack.

Click on the title for a link to Bob Barr's post in the AJC.

Internet

What People Are Really Afraid Of

Luckovich at the AJC.

This is what people are really afraid of with the full body scans!!