"Shout hallejulah c'mon get happy!"

Power Line is making hay of a Pew Research study indicating that, apparently, Republicans are happier than Democrats. It also says that only 29% of us independents are happy... but hey nobody polled me so what do I know (and I like to consider myself a pretty happy guy).Here's where Power Line demonstrates considerable narrow-mindedness:That conservatives (Republicans) are...

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My favorite Idol contestant

We watched American Idol last night, the one where the judges picked the top 24 contestants (12 guys, 12 gals) who'll go on to be judged by popular vote. Yah, I though I wouldn't be getting caught up in this again, but so help me this crop of singers has some people I really, really want to see go far. This might be the best group since Season 2 (the one that produced Ruben...

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Tonight's Lost...

...was intense.I found it to be darkly ironic that Mira Furlan's character Rousseau hands Henry Gale over to Sayid for torture... when it was Furlan's character Delenn who was mercilessly tortured in the "Comes The Inquisitor" episode of Babylon 5. Anyone who watched that show will know what I'm talking about (and this is the 2nd time in 24 hours that I've linked to the Lurker's...

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Wait a sec... so Cheney WAS drunk?!

From my first post about Vice President Cheney shooting a fellow hunter a few days ago:Part of me is wondering if alcoholic beverages were involved in this thing...I'll admit that it was a joke. A bad one at that. And then it comes out in an interview today that Cheney really was under the influence of alcohol:Cheney on TV: Takes Blame for Shooting But 'Unapologetic' About Aftermath, Admits Drinking One Beer at LunchBy Joe Strupp and Greg MitchellPublished:...

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Outbound Flight: Star Wars novel soars with Zahn at the helm

Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn is one of the best Star Wars novels I've read in a very long time.But first: Has it really been fifteen years?I mean, there's now been more time elapsed since Heir to the Empire, than there was between its release and the premiere of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977. And even then that seemed like an awful long time.It was a morning in May of...

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Andreas Katsulas - G'Kar and the One-Armed Man - has passed away

The sad news is just now hitting the wires that Andreas Katsulas has died of lung cancer at the all-too-young age of 59.Katsulas was a Shakesperean actor who appeared in performances all around the world. But what I'll never, ever forget about him was his portrayal of G'Kar, the Narn ambassador on the television series Babylon 5. Starting from the very first time I saw him...

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Happy Lupercalia to you and yours

From an article at Wikipedia...In Ancient Rome, the day of February 15 was Lupercalia, the festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility, who was represented as half-naked and dressed in goat skins. As part of the purification ritual, the priests of Lupercus would sacrifice goats to the god, and after drinking wine, they would run through the streets of Rome holding pieces of...

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New look and other stuff

As both of my faithful readers have no doubt noticed, this blog underwent a dramatic facelift over the past few days. I'm still tweaking some things but for the most part I really like how it turned out. There are no more vast acreages of blank black space on the sides, and it's not so color-clashy as the original scheme was. It seems to read a lot easier too. The original template will still be "active" for posts dated before my "overhaul notice",...

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Bid on eBay for lunch with King Richard

This is one of the coolest charity fundraisers I've ever heard of: an eBay auction for lunch with NASCAR legend Richard Petty and his wife Lynda. All the money goes to Communities In Schools, an outfit devoted to encouraging young people to get their education. As of this writing the high bid (of 14 so far) is $760, with the reserve price so far not being met: I'd guess...

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Just realized something about Cheney...

Dick Cheney is now the first Vice-President to have shot someone since Aaron Burr. It was in 1804 while serving as VP under Thomas Jefferson that Burr had his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton. That was the first and last time a sitting veep got someone with a firearm... until this weekend.(I always thought that it shoulda been Burr who got his face on the ten-dollar bill......

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Dick Cheney shoots fellow hunter: Is Ana Lucia on Lost really VP's lovechild?

This sounds way too much like what happened on Lost when Ana Lucia shot Shannon: The Vice-President of the United States unloaded his shotgun on a 78-year old man during a hunting trip in Texas this weekend.Does this sound like someone who's very responsible with firearms to you?Armstrong said Cheney turned to shoot a bird and accidentally hit Whittington.Well, it was sort of easy to figure that Cheney was the trigger-happy sort. Never thought he'd...

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"Change, my dear..."

This place is due for an overhaul. I'm working on a lot of new stuff - template, graphics, etc. - that I'll be doing some trial-and-error with this weekend and the next few days. Hopefully a better/more fun and engaging blog will emerge from the wreckage. In the meantime if something goes way off-kilter on this page, it's prolly just me monkeying behind the scenes and I'll try to have it fixed in a jiffy ...

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Look at what they've gone and done to Juggernaut!

The more I've heard about X-Men III: The Last Stand over this past year, the more I've come to dread it. The X-Men movies had two solid installments (X2 was in some ways much better than the original even, which is pretty rare) but if even half the stuff I'm hearing about this next chapter is true, well this is going to be a pretty sucky movie. Which is sad 'cuz it does...

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Phil Brown passes

It's being reported at this hour that Phil Brown, who had a storied and colorful career but is probably best known for playing Uncle Owen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, has died today at the age of 89.One thing I always found interesting about Brown was that he was one of the American actors who got "blacklisted" during the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s. Brown never...

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If the Internet was around in 1944...

...would Yahoo! have betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis?The web portal giant is helping the Communist government in China track down political dissidents. At least two of them are now sitting in prison because Yahoo! handed over records that led to their arrest... for the simple crime of sending an e-mail.Why the hell is a U.S. company like Yahoo! dealing with a government that would rather see this nation destroyed? Why is any American company dealing...

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Found a Spudtrooper!

Last week I went driving around for no particular reason and wound up at the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Mayodan (I'll refrain from once again ranting about how it makes no sense whatsoever for Rockingham County, North Carolina to have three Wal-Mart Supercenters). Anyway it had just been open for a day so I figured they might have some of the newer Star Wars loot. Including...

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"Crazy Dave" Hoover is the new Meat Loaf

Three guys stick out in my mind from last night's American Idol, the first covering the "Hollywood week" part of the contest: Garet Johnson, Taylor Hicks, and "Crazy" Dave Hoover. Johnson is the cowboy who broke down in tears after seeing the ocean for the first time in his life (and he sings pretty good too): Lisa especially wants him to go far. Hicks is the gray-haired guy from Alabama who really seems to be a standout individual in terms of...

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