"America is built on freedoms - of speech, religion, press, assembly, AK-47s and your face."---Mike Strobel

When all is said and done there is nothing left to say or do.
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Today is as good as it gets, and our tomorrows won't be any better
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These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, EPA, FBI, DEA, CDC, or FDIC. These statements are not intended to diagnose, cause, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you feel you have been harmed/offended by, or, disagree with any of the above statements or images, please feel free to leave.
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"The trouble with Republicans is that when they get into trouble they start acting like cannibals"-Richard Nixon
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Barcelona Street Entertainer

From the looks of this it appears I've been entertaining all my life...just didn't have an audience.

Ducks Wear Dog Masks

What goes Up Must Come Down

BERLIN — A Polish man living in Germany went about his business for about five years without noticing he had been shot in the head because he was drunk when it happened.

Police in the western city of Bochum said on Tuesday doctors found a .22 caliber bullet in the back of his head after the 35-year-old went to have what he thought was a cyst removed.

Presented with the 5.6mm projectile, the man recalled he had received a blow to the head around midnight at a New Year's party "in 2004 or 2005", but had forgotten about it because he had been "very drunk," a police spokesman said.

"He told us he remembered having a sore head, but that he wasn't really one for going to the doctor," the spokesman said.

The wound later healed around the bullet and it was not until the man decided to have the lump examined due to recurring pains that the discovery was made.

Police said they were not treating the incident as suspicious as the bullet might have got lodged in the man's head when a reveler fired a gun in celebration.

"It may have been a shot fired up in the air which entered his head on the way down," the spokesman said.

Reuters

Caution, Genius Asleep

Over to the right is the arrest photo of the infamous Duct Tape Robber from a couple years ago.  His robber mask consisted of wrapping his head in duct tape.  The problem was he could not see to make his getaway.

Some folks that might be related:
1. He ah, you ah, they, umm, like WHAT!?
AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence.

2. Close to closing the case.
Police in Oakland, CA, spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them in the police line, shouting, 'Please come out and give yourself up.'

3. Whatever. As long as he gets money.
An Illinois man, pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines, wherein the kidnapper proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts!

4. Robbery can be hard work.
A man walked into a Topeka , Kansas Kwik Stop and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him.

5. Facepalm!
Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words: 'Give me all your money or I'll shoot', the man shouted, 'that's not what I said!'

6. Lost count?
A man spoke frantically into the phone: 'My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart'.
'Is this her first child?' the doctor asked. 'No!' the man shouted, 'This is her husband!'

7. Bang bang.
In Modesto, CA, Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun. Unfortunately, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket. (hellooooooo)!

8. Forgot something?
Last summer, down on Lake Isabella, located in the high desert an hour east of Bakersfield, CA, some folks new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get their brand new 22 foot boat going. It was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power they applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putted into a nearby marina, thinking someone there may be able to tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out-drive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard.
NOW REMEMBER...THIS IS TRUE.
Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer!

The College Class of 2014 Doesn't know:

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.

Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.
 
From The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014:
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”

4. Al Gore has always been animated.

5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on parents’ Weekend.

10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
 
and a few more
 
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.


63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.

64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.

67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.

68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.

69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke.

70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.

71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.

74. They've always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel.

75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.

The complete list HERE

Pay To Sit On Park Bench

Park officials in China have found a way to stop people from hogging their benches for too long - by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer.


If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat.

The spikes are too short to cause any serious harm - but long enough to prevent people from sitting on them comfortably.

Park bosses got the idea from an art installation in Germany where sculptor Fabian Brunsing created a similar bench as a protest against the commercialisation of modern life.

"He thought he was exaggerating. He didn't foresee that a very practical country like China might actually use them for real," said one critic.

Parks in China suffer from chronic overcrowding at weekends when millions of people try to escape the country's teeming cities.

"We have to make sure the facilities are shared out evenly and this seems like a fair way to stop people grabbing a bench at dawn and staying there all day," said one park official.

See it in operation HERE

75-year-old man with robs bank then makes slow getaway using a walker

A speedy getaway is usually critical for bank robbers, but perhaps not for an elderly British Columbia man who this week held up a bank - and while using a walker. While no weapon was produced, the 75-year-old told staff at a Prince George Bank of Nova Scotia that he was armed. Staff surrendered a small amount of cash and the robber made his getaway as RCMP were called at around 11:45 a.m. on Friday.

The suspect was described as a Caucasian male weighing about 230 pounds. He was wearing a straw hat, white T-shirt, grey jogging pants and dark glasses - and he was using a walker that many rely on for mobility. Prince George RCMP spokesman Gary Godwin said the man was apprehended approximately 45 minutes later in the same suburban strip mall where the bank is located.

The man is in custody while police investigate the decidedly unusual case. “It’s not every day you get a 75-year-old male on a walker holding up a bank,” Godwin said. “We’re looking at all the circumstances that are involved.” He said the man is known to police. Godwin, who has just retired from the RCMP after 25 years and has 36 years of policing experience, has never seen as elderly a bank robber as in this case.

But he said staff did the right thing in allowing the man to leave the bank even though they never saw a weapon. “You never know what you have on the other side of the counter,” Godwin said. “If he says he has a weapon, the best thing is to give him what we wants. Err on the side of caution is what we teach.”

VIA




According to Guinness World Records Elaine Davidson is the 'Most Pierced Woman.' And according to Wikipedia, in March 2010 Ms Davidson reported a total of 6,725 piercings. 08/16/10 AP Photo

That's some sick scary stuff there.-Ed

Salmon Run

And you can safely bet the bears are not that far away fattening up for the hibernation coming up

Red Crab At The BP Oil Leak Site

I had not viewed the BP web site at
http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do?categoryId=9034366&contentId=7063636
for a few days so last night before I put the computer to sleep I decided to have a look.

Usually all I see are different views of the robot equipment looking over the sealed vent checking for leaks. They also check over sections of the sea floor to see if any oil is seeping out from any fissures in the sea floor. After all the pressure is very high what with the ocean floor pushing down on the dome of oil and if there is a weak spot in the sea floor the oil will find its way out.

With the screen full of all the views my eyes were instantly drawn to a red odd-shaped thing that occupied the full screen view from the feed labeled Boa Deep C – ROV 1. The crew controlling the robot had locked onto a red crab foraging on the ocean floor. How long they had been viewing I hardly know but do know I was as fascinated as they were.

My search to try to determine what type of crab it is was inconclusive as the screen capture is not clear enough to be much value in providing comparison during my search.  Here's a screen shot of the critter:

Corporate Budget Priorities

A Classic Political Discussion/Arguement

I read many a political discussion over the years and this pretty much captures the way they go:



Spectacular Northern Lights may be visible tonight across the northern hemisphere

Spectacular Northern Lights may be visible tonight August 3 through morning of August 4, 2010 across the northern hemisphere, following a solar eruption on Sunday night.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the Sun's surface erupted in what's called called a coronal mass ejection, blasting tons of ionized atoms into space.

This plasma is headed straight for the Earth, and when it arrives, could create a spectacular light show.

"This eruption is directed right at us, and is expected to get here early in the day on August 4th," said astronomer Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "It's the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time."

The eruption itself was caught on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in February.

"We got a beautiful view of this eruption," said Golub. "And there might be more beautiful views to come, if it triggers aurorae."

When a coronal mass ejection reaches Earth, it interacts with the planet's magnetic field, potentially creating a geomagnetic storm. Solar particles stream down the field lines toward Earth's poles and collide with atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, causing them to light up like little neon signs.

Aurorae can usually only be seen at high latitudes - but a geomagnetic storm can make them visible much further south. Sky watchers in the Northern US and Europe should look for rippling 'curtains' of green and red light to the north.

Photo Of The Chelsea Clinton Wedding port-a-potties

$15K for the Chelsea Clinton wedding port-a-potties were anything but. They were a class act. Here's a photo of the insides of one and its diagram layout/ actual porcelain toilets that flush, stereo music and hot running water.
VIA
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.~ John Lennon
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