The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.
I just want to thank Steve for trusting me with the keys to the blog, I will do my best to make you regret the decision ;-)
For those of you that don’t know me, I live on Milwaukee’s North Side, and because I live in an area with an increasing crime problem, my blogging focuses heavily on issues of crime in the city that I love. However, I do branch out into other areas as well.
It seems that Chloe “Russet Potato Face” O’Brian not only hacked her way into the Miss Blogs4Bauer contest, she hacked her way to a lead over Michelle “Too Hot To Handle” Dessler. Do you really want a pouty cheater to win? No? Then vote for Michelle, dammit!
Let’s troll around a bit through the roll, shall we?
First two items come via Bryan at Hot Air (who also found the Friday Freefly):
– Jeff Stambosky has Algore’s future theme song.
– Grab your water wings; Google Maps will now get you between Boston and Le Havre. The kicker is direction #9 on the eastward trek (#7 coming back) – a 3,462-mile swim (5,572-km for the Frogs) across the Atlantic Ocean. The neat thing is, assuming you can find some wheels, you’ll be able to start anywhere on one continent and go to the other following Google.
Item #3 comes from JSOnline’s DayWatch, and is a special for Fred:
– Bergstrom is opening several (not-so-)Smart car dealerships in Wisconsin, including Milwaukee
I wonder if Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) has anything he wants to slide in while everybody is snoozing. I won’t tell </fingers_crossed>
– With a tip of the hat to Peter, we have JibJab delivering the dim mac to the current state of news
– Hot Air Films proudly presents “A Day in the Life @ Hot Air”. It appropriately starts in Michelle’s closet/office, then follows Michelle and Bryan as they get ready for a black tie event.
– HamNation checks in a bit late, but the red meat she delivers from the Media Research Center’s Dishonor Awards show is worth it.
– This week’s Friday Freefly suffered unfixable technical difficulties. In it’s place, Uncle Jimbo provides 9 Little Known Facts About Rosie O’Donnell, borrowed from the nose on your face. So, he filmed a replacement contrasting Steve Irwin and a CNN weasel.
Revisions/extensions (11:18 am 3/30/2007) – A third of my friday videos won’t be airing today.
Further revisions/extensions (3:30 pm 3/30/2007) – HamNation came in.
Last set of revisions/extensions (3:43 pm 3/30/2007) – Uncle Jimbo got a replacement up.
Spent the afternoon and part of the evening mirroring a rapidly-failing hard drive (twice it had popped up the “Unmountable Boot Volume” error, and that means absolutely, positively no access until CHKDSK run off a recovery disk gives an all-clear) onto a replacement (provided by Dell under warranty) at my younger sister’s and future brother-in-law’s. It SHOULD have been about a hour job, but because Dell never did provide a drive-mirroring product and Norton Save and Restore does not quite like bad sectors (one time crashing the computer so badly that it took CHKDSK the better part of an hour to put the old drive back together, and that was without a surface scan), I ended up working through to dinner. It still was better less time-consuming than the alternative, which would have been to do a clean install of everything (and it took 2 tries to get the right OS out of Dell; the first time they sent XP Home SP2 instead of XP Media Edition 2005). The only positive things I can say about Dell this time around are they’ve made their cases tool-free, not only to get into but for hard drives as well; and they sent out a Western Digital 80 GB SATA drive to replace the POS Hitachi 80 GB SATA that couldn’t even last a year.
The payoff dinner was good (at least for a bachelor), and the FBIL and I split 4 games of 4-handed cribbage against my sister and dad (who was there to work on a sink that got damaged due to frozen pipes), but 6 hours in a house with 2 friendly (1 crazy and 1 lapdog rottweiler/shepard mix) dogs finally got to my allergies. Disk Defrag, which began at the start of cribbage, was still running when I left.
Since I don’t feel like shortchanging Jack Bauer, I’ve changed the link to Blogs4Bauer to a pic, and added Forums4Bauer. I’ve also added the host of Forums4Bauer, bRight & Early, just because I can.
If anybody else on the roll wants a pic, send it on down (I need it to be about 110 pixels wide; otherwise, I will reduce it to fit in the sidebar).
Actually, we start drinking in about 15 minutes over at Papa’s Social Club (7718 W Burleigh), and we’ll be done when we’re done. So, even if you’ll be late (like me), the door is open.
See you there.
Because Kevin at Lakeshore Laments is headed out to what hopefully will be greener pastures tomorrow, because it’s his and Fraley’s birthdays (give or take a couple days), and because Aaron and Kelly are likely going to officially join the ranks of parents this week, Sean and Casper are having a very special Drinking Right Jr tonight at 7 over at Papa’s Social Club.
That’s enough reasons for me to go out and get an HD tuner for my computer so I can turn it into a hell of a TiVo. Jack Bauer’s about to practice his very special brand of “foreign relations”, and I’ve called for an 8-spot on tonight’s Blogs4Bauer Kill Counter Challenge.
If the blizzard warning that goes into effect this evening isn’t enough, we’ve got one of The Weather Channel’s disaster-speakers in town. Please give a warm welcome to Mike Seidel.
I’m not very creative on the weekends, so we’ll just go with everybody else that is:
More if I can think of anything.
It may seem I’m a bit late with this, but with the various policies from all of the “state of the…” speeches starting to play themselves out, it’s the perfect time to do my own.
First up, the state of the blog. It’s good, as I’ve successfully moved this thing to its own domain and figured out how to drive most of those stuck in the dark ages here. I might not post as much as I want partly because I am running out of steam and partly because I prefer not to use profanity every other word, but that’s a quibble for my 2 readers.
The state of the city of Oak Creek – Not as good. The suckers known as 54% of the voters in November decided to build a Taj Mahal East Middle School at a cost of $28.5 million (which is more than what they paid to “renovate” and vastly expand the suddenly-inadequate high school, then the bombshells started coming out. First, that 36-acre/$1.4 million site that the school district wanted turned out to be a third swamp, so they couldn’t also build the coming replacement for Meadowview there. Then, the NIMBYs struck successfully. I would be cheering, but I realize two things; the costs will go up even more, and their most-successful argument is complete Barbara Streissand. My answer to that argument; where better than a neighborhood for a school? There’s far fewer overprotective parents driving little Biffy and Buffy to middle school than to elementary school, there’s no high-schoolers making the roads unsafe, and Oakwood Road is supposedly a main road, so the “increased traffic” excuse is a canard.
Taxes went up across the board (again), and unless things change drastically, I either need to learn to love grabbing my ankles or bail. Fortunately, all isn’t yet lost, as Mark Verhalen wants to be my new alderman. Just as a reminder, the primary is next Tuesday.
The state of Milwaukee County – Once again, there are just too many tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spenders. I would call for a revolt, but considering not even half of the people in Oak Creek, once the home of the tax revolt, feel taxes are too high, it’s not worth it. I wish Scott Walker the best of luck, and I hope he decides to run for President because it would give us at least one conservative in the race (more below).
The state of Wisconsin – What do $1.7 billion (and counting) and 600 represent? Another two broken campaign promises by Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale). If I could avoid swearing, I would comment more on the tax increase represented by the first number, and I’m not at all surprised that instead of cutting another 7,000 state jobs (which is what Craps would need to do by 2010 to actually live up to a campaign promise), he’s adding state jobs. Have to have an excuse to raise taxes, after all.
Meanwhile, JB Van Hollen is proving a big disappointment. I wonder if the ‘Rats in this state knew that he would continue his “see no evil” approach he perfected as US Attorney for western Wisconsin, and decided to give the “Pubbies” a token victory.
The state of the Union – We’re, frankly, falling apart. The conversion of the union to North Mexico continues unabated under Jefe Jorge. The ‘Rats, unsatisfied with the 80% they have been getting, and wishing to live in the slavery of dhimmitude and die under Sharia rather than “suffer” under one more day of liberal RepubicRATism (much less conservatism, which we haven’t really had since 1988), are racing each other to see who can cave to the Islamokazis the fastest. The RepubicRATs, almost to a man, are racing hard to the left while giving less than lip service to conservatism.
Damn, I’m depressed.
Billboard.com is reporting that a Van Halen “reunion” tour with original front man David Lee Roth will be happening in 2007, presumably to be kicked off at the 2007 induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The reason I say “almost” is, a few months back, band “brain-trust” Eddie Van Halen booted Michael Anthony and replaced him with Eddie’s own 15-year-old son Wolfgang because Michael sided with ousted replacement front-man Sammy Hagar.
I am not holding my breath that this reincarnation of Van Halen will turn out any better than the average Hollywood revivals, which is a damn shame because the original Van Halen flat-out ROCKED. Eddie knows how to run everybody off, and David has been off the deep end since 1984.
The questions that Owen’s and Wendy’s 6th-grader had to answer are over there. My mostly-correct answers, including a wholesale criticism of one of those questions, are below the fold.
(H/T – Allahpundit)
A brewery in the Netherlands has come up with a non-alcoholic beer for dogs made of beef extract and malts. Dunno if they’re going to ship it to the US, but over there, it’s a lot more expensive than Heineken, my beverage of choice at Drinking Right.
When I saw that, the first thing I thought of was Wyatt, Brian’s (my younger sister’s fiance) dog. Every time I’ve stopped over at their place and had a cold one, he’s right there begging for a sip. Dunno if he’d like the lack of alcohol though.
There is only one man who can spin the fact that 11,152 calls to police were made from Milwaukee Public School system schools last school year into a “non-crisis”. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present the new press secretary for Milwaukee’s Mayor, Tom “Milk Carton” Barrett, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who has a world-exclusive quote on the news of the day from MPS –
“There is no crisis here. Those 60 calls per day
to the Milwaukee Police Department are really
misdirected calls to Domino’s Pizza.”
The account of Jesus’ birth from Luke 2:1-12 (NIV):
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
See you Tuesday.
The local National Weather Service office says that the Space Shuttle and International Space Station will be visible for serveral minutes just after sunset this afternoon. They got the website with the details wrong; it’s http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings (typical gubmint employees :-)
Cool!
Like Fred, I’ve been a bit lax in my fantasy football updates. After suffering the upset of the year Week 7 to Brian Fraley and the No Bid Contracts, I’ve been on fire, taking the regular-season title outright at 11-2, scoring the most points at 1536.69 (100+ 12 of 13 weeks) and earning a first-round bye in the playoffs.
I drew first blood on the Warriors (7-6), with Frank Gore dropping 144 yards rushing, 34 yards receiving and a touchdown on both the Seahags and the Warriors. The Warriors came out to play, with 7 players going into double digits, led by Ladell Betts’ 16.20 (119 yards rushing, 43 yards receiving), but they didn’t come out to win. The coupe de grace and my ticket to the championship game was delivered by LaDanian Tomlinson, who contributed 199 yards on the ground and 2 touchdowns to obliterate the all-time scoring record, the Chefs and my opponent 126.06 to 102.02.
Speaking of Fred, TheDebateTeam (11-3) pulled off a miraculous comeback on the strength of Peyton Manning’s 4-touchdown, 37.89-ponit performance to knock off the feel-good story of the year, Sanders’ Sabers (7-8), 106.09 to 100.23 and set up the rematch of the titans. Rex Grossman (26.03) and Steven Jackson (24.70) couldn’t deliver enough for Owen.
In the 5th-place game, the City Workers (9-6) used a dominating 26.60-point performance from Marvin Harrison to pull away from the Killer Boars (9-6), 82.06 to 70.30. Harrison’s teammate, Reggie Wayne, led the Boars with 14.40.
Up next: the third-place game between Sanders’ Sabers and Warriors, and The Cheddar Bowl featuring your humble host’s team, Spiraling Colby, against TheDebateTeam. Time for an extended look at the Rematch of the Titans:
QB – Matt Leinart (at San Francisco)/Alex Smith (vs Arizona) against Peyton Manning (at Houston) – The good news for me; both the Niners’ and Cards’ pass defenses (27th and 30th) suck. The bad; so does the Texans’ (24th). The ugly; the youngsters are nowhere near Manning in demonstrated ability, and I can’t play them both.
RB – LaDanian Tomlinson (at Seattle)/Willie Parker (vs Baltimore)/Frank Gore (vs Arizona) against Jamal Lewis (at Pittsburgh)/Brian Westbrook (at Dallas)/Reggie Bush (at the Giants) – The Parker/Lewis matchup is a stout defense wash (Parker’s better, but so are the OldBrowns; #2 against the rush versus #5 for Pittsburgh). All-World LT looks to run wild against #22 Seattle, and Gore faces a mid-pack (#16) Card defense. Westbrook can expect tough sledding on the ground against Dallas (#7 rush/#20 pass), and Bush can expect the same against the G-men (#11 rush/#28 pass).
WR – Terry Glenn (vs Philadelphia)/Lee Evans (vs Tennessee) against Andre Johnson (vs Indianapolis)/Chris Chambers (vs the Jets) – I’m hoping the Eagles (#12 against the pass) are too preoccupied stopping TO a second time to worry about She. Evans looks to continue his resurgence against a porous Titan pass defense (#25). Johnson will be going up against the strength of the Colts’ defense (#2 against the pass, but #32 against the run), while Chambers faces a middling Jets’ pass defense (#18).
TE – Randy McMichael (vs the Jets) against Owen Daniels (vs Indianapolis) – See the appropriate commentary in the WR section.
K – Jeff Wilkins (vs Washington) against John Kasay (at Atlanta) – Both kickers are in domes, so weather won’t be a factor.
Defense – Kansas City (at Oakland) against Buffalo (at Tennessee) – They’re next to each other in the middle of defensive rankings, but Oakland has NO offense.
The bench – Smith/Leinart (whichever QB I don’t start)/Greg Jennings (WR-vs Minnesota)/Marcus Robinson (WR-at Green Bay)/Ben Watson (TE-at Jacksonville)/John Carney (K-at the Giants)/Green Bay (Defense-vs Minnesota) against Philip Rivers (QB-at Seattle)/Wali Lundy (RB-at Indianapolis)/Roy Williams (WR-vs Chicago)/Reche Caldwell (WR-at Jacksonville)/Bo Scaife (TE-at Buffalo)/Philadelphia (Defense-at Dallas) – I know that the bench doesn’t score any points, but they’re insurance against injuries popping up midweek. Let’s review them anyway.
For the Colby, I’ll probably choose the wrong QB to bench :-) . Jennings has hit the rookie wall hard. Robinson and Watson missed Week 16 with injuries and face unfavorable matchups even if they were healthy. Carney’s kicking out of doors this week. I figure I rode the Green Bay defensive train as far as they’re good for, especially with the other matchup I put together with some post-season maneuvering.
For the Debaters, Rivers has the misfortune of backing up Manning. Lundy has disappeared from the Texans’ rotation. Williams faces his second tough defensive backfield in 2 weeks, this time with a real secondary coach back there. Caldwell appears to have fallen out of favor with Tom Brady. Scaife missed this past week with an ankle injury and is expected to be questionable for this week. Philly faces a potent Cowboys offense.
Just been busy and discombobulated. I’ll have some fresh meat up later today.
We could be in southern Michigan. They’re getting an ice storm, with a half-inch of ice expected to play havoc with roads, power and trees.
Or at least it will be, if the weathermen are right. 6-10 inches by about this time tomorrow. Time to review the checklist:
– Boots; check
– Full-time AWD vehicle; check
– Snowblower; check
– Snow brush/icescraper; check
– Canned laughter for when the overspending/overtaxing/underperforming Oak Creek-Franklin School District shuts down; check
I am ready. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Guess it’s going to be Chinese food from the Sow, er, Hog 102.9. JSOnline’s DayWatch is reporting that Guns N’ Roses has cancelled their show, scheduled for the Bradley Center Wedneday at 8 pm. Allegedly, Axl Rose has strep throat and an ear infection, but that didn’t stop him from playing in Chicago Monday, or cancel plans to make the next stop in corn country.
Seems Blogrolling isn’t automatically getting the updates from here, so I’m trying a manual ping to Blogrolling. Please ignore.
JSOnline’s DayWatch has the details on shot of the deer hunting season. 13-year-old Ryan Roman, on his second hunt, got a two-for-one deal on his first kill. Excellent shot, Ryan.
I wonder if the DNR will be going after him for taking too many deer.
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