Happy Birthday, Ellis

Ellis William Ross, P. Eng. (Genius).
Woulda been 75 this year.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

True Ellis story (and before I start, you need to know that Ellis was 5′8″, went about 260 lbs at the time, and pretty much always had an unlit cigar jammed in his mouth):
Dad got called up to Newfoundland on a job. Silly bugger left his briefcase back in Nova Scotia, in which was his wallet, ID, cheques…pretty much everything he might need.
Rental car was already booked and paid for, but as we pulled into St. John’s we had a flat. Dad walked into the local branch of the Royal Bank, sauntered up to the counter and told the teller he wanted $500 from his business account.
“Of course, sir,” she replied, “Do you have a cheque?”
No, said Ellis. I forgot them in Nova Scotia.
“Well, then, do you have your client card?”
No, said Ellis. It’s with my cheques.
“Do you have some ID?”
No. My ID is with my client card.
“Sir…I can’t just give you money. I don’t know who you are.”
Look, says Dad, call the main branch in Truro and tell them “Ellis is here and he wants some money.”
“Ellis?” the teller asks, “Is that your first name or your last name?”
Dad grins. I told you. Call the main branch in Truro and tell them Ellis wants some money.
“But that’s a long distance call,” croaks the teller.
By now a manager had wandered over. He wants to know what the problem is. The teller explains, best she can, as Dad slaps a $20 bill on the counter. “That will cover the long distance charges.”
“Make the call,” says the manager.
The teller goes to the phone. After about two minutes she comes back with a big grin on her face and starts counting out the withdrawal.
Dad asks her what’s so funny.
“Oh…nothing,” she answers, “Just something struck me funny, that’s all.”
Dad signs the slip, pockets the cash and heads for the door.
I had to know. “Tell me exactly how that phone conversation went.”
The teller can barely contain herself.
“I told them it was Main Branch St. John’s calling and I had a man here said to tell them ‘Ellis wants some money’….They asked me, ‘Is he short?’…I said yes…then they asked me ‘Is he fat?’….I said yes…then they asked me ‘Does he have a cigar in his mouth?’…I said yes. They said, ‘GIVE HIM THE MONEY.’”

Happy Birthday, Pop. Miss you.

Fucking Furry Teddy Bear Freaks

I posted a comment on a piece written by Dahlia Lithwick lamenting anything remotely resembling sane gun control laws in America. Dahlia remarked that the strategy to deal with gun death appears to be stacking Teddy bears at the scene of each and every lamentable gun death. Unfortunately, I titled the bit “Guns Don’t Kill People, Teddy Bears Kill People!“

And so, yet another thing I fucking hate about the internet has become apparent. That post has become one of the more heavily trafficked bits on VNV – but not for anything related to gun deaths, gun control or any other sane element. People consistently click that link based on the search string “Teddy Bears.”
The conclusion is inescapable: The Furries, with no public venue for an outlet that doesn’t risk death, have infested the internet. I now deeply regret titling the bit with Teddy Bears, and I want you plushie humping freaks to stay the fuck away from here.

Getting to Know Jesus

Vapid, Vicious, Brainless Whore Liz Cheney

I understand the desire to defend her father. Even if he’s a lying, profiteering war criminal, he’s still her Daddy. And Liz Cheney has demonstrated over and over again there is no limit to the lies and distortions in which she will wallow in order throw some cover over the reprehensible, vicious, constitution shredding crimes of Daddy Dick.

“Water boarding is not torture,” and, “It has been proven that torture enhanced interrogation prevented attacks,” are two of her favorite and most commonly repeated outright lies, but now the horrid spawn of the most vicious VP in history has gone too fucking far. It’s one thing to twist, contort and lie her ass off in some vain attempt to defend Poppa, but to distort the solemn duty of a president, exercised at Dover Air Field this past week by Obama, when neither her father (as VP) or the president he served, George W. Bush, EVER had the decency, the character, or the balls to meet that duty… Liz Cheney has now achieved reprehensibility. She should be spat upon.

George Bush and Dick Cheney lied America into a war with no real purpose, no real plan, and no exit. They sent America’s soldiers into harm’s way, banned the press from covering the many who returned dead, and never once – NOT ONCE – ever met those returning caskets.
George gave up golf, though…in solidarity with the mothers who had lost their sons, George stopped golfing (for a little while). No word if Dick Cheney plays golf, but he didn’t give up quail hunting, or handing out billion dollar, no bid contracts to a company from which he profits.

And so, last week, this:

President Barack Obama salutes those who have made the ultimate sacrifice when called by their country.

Liz Cheney said this:

“I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don’t understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That’s really hard for me to get my head around…It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this.”

President Bush banned cameras from filming or photographing the caskets – another in the long list of things he withheld from the people.
President Bush, despite Liz Cheney’s claim, NEVER – NOT ONCE – met a returning casket or saluted a KIA sent overseas on the back of his lies.
Not one single time.

Liz, you horrid, vicious, ignorant bitch. THIS is what a president does.
And letting the people SEE that this is what a president does goes with the job of BEING president, you lying, reptilian, reprehensible, shameless chip off the old block.

Geocities is Dead

Who didn’t have a geocities site?
Has it been that long? At least 10 years…probably more like twelve. It was just a place to slap up photos of the hound, a few links. I am rather pleased that my little slice of yahoo had no sparkly flashing background, no rotating flaming skulls, none of the atrocious crap that would later become the signature of MySpace pages.
And so, to mark the passing of the address, I post the front page picture from the now defunct Tatum’s Joint:

…and one more just because he was the best damn dog:

And I Thought Deepak Chopra Was Bad

There are idiots (see Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann), and then there are IDIOTS – a special breed of all-caps intellectual disability that employs scientific concepts they utterly fail to comprehend as a means to convince imbeciles and morons that their snake oil bullshit has some basis in reality (see chiropractors and homeopaths).
I personally recall one particular example of this sort of brainlessness from a Saturday night at a popular watering hole downtown. It was nearing last call, so the boys were pulling out all the stops in an effort to impress the girls and avoid going home alone. One fellow had apparently decided that an intellectual approach might succeed with his particular target, so he ventured into the realm of theoretical physics – Schrodinger’s Cat, to be precise. I couldn’t help overhearing – the booze had made him loud:

So, this guy Schrodinger, he put a cat in a box with some poison to find out if it would live or die…and he closed the box, but the point of the experiment was that it IS possible to travel through time and change the past…

Come to think of it, this is not far off the bullshit Deepak Chopra was blithering on Huffington Post just today, so at least the boy was in popular company…but even Chopra knows there was no fucking cat – it was a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT designed to illustrate probabilities and potential waveforms of subatomic particles – that the act of observing affects the outcome of that which is observed. I don’t know if the girl had studied any physics, or if her bullshit detector simply slammed into the red zone, but she left moments later with a staggering rugby boy. So it goes.

Nevertheless, there are other IDIOTS out there, selling far more harmful options than a drunken roll in the hay with equally backward, shallow, ignorant pseudo-scientific bullshit. Check this shit out:

Got that? “All of the matter in the universe can be compressed down into the size of a bowling ball…so E=MC2.”
This sort of thing ought to be a crime. The willful spreading of ignorance through demonstrably batshit crazy claims.
Of course, that would mean dragging this homeopath off to the electric chair, along with Beck, Malkin and Bachmann…
…
Hey, I might be on to something.