LOL @ Joe Biden

Joe Biden says that every good idea in the last 200 years has come from government.

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said.

Here's a short list of great things the government didn't provide:

• Airplanes
• Telephones
• Phone sex lines
• DVDs
• The Battlestar Galactica reboot
• A trillion other things

It takes someone who has spent his entire life working to grow government to make a statement like that.

Nothing To See Here

From the delightfully named Yid With Lid blog:

Fox News uncovered a scandal involving Harry Reid's Press Secretary to the Hispanic Community.
Diana Tejada, (the Reid aide) admitted she took payment for “some of her expenses” in exchange for fraudulently marrying Bassam Mahmoud Tarhini in 2003 so he could obtain permanent U.S. residency, according to court documents.

Apparently the fake groom was under investigation for terrorist ties,

Following Tarhini’s arrest in 2009, he was interviewed by FBI agents who sources say asked about his ties to extremists groups. Some sources said they determined he did not have ties to any terror group, but other sources close to the case said that could not be ruled out.
“Not all of my cases involve the FBI,” said Tarhini’s immigration attorney, Timothy Lee Cook. “Certainly, there was something out there that caught their attention.”

Meanwhile Good Morning America offered a hard-hitting exposé on BMWs that sometimes slow down unexpectedly.

This Is Why I Don't Take Doonesbury Seriously

So Garry Trudeau, in this interview with Slate, explains why Barack Obama is the hardest politician to satirize:

Believe it or not, Obama's very tough for business. The contradictory characterizations of him as fascist or socialist only serve to confirm the truth—he's a raging moderate. And satirists don't do well with moderates, especially thoughtful ones. In addition, Obama rarely makes gaffes and has no salient physical or temperamental features. And sinking popularity isn't a critique. Even SNL's main rap on him is his unflappability, hardly a vice in a world leader.

Mmmm mmmmm.  Kool-Aid!  "Obama rarely makes gaffes and has no salient physical or temperamental features".  That doesn't sound like the President I know.

Now, if I can just figure out why I keep reading Slate...

Child Of The Corn

This year was Macy's first trip to some of our area's spooky attractions.  She's been begging me to go for a couple of years now and this is the year I thought she was ready for the sheer terror that only teenagers in costumes with chainsaws can bring.  First of course was to decide on costumes for us; this is my Halloween and we like to get dressed up.

Unlike past years where we decided to either mix a little humor with the horror or go with straight-out silliness, 2010 was a year for pure scary.  It was decided early on to incorporate our recent engagement into the proceedings, so we settled on a menacing bridal party with me as the groom, Donna as the bride and Macy as our undead flower girl.  After dealing with the usual problems with finding women's costumes not dual-used as streetwalker attire we remembered there was a thing called the internet and we were off.  Donna was in charge of makeup.  She has a second career in Hollywood if the technical writing thing doesn't work out.



Not pictured: my failed attempt to make it to 40 without painting my fingernails.



That's Donna: always smiling.

Gaahhhh!

First stop was the Haunted Farm where Macy got punk'd by a guy hiding right near the entrance.  Though her heart was beating around 400 beats per minute, that didn't stop her from getting surprised by the same guy as we went out.  She had a blast (we all did, really).  I refused to tell her what was waiting for her -- they change things up a little bit every year, but the basic layout of the farm is the same -- and you know Macy: she always wants to go first.

Afterwards we went to try out the area's Haunted Corn Maze.  We'd never been; man that place is huge!  It's laid out pretty nice; you can get lost for a bit, but eventually you find the right path.  There's all kinds of mini haunted building along the way along with a bridge that you at first go under then later cross.  It was so big that it was a bit much to do in the same night as the Haunted Farm.  Next year will break it up into two nights.

The great thing about dressing up for this is all the compliments you get from the people working the attractions.  We were told a few times we had seasonal jobs waiting for us if we wanted them.  We also scared more than one group wandering the corn maze who thought we were already moonlighting.

I'm happy to report Macy had a great time getting scared and slept like the dead (heh) when we got home.  No nightmares to report and I think she will want to go again next year. 

Exhibition Soccer

The fall recreational soccer season is wrapping up, but Macy and I had a unique opportunity today to get a glimpse of soccer on a grander scale.  I was asked to coach one side of an exhibition for Moorhead Youth Soccer during halftime of the Concordia College women's soccer match.  It was a chance for the girls to play on a field ever-so-slightly larger than the one to which they are accustomed.  They were suitably impressed.  Before we got out there they were disappointed that we were going to use only part of the field.  Once they actually got out there they realized how prescient it was that we did; they didn't quite believe my explanation that "we didn't want them to die from exhaustion" until they got out there on the pitch and realized just how big it was.

It was heartbreakingly cute to see how nervous they were as the scoreboard clock counted down the minutes to halftime.  Of course, once they got out there they had a blast, and the spectators gave them a warm reception and send off, to the delight of the girls.

We preceded the exhibition with a tailgate party where many hamburgers, hot dogs and bratwurst were sacrificed.

The Legend Of Antennatruck

Since the beginning of time Man has pursued those mythical beasts of yore.  Sasquatch.  The Yeti.  The Loch Ness Monster.  Extraterrestrials.  Manbearpig. A good Uwe Boll movie.  That the only evidence of these phenomenon consist of obviously faked footage, eyewitness "accounts" by insane drunken hicks, and TLC shows apparently produced by adolescent chimpanzees only drives some to even more desperate lengths to secure actual proof.

My personal demon does not take the form of an ape, a little green man, that dinosaur Fred Flintsone used to move rocks at Mr. Slate's quarry, or even Bloodrayne 3: The Third Reich.  No, the creature that haunts my dreams is something even more frighteningly puzzling: Antennatruck.

I first became aware of Antennatruck when I was a small boy.  My dreams, which were supposed to be inhabited by happy visions of friends and family, adventures in space, winning the big game, and punching Darth Vader in the nads instead was where Antennatruck stalked me.  Like the grim spectre of death it rode, its grille like teeth, its tail lights glowing like the fires of hell.  And from the roof of the cab, like a spire on the dark church of Satan, a steely metal appendage that could both impale little children and pick up Fawlty Towers in syndication on the local UHF station.

Soon after I began to see it in the waking world as well.  Stalking me from corner to corner.  Lurking at the bus stop.  Waiting for me to let down my guard.

As I got older, Antennatruck faded into the background.  It was at every other street corner.  Then every fourth; every tenth.  But I never forgot.  With dawning horror I realized the truth: Antenna truck had grown weary of waiting for my guard to drop and had moved on to other prey.  It was then that I began the hunt.

I couldn't let Antennatruck take an innocent, so I began searching.  My travels took me to the far reaches of the Earth.  In Tibet they call it 灵魂的贪食者 which means "devourer of souls".  In the Urals they refer to a beast which "roams the steppes on wheels of silver" and impales farmers with a "lance of evil".  And in Bangladesh it is simply referred to as "the truck that can get PBS".

The years passed, and the stories of children lost in the night, the only warning being the fuzzy strains of the theme song to WKRP In Cincinnati fading into the darkness, piled up.  After so long I lost heart.  I gave up the search, moving to the remote wilds of North Dakota in an effort to forgive myself for my failure, and to forget.

More years passed and I finally began to heal.  The occasional stories of horror and mayhem the authorities around the world passed off on some evil stranger (but I knew the truth, oh yes!) that made it to my ears grew less and less frequent.  I believed it was finally over.  I was stupid.

I saw it again.  It's back.  It's come for me and it won't stop.  God help me.

Click to enlarge, if you dare!

One Ring To Bind Them

A picture Donna took of her ring while we were in the Bahamas...

(Click to enlarge)