He's Dead, Jim

Occasionally, I surf Blogger.

See up in the left hand corner, where it says "Next Blog"?  Click it and off you go to all sorts of strange, wonderful places.  I've been noticing though that most of them are abandoned sites.  Ghost blogs from the not so distant past.  It occurs to me that the interwebs are probably full of dusty old blogs, websites, comments and reviews.  It's hard not to think of such as actually having mass...

It makes me wonder if someone will someday stumble into one of my digital ghosts.

Jodi Arias

I don't believe in the death penalty but after hearing Jodi Arias' pleas for mercy during the sentencing phase I'm willing to reconsider it. 

Locks of Love?!  HA!

Dan Brown's Inferno

I have to admit, somewhere in the middle of this book I began skipping over the history lessons.  And, frankly, you could guess within the first half dozen chapters (they're short) some of the plot twists - that inkling you get that THIS character might turn out to be a bad guy is probably spot on.

But here's the major issue I have with the book: once the major plot device is fully revealed, I was left with a 'meh' sort of attitude.  The antagonist is guilty of monologue-ing to the extreme: if he really felt that way he'd not risk mucking up his nefarious plans by leaving obscure clues hidden about Florence.  The book doesn't sell the reasons for the historical wild goose chase well at all.  And, frankly, it's a bad thing when your readers actually AGREE with the evil scientist.  If I were Robert Langdon (and I'm not, I don't dress that well) I'd have called off the scavenger hunt just as soon as I figured out what the deal was.  Crazy Evil Scientist is also spot on.

I hope this doesn't make me any more of a sociopath than I already was.

Somewhere in Twitter

There's a moron with a TCOT hashtag tweeting that "Obummer should ban tornadoes now, too!"  I just know it. 

What a world, what a world...

Benghazi, IRS, AP

Hoo boy, three things a-percolating away up on the Hill and don't it all smell bad?

At least, that's what the 'mainstream media' wants you to think.  The folks over at Fox are positively giddy.  But let's look at them objectively:

Benghazi - An absolute tragedy, no question.  But is it anything out of the norm for the government to want to spin it favorably for whoever was in charge?  The whole Susan Rice thing is NBD.  It is perhaps more interesting to delve into the actual response and support provided than get hung up on how it was spun.  Fifty plus folks died in embassy attacks during the Reign of W - so let's keep things in perspective.

IRS - Hey, I hate 'em as much, if not more, than the next guy.  One of their jobs is to make sure folks filing for tax exempt status are on the up and up.  A 501(c)(4) is NOT supposed to have political leanings.  If I'm pushing paper behind a desk in Cincinnati, you can be certain that any new entity with a name containing "Tea Party" is going to attract my attention.  It's called doing your job, you see.  The big question is did they spend an equal amount of time scrutinizing obvious liberal leaning groups?

AP - This may be the runt of the litter but, to my way of thinking, it is actually the most troubling one.  You can't explain away such a broad sweeping use of power for any sort of reason.  A vague pass at national security ain't going to cut it.  For whatever reason though, this 'scandal' comes in a distant third...

The biggest issue, really, is the Whitehouse being unwilling to DEAL with these issues head on instead of circling around and pointing fingers or denying out right.  Stuff is going to happen during anyone's Presidency - how you deal with it is what's important.  And that's where Obama is failing - not so much on all these other MSM talking points.

Becky the Love Doll

The wheels on the truck went wump, wump, wump this morning as I left the house.  I've owned the GMC for ten years now and have never once had to change a tire - I was always able to limp in some place and get a tire repaired without having to do it in the road, so to speak.  No such luck today.  After finding the necessary tools, and swearing incessantly, I got the spare on and drove to my favorite tire shop - not far from the office.  They were swamped and asked me to leave the truck.  Since it's such a nice day, I decided to walk to work.

The first thing I noticed was the cloyingly sweet smell of honeysuckle - profuse along the road but, somehow, they were something I never noticed before.  A bluebird flew by and perched on the phone lines above.  The flash of blue caught my eye while the cool breeze kept the walk pleasant.  I was, honestly, sort of enjoying the walk on the road until:

Becky the Love Doll.

Actually, it was just an empty box.  I caught a glimpse of the box in the weeds and my mind started to wander.  Becky was my first real girlfriend and I don't think I ever referred to her as a 'love doll.'  I wondered if the doll looked like her though.  And then I wondered at someone who would buy such and, in a fit of impatient passion, take it out of the box before they even got home.

Do you think they blew the doll up (a la Otto, the emergency pilot) while they were driving?  Did they pretend the GPS' voice was Becky's?  (Turn left NOW.)  Was Becky Dutch?

Anyhow, whatever strains of Beethoven's Pastoral that might have been playing in my mental soundtrack were entirely drowned out by a different sort of wump, wump, wump.  So much for a nature walk.

The IRS and Profiling

So, folks are all up in arms because the IRS was targeting not for profits with the words Tea Party or Patriot in their name.  If you ask me, and I noticed you didn't, if you looked at not for profits as a whole, you'd have to imagine those with more business savvy would be the ones trying to bend the rules a bit.  That's what big business does.  And if you only had so many resources, wouldn't you focus your efforts where you'd get the best *ahem* returns?

The IRS is simply guilty of profiling - which is ironic in that folks on the extreme right tend to be the ones telling us we shouldn't let Muslims fly any more.  :D

(BTW, am I the only one who finds the new implied meaning of the word 'patriot' amusing?)