Home improvement pro tip

 Although I kind of want one and know people who could do it ...

Kilted To Kick Cancer - Day 9: What happens when you get kilted?

It's been a new experience for me getting out in a kilt, and it's been surprising that the reaction has been 100% positive.  I'm not used to groups of women coming up to me on the street and striking up conversations, but this has happened several times.  My guess is that they figure that any dude walking around in a kilt has some confidence, which they find attractive.  The conversation about the KtKC fundraiser is always good - the nurses at the doctor's office loved this.

A word to the wise, though - it's not just the ladies who like this.  A guy at the art gallery asked me if I was going regimental.  Given that it was Mid-town Atlanta, there's a decent chance he was at least a switch hitter.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And out for a walk with Wolfgang, there was a mom and her kid on a bike.  The kid smiled ear to ear.  Also the big (I mean big) shaved head dude going into the liquor store while I sat outside the pizza joint.  He looked at me and I said, "Yeah, I know."  He cracked up.

In every case but the mom and kid it led to a conversation about KtKC.  Everyone thinks it's cool.  Not sure what I had expected, but it wasn't that.  Next year I think I'll get business cards printed up for this and hand them out.  After all, it's the fundraising that counts.  Please click through to donate to this cause.  It's fully tax deductible, as a 501(c)3 charity.  The Donate link is here, and please select Team Borepatch.

And if you click through to read Brigid's post you'll see why she is also invested in this - her Dad is fighting that same fight right now.  She is so invested that she's made an enormously generous offer: the first twenty donations of $50 or more via Team Borepatch will receive an autographed copy of her amazing The Book Of Barkley.

And get kilted! Atlanta Kilts got me set up, and they can take care of you, too.  They have quite a good web site that tells you exactly how to get measured for a kilt that fits like a glove, regimental or not.  Don't ask, don't tell.

Obama to resign?

He denies the demand to step down:

Flexing its new-found political muscle in ousting its co-founder Brendan Eich for having been "anti-gay-marriage," Mozilla has upped the ante by demanding that President Obama resign for having raised funds in 2008 and 2010 for candidates known to oppose gay marriage and for having said in his own campaign in 2008 that "marriage is only between a man and a woman."

I hear that he's going to go on TV to address the Nation.

Man, this is all getting confusing ...

Disco shoes

I never had the Platforms, back in the day.  Didn't really need them.  The polyester disco shirts and chains?  Yeah, 2cents and me looked good.

Well, the Silicon Valley Redneck (there are any of those?) says that this is trying to make a comeback. Angels and ministers of Grace, defend us:

... well, up until a few years ago, I often wore shoes with the normal amount of heel for, e.g., sneakers, men's dress shoes, or jungle boots.

But, having developed an ankle problem that was aggravated by such things, I now wear, basically, the flattest darn shoes I can get.  (Though not the silly things from a few decades back, with the toe lifts.)

Far from drag, men are choosing heels for the same reason as women - to feel good

Riiiight.  Feel good.  Ow.  Ow.  Ow.  Ow.

Heh.  Click through for the link to the fashionista site.  And it makes me think somehow of John Wayne.  Wonder what he'd say ...

The unenlightened self-interest which calls itself "environmentalism"

It seems there was a leak in a crude oil pipeline in Wilmington, California.  The result?  Calls for more regulation that will stifle (even further) the California economy.  The reason?

Residents that I spoke to the morning of the spill and those who have contacted my office since the incident have explained what they have gone through. The smell was nauseating and unbearable. Extensive drilling on the street is causing damage to driveways and even cracking tile flooring inside homes.

Gosh, it smells bad.  Better shut down the still sort of functioning smelly petroleum part of the California economy.  After all, there are still some tax payers there who haven't moved to Texas yet.

And as to the post title?  That's from George Carlin's magnificent take down of the environmental movement.  He really gets rolling around 1:50 into the video. ]Warning, strong language is probably not suitable for work, but it's George Carlin so you know this anyway]



I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists.  These white, bourgeois liberals who think that the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths.  People trying to make the World safe for their Volvos.  Besides, environmentalists don't give a s*** about the Planet, they don't care about the Planet - not in the abstract!  You know what they're interested in?  A clean place to live.  Their own habitat.  They're worried that someday in the future they might be inconvenienced.  Narrow unenlightened self interest doesn't impress me.

Me, either.  I grew up downwind from a paper mill.  Smells like jobs, they used to say.  Let California freeze in the dark.  And so my response to the complaints that the smell was nauseating?  Gay.  Not as gay as Twilight, but Green is the new Pink.  And not in the fabulous way.

Gay or European?

I met up with Differ, kind of by accident.  A pub was involved, as you might imagine, and we both walked in.  He was actually there to meet an old Air Force buddy (call sign CARTMAN), which led to a most enjoyable evening of listening to flying stories.

And stories about NATO pilots, hence the title of this post.  And Cartman has me quasi convinced that the Malaysian Airliner mystery didn't involve an electrical fire, but rather a hijacking.  Hearing the systems described leads me to think that the loss of the transponders and radio didn't happen by a catastrophic failure, because of quintuple (!) redundancies.

Plus, Differ brought his sweet Camaro which did its V-8 thing down Canton street.

I must say that after the last week, this (and last night's meeting with JP) was a cool drink of water on a hot day.  Good times, good conversation, and good company, and not thinking about doctors and recovery plans.

So who's up for a blog meet?  It would be fun to have it at Mulligan's in Marietta.  Ride your bike (or drive your Camaro).  I expect that there are a ton of topics that can be discussed through the filter of "Gay or European?" ...

Leave a comment if you'd be interested, and preferred dates and times (Sunday afternoon sometime that isn't Palm Sunday or Easter?).

Dude!

That's one heck of a red pill ...

Or tweeting.  Damn kids.

Huh. Did Jimmie Johnson convert to Islam?

Not sure if that's facing Mecca or not.  Not that there'd be anything wrong with that.  Man, NASCAR sure is confusing ...

Actually, I'd pay cash money to see this movie

Avengers with #2 Son was pretty good, even if the invisible flying aircraft carrier was dumb.  Skycaptain and the World of Tomorrow at least had retro sci-fi chic, like P-40s that turned into submarines.  But the rest of the film was pretty awesome.

This cracks me up

The bit about Mio paying him is so over the top - camp, even - that it's hilarious.



Clever meets over the top.  There are more up on Youtube, but this one is my favorite.

Not that there's anything wrong with that

 

Srlsy.  I grew up reading that sort of thing (no, not that sort of thing,not that there's be anything wrong with that).

In which I challenge Baldr Odinson to an Internet duel

I apologize in advance for my language in this post.  I endeavor to keep this blog PG-13, but some times a man has to say what a man has to say to other (I think) men.  You've been warned.

Everyone, please stop feeding the troll.  He won't post your comments, he controls everything on his blog to make sure that only the Right Thoughts™ appear there.  You'll never win this way.  Here's how you win.

Baldr Odinson (whoever you are, assuming I spelled your pseudonym correctly, which I don't care if I did or not), I challenge you to a man-to-man contest.  I will prove by blog combat that you are a pussy, and that you are also an idiot.  Your ideas are weak, yea, weak unto death.  They make your blog weak, and everyone knows it.

I will prove this, to the Internet's satisfaction, or I will grovel and ask for mercy and forgiveness.  As the Knights of old did, I offer to prove this, risking my body (well, err, traffic and Internet reputation) against yours.  Not that I want your body.  Ewww*.

You are a pussy** ***.

You moderate comments, not because you get so much traffic that you attract spammers (you wish), but because you are, y'know, a pussy.  You can't actually take real criticism. Pussy.

You leave comments on the gun blogs, but flee when people reply to your comments.  Your intellect is weak, and you take the safe but cheap route of tossing a grenade, troll-like, into a comment thread and then Sir-Robin-like scampering away.  Pussy.

Your traffic (for someone who's backed by the Brady crowd) would best be described as "pussy-like", but that would be an insult to honest pussys  throughout the Internet.  You, on the other hand are a dishonest pussy.

And I can prove it, in front of everyone on the Internet.  Here's my challenge:

- Open your comments, as mine are open here.  I delete comments, but only if they are spam.  For the purpose of this challenge, I will agree to delete *no* comments, even spam.

- Put up a post in reply to this post, accepting the challenge like a man.  Someone who refuses to hide behind comment moderation.

- After seven (7) days, whoever has the most comments (on your post or mine) wins.  If you win, I shall apologize handsomely, both in a comment to this post and in a separate post.  When I say "handsomely", I mean "will exceed your expectations".  As the Knights of old said, I will prove this at the risk of my own (blog) body.

- If you lose, you will post a simple "Borepatch was right" post.  That's all I ask of the likes of you.  Pussy.

You won't take me up on it, of course, because you're a pussy.  You know that your arguments are weak, and can't convince anyone - as indeed the entire Gun Ban lobby has found to their dismay.  Your practice of avoiding conflict and discussion has made you weak, and you know it. Even against a nobody blog like me.

And because you know you're weak, you're a pussy.  You know it, I know it, and everyone on the Internet knows it.  So put up or shut up.  You've been called out.  Man up, or crawl away to hide under a rock.  And no whining about what a "brute" I am - these are words, dude.  Sticks and stones, and all that.  We'll never meet In Real Life, so don't piss your pants and everything.  Or email me, and if we meet up, I'll buy you a beer and we'll talk about this (not fight, duh) man to man.

Let me say that again, so all the Internet can hear: man up to this challenge, or STFU and crawl away like a pussy to hide.  There are no other choices.

To the Gun Blog community, that's how you deal with pussies.  Stop feeding the troll.  Stop putting up well reasoned arguments against what they post, when you know that they're too pussy to reply.  Pearls before swine, and all that.  It's making me cross to see such a waste of fine intellectual horsepower.  It a stupid game, and we should stop playing - unless Baldr is (unexpectedly) willing to act like a man for a change.  Which he isn't, because he's a pussy.

* Not that there would be anything wrong with that, of course, except that I don't swing that way, you pussy.

 ** No offense to honest women everywhere.  Except Joan Peterson, who manages to be simultaneously an actual, you know, woman and an a weak, disengenious, two-faced lying comment-moderating pussy just like Bladr.  I'd challenge her to a duel, too, except that a Man doesn't go after a lady that way.

*** I try to keep this blog PG-13, but enough is enough.  If I can say that Mitt Romney is gayer than Twilight, I can say that Baldr Odinson is a pussy.  Unless, of course, he mans up.  Which he won't.  Pussy.

'Tis better to give than to receive

The Holidays are all about giving, which means free stuff.  In that spirit, here are some of my favorite free software packages.  Free as in beer, even.  Open Source rocks.

The Gimp

What do you do when you want to add a cute caption to a picture of your cat, or photoshop sparkly vampire sparkles onto Mitt Romney*?  You could reach for Photoshop, but that's hundreds of bucks.  Or you could download The Gimp (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).

It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.  And did I mention that it's free?  Yeah, it's complicated (like Photoshop), but you can do really cool stuff, like showing where you left your wookie suit.

FreeCiv

I lost a non-trivial part of my life to Sid Myer's Civilization, back in the day.  So along comes the Open Source community with a free version that you can play solo or over the 'Net.

It's basically Civ II.  Free life-sucking time sink for Windows and Linux (maybe Mac, too).  Awesome.  Plus, you get that OSS cred at cocktail parties when you say I just downloaded it from Sourceforge ...

OpenOffice

Ever wanted to write something, and Wordpad just didn't give you enough word processor?  Or wanted to whack together a quick spreadsheet?  Or a slide deck to present you your kid's Scout troop?  Well, you can shell our the Benjamins to Microsoft for Office, or you can download OpenOffice.

I did my Should you be a Global Warming skeptic presentation using it.  Oh yeah, the word processor can count the number of words in a post (yeah, yeah, too many.  I know).  Awesome, and free. 


Ubuntu Linux

You've heard me talk about this before, but the next time you upgrade to an new computer, consider turning your old one into a studly Unix workstation.  You won't get most games (well, other than FreeCiv), but you won't get malware either.  Ubuntu is cool in that everything just works one it.  May run as fast as your new computer, too.

There you go.  Solid, high quality, free software.  Thank you, Open Source community!  Besides, using Open Source is manly.**

* Mitt is gayer than Twilight, not that there's anything wrong with that.

** Especially when it's The Gimp, and you're adding sparkles to a photo of Mitt Romney.

Still not as gay* as Mitt Romney

Accurate Twilight image is accurate:

* Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Mitt/Twilight backstory here.