At the last minute, we decided to to take the day off, being, well, it was a holiday, and, we had other festivities, namely a family member's birthday to celebrate, and, being here in Boston, we would have broken the law if we didn't sit and watch the NHL's over-produced, over-hyped Winter Classic, at legendary Fenway Park.
As for today, there was nine-inches of snow to shovel, and, after hitting it twice, we were left in a very un-creative mood.
So, we ring in the New Year with a gem-of-a-gem for you.
The YouTube title credits it as "The Crusaders", when, actually, it is Crusader drummer Stix Hooper (who we got to sit behind, and talk with, at a Sonny Rollins concert in Los Angeles, back in the early 1980's),from his album, 'The World Within'.
MATTHEWS: And I think we have got to get serious about catching terrorists, not just catching weapons. I‘m waiting for the terrorist who knows kung fu or something that gets on an airplane without a weapon. God knows what that is going to be like.
Hey, Gerald, happy new year, even under this circumstance.
Also note the context: Matthews is urging us to "get serious" about counterterrorism, and in the next sentence, warning us of the potentially deadly consequences of terrorists who know "kung fu or something."
Oh man ...
Was Tweety hitting the punch a little early this evening?
But, on another note, Tweety's wing-in-mouth solved our New Year's Eve music choice.
There was much hub-bub on the World Wide Web last evening, with the news that the "Cheeseburger That Sweats"(h/t Barry Crimmins), aka Rush Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital, ironically, in Hawaii, after suffering chest pains.
Some of the Flying Monkeys, of the Right Wing Freak Show, were, already, last night, sending out shots-across-the-bow, dare anyone start making death jokes about one of our grandfathered Ignorant Dolts.
That he lives long, so that he can see the country bounce back, become great again, under Democrat Leadership.
That he lives long enough to see a woman, perhaps a black, gay woman, elected President.
So that he can see the people he cheerleaded - The Commander Guy, The Shawdow President, and all the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds of The Bush Grindhouse - take their Perp Walk, if not in this country, than in the World Court, to pay for their War Crimes.
So, get well, Rush Limbaugh. And get well quickly, because I want to make fun of you for vacationing in that "exotic" Barack Obama-producing state of Hawaii.
I hope Rush Limbaugh is saved by a black homosexual doctor with a questionable immigration status
Adrian Chen, over on Gawker, points out the Prayer Vigils taking place;
Our buddies over at the Free Republic know how to save Rush Limbaugh: Internet prayer vigil! There are like 150 prayers already! Do you realize what this means? Tonight could be the night we find out if God exists
There is a story sweeping across the media today on this incredible mystery, out in San Francisco, this headline greeting me upon firing up the computer this morning; San Francisco’s sea lion horde evacuates its Pier 39 home OMG!
Is it Climate Change, reaching down it's mighty fist, snatching up the slithery, yelping Sea Lions?
At San Francisco’s famed Pier 39, tourists are treated to a perfectly fascinating scene of California Sea Lions sunning themselves on floating wooden platforms, yelping ferociously and diving over one another. But not anymore, according to an AP story published yesterday that highlights a strange exodus of virtually all sea lions from the area. The Washington Post gave the story top billing on its website, as did the LA Times and over 400 other news sources. The Huffington Post was the most sensational, accentuating the alarming (and misleading) headline: San Francisco’s Famous Sea Lions Have VANISHED.
[snip]
Sea lion visitation to Pier 39 fluctuates with the season. Numbers during the summer – at one point as high as 1,700 – usually drop to about 60 to 100 in the winter months of December and January due to weather and food accessibility in the Bay. This year has been a little more extreme, but it hasn’t hit zero. About a dozen sea lions have stuck around to entertain Embarcadero tourists. And the numbers that did stick around when the weather got cold in November were slightly higher than normal this time of year.
The sea lions’ disappearance is as strange as their initial colonization of the pier about 20 years ago, in late 1989. They just started showing up one day and as their numbers increased, their traditional hang out, Seal Rocks, became less populated. There are all sorts of theories about why the pier became a favorite haul-out spot for the sea lions, but no one knows for sure why the animals’ behavior changed.
Stoudt averred that the officials at the Marine Mammal Center weren’t worried about the animals’ disappearance from their standard location. The sea lions are migratory animals, after all, and it’s natural for them to move around.
So, even though no one has found them, “there really isn’t a reason to be looking for them,” Stoudt said.
Just an enormously slow news day, in which an otherwise non-news-story would be totally overlooked, and dismissed, gets top billing with racing, forest-fire speed.
The Sea Lions' migratory habits, and follow-the-food-instincts not withstanding, there is a rather simple reason they all up, and left.
They had to be getting the message late, but someone, or something, hipped them that they were hanging out at one of the culturally foulest, crudest, greediest tourist traps in all the lands, Pier 39.
It is a rank armpit of a place.
And, that they built an "observation deck" to exploit the Sea Lions, to suck in more hapless tourists, well, it's poetic justice that the Sea Lions gave them a proverbial "Up Yours!" and got out of there.
Better said, we got "froze" out of gas, as it was a bitter, bitter cold a day around these parts, with single digit/low teens for temps, and below-zero windchills, thanks to 26+ MPH winds, gusting into the 40's.
Rest Of Tonight - Mostly clear and windy. Colder. Near steady temperature around 8 above. Northwest winds 20 to 30 mph. Gusts up to 45 mph...decreasing to 35 mph.
As Barry Crimmins would say, it was "colder than Dick Cheney's heart" out there today.
So, rather than grunt, and struggle, to come up with something, we set our minds to a better place, a much warmer place, with the help of the legendary Gil Evans ...
It was sheer laziness on our part, for not fitting her with the Ignorant Dolt Crown and Sceptre, for her bevy of outlandish displays of amazing doltness.
If we were ever to create a statue, a la The Oscar, to bestow upon our Ignorant Dolts, Matalin would, definitely, be up, high on the list, top two, or three, for its' likeness.
On CNN today, GOP strategist and former Dick Cheney adviser Mary Matalin argued that President Obama is speaking too much about the severe debt, deficits, and economic recession he inherited from the previous administration. Defending her former boss, Matalin charged that President Bush had in fact “inherited a recession” and the September 11th attacks from President Clinton:
MATALIN: I was there, we inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history. And President Bush dealt with it and within a year of his presidency within a comparable time, unemployment was at 5 percent.
Oh no, you didn't really say that, did you Mary?
After all the documentation on how The Bush Grindhouse blew off the Clinton Administrations terrorism work, naturally, because they were too busy planning on how they were going to attack Iraq.
It may be Mary, that you are such an Ignorant Dolt, they cut you out of the loop.
Rove, or Dan Bartlett, maybe even Andy Card, didn't send you the memo?
The memo that said, since The Bush Grindhouse was out of business, since WHIG was shuttered-up, you couldn't go around making up your own facts any longer.
This is really egregious.
Even he must cringe at having to look at such an Ignorant Dolt as yourself every day ...
It wouldn't surprise me if Gollum divorces you over this.
We hope you had a great Christmas Holiday, as we did on this end, busy few days, that it was.
In the event your Christmas didn't go very well, perhaps, a family member, or two, over-indulged, maybe things got a little rowdy, and you found yourself longing for a good, old-fashion Christmas celebration ...
Your drunken, loutish family members would be on-the-money, as the way to go.
So where does this leave the old-fashioned Christmas of yesteryear, untainted by commercialism or ideological dispute? The evidence from Boston suggests it was never there. When the Boston public embraced a more family-centered, domestic version of the holiday, it was already commercial at its very core
No snips, go read the entire piece ... It's hysterical.
