26.9.14

IT'S COL. PETROV DAY!


He saved the world -- really.
This nice man saved your borscht from hitting the fan.

Yay, it's Colonel Petrov Day! Who is Col. Petrov, you ask? He's your basic hero. A real one.

31 years ago today, Col. Petrov was hunkered in the bunker, the lone officer in charge of the former Soviet Union's ICBM Early Warning System for a given sector. On that day, said system suddenly alarmed and showed five American ICBMs inbound. Rather than fully commit his missiles to a retaliatory strike, Col. Petrov had a "funny feeling" (he told the WashPost back in '99) that something wasn't quite right. Needless to say, it was just a false-positive computer glitch and Col. Petrov did not launch his missiles and by failing to do so he saved the world from nuclear annihilation and THAT is why today is Col. Petrov Day, living proof that you don't need gigantic superhero muscles or a fancy suit to save the world, Timmy. Alas, no one can save you from Da-da's run-on-sentences.

Vodka and blintzes for everyone! Or failing that, a pumpkin blancmange. Heroes LOVE pumpkin blancmange.


Fig. B. The Pumpkin Blancmange

25.9.14

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 3)


hooblee
"Hoooblee hooblee hoobleeeee LEFT!"

White Line Fever and California's (Artificial?) Drought


Hm. What is going on here?


Ok, the above loop is Pacific weather from 9-24-14. There are a couple of things to look at:

1. Find the 40th Parallel (40N/140W) intersection in the middle of the screen and follow the latitude line to the right till it hits land. See where the weather is hitting the coast? Look carefully. See the white lines darting in the opposite direction to the approaching wind, on the edge of the weather system?

2. Now track WEST (left) from the 40N/140W intersection and look at the approaching storm. Look at the sea ahead of it. There's nothing there, right? Now check this out:



Here's today's (9-25-14) weather. Look at the aforementioned spot at 40N/140W. See the darting white lines? Moving faster than clouds and wind have a right to move? That because those aren't clouds caused by wind, any more than the ones were in the previous loop. What's going on here?

Well, those little white lines could be aerosoled metallic particles dispersed by jet aircraft in the upper atmosphere, the particles then heated from two or more energy locations (yes, HAARP), those little pieces of metal in the air absorbing the triangulated energy and heating up the atmosphere in that area. Yes, of course they can do this, but what else could be goingdoes this do? It could seed clouds, trying to make rain. Or it could defeat HI/LO pressure weather systems, basically keeping rain from the west coast. Thus:

HAARP in action. Note Fig. R.

But it's tough to know which is the case. It did rain recently in N. CA, but was that intentional, an accident, or simply natural? Another unanswered question: if they could, WHY would the U.S. Govt. work so hard to keep rain from the West Coast? You can revisit the reasons HERE.

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 2)


Da-da goes for a walk
"Oh, la di daa di daa..."

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 1)


Da-da goes for a little walk around the town... in his way.

22.9.14

Autumnal Equinox Monday: It's About Time (or, "TIME QUAKE: FORCE INFINITY")


Name that movie.



Is anyone else having time dreams? The past two nights, Da-da's had dreams of being on a new timeline, one where things are slightly different and... better. In his latest one, the Time Lord himself, Dr. Who (strangely played by Ford Prefect from the BBC production of "HHG")...

That's Ford on the left, next to Arthur Dent. He was even wearing that damned argyle sweater.
Question: do people in Argyle wear argyle sweaters? Or is that considered gouche?


...gave Da-da a ride on the TARDIS... which actually looked more like a big covered golf cart with a trailer, but it's the thought that counts. What does all this mean? It means IT'S TIME. Time for what?

Check out what Alfred Webre wrote a few days ago.

Hey, if Batman says it...

Of course, Da-da takes everything with a large ontological salt lick. But when he personally experiences data intersections in twos and three and fours... well, only those in denial pay short shrift. Da-da had been told by Lynn the Internet Oracle that he (and those residing at Spook Central, Da-da's abode) would start having dreams of a new timeline before making the jump. This has already started, not just with Da-da, but also with Bronko and Nagurski, Da-da's 7 and 9YO respectively, having their own time dreams. (Ma-ma is far too rational to jog after this train of thought... that is, until she has her own dream; she was a skeptic about Spook Central until she herself became possessed. Seriously. If Da-da hadn't seen it, he wouldn't have believed it.)

Anyway, things are changing for the better. The Powers That Were are on the run, or simply dying out. People are waking up to the silly MSM fear train that keeps running around in ebola/ISIS circles. Police are demilitarizing. Dogs and cats are living together. As they say, it's only a matter of time. (As Da-da proofed this for the last time, his ship's clock chimed six bells.)



And if all that isn't good enough news, it's also the Autumnal Equinox at 10:29 pm EDT. The first day... er, night of Autumn, yay. Hope you bought a jacket when it was on sale.




Friendly Earthquake Advice From A Man Called Da-da


DON'T RUN OUTSIDE IN AN EARTHQUAKE!
Hide under a politician. Preferably an unconscious one.

Halloween is Coming


Oh. Kirk's possessed again.

11.9.14

Halloween is Coming


"Dick Cheney/Dracula party of 666,666... your table is ready."

Da-da's Final Post on the NFL, Melting Nazis and Reaching the End of the Batman-Riding-Unicorn Rainbow

A real graphic from ESPN, not doctored by Da-da.

The above image and text... is just weird, right? Da-da's seen so much weird that he kinda takes it for granted. But then there's WEIRD. (Btw, "were" as in "werewolf" means, "MAN." So, werewolf means, "MAN-WOLF" and, "WEIRD" means, "OF MAN." Fitting, right?) Anyway, the above image and the below text are directly from ESPN's site, circa 2011:

BRISTOL, CT—ESPN announced that they will replace Hank William Jr.’s theme song for Monday Night Football with a scene from the 1981 film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in which a large group of Nazis are liquified upon opening the Ark of the Covenant.

Williams’ song “All My Rowdy Friends” served as the broadcast's introduction for over 20 years, but was pulled following comments he made comparing President Barack Obama to Nazi leader and noted hater of Jewish people, Adolf Hitler.

“We at ESPN want to send a strong message that Monday Night Football is strictly an anti-Nazi program,” wrote Carol Stiff, Vice President of Programming, in a statement released this morning. “Mr. Williams’ comments contradicted that view, which is why we have decided to replace his introduction with something more in line with our belief that Nazis are awful, awful people, and we think a solid minute of melting German nationalist social party members accomplishes the goal of getting fans ready for football in a family friendly way.”

Mmm, liquified Nazis = Family Friendly! Not to mention WEIRD. But this makes total sense to DISNEY, ESPN's parent company. The above happened three years ago and Da-da's still scratching his head, not that he cares if Hank Williams Jr. is ever heard from again (psst, he doesn't). Jeez, it's as if ESPN had no idea who owns them. Wake up and smell the hot wax, guys.

Now, Da-da doesn't want to write about sports -- or start sentences with, "now." He no longer believes in the manufactured duality of sports spectacle with their cheeseburgers-for-the-apocalypse raison d'etre wagonload of rabid flagwaving run-on-sentence color-schemed WINNER and LOSER separation, dividing humanity into FUMBLERS and those who are not. Into those who beat their wives in private, and those who don't. This is nothing but sophomoric, outdated, third-dimensional vibratory us-vs-them raw-meat thinking -- in italics, yet.  However, the good news is that, like the cabal and the Powers That Were, it's quickly going the way of the Reagan hairdo couch.

Indeed, our sad, capitalistic world will continue to wheeze on for a little while longer, clutching its Dick Cheney-model pacemaker and sucking wind, thinking that we -- we redundant WE -- we feckless Viewers in Viewing Land, we useless eaters, are clueless and stupid and easy to control. Well, guess what: we're not, and we're waking up to that fact. In fact, we've showered, shaved, had a good rousing breakfast and have been standing on your former-controller-bonehead lawns since daybreak. Ever see the end of Frankenstein? Like our torches and pitchforks, our unicorns are glinty and pokey, our dolphins freshly waxed, and you -- The Monster -- will not win.

Everything's fine, Gotham.

What's Da-da complaining about?

Case in point: the first Monday Night Football game for 2014, NY Giants vs. the Detroit Lions. The announcers, John Gruden and Mike Tirico, formerly decent people, prior to say 2011. They were once borderline fair, if not a little overly excited about whatever made the most money, as they themselves are being paid LOTS OF MONEY to be enthusiastic and money's the only thing to be excited about -- for them -- but this has gotten much worse. Tirico was always a smiling ESPN bag man, but MAN is John Gruden drinking the kool-aid these days. It's so disappointing. So much so that Da-da has taken to calling them, "Greedin and SaTirico."

In their most recent season-opening entry, the elite MNF team started talking about the NY Giants. And then there were the Giants. And there was that team from New York... what was their name? Oh, yeah. THE GIANTS. Um, was anyone else playing? Were the Giants gonna play themselves? Sure, New York's a big market. Their team is supposed to be, "good enough" (psst, it's not, and hasn't been for a while) to generate decent ad revenue, not to mention sell tickets and TV rights and NFL jerseys and $75 parking passes and $15 beers, blah blah blah. So of course Greedin and SaTirico only talked about the Giants, their players, their challenges, all their amazing personnel, their roster, their this their that. They did this for the Detroit offensive line, a coach here and there, and that's all about Detroit. After all: it's DETROIT, a moniker that carries a whole load of media-induced baggage. But when the Giants started to suck big time (they lost the game 35-14), Greedin and SaTirico explained that the Giants were having an off night, as that that's the only way the Lions could possibly win, right? Not exactly.

Already rife with "weapons" (they're people -- "players" -- not weapons) the Lions have also retooled recently, and simply outplayed the rather lame and soulless Giants, led by the ever-vacant, three-and-out Eli Manning, despite a ton of penalties called against Detroit. A lot of those calls were interesting, as they were nitpicky, the refs looking more and more guilty at each call; they weren't making those same calls against the Giants that night, despite their actions. It was ostensibly only Detroit that was having a problem. Were the refs paid off to make it tough for Detroit? Was the fix IN with them, the announcers, with ESPN, the NFL, as New York is a big market, their fans millionaires and billionaires, with big advertising dollars and kick-backs and all manner of big city dreck oozing out of the pipe, such that they deserved to win more than lowly Detroit, a failing city which has been made to LOOK like a failing city so real estate is cheap enough to make foreign investors salivate now that gold and hard currency is so hard to come by? Who's to say? But like Da-da said, we're not stupid.

This all looked suspicious to Da-da, especially for an opening night game for both teams. Was ESPN  *that* desperate for ad revenue that they'd tip their hand so obviously? Da-da's not sure. He's only a 20+ year communications veteran who's worked both sides of the camera, and who's been watching football evolve into an embarrassingly jingoistic and venal machine of questionable worth since the '70s. What does he know? Time will tell. It's doubly sad, as Da-da used to like Greedin when he was coach of the Raiders, then Tampa Bay (which he kinda inherited from Tony Dungy). But since then, Greedin's become a big Hooters-lovin' TV phoney. However, Chucky, it's never too late to change.

As for, "Sunday Night Football," which used to be Monday Night Football... [sigh], who cares? Both those guys are so infinitely annoying that Da-da simply doesn't go there. That game is dead to Da-da, whomever's playing. Those guys are even more unwatchable, unlistenable. Such opinionated, biased dunderheads that if Da-da were present, he'd probably hit one or both of them with a rock -- and Da-da's a pacifist. It's getting to that point. Just slap them, laws be damned -- because they are. The law is over. Football is over. They've both been bought and sold -- out.

So why does Da-da watch? Well, it used to remind him of his childhood... but that nostalgia has been whittled thin, so much so that it's too easy to see the cold reality smirking within what once was a game, but has now turned, like everything else, into a moneymaking machine.

This is probably Da-da's last year of watching the NFL, as it's become too sad to watch. The fact that the NFL commissioners lied repeatedly about the severity of player head injuries for over thirty years, has soured many on them. The most recent lies are just the final nails in the coffin.

If that wasn't enough, the fact that the NFL is a 501c nonprofit entity that made a reported $9B last year -- nine billion dollars -- and paid zero federal taxes on that money... well, that's the last straw. Da-da knows that money is the American Way, but if he doesn';t watch... they don't make money.

He's starting not to watch.

How much longer will the NFL and the Powers That Were continue to think that we're all stupid? Not much longer. Da-da gives the NFL about ten more years, maybe less, before they go belly-up, as people's attentions are moving away from us-vs-them mindsets and lies to... well, us. And the truth. The truth is SO much more compelling than the lies we've been told. And now that we have that, we're finding that WE are the ones we've been waiting for.

Oh, and ESPN and MSM... those Nazis that are melting? That's you. That's what you've become. The good news is that you have good people inside you. Let us know when you get that wax out of your hair. We're a pretty forgiving lot. Just don't step on our rainbow.

Can you hear the shark-jumping? It's loud.

10.9.14

Killer Solar Flare/Loch Ness Monster Mystery SOLVED


Phew. Glad that got solved. Explains "global warming," too.

Tales From An Alternate Harry Potter Universe: Rik Mayall as PEEVES


Who? WHAT? How did Da-da miss this?!

Da-da and his boys were having dinner last night, listening to Harry Potter audio books as is our wont these days (#4, "Tri-Wizard Cup"). These are done by Jim Dale -- who is utterly fabulous, as does ALL the voices, in some cases, over 150! These are better than the movies, as they follow the exact text, not some filmmaker's "interpretation," blah blah blah... so we were listening to Jim Dale doing Peeves when it suddenly dawned on all of us: Peeves was missing from the movies.

How could we have missed that? Peeves is hilarious, and a necessary part of the Harry Potter canon. So, what happened? Well, Da-da missed this one, neck-deep as he was with kids and work and other things in 2010, but...

RIK MAYALL PLAYED PEEVES BUT THEY CUT IT?! [insert violent gestures, curse words]

Indeed, he did, but was apparently making the kids on the set laugh too much. Check out his later (and not entirely safe-for-work) interview about it:



He was the perfect person to play Peeves, but... he kinda wasn't. He'd not read the books. He wasn't a fan. He didn't know anything about the story. So, perhaps he wasn't as into it as he might've been otherwise, basically downshifting into evil madcap silliness, which is arguably what Peeves is all about. Da-da's guessing Rik just read his part of the script and went in with his Rik Mayall genius turned on... which was probably so scene-stealing that the movie would've either stopped dead in its tracks or become even more beloved... who knows. Someone in a comment somewhere sugested that Rik's Peeves may have become Harry Potter's Jar-jar Binks, but Da-da doesn't believe that. Maybe he was fabulous and they cut him to deal with pacing issues, or it was indeed simply because he was making all the kids break up too much on camera. We'll never know. Or will we?

That footage exists somewhere. If they cut it out... they could put it back in.

They could create [GASP]: A DIRECTOR'S CUT, with all the Peeves footage back in. And all of us idiots would buy it and rejoice. And more money would be made, which is what this is all ab... er, and it would be great! Or, if the studios were kind [they're not, they're bankers], they could freely dump the footage online and let us all have it for free. Why not? (Why? Because they're bankers. Worse: ATTORNEY bankers.)

Either way, Rik was obviously a little hurt that his part was cut, and this might give his Peeves-ish spirit some rest. OR, even better -- RIK, IF YOU'RE READING THIS OVER DA-DA'S SHOULDER -- Rik should come back as Peeves the Poltergeist LIVE... er, dead, at one of the studios. Rik could re-enact and even EXPAND his Peeves-ish performance, LIVE from the deadside.

"The studio didn't LIKE Peeeeves PER-FOR-MANCE! BITEY BITEY! POKEY POKEY!" [insert spitting sounds and breaking glass]

Da-da would pay for that. Like Fred and George said, "Give 'em hell, Peeves."




P. S. While you're at it, Copyright Owners XYZ, put back in Winky and Ludo Bagman and Dumbledore's funeral, as well, and... wait. As Da-da's suggested before, just do the whole Harry Potter thing over again as a BBC mini series, with Jo Rowling as producer and director (read ALL THE POWER). Leave nothing out, Jo. Use all new actors. Get right on that and Da-da will let you take all the credit, winky winky bitey nosey.




9.9.14

SAHD PHOTO ESSAY: "Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?"


Well, kid... it's complicated.

First, Da-da does a lot of this, while monkeys scream inside his head. This could go on for years.

Then Da-da tends to a few projects he started long ago, but can't seem to finish.

Then it's time for some home improvement.

Next, Da-da steam cleans a few things.

Touches up the scenery.

Has a small adventure.

Gets out in nature, for a bit.


Returns to perform a little maintenance on the family vehicle.


Handles the unexpected.


Starts to work on dinner...


...and keeps working.

Then Da-da waits patiently, in the short time left...

...before he picks you up from school.

And only then, after a long day, does Da-da unlock the donut.

5.9.14

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