The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket

Daddy Frank with his usual hit-the-nail-on-the-head insight, in toto Below The Fold.

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

He quits pullin' his punches after that. Go.

You can get Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience in just 2 seconds!

At Professor Smartass.

Man, I don't know about you, but after looking at those photos, I feel much more qualified to talk to Vladimir Putin about strategic nuclear weapons, which countries to let into NATO, and whether we are risking a world war by trying to encroach on Caspian Sea oil or by attacking Iran.

Don't you feel it too?

What I feel is sheer terror that enough morons might vote for this insane duo to elect them and sound the death knell for our country as we know it, imperfect, yes, but we still got a chance unless such should come to pass.

I shudder to think that we might look back on The Bush Years as 'the good old days'. God help us.

Free Mexican Airforce

Last night, me'n Mrs. G went to hear Peter Rowan and his bluegrass band. It was a real good show, and only $20 a ticket, which is pretty cheap these days I'm told, and well worth it. They did some straight traditional bluegrass to kick it off and then branched out a little and did dome of Mr. Rowan's signature numbers like "Panama Red" and "Land Of The Navajo", as well as stuff like "We're Choppin' Down The Trees For Jesus" and "Ruby Ridge" which was about the FBI murder rampage in Idaho some years back from the standpoint of the target.

Everything was done in bluegrass style since that's the band he had with him, but he's in no way limited to that. He's played with everybody from Bill Monroe to Jerry Garcia.

Just as an aside, the band was casual in the extreme. I made the comment to Mrs. G that they looked like they just knocked over a gas station and all they got was the attendant's pants. She agreed. The Crown Room is casual anyway and we weren't there for no fashion show.

So I went lookin' for a video to show you and ran across this one. Mrs. G has been a fan of this gent for 44 years. I'm a relative newcomer at only about 37 years. I hope this video begins to explain why. Enjoy.

Monkeys!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got to visit some relatives on Gibraltar. Heh ...

Fail ...

The SS McCain spotted in the Port of Gibraltar. Heh ...

Rio, San Francisco, and Henry the Navigator ...

I got the post up from Lisbon and Portimao ... finally.

I Am The Big Easy

Ray Bonneville opened for Peter Rowan at the show me'n Mrs. G just got home from. I never heard of him before and now I'm a fan. I sat about eight feet from him. After his part of the show, I went and shook his hand and bought his CD with this song on it and he autographed it for me. I asked if he had any stuff on YouTube and told him that I'd blog it, that I take weekends mostly off from raggin' on Bush. He said Bush needs raggin' on.

This is a song he wrote after Katrina. Notice his knees going up and down. He's doing the drum part with his feet on a pad that amplifies his foot tapping. Don't let Larry Craig see this!



More at FolkAlleydotcom.

Red Dirt Girl

I don't need to tell you who the girl singer is, but the picker/backup vocal guy in the gimme cap is singer-songwriter Buddy Miller. Enjoy.



Whenever I think of red dirt, I think of the punch line of Red Dirt Marijuana that goes something like, "OK, let's smoke another one, but this time let me lick it...".

Probly no more blogging today. I got things to do and then we're gonna go hear Peter Rowan tonight at the Crystal Bay Club. Later.

Are you an elitist?

Mark Morford with 18 ways to know for sure:

6. The impressive dimensions of the strap-on system in your dresser would make your average Alaskan redneck hockey player scream in horror even as it openly titillated a dozen Republican senators from Colorado Springs to Idaho, though it would probably still get you arrested in Alabama.

7. You know what a strap-on is. In a good way.

I know what a strap-on is. I have a buncha StrapOn tools I bought off a truck.

13. The hammer with which you often consider striking yourself in the face when listening to Bush speak or when observing McCain's creepy grin or hearing Palin's embarrassing answers to simple questions of policy has never actually been put to use for any "real" work, and has only ever really been used to tap down a few loose nails on the deck of your Martha's Vineyard summer cottage or tighten some planks in the fetish dungeon.

Fetish dungeon? Sounds like a Repug deal.

14. You prefer spirituality to religion, fluid self-determinism to Biblical dogma, premium sake to sacramental wine, devising new sins instead of merely indulging the old ones, swallowing instead of spitting, back door to front, Shakti to Mary, and floating instead of kneeling.

15. You speak a foreign language. This implies you might understand something of the world, have an interest in a culture other than your own, or have perhaps even traveled to some exotic foreign land that isn't Texas or New Jersey or Hawaii, a place where they like weird cheeses and don't fear gay people and ride bicycles to the opera.

16. You recognize and appreciate more than 50 percent of the references and enjoy at least a quarter of the featured profiles in the New York Times Arts section. Also, you read the New York Times. Also, you read.

17. You are, for some godforsaken reason, absolutely convinced all the way down to your most profound sense of what is divine and truthful in this strangled world that violence and bloodshed are rarely the answer, that the irrefutable spiritual laws of the universe confirm that like attracts like and even at a quantum level there is a profound pull toward a divine, benevolent dynamic equilibrium, and therefore constructing a malicious national policy of torture and surveillance and pre-emptive aggression merely shames the better nature of the human animal and invites a particularly violent energy into the national bloodstream and poisons the human heart as it creates nothing but more turmoil and unrest and hate in the world. Man, only an elitist jerk would tolerate a ridiculous run-on sentence like that.

Personally, I like big long run-on sentences as long as they are punctuated correctly.

More. Enjoy.

McCain ethics reform: Dept. of Lobbyists

Professor Smartass

Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain introduced a sweeping ethics reform proposal today that included the creation of a new Department of Lobbyists in a speech before the Chamber of Commerce in Velva, North Dakota.

The text of his speech follows:

Everyday, corporations or wealthy individuals will make contributions to our campaigns and our shell foundations and PACs , or even give high paying jobs to our wives or children, fully expecting tax or regulatory relief, government contracts, or even subsidies in return.

Too often though, elected officials fail to keep their end of the bargain. They make half-hearted attempts to service their donors, then abandon even that effort if some newspaper or website starts to ask questions. Worse, some don't even make the effort in the first place, pretending that the donation was given out of some idealistic agreement with a candidates ideology, not a fee for service.

My friends, there is a word for not doing what you are paid to do, and that word is FRAUD.

Those in Congress must be held accountable and must be forced to do their patriotic duty for those who supported them financially.

Therefore, I will create a new Department of Lobbyists that will exist solely to expedite service to political donors. They will keep a central database of donations and inform donors of the level of service their donation entitles them to, from a letter to a regulator telling them to back off, to five senators showing up at the regulators office to give him an attitude adjustment.

This will also make life easier for lobbyists. Currently, to seek favors, they have to visit each and every politician they will need on their side, wine and dine them, or provide escorts of their preferred gender. With the new Department of Lobbyists, they will only have to make ONE stop. The DOL will then give the marching orders to the relevant congressmen and senators.

My friends, if I am elected, the Department of Lobbyists will be just the beginning of my ethics reform. If I have to, I will go to the gates of Hell to serve my donors, whether they are trying to outsource jobs, loot their employees pensions, pollute the air and water with coal or nuclear plants, or secure oil reserves in some God-forsaken Middle Eastern backwater.

That is the way America is supposed to work, and under a McCain presidency, that is how it WILL work, so help me God.

Read the rest. I'd say it was funny. but it's a little too close to the truth.

Beverly Hillbillies - Redux

Except this time the family isn't called, "Klampert", it's called, "Palin".

Maybe that is a tad strong, but I'm not sure. I have seen a few of the excerpts from last nights intervies. She reminds me of an overaged high-schooler answering questions in civics class. How did we get to the point that this absolutely mediocre person could be the President of the United States before the end of this year?

JG.

Say WHAT!!!?

Think Progress, with video, links, and comments:

On 7th Anniversary Of Attacks, White House Claims Bin Laden Was Not The ‘Mastermind’ of Sept. 11

[...] In a press conference today, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino about the administration’s ongoing efforts to find Osama bin Laden, calling him the “mastermind” of 9/11. Perino interrupted the reporter, claiming bin Laden was not the true “mastermind” of the attacks:

Q But Osama bin Laden is the one that — you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 –

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.

Perino seems to be attempting to justify the White House’s failure to catch bin Laden by suggesting he was not the “mastermind.” But in September 2006, former press secretary Tony Snow stated:

Osama bin Laden, mastermind of September 11th, the person that many people talk about and still have concerns about, calls this fight, the fight in Iraq, “the third world war.”

While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted to being the “architect” of 9/11, bin Laden was not inconsequential; he approved and executed the attacks. KSM in fact, brought the idea to bin Laden, who according to the 9/11 Commission, “wanted to hit the White House, Pentagon and U.S. Capitol,” not just the World Trade Center.

This administration is having a hell of a time keeping its story straight. Lie upon lie upon lie tends to do that.

One of many comments:

And in conclusion we are now questioning Daffy Duck, aka superhero Duck Dodgers, for what he knows about OBL. So far we have only gotten leads for a Porky ‘lipstick’ Pig. Eba da dee, that’s all folks.

No victory in Iraq, says Petraeus

Thank the stars for the foreign press. From the Beeb, with video:

he outgoing commander of US troops in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has said that he will never declare victory there.

In a BBC interview, Gen Petraeus said that recent security gains were "not irreversible" and that the US still faced a "long struggle".

He said he did not know that he would ever use the word "victory": "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not war with a simple slogan."

As far as the American public goes, the 'simple slogan' might as well be 'Go Shopping!' for all the sacrifice and involvement we were never asked for in the run-up to, and incompetent execution of, Bush's lies and war crimes.

McCain knows all this very well. His '100 years' comment proves it.

Big Red One Inc.

1st Infantry Division site here.

Politico

From Cantigny, France, and the Argonne Forest to North Africa, Normandy, Vietnam’s Iron Triangle and Iraq —and now hauteconcept.com?

Foreign battles aren’t new for the 1st Infantry Division, but this firefight is from another world, a clash between the New Army and Old over plans to commercialize the 1st Division’s historic “Big Red One” insignia in a sportswear line at Sears.

Caught most by surprise are combat veterans of the 1st Infantry Division, who see their familiar red-and-green shoulder patch splashed across Internet websites celebrating soldier chic.

“The U.S. Army launches an all-out fashion offensive,” reads the headline on stylelist.com. A Sears corporate press release quotes an unnamed Army spokesman extolling the new line for melding the “Army’s timeless traditions with iconic styling.” And following the Republican convention, the fashion blog Haute Concept added this note: “Now gun-toting soccer moms like Sarah Palin [can] get all their fight gear with one stop!” (my em)

What a fucking outrage! Selling the rights to the insignia of the oldest division in the United States Army for crass commercial usage is bad enough, but implying that some goddam no doubt made-somewhere-else-by-sewing-slaves cheap-ass sportswear somehow equates the wearer with generations of fighting infantrymen takes alternate reality to a new level and directly benefits Repug warmongers. That was the whole idea, I'm sure.

Charles Horner, a retired Army officer now working for Murtha, isn’t happy. He served with the 1st Division in Vietnam, as did his father in World War II, including landings in North Africa, Sicily and Normandy.

“That patch is to be worn by only people who served in the 1st Division,” said Horner. “What right does the Army have to sell our patch?”

My advice to 1st ID Vets is to take a tip from outlaw motorcycle clubs - when you see someone wearing your patch without authorization, i.e. not a member, pull it on the spot. In other words take it away from them wherever and whenever, then and there, whatever it takes. Make a public announcement that this will happen.

Note to DoD: You fuckers stepped on yer dicks big time with this bullshit, but if you wanta see blood in the streets, sell the rights to the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.

Absolutely disgusting.

Cheney with lipstick

In Sarah Palin: A Gidget for God's Truth, Steve Weissman has defiled an icon to Southern Californians of a certain age. Really old-time surfers decry that flick as the beginning of the end of surfing, but to the rest of us it was the first surf movie and turned us on to that sport. Cowabunga, dude.

"The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation," declared John McCain back in September 2007. With his vice-presidential pick of Governor Sarah Palin, he has found a winsome soul mate who is even more of a Christian nationalist, eager to use government to impose her religious views on the rest of us.

McCain hears God less extremely, but the Republican platform echoes Palin, and if she ever became president, she would feel completely justified in making her religious belief a litmus test for appointees to the Supreme Court.

She described the building of a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska as "God's will," which she would work to carry out as governor.

She supports the presence of US troops in Iraq as a "task that is from God."

And she has told colleagues that Christ will return within her lifetime, which raises questions about what sort of Armageddon she has in mind.

However absurd one finds all this, Palin's religious convictions should normally remain her own private concern. But her eagerness to use public office to enforce and implement what she believes makes her beliefs a matter of enormous public importance.

If you don't believe me, just listen to the enormous support Palin is receiving from Dr. Dobson, "End Time" author Tim La Haye, and others on the Christian right. Dobson once swore he would never vote for John McCain. He now calls McCain's choice of Palin "outstanding" and is promising his enthusiastic support.

Sarah Palin is their gal, and if she is elected vice president, these warriors of God could find themselves only a heartbeat away from their long-held goal of turning America into an ultra-rightwing Christian nation.

Scary fuckin' broad.

White Trash Wedding

This bit of performance art by some happy dragsters to The Dixie Chicks' "White Trash Wedding" is dedicated to Bristol Palin. Yes, I know it's not nice of me. Fuck the whole goddam bunch of 'em.

Fog, ceramic tile, and port wine ...

We were in Oporto, Portugal today.

"We're through. Even if we win, we've lost."

Go read Confessions of an RNC security guard.

"I know what some of you tough guys are thinking," says Thibodeau, draining his Rockstar. "But trust me, unless you've got no escape route and are being seriously threatened, and can prove that in court by crying on the stand, you had better retreat. You either run or you cry. Your choice."

A recruit sitting in the back of the room begins to fidget and sink into his chair. He wears a T-shirt in the ubiquitous purple and yellow of Minnesota Vikings football. The shirt reads "What Would Leif Erikson Do?"

Soon enough the recruit answers his own question: Leif Erikson, it turns out, would stand up, wipe his hands on his jeans, mutter "Fuck this" under his breath, slip out the back and not return.

I, however, stay until the bitter end and await my assignment. The following is a log of a night in my life as an RNC security officer. The night shift is 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Midnight
The first wave of delegates, staffers, lobbyists and hangers-on are returning from their parties. I'm still guarding the front door. My first drunk: a guy whose dress shirt is recklessly untucked, his "McCain for America" pin dangling precariously from his lapel. Looking for his credentials, he fumbles around for almost five full minutes.

A car stops in front of the entrance. A man and a woman emerge and exchange a long meaningful hug. They whisper for a bit. Then the woman goes into the hotel and the man steps back into the car and drives away.

"Cheaters," says my new partner, Scott Mendes. "They both got wedding rings."

Yes, the party of 'moral values'. As a talking point.

"There's a lot of hot chicks here," he tells me in a failed attempt at a whisper. He reeks of chardonnay. "You cannot spring a woody here, dude. Your pants got no give, know what I mean? It'd be totally obvious. Gov. Palin is staying here -- you gotta be careful. You get what I'm saying? You can't get wood on the job."

The right-wing youth resurgence is taking shape here before my eyes and it has a strong erotic undercurrent. For the first time in American politics there is a strong alpha woman with whom mothers identify, and after whom sons lust. The GOP is playing the Oedipal card. And it could mean bloody war, fought house to house.

4:15 a.m.
I'm developing a purely anecdotal theory about Republican drunkenness: that it's related to ideology. The less ideological arrive back at the headquarters earlier in the evening, between midnight and 1 a.m. These are, in chronological order, the Romney and the Giuliani supporters. Both are East Coast, urban college grad, corporate types. They like to drink and reminisce about the Harvard-Yale game, but they also like to wake up early, shave and not smell like booze at committee meetings. The Giuliani people are secular and more openly lecherous. So they tend to drink a bit harder and stay out closer to 1 a.m. The Ron Paul people party past 1 a.m., but not much. And they shave but they don't showboat.

The ones who stay out the latest and come back the drunkest, I notice, are the Huckabee folks, the party's rural conservatives. They believe in Jesus, in the hard-bitten way of the true alcoholic. If they ever sober up, it'll be by the grace of the Lord; and if they intend to stay on the sauce and continue living, then they'll really need His loving kindness. If you intend to be drinking heavily until closing time -- 4 a.m. in the Twin Cities during the RNC -- you had better walk home with Jesus.

I can't place true McCainites on the alcohol-ideology matrix. I think they were all asleep by 9:30 p.m.

ll the hotels in the area are dark. Thousands of Republicans stir in their beds, dreaming thousands of dreams about Sarah Palin. But Charles Hunter, an environmentalist delegate from New Hampshire and a veteran of Republican conventions going back to the 1980 coronation of Ronald Reagan at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, can't sleep at all.

"This is my last convention," he tells me, lighting a cigarette.

"Why?"

"I'm a real McCain guy. I served. But I liked the old McCain -- when he was a true hero, before he signed on with the yahoos. I actually believe in 'country first.'"

"Not a fan of Palin?"

"If I were McCain I'd probably bring her onto my ticket, too. That's exactly the problem. I guess I tricked myself into thinking that McCain, even after he watered himself down for the election, could somehow restore sanity. The Democrats tried to paint him as a twin of Bush. Not true. But Palin ... she does remind me of Bush. McCain has made a devil's pact and sealed this party's fate."

Even though he's older, he smokes his cigarette like a young man, with earnest haste, before he flicks it off into the dark.

"That's it," he said, "we're through. Even if we win, we've lost."

We will all have lost.

"She's screwing up Alaska big time"

John Dean on why

McCain's Inexperienced Running Mate Falls Short of Meeting the Implicit Constitutional Qualifications For Vice Presidents

Good long lawyer-like piece. Last paragraph:

Recently, I was in Alaska, just after Palin's name was first floated as a possible McCain running mate. Although I am not a Democrat, I gave a keynote speech at the Democrats' state convention. During my visit, a senior Democratic Party official said to me that he sure hoped McCain would select Palin, because based on his observation of her record Alaska, he opined that, : "She's screwing up Alaska big time, and she could probably assure defeat for McCain." His wish may be coming true.

Let's hope.

Deep pockets and short arms

Workday Minnesota

Joy Anderson has always been skeptical of Republican priorities and policies, but her views were confirmed after a week as a banquet server for the Republican National Convention.

Anderson said she was busy round-the-clock this week at numerous lavish receptions and late-night parties in downtown Minneapolis. Her main job was making sure the food never ran out at the bountiful buffets held for Republican delegates by Wal-Mart, Blue Cross Blue Shield and many other members of the Fortune 500.

Anderson, a 52-year-old Minneapolis native, is no newcomer to political spectacle. One of her first gigs was as a banquet server at a Minneapolis campaign event for Democrat Jimmy Carter, during his run for the presidency in 1976. But Anderson said she found the extent of the excess during this week's Republican convention truly shocking, especially considering the state of the economy.

"It's like they have money to burn," Anderson said. She went without health insurance for years until getting coverage through UNITE HERE Local 17, the union representing hospitality workers in the Twin Cities. Her husband, a military veteran, also went for years without insurance, she said.

But surely there must have been a silver lining for workers like Anderson, with all the business created by having thousands of delegates and media – not to speak of out-of-state law enforcement – flood the Twin Cities this week?

That's not what Local 17 President Nancy Goldman is hearing from her members, who work at many of the area's hotels and restaurants. They report that regular patrons stayed away during the convention hoopla and tables sat empty due to cancelled events and no-shows.

Said Anderson of the Republican delegates she encountered: "They're just the cheapest tippers."

Repugs are sure cheap fucks when it comes to giving any money back to the peasants they stole it from.

This one is kinda personal - my wife's Mom put her through college with her tips as a waitress, as female 'servers' were called in pre-PC times. We take good care of our 'servers' if they come anywhere close to taking good care of us.

Palin: White Trash

Go read this one right now! This Canuckistanian gal is good!

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? [...]

They don't? But I've heard them...

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.

I had the thought that a jury would never convict her husband for her murder if they heard her voice. That screech'd drive anybody nuts if they listened to it long enough, and husbands can't get away very easily.

I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to, but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.

They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in the Paddy Wagon?

The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence.

I am damn glad I found that. I needed it. There's plenty more.

F**k a Duck

I am having a real problem tryin' to find stuff without the word 'Palin' in it. The bimbo is cloggin' up the internets like volcanic ash in an air filter, I tell ya! Found this, tho'...

WASHINGTON, Sep 4, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) -- U.S. officials said "duck stamps" affixed to cards carried by hunters licensed to hunt ducks contain a misprinted number that connects to a phone-sex line.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said the misprinted numbers -- which connect callers to a recorded female voice that promises them they can "talk only to the girls who turn you on" for $1.99 per minute -- appear on about 3.5 million of the federally-issued cards and the service does not have the funds to reprint them, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported Thursday.

The correct number, 1-800-782-6724, is meant for hunters wishing to purchase additional duck stamps. The misprinted number instead connects to a phone sex line called "Intimate Connections."

"The stamp is perfectly usable," Levin said. "It will just be a lot more interesting for people now."

I know a buncha duck hunters. They'll get all pissed off when they call the number and can't talk to a Labrador Retriever.

I know what I like ...

Living aboard Prinsendam for two weeks is like living in an art gallery.

In Support of Choice

A must read from Christy Hardin Smith at firedoglake:

"There are some very personal reasons that I support a woman's right to choose -- based on her circumstances, her history, and all the factors that go into making such a difficult decision. A lot of it has to do with my own history. And also the difficulties I have seen in the lives of women and children that I have met throughout my legal practice. . . ."

Go read the rest.

JG.

I'm ba-ack...

It was an action-packed weekend and I've got a bad case of truck lag, so I'll be back tomorrow.

I did have the energy to crank out a little piece about the trip over at Fixer & Gordon. To lure you over there, here's the cake at the birthday party we went to:

Click if you dare!

And shame on ya fer thinkin' I'm gonna rat out my buddy and tell ya which part of the cake he ate first...

Lazy day on the Bay of Biscay ...

My first half-assed attempt at a tour of the ship. I'll get it all done ... eventually.

Pip, pip ...

My post from London is up at Worlds.