I mentioned when I left on vacation that I would possibly post photos from our secure, undisclosed location. So I'm trying to make good on that aspiration.
We've been enjoying the natural beauty. (Click to enlarge photos.)
I couldn't resist this last one. It's the best mailbox ever. If you don't know what's covering it, you've never had the pleasure of repairing or upgrading your computer. Or building it, I guess I should add. I've uploaded an even larger click-to-enlarge version of this photo (1024 x 768), to give you some of the detail.
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July 18, 2008
Report from the secure, undisclosed location
Best of Pillage Idiot - V
Mrs. Attila and I are off celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary. Here are some blasts from the past. I hope you'll enjoy them a second time.
I certainly hope that President McCain will appoint justices like John Roberts and Samuel Alito, so I can do some more photo comics like these:
Anatomy of a nomination
Alito talks about Roe
July 17, 2008
Best of Pillage Idiot - IV
Mrs. Attila and I are off celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary. Here are some blasts from the past. I hope you'll enjoy them a second time.
Today's Obama day. I really guessed wrong about him. A year ago, I assumed he was running to be Hillary's VP. So I didn't have a lot to say about him.
Last winter, I started out with a series called "If Barack Obama were Jewish, instead of the Second Coming of Jesus." Here's Part 4.
And some miscellaneous posts:
Barack Obama shows he's human
Top ten Obama bumper stickers
Barack Obama responds to the Gettysburg Address
Barack Obama's newest text on national security
My strange post about Barack and Michelle going on a blind date is very recent and should still be on the front page. Go there or click here.
July 16, 2008
Best of Pillage Idiot - III
Mrs. Attila and I are off celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary. Here are some blasts from the past. I hope you'll enjoy them a second time.
I haven't found much to laugh about with John McCain, but I did get a chuckle when he tried to make nice to conservatives at the CPAC convention after having won the nomination without any significant conservative support. Here's my photo comic, which I think describes his thinking pretty accurately.
John McCain reaches out to conservatives
July 15, 2008
Soccer Dad: Public enema #1
Alexander Kharchenko, director of the Russian spa says the world's first monument to enema treatments has been unveiled at the spa in the southern city of Zheleznovodsk. The bronze syringe bulb, weighs 800 pounds and is held by three angels.I just had to post it so I could use the title.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Best of Pillage Idiot - II
Mrs. Attila and I are off celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary. Here are some blasts from the past. I hope you'll enjoy them a second time.
Bill Clinton started out in the campaign as a guy that Hillary wanted nowhere near her, but he ended up upending her, attracting media attention away from her in a negative way.
I guess you can see a little of the trajectory in these photo comics:
Bill Clinton grabs some contributions for Hillary
Bill Clinton supports Hillary's cleavage
Bill Clinton evaluates HillaryCare II
Bill Clinton gives an interview
Bill Clinton responds to the New York Times
July 14, 2008
Soccer Dad: You can't handle the naked truth
Posted by Soccer Dad.
For those Pillage Idiot connoisseurs out there, you must know that one of the most common search terms that googlers use to find Pillage Idiot is "naked."
It is in that spirit I recommend today's Best of the Web Today that observes that there's a one naked man crime spree going on nationally. Go check it out.
But I find the first crime particularly curious:
Naked Man Breaks In, Flees in Woman's Clothes
If he fled in a woman's clothes, he wasn't naked anymore. Was he?
Anyway, if some of you are wondering how we became such good friends, it goes back to a story that he covered 3+ years ago about a group of naked bison who played tennis not too far from where I live.
Anyway, in the meantime enjoy the best of Pillage Idiot while he enjoys his anniversary and check out the latest Haveil Havalim (the Jewish/Israel blogging carnival) that includes a link to Attila's post on Sen. Obama's Minyan.
Best of Pillage Idiot - I
Mrs. Attila and I are off celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary. Here are some blasts from the past. I hope you'll enjoy them a second time.
Remember Hillary Clinton? I do.
Some photo comics:
Hillary begins a conversation (my personal favorite)
Hillary responds to Kate Michelman
Hillary engages in some racial healing
I also thought this spoof turned out pretty well. I was poking fun at Hillary's fantasy of evading sniper fire in Tuzla.
Hillary returns from the Chappaqua 7-Eleven
July 13, 2008
Scheduling note
A note about the upcoming schedule at Pillage Idiot for the benefit of my small but devoted following:
This coming week, starting later today, I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary with Mrs. Attila at a secure, undisclosed location. Our anniversary is actually in a couple of months, but I'm a proponent of partying early.
There might be some guest-blogging here in my absence, but I've pre-scheduled a bunch of "Best of Pillage Idiot" posts to make sure there's something here for you to read. These are re-posts of things you may have seen before, but I hope you'll enjoy seeing them again. It's possible, though I make no promises, that I may be able to post a few photos from from my secure, undisclosed location. (If I do, don't expect to see me or Mrs. A in any of them.)
A 25th anniversary, if you're as lucky as I am, is a time for celebration, but it's also a time for reflection. Basically, I'm still trying to figure out what Mrs. A saw in me. I think I know what she sees in me now, but I'm puzzling over what she saw 26 years ago.
The odds against a socially defective human being like me finding the woman of his dreams and having her think he's worthy of marriage are astronomical. The odds are even longer when you consider that the coincidences by which I found my wife were, well, flukish, as so many coincidences are.
I met my wife when she was sharing an apartment with a woman I went on a couple of dates (literally, two) with one summer. I'll call her X. The woman, X, was a year behind me in law school, and the year after I graduated, when she was a third-year student, I returned to the school for a few days to visit some friends. I accidentally bumped into X, and we had lunch. When she heard where I was living, she told me my wife was living only a few blocks away and advised me to ask her out. I already knew from having met my wife briefly when I picked X up at her apartment that my wife was smart and attractive and laughed politely at my jokes, so I didn't pooh-pooh the idea. But a socially defective guy doesn't just ask a woman out. He is tormented over the prospect for about six weeks before calling. Fortunately, in my case, my wife was expecting my call.
Now, it might sound odd in this day and age, but 25 or more years ago, when I was in my 20s, I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for in a wife. I still think that when you're in your 20s, you should be evaluating relationships with an eye to whether they can lead to marriage, and not waste your time with ones that obviously cannot, but that's a topic for another time. My wife and I, in any event, had two long phone conversations before we even went out on a date, and by the end of the second conversation, I decided I was going to marry her. This is a true story. I don't recommend this strategy in general, because love at first sight, or second phone call, is usually a mirage. But in my case, my wife was way off the charts.
In the first month or two, there were a couple of missed signals that almost ruined my string of luck, but a year later to the day after our first phone call, we decided -- I should say she agreed -- to get married. And my life has been wonderful ever since.
I'm totally serious about that.
Carnival of Maryland -- 37th edition
The 37th edition of the Carnival of Maryland is up at monoblogue. Michael, at monoblogue, has been our host for every 10th edition of the Carnival, starting with the 7th. Check back in 20 weeks. He's promised to host the 47th edition, too.
The 38th edition of the Carnival is scheduled for Sunday, July 27, to be hosted at ROTUS, a blog run by Clark of Clark's Picks.
Send in your submissions by using the Blog Carnival form.
July 12, 2008
"It was Microsoft"
I have to report a totally true conversation I had at shul with a member of our congregation who is a computer consultant. I'm leaving nothing out between my question and his answer.
Me: Do you use ZoneAlarm for your firewall?
Him: It was Microsoft that did it.
To explain: This past week, Microsoft pushed an update to Windows XP that apparently "broke" ZoneAlarm in the sense that internet traffic was blocked. I figured out ZA was broken by eliminating about 10 other possible causes of our inability to reach the internet. The workaround was to go from High to Medium on the internet zone, which seems to unstealth one port but otherwise leaves things alone.
The guy I was chatting with said that many of his clients had called him this week to solve the problem -- which is why he knew what I was going to ask. Incidentally, he didn't blame Microsoft. He said these updates can't be tested on every software (although I would think major firewalls would be in the top 10 to test), and he thinks ZA could have alerted its registered customers with the solution and later with the upgrade. He's right, and I still don't have the upgrade.
But the idea that a Microsoft fix could be harmful was an amusing turn of events. And really not so surprising.
July 10, 2008
We can believe in it
Via Ace, another do-it-yourself Obama poster maker site.
Oh, and here's mine. Not funny, just odd.
Stacking the deck against the death penalty
Governor O'Malley has firm views on what's wrong with the death penalty, but he apparently lacks the guts (and the votes) to push for its abolition.
So instead, he's set up a commission to "study" it, and has stacked the deck with a chairman who's on record against it. Another day in Maryland politics.
Benjamin Civiletti, a prominent Baltimore lawyer and former U.S. attorney general who once called for a national moratorium on capital punishment, will head a state commission studying the death penalty in Maryland, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Thursday.Oh, sure, there are members who support the death penalty, like the Baltimore County state's attorney, but we all know where this is headed. Why go through this elaborate ruse of impartial inquiry?
The commission begins its deliberations as O'Malley, a staunch death-penalty opponent, has moved toward ending Maryland's de facto moratorium on executions by ordering the drafting of procedures for the use of lethal injection. O'Malley, a Democrat, made that decision on the advice of legal counsel after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injection protocols that are virtually identical to Maryland's.
Established this year by the General Assembly, the commission is charged with examining a number of issues including disparities in the application of the death penalty, the cost differential between litigating prolonged capital punishment cases and life imprisonment, and the impact of DNA evidence.
O'Malley appointed 13 of the 23 commission members, and death penalty proponents had raised concerns that the governor would stack the panel with like-minded opponents. Civiletti, who was attorney general during the Carter administration and now focuses on commercial litigation and white-collar crime, said he hasn't represented anyone charged with a capital offense. He declined to share his personal opinion on the subject Thursday.
Who's minding the mint?
At first, this sounds like the symptoms of watching a presidential debate, but in all seriousness, it is truly scary.
When Satnam Singh's Indian American relatives gathered for dinner Tuesday night in Gaithersburg, they shared a typical meal, including a potato stew flavored with mint.Authorities suspect that the mint may have been sprayed with a pesticide and not properly washed. On the other hand, six other family members were not sick, so who knows?
What happened later was far from typical. Singh woke to find six members of his extended family in medical distress: nauseated, disoriented and worsening quickly.* * * * *
The six became lethargic, and as the night wore on, they experienced a variety of symptoms, including heart palpitations, vomiting, sweating and loss of consciousness.
When I was young, we used to drink homemade iced tea with homegrown mint. I guess we didn't spray it with pesticides. That wouldn't have done anything to stop the neighborhood dogs, anyway.
UPDATE (7/11): Probably, it wasn't mint, after all, but rather "a potential deadly weed that apparently was mistakenly used as a cooking ingredient."
July 09, 2008
Up to mediocrity
As I've told you before, I'm an eternal pessimist when it comes to my team, the Mets. Last fall, when the Mets collapsed, I saw it coming. It wasn't a collapse, after all; it was a return to where the Mets should have been all year long: at mediocrity.
You would think that signing Johan Santana in the off-season would have changed things, but you would have failed to take into account the general aging of the otherwise already aged squad.
With this weekend's 3 wins out of 4 against the first-place Phillies and last night's shutout of the Giants, some people are starting to get excited. The Mets are only 1-1/2 games out of first.
Wake up! The Mets are also only two games over .500, at 46-44. That's called mediocrity. You don't strive for mediocrity; you want to be good, if not great.
I still remember the Mets' 11-game winning streak in June 1969. It was the first time they went over .500 that late in the season. Ever. But Tom Seaver, then in his third year in the majors, said that being .500 is nothing to celebrate. The goal was to win. (I recently searched the NY Times for June 1969 and couldn't find anything resembling this quotation, but I distinctly remember it. Maybe it was reported by the Mets' announcers on TV.)
So the goal is for the Mets to win. If they can't do that, and I suspect they're a few position players and a few starters short (to say nothing of the bullpen), it's time for them to recognize as much and build their farm system. Santana was an excellent acquisition, but if it takes two or three years to develop some players in the minors, that'll have to happen. New York is a win-now kind of environment, but the Mets have been trying to win now for years, with only a rare visit to the playoffs. The time to build is coming soon, and maybe it's already here.
UPDATE (7/13): I think I'm going to have to take credit for the fact that the Mets have won four more in a row since I wrote this (at 8 in a row now). I guess I provoked them, or else they wanted to make me look like a whining jerk.
July 07, 2008
Barack and Michelle go on a blind date
Date Lab
Can two Ivy-educated members of the power elite hit it off without hitting each other?
7:00 P.M., NEW ORLEANS BISTRO
Michelle: I got to the restaurant 10 minutes early, because that's the way I am, you know? He was seven minutes late.
Barack: Seven minutes? I was a minute or two late. A throng of college kids surrounded me on the street, and I had to sign autographs.
Michelle: When he arrived, I was thinking, "Light-skinned but not bad-looking." I'd heard from Date Lab that his mother was white. I know something about that subject, especially about integration or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure and about how it forces me to remain on the periphery of society, never becoming a full participant. So I was a little wary.
Barack: She's quite attractive, but I don't usually date women who wear pearls and dress like June Cleaver. I was wondering if she was trying to make some kind of statement with that 50s retro style. She had an angry scowl glued onto her face. I decided I was going to try to get her to relax and see what she looked like then.
Michelle: We started by ordering drinks. I had a Black Russian and he ordered one of those, ha, those things with the umbrella? I always knew there was a distinctive black culture very different from white culture.
Barack: It didn't have an umbrella. It was an apple-tini. She got that one wrong.
Michelle: Apple-tini, he said? Well, whatever. I've never heard of a black dude drinking an apple-tini.
Barack: She was easy to talk to. We discussed our families, our Ivy League schools, our churches. But she had a kind of chip on her shoulder.
Michelle: He was pretty defensive about his family but eventually confided that the white side of his family was a whole bunch of racists. Then he started talking about Black Liberation Theology. I figured he was just trying to impress me, but suddenly he pulled out his collection of BLT trading cards -- James Cone, Jeremiah Wright, the whole crew. I was, like, Wow! If this guy is just trying to impress me, at least he's done his homework.
Barack: Actually, I also keep a second set of trading cards with conservative church leaders, just in case.
Michelle: He said that? I am so not surprised. When I told him about a great soul-food restaurant I knew, he said his policy was to reject race-specific cuisines, but then he said he would try it out so he could have more information and possibly refine his policy.
Barack: We are the cuisine we've been waiting for.
Michelle: After we ordered dinner, he let on that he was on the mend after a big fight he'd had with an older white woman in a difficult relationship, but he wouldn't say any more than that.
Barack: It was a problematic relationship. She beat me repeatedly until my friends got together and got her to quit.
Michelle: I asked the waiter to take a photo of us, but Barack refused to be in the picture.
Barack: She asked me to wear a silly hat, and I didn't want that circulating on the internet.
Michelle: Around 10, I decided it was time to leave. He seemed a little awkward about whether he should give me a kiss or a hug or a handshake.
Barack: I offered her my phone number. Then, she gave me a little fist bump.
Michelle: Yeah, I did that. Did he tell you he tried to give me a chest bump?
Barack: What? Come on, she knew that was a joke.
Michelle: I'd give the date a 2.5 [out of five]. He made a good first impression, but the more I think about him, the more I wonder if there's anything there.
Barack: I'd give it a 4. I'll probably ask her out again.
********************************************
Update: We checked in a week later. Barack had called Michelle, but she turned him down. She told us she'd decided he was an empty suit. Barack ruefully remarked, "That was not the woman I thought I knew."
Interviews conducted by Pillage Idiot.
Previous: Bill and Hillary go on a blind date.
Here are some real Date Labs: here, here, and here.
July 04, 2008
Fourth of July linkfest
For the Fourth of July, instead of re-posting old July 4 posts, I'm going to bring you a linkfest. OK, I'll re-post one old post, too, but here's the linkfest.
1. While we're appreciating our independence and our freedom, some of our fellow Americans are not. Two years ago, I wrote about one such individual. And this week, a peculiarly repellent column out of the City of Brudderly Lub by a dude named Chris Satullo, who wants to cancel the celebration because "we have sinned." (via Stop the ACLU, via Ace) You already know the rest. No reason to read the column.
2. From last week: At the Seattle Mariners' ballpark, love is dead. (via Baseball Crank)
3. Mars, Saturn, and Regulus are converging in the evening sky.
4. "Police suspect giraffe in circus breakout."
5. Drink to Obama's victory? The tee-shirt.
6. Speaking of Obama, Jennifer Rubin explains his problem with Jewish voters in a single word, er, number: 1973.
7. If you're a white dude in England, whatever you do, don't call a white security guard "Honky!" (via HotAir)
8. Finally: A definition of torture.
9. It's hard to believe, but Maryland is only the 19th most corrupt state in the union. Should be higher.
10. David Wissing says you are what you Google. Anyone who's read my "Visitor of the day" series would have to agree.
11. New York dude moves to Atlanta and finds that "New York style" pizza in the South exemplifies major suckitude, so he returns to New York to "reverse engineer" real New York pizza. (via Fark)
12. Last but not least, for the woman concerned about "pelvic fitness," your own spa. (via HotAir) In case you don't understand, the New York Times article explains: "And now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area."
July 02, 2008
Headline of the day
"Suspected gang member arrested for stealing girl's trike"
The gang member was arrested while "joyriding down Orem Boulevard on the trike."
(via Fark)
July 01, 2008
\/\/@t3rm3l0n, the new spam subject line?
Here's a news report that's bound to make guys eat their fruits and vegetables:
Forget the oysters. Texas A&M scientists say watermelon contains ingredients that deliver Viagra-like effects to the body's blood vessels and may even increase the libido.(via HotAir) But here's a drawback. Most of the citrulline is found in the rind, so you can just throw out that red stuff with the seeds and eat the green, bitter rind. Mm, mmm!* * *
Watermelon and some other fruits and vegetables contain phyto-nutrients, including lycopene, beta carotene and citrulline, which are compounds that produce healthy reactions in the body, Patil said.
Specifically, scientists believe it's the citrulline that has the ability to relax blood vessels, much like Viagra does.
Oh, yes, one other thing. "Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra," says Patil. It can do its work throughout your body.
So you should call your doctor if you can't bend your limbs after more than four hours.
Visitor of the day -- 7/1
Doing the jobs Americans won't do? Nah, can't possibly be.
Mild content warning, so it's going in the extended entry. If you go there, don't forget to click to, er, enlarge. The image, that is.
(In case you're wondering, shacharit is what the morning prayers are called. And there is undoubtedly an answer, as there is to virtually any question.)
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