Things they probably don't teach in police academy:

What to do when charged by a bull.

A bit big for their britches...

SayUncle has been following Michael Bloomberg's constant attempts to poke his nose where it doesn't belong; a habit of Bloomberg's that has been drawing fire from national gun rights organizations.

According to Snowflakes In Hell, America now has two mayors, as Boss Daley of the Chicago Machine has decided that he can attempt to dictate policy to the rest of the nation.

One Question: Where do these yankee busybodies get off thinking that their writ extends six inches past the nearest City Limits sign?

D-Day, H-Hour.

At 0630 hours Normandy time, sixty-three years ago today, the bow ramps dropped on landing craft off the beaches of France, and a generation of young American men would stumble off them, through the bullet-churned water, and into immortality.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

With those words from General Eisenhower in their pockets, the men of the 29th and 1st Infantry Divisions went ashore at Omaha beach. Largely inexperienced, facing tricky tides, clever beach defenses, and the murderously accurate fire of the veteran German 352nd Infantry Division, they floundered through the blood-streaked surf to the rocky shingle of the French coast. Despite hideous losses (A Company, of the 116th Regiment, landing in the zone known as "Dog White", within minutes had only a couple of dozen men left out of 200; only one officer was still alive as of 0640, and all their sergeants were dead or wounded,) they fought on and secured the beaches.

If Waterloo is the defining moment of British arms, and Stalingrad is the symbol for the Russian army, then surely Omaha Beach stands as the mark of the American soldier. Despite blunders and confusion, chaos and disorder, and casualties our generation seems unable to fathom, those untried troops fought their way ashore through everything that was thrown against them, and prevailed. They helped keep the light of freedom shining over half a continent through the dark years to come.

We owe them.

Remember.

Knoxville Blog Get-Together this Saturday.

Rich Hailey has the scoop.

Blog Stuff: 'Net Advice for AnonyBloggers.

'Net buddy TD has a great post chock full of advice for those blogging anonymously from their own domains. Cool stuff on how to prevent stalkers, snoopers, and 'bots, oh my! Obviously I can't use this because not only am I so uncool that I still use Blogger, but I'm also fairly un-Anonymous. Someday I'll get around to doing the whole my-own-domain-and-Wordpress thingie.

Anyhow, a great moment for me was that he mentioned the Wayback Machine, which jogged my memory about a site long gone. I checked the archive and there it was, in all its 1999 glory: "Bigrig Industries: I'm Drunk And I Own A Gun." Look! Frames! How quaint! How 1990s! Especially, however, do not miss the "I'm A Drunk" and "Curio Guns" essays. Screaming Bay-Area pinkos they may have been, but I probably could have partied with these people until we sobered up and had to go vote.

EDIT: Wow, I remember when Space: 1999 was The Future, and I just used "1999" to describe something as "quaintly retro". Whee! I'm living in The Far Future!

Stay away.

I've taken home a jar of delicious pickled garlic cloves.

Dang! These things are so tasty they're like crack for your mouth and...

*urp*

Wow. I didn't know that you could fog up your own eyeballs!

Blog Stuff: Slacker.

Phlegmmy,

I have not forgotten the meme, I've just been working hard on my slack. Soon my writing mojo will return. I hope.

T.-

Heh.

Fight tha power!

Dems go after Jesus vote.

In a baffling display of telegenic piety, leading Democrat candidates answered a string of prying questions for a broadcast audience. Sen. Clinton, attempting to appeal to the one demographic that wouldn't vote for her at gunpoint, abased herself by hinting at hidden tawdriness in her marriage above and beyond that which was used to disturb the public for eight years in a row.

*shudder*

Pardon me. Where was I? Oh yeah, then John Edwards confessed to "sinning every day", to which nobody replied "Well, duh, you're a politician!", despite being fed such a choice straight line. He then went on to talk about how much he loved poor people (and plans on making a lot more of them, no doubt) and Jesus and maybe Mom or puppy dogs or something else.

Obama stuck mostly to policy stuff, apparently, and when asked about the current situation with the War on a Noun in terms of Good and Evil, averred that terrorists are indeed evil, unless they're being bombed or incarcerated by Republicans, in which case such simplicities no longer apply.

How much good this did any of the candidates remains doubtful, but it sure has made for amusing reading.

Politics: Clash of the Un-Candidates.

Thompson v. Gore in a Knoxville News Sentinel Texas Cage Match poll.

If you laugh, you're a geek.

Heisenberg used to house sit for Schroedinger, and would get annoyed when his buddy would call home from out of town and ask "Where is my cat? And how fast is it going?"


(Partial curtsy to Unc.)

Red Light Camera, Part Deux.

In which the photo enforcement saga continues...

Predictably, the Law'N'Order contingent has chimed in with responses like "You broke the law and were dumb enough to get caught by a MACHINE!", so let's examine the state's evidence against the defendant, hm'kay?

Exhibit 1: The Citation.

It lays it out nice and neat: The person cited, her address, the location and time of the crime, her vehicle and its license number. It's all right there in black and white:


Exhibit 2: The Damning Photo.

Well, there it is, timestamped and everything: A photo of license plate number XX2KXX tooling through the red light at the time cited. Slam dunk, right? Wait, that doesn't look like a BMW; maybe she craftily switched her plate to another vehicle to carry out her nefarious red light running scheme!


Exhibit 3: The Defendant's Current Getaway Car.

A-ha! There's her escape vehicle! Only... wait... is that a two or a three?


Better have her waste a day in court without recompense! Only a judge with the wisdom of Solomon could dig to the bottom of this one!

Found via SiteMeter...

Hey, look! A new Knoxville blog!

Blog Stuff: Green-eyed monster.

I just got off the phone with my friend Kaylee.

Tomorrow she just cuts loose from her life and boards a plane to go chase her dreams in Alaska.

I wished her bon voyage and bon chance.

I am so jealous...

Blog Stuff: Hilarity could ensue...

Whiskas "Meaty Selections" kitty propellant is, in all but color, nearly identical to Cap'n Crunch.

Red Light camera fiasco...

So my downstairs neighbor handed me my mail yesterday and I started flipping through it. Bill, bill, bill, catalog, junk mail, Knoxville Photo Enforcement Service Center...

Huh?

I haven't run a red light in years that I know of, and the last time I did wasn't in this city, but my daily travels do take me through a few traffic camera monitored intersections. Maybe I did and wasn't aware of it? I tore the envelope open, and immediately burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" asked my neighbor.

"R2D2's an idiot. Look at this," I replied, and handed him the notice. He started laughing too.

There on the right hand side of the page was the information that one Tamara K., owner of record of a BMW convertible, license plate number 122ABC, was guilty of running a red light at Kingston Pike and Alcoa Highway on May 22nd at 8:17PM.

There are a couple of problems with this.

1) I haven't been through that intersection in the last year.

2) The license plate on my BMW convertible is 123ABC, not 122ABC.

3) The vehicle in the accompanying photos is a white Toyota Tacoma, license number 122ABC. I realize it was dark, but a white pickup doesn't look much like a silver Nazi rollerskate, no matter how hard you squint.

"I am so blogging this," I muttered. And I have.

This should be fun.


EDIT: Updated with my pathetic claims of innocence.

People: Can't live with 'em, can't nerve gas the lot of 'em...

So the latest banner ads I'm seeing splashed around cyberspace invite you to click on them and, I quote, "calculate the name of your perfect lover."

Folks, if you answer one of those ads and actually date anyone it tries to hook you up with, do us all a favor and make sure that no offspring result, okay? We're trying to improve the breed here, not select for gullibility genes. Anybody who thinks the name of their perfect soulmate can be "calculated" probably thinks Oprah's book club offers things worth reading (and moves their lips when they do.)

Venezuela: Anti-Pugsley TV station goes to the web.

Despite pepper gassing a whole mess of college students, Pugsley still can't stop the signal:

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) -- Radio Caracas Television, the station silenced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has found a way to continue its daily broadcasts -- on YouTube, the popular video Web site.

You know, dictatoring used to be a pretty good gig, but it must suck trying to be a repressive dictator in the age of satellite dishes and the intarw3bz.

Dear GOP,

Please do not nominate Mitt Romney.

The last two Massachusetts politicians who went to the Big Show got stomped by milquetoast opponents with the public speaking skills of a Thorazined Yogi Berra. America hasn't wanted a Bay Stater in the Oval Office ever since JFK got whacked by Oliver Stone.

That is all.

Politics: Fred Thompson on the issues...

Voted YES on school vouchers in DC
Voted YES on drilling ANWR on national security grounds
Voted YES on terminating CAFE standards within 15 months
Voted YES on defunding renewable and solar energy
Voted YES on enlarging NATO to include Eastern Europe
Voted NO on limiting NATO expansion to only Poland, Hungary & Czech
Voted YES on favoring 1997 McCain-Feingold overhaul of campaign finance
Voted NO on adopting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Voted YES on allowing another round of military base closures
Voted YES on deploying National Missile Defense ASAP
Voted NO on banning chemical weapons
Voted YES on allowing more foreign workers into the US for farm work
Voted YES on authorizing use of military force against Iraq
Voted YES on repealing federal speed limits
Voted YES on increasing penalties for drug offenses
Voted YES on $75M for abstinence education

Wow, other than the drug war/abstinence/McCain-Feingold stuff he sounds like my kinda guy. I'm all about ditching CAFE and drilling the ANWR with nuclear weapons and nerve gassing any hippies who protest it while de-funding their solar-powered Prius.