Apparently it’s illegal to camp on Walden Pond. I don’t have the words. 

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You know, if the President just came right out and said “yeah, that stuff about chemical weapons and humanitarian aid was all BS; we’re interested in deposing Assad in order to ensure Russia doesn’t have a monopoly on oil sales to Europe”, I’m pretty sure the American people wouldn’t be as quick to roll their eyes at this whole ‪#‎Syria‬ thing.

But given the last 10 years, I don’t think anyone’s buying the narrative that America is a real-life Justice League, and with more and more people turning to the Internet instead of traditional outlets for their information, treating the public like a bunch of kids sitting around a TV on Saturday morning isn’t going to be an option much longer.

The Internet has made it much harder to wag the dog, but that apparently doesn’t stop the ass-end from trying. (Conversely, any wonder why Internet freedom is under attack from all directions right now?)

Originally posted on Facebook here

…part American Pit Bull Terrier, part Prehistoric Alligator from the Cretaceous period.

Here she is, trying to eat my foam roller:

and a Chinese vase…

and a wrought-iron end table…

(All of these pictures were taken within the space a few minutes…)

I wanted to name her “Lady Planetwrecker, Princess of Destruction”, but my wife explicitly stated “none of that nerdy crap”, so she named her “Honey”.

When I mentioned my naming choice on Bullshido, this was posted:

All hail Lady Planetwrecker, and look for her upcoming biography, “Fuck Your Sneakers – My First Few Weeks in the Fletcher Household”.

2012 saw more archers as action heroes than fat people at Hometown Buffet on half-price Wednesday. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out what crawled up the spectral bum of the zeitgeist to prompt this. Especially considering most of the archer characters, like Hawkeye and Green Arrow, have been around for decades.

Anyway, instead of wasting time trying to puzzle out the human race’s collective idiosyncrasies, I’d rather capitalize on them. If people have an underlying action fetish for outdated weapons technology, then boy do I have a super hero for them:

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t get why people think New Yorkers are rude; over the last few days I’ve found the exact opposite to be true, and there’s a damn good reason for it. A rock that sits in a river long enough won’t have very many sharp edges. Or less poetically: when you have this many people crammed onto a relatively small island, individuals who are rude won’t remain un-stabbed for very long.

People here hold doors for strangers, smile and nod, and say “excuse me” when pushing through a crowd standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an over-packed restaurant on a Saturday night.

There’s a difference between rudeness, and having well-drawn lines, beyond which, courtesy turns into open contempt. I imagine this subtle difference is lost on a lot of those who either haven’t spent a lot of time around people from this part of the country, or just don’t possess the force of character needed to draw those lines for themselves.

Because people can’t be trusted to run their own lives and make the best decisions for society we need a Government, which is made up of people. Anyone else see the flaw in this logic, or does being elected somehow make you a better person?

I’m just curious because either this is an argument in favor of being ruled by an aristocracy, or I should seek public office as a means of self-improvement.

Heinlein said:  “The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”

Count me among the latter, because I still think Human Beings are inherently good. Am I wrong, or just not cynical enough?

At the last stoplight on the way home from work today I noticed a pair of geese waddling across the grass of a freeway on-ramp, looking back and forth at each other as the human race zipped by in cars and trucks and running shoes.

“You know Bill”, I imagined the one on the right saying, “we used to be motherfucking dinosaurs”.

“Dinosaurs“.

I’m not as big of a fan of music as some people; I don’t collect songs or albums, and I certainly don’t obsess about the difference between digital and analog. But I do appreciate certain types of music, especially those that effectively convey emotion or set a scene. That’s something you don’t find too often in most pop music, beyond the conventional garbage bouncing around in the heads of teenagers or adults who still act like them.

Did that read as smug? Yeah, probably. But it helps explain why, in part, I’m not someone who follows music. (The other reason is that I’ve only got so much room for crap to bounce around in my own head.)

Anyway, as I get older I do appreciate certain artists from random genres; punk, rock, hell… even country. I don’t normally write about them, mainly because of that whole “room in my head” thing I just mentioned, but from time to time when I brush up against some of the music I do like, it gets under my skin like botfly larvae. For example, we went to go see the American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I hadn’t seen the original, or read the book, but the trailer hooked me. And that was because it used a Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”.

And that particular song did a good job of evoking the image of a viking horde on its way to battle. I know Zeppelin isn’t exactly some kind of underrated band, but it’s amazing how little influence they seem to have on current music. And the bands they did influence with their wide range of subject matter and musical styles, from tributes to Tolkien to hippies and even an attempt at a Caribbean-themed song, only seemed to have picked up on a few tidbits here and there (the entire 80’s “epic metal” scene, Dragonforce, etc.).

Whatever, I’m just writing for my own benefit here; mainly because I started. The salient point is:

“Holy crap, this is a cool cover, and I’d forgotten how much I liked Led Zeppelin”. Here’s the song: