Boom!

Whoa, I got a coffee grinder and and some Columbian coffee beans for Christmas and man am I wired!! I'm beginning to understand the widespread popularity of places like Starbucks, I've been missing out. Well better go get some more coffee and clean the house and then maybe paint the house!

Tex went down to Texas

I thought of a cool post. I even told Shelly about it, she thought it would be okay.
It was funny, interesting and all that. But now neither one of us can remember what it was going to be about! Maybe I should write one about the mental decline that people experience in their mid 40's. We went to Dallas today, while Shelly was shopping, I roamed the streets of the Dallas-Fort worth metroplex shouting
"Babs!Babs, where are you?" No luck, one guy said he had Babs for me right here and pointed down his pants but I figured it must be the wrong Babs, she would have mentioned being a tiny person by now if she was. I ate a good hamburger down there today, it seemed a little bigger than the burgers I usually get in Oklahoma. Shelly said it's because everything is bigger in Texas. I wanted to get a motel room and see if it was true but we needed to get back home, plus my wallet's a little thin since Christmas. (I did ask a friend from Texas and he said it was true, Texas motel room are 20% larger than Oklahoma motel rooms!)

Yardhouse Texlahoma, Co

yardhouse

Understanding Time Zones

I can't believe no one has ever thought of this before. Here's the plan, I call it
"The Time zone Exploit", I go watch a Dallas Cowboys home game. I call you in Los Vegas, tell you who won. Now you have two hours to place a huge bet on the winning team (because it's two hours earlier in Los Vegas) and just like that, we're rolling in dough. I will, of course, have to send a trusted Representative to accompany you. (I ain't no dummy!)

Bareback Mountain (Homophobic version)

I saw Brokeback Mountain the other day. I saw where the movie went horribly wrong. When the guy in the tent sees the other guy out by the campfire beating his meat, spanking his monkey or whatever the kids call it now days, he should have said "Hold off on that for just a minute, have I got a surprise for you." Then, a little later, he returns to the camp with a ewe (A female sheep). They take the sheep into the tent and have their way with her (it). Then at the end of the movie the boss man could ask
"How was it up there on the mountain with nothing but sheep for such a long time?"

The cowboy could reply "Not baaaaa, baaa, baaaad!"

[last scene soundtrack- (Linda Ronstadt's "When will I be loved?")]

The very last scene could be a trailer full of sheep being taken to market, the camera zooms in to a closeup of a sheep (wearing lipstick & mascara) looking back at the cowboys with tears in her eyes.

4000%

MPP Report: Does Prohibition of Marijuana for Adults Curb Use by Adolescents?

MPP's December 2006 report examines whether current marijuana laws effectively deter marijuana use by young people. Among the major findings:
Marijuana prohibition has not prevented a dramatic increase in marijuana use by teenagers. In fact, the overall rate of marijuana use in the U.S. has risen by roughly 4,000% since marijuana was first outlawed.
Independent studies by RAND Europe and the U.S. National Research Council have reported that marijuana prohibition appears to have little or no impact on rates of use.
Since Britain ended most marijuana possession arrests in 2004, the rate of marijuana use by 16-to-19-year-olds has dropped.
In the U.S., rates of teen marijuana use in states that have decriminalized adult marijuana possession are statistically equal to rates in those that have retained criminal penalties.
In the Netherlands, where adults have been allowed to possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana since 1976, the rate of marijuana use by adults and teens is lower than the U.S., and teen use of cocaine and amphetamines is far lower than in the U.S.

A 'JIHAD' ON USERS

The Dec. 19 Chronicle article "Houston's rise in violent crime outpaces U.S." said that "violent crime in Houston increased at nearly twice the national level." Certain deductions about this near doubling of violent crime in Houston are obvious.

Houston and Harris County lead the world in the incarceration of our citizenry; mostly for drug charges, minor amounts, empty bags, empty pipes or for failing a urine test for drugs. Our jails are so overcrowded that prisoners sleep underneath bunks and next to toilets, and we are contemplating building additional jails to house more drug users. Our jails and prisons are so swamped with drug prisoners that we find it necessary to provide early release to violent criminals to make room for these minor drug offenders.

Many cities and states around this nation ( even within Texas ) have found it necessary to ease back on sentencing drug users. They have found it necessary and prudent to cease the arrest and sentencing of those found with empty bags, pipes and minor amounts of drugs.

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal says "when the only tool you have to work with is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail." Police Chief Harold Hurtt, a black man, seems indifferent to the fact that Houston arrests blacks at a rate significantly higher than that of South Africa under apartheid. Houston and Harris County lead the world in the incarceration of our own people, and yet we seek to build more jails, to send more people to prison for longer periods of time for minor amounts of drugs. At some point, for moral reasons, for fiscal reasons, we will have to back down from our "jihad" against drug users.

Perhaps then, our police force can focus its attentions on violent criminals, and we'll have plenty of prison beds available so the predator types can serve their full sentence.

DEAN BECKER

spokesman, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Houston

Report criticizes FBI's Okla. City probe

Report criticizes FBI's Okla. City probe

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 14 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The
FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped
Timothy McVeigh and
Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes.


The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but far too many unanswered questions remain.
Previously, the bureau has said it believes its investigation of the bombing was exhaustive and there is no credible evidence that other people were involved.

The subcommittee concludes the Justice Department should not have rushed to execute McVeigh in 2001 after he dropped his court appeals, and officials should have made more efforts to interview and question him about evidence suggesting he might have gotten help from other people who remain unpunished.

The former lead FBI agent in the case, Dan Defenbaugh, told AP a few years ago he was trying to get one last interview with McVeigh to go over unanswered questions in the case but could not get it arranged before McVeigh was executed.

Rohrabacher's report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:

_Information that McVeigh called a German citizen living at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma two weeks before the bombing and that two witnesses saw the men together before the bombing.

_Witness accounts that another man was seen with McVeigh around the time of the bombing. The FBI originally looked for another suspect it named John Doe 2, even providing a sketch, but abruptly dropped that line of inquiry.
The subcommittee concludes that decision was a mistake.

_Findings in AP articles in 2003 and 2004 that indicated the FBI had gathered some evidence suggesting a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers may have been tied to McVeigh. The subcommittee interviewed three of those robbers, and all denied a connection. A fourth member of the gang died and a fifth member could not be located by Congress.

_Phone record and witness testimony that persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism in the Philippines may have had contact with Nichols, and that Nichols took a book about explosives to the Philippines. The FBI and Filipino police spent months investigating such a connection, but ruled it out.

_Information from a former TV reporter concerning an Iraqi national who was in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing.

Va. Congressman Protests Ellison's Quran Swear-In

(AP) Washington, D.C. Responding to constituent e-mails about Rep.-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Quran at his ceremonial swearing-in, Virginia congressman Rep. Virgil Goode, R(Republican)-Va warned that "many more Muslims" will be elected demanding to use the Quran unless immigration is tightened. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., made the comments in a letter sent to hundreds of constituents about Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress. The letter triggered angry responses from a New Jersey congressman and an Islamic civil rights group.

In the letter, Goode wrote, "The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

Goode said the U.S. needs to stop illegal immigration "totally" and reduce legal immigration.

Ellison's decision to use the Quran at his ceremonial swearing in next month has generated heated controversy. Conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager has criticized Ellison for it, prompting CAIR to call on Prager's removal from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum board.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. Goode is totally paranoid about Muslims. To me, it makes more since to have a person swear in on the book that they believe in, as a matter of fact it should be required. But, on the other hand, it might have looked kind of bad when Bush & Cheyney swore in on the book of Satan.
By the way, Ellison was born in Detroit.

Earthquake

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An earthquake was reported and confirmed in central Oklahoma on Wednesday night, authorities said.

Jim Lawson with the Oklahoma Geological Survey observatory in Leonard, Okla., said the southeast Oklahoma City and Midwest City-Del City communities experienced an earthquake at about 8:40 p.m.

They are gathering information relative to the magnitude of the quake; however, several residents reported to Eyewitness News 5 that the earthquake sounded and felt like a large explosion.


Stay tuned to Eyewitness News 5 for further details.

Christmas tagged

I've been Christmas tagged, I never fully cooperate with tags, but I'll do what I can. Here are the rules as explained by my tagger, somewhereinnowhere www.somewhereinnowhere.blogspot.com

[Ok this is how it works. The player (me) must list 3 things that I would love to get for Christmas. Then I must list 3 things that I definitely do not want to get for Christmas. Then I tag 5 friends and list their names. The one I tag needs to write on their blogs about their Christmas wishes then tag 5 more people. They must also clarify all the rules. When you tag someone you need to leave a comment that says "you've been Christmas tagged!" in their comments]

Three things that I would love to get for Christmas

1) A nice car. I drive a very practical "Grampa Car" that is totally not me. I don't need a new car, just a nice sports car.


2) I might as well get a new dome home while stuff is free.



3) Enough money to live on without working for someone else. Also enough to start a business of my own.

Three things that I definitely do not want for Christmas.

1) A Lobotomy. In his transorbital lobotomy, a mallet is used to force a surgical instrument akin to an ice pick through the thin layer of skull at the top of the eye socket. The pick is then wiggled to damage the frontal lobe. This technique could be performed in a doctor's office rather than in an operating room, and required only a few minutes to perform. Freeman advocated this procedure for patients with even fairly mild symptoms, and as a result, performed the operation on thousands of people.




2)Cozy Ballet Slipper Sock

3)Herpes virus

Learn this Jingle, Confuse Your Friends

BC Clark
Ever want to make someone think you're from Oklahoma? Probably not huh?
Well, you can at least know this jingle when it's on the Meagan Mallally Show on Dec. 22 2006. You can sing along and add a sense of mystery to your persona. You can deny ever being in Oklahoma, to some of you, I guess that goes without saying.
(The "animation with jingle" is the one I remember best.)

The Zappa Door

I think I've talked about the house in Norman that I shared with two roommates...you know, the one with a Frank Zappa mask on the front door and we would look through the eyes when someone knocked on the door? Well I found a picture of it, I use to have a Pentax k-1000 camera that was my constant companion.

Hurry, your twenty minutes is almost up!

Let's say your getting pretty old, you've lived a full life with it's ups and downs. Your the father of three kids, two girls and a boy, your first wife died and you never remarried. You're on your death bed now and you know it's almost over.

Then suddenly you're somewhere else and a guy is removing some device from your head. He is smiling and saying "Well what did you think?" "Pretty realistic isn't it?" "You played it for about twenty minutes, I thought I should check on you, besides I wanted to see if you thought it seemed real enough." "Are you okay?"

"Dude, it's too real!" "I worked for 45 years!" "I lived a whole life, I miss my wife and kids, my wife died, but she never really existed...and it was only twenty minutes."

Hide in Plain Sight

Bob lays low in an attempt to exempt himself from certain "Holiday Activities".



But after a few drinks, Bob relaxes and gets into the festive spirit.

You may be right, I might be crazy

Sometimes songs pop into my head, that go along with what I'm doing, sometimes the lyrics are a little twisted around but close enough for my subconscious I guess. Like at work there are vials that say NEVER TOUCH. Suddenly M.C. Hammer is playing in my head "You can't touch this!" and of couse the always popular "The turbidity of our water." by System of a Down.

What's that?

I'm off today so I was wasting time looking at Google Earth. I was looking at New Mexico because I lived there in the mid 1960's. Anyway I was looking at Carlsbad, to see if you could tell that there was a huge cave there, I couldn't. (click on pics)



Just to the east of there I noticed that there was an "I" someone had a question about what this is, but he was mostly interested in the square things. What blows my mind is the circular symbol with the North to South and West to East lines through it! I've seen that symbol a million times. Oh yeah, I lined the Google Earth pointer up on it and it is exactly North and South and East to West. (There's a path or road that cuts across it but you can tell that it's seperate from the original.) It's in an interesting place too, Carlsbad Caverns to the west, springs nearby and some kind of depression(?) to the East. If you want to look for yourself, it's @ 32 degrees 11' N and 104 degrees 17' W

Shitbegone gallery

These images brought to you by the makers of Shitbegone. "Quietly doing your dirty work for over thirty years."

Guthrie

Guthrie, Oklahoma a nice place to visit and it seems like it would be a nice place to live too.
It was a beautiful night, clear sky, full moon and snow on the ground. I made good time without driving very fast, there was very little traffic, but I guess you wouldn't expect much at 10:00 on a Sunday night. I took the South Guthrie exit, which in one way was a mistake (the North exit would have taken me almost directly to my motel). I drove around a little, looking for a sign, a motel sign. I had no luck but the old downtown looked great in snow and so did the old houses, so I didn't really mind the delay in getting to the motel. I decided to go to McDonald's, I always think better on a full stomach, and besides something told me the young people there would know and help if I asked them right. So I drive up to the first window and ask him, "I have no idea." So I go to the second window (this guy looks friendly) I ask him, he gives the best directions I've ever heard (he makes me feel like I've been there) I don't know what job he should have but he's wasting his talent in fast food. So I drive right to the motel and there's I-35, the North exit!

There's no place like home

Oh I don't see how those people do it, people that have to travel all the time, catch flights, or drive long distances. I just had to drive about 100-150 miles away and stay for two days for classes then drive back. I just got back and I'm wiped out, driving through very heavy traffic and a traffic jam on I-35 "South to Dallas" in Oklahoma City. To people up there it's nothing, hell, it was nothing to me a few years back but I've gotten use to the slow pace of a small town.
[If young me were reading this, he'd be screaming "No! nooooo!"]
The good news is, I passed! The bad news is, someone like me will be tinkering with "your" water. When someone takes a sip and says "Huh, that tastes kind of weired!" they will think of me. I can't wait till St Patrick's Day! I've seen green beer and green rivers, but I've never seen green beer on tap for a whole city! {To DEQ and EPA, not really!}