Ontario Empoblog

Remember what I wrote last December 31 ? Well, I received the following comment from Lois Lane on January 4, 2005: I must say I was very upset with the lack of Dick this New Year! I've started every year for all of my adult life with A good dose of Dick. This year was not nearly as good. Regis VS. Dick... no comparing the two! Little did Lois know that a year later, she could have Regis AND Dick. Sort of : Dick Clark was back on television after a stroke in 2004 forced him to miss his first New Year's Eve celebration in 32 years, though with speech slightly slurred and speaking from a studio. Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, joined by city workers who helped with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, officially started the ball's descent and counted down the final 10 seconds.... Dick Clark, now 76, returned briefly to ABC-TV's "New Year's Rockin' Eve" for a worldwide broadcast audience estimated at 1 billion people, though his voice was slow and slurre...

Pity the fools at the Ontario Mountain Village Association. They merely oppose a Wal Mart in northwest Ontario, California. The Ontario Vineyard Village Association opposes everything about Wal Mart. Why? Because it's the trendy thing to do. It stands to reason that because Wal Mart is evil, anything that Wal Mart likes should be opposed by progressive, reasonable people. Take a gander at this news from a couple of months back: Wal-Mart calls for minimum wage hike CEO Lee Scott tells executives he's urging congressional action in a bid to help 'working families.' October 25, 2005: 12:47 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said he's urging Congress to consider raising the minimum wage so that Wal-Mart customers don't have to struggle paycheck to paycheck. Scott told Wal-Mart directors and executives in a speech Monday that he believes "it is time for Congress to take a look at the minimum wage and other legislation that can help working fa...

Remember Adam Smith? George Bush doesn't . [A] temporary worker program would take pressure off our border. When you match willing worker with willing employer on a job Americans won't do.... So one of the ways to make sure we have a rational border control policy is to make work legal - not amnesty, but work legal - on a temporary basis. People ought to be given a tamper-proof work card, come here and do jobs Americans won't do, and then after a set period of time, go home.... Oh yeah, there's just some jobs out there that Americans just plain will not do. Well, not exactly. Bush's statements ignore what he and his father and his grandfather presumably learned in school - if you cannot get workers at a particular wage, you CAN get workers if you RAISE the wage. Naturally, Bush corporate supporters don't want to do that. They'd prefer the cheap labor. But why does the cheap labor come here in the first place? One of the recent studies showed that many of th...

I was reading some technical junk, but it soon became apparent that this story is primarily political: The man responsible for bringing OpenDocument to Massachusetts has resigned following controversy and personal attacks over the initiative. Peter Quinn has resigned from his post as chief information officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to avoid further mudslinging over the state's controversial move to OpenDocument.... Eric Kriss, the former Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance who was Quinn's boss during most of the ODF evaluation process, said that Quinn found it difficult to handle the personal attacks that followed the state's high profile move.... Quinn was particularly affected by last month's report in the Boston Globe , which claimed he had taken unauthorised trips to conferences, according to Kriss. These allegations were investigated, and Quinn was later cleared of any wrongdoing. "He found the last few months to be very dista...

Check this story: A troublesome air passenger has been castaway more than 1,000 miles from home.... He became so abusive the pilot abandoned the four-hour flight from Manchester to Tenerife to radio ahead and make an unscheduled stop on Porto Santo island off West Africa in the Atlantic. [T]he traveller was then frog-marched off the plane by local police and his luggage dumped on the tarmac.... The Atlantic island, just 10 miles long by three-miles wide, is a two-hour ferry journey to Madeira. To get home the passenger will now have to get the ferry then catch a flight back to the UK from Madeira. There are no direct flights from Porto Santo. I'm sure that the tourist's presence was appreciated : Tourists seek to Porto Santo to enjoy a relaxing holiday of tranquility. The isolation permits the island to keep some of the old traditions of the first settlers. So what did the first settlers do with drunken boors? From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

Got this when I went to annika.mu.nu : Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. It must have happened when Never Yet Melted covered the C.O.W.A.R.D. proposal . Or perhaps something happened when Dennis the Peasant joined the new Nose in the Air Media . Odd that both Annika and Blogrolling seem to be having problems simultaneously. (Not to mention my PDA . So I won't.) Could these events have a single cause? Yes . ALBANY, N.Y. - Donald Trump is considering running for governor, a leading Republican said Friday. Uh...uh...uh...uh... From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

Some problem with Blogrolling, at least at present. [OE UPDATE: Governor Trump must have fixed it.] From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

I've done what I can about my PDA problem , so I can turn to less important matters, such as the ongoing discussion of Victoria Osteen not riding Continental one day (see the previous posts in my Wet and Wild series: 1 2 and 3 ). From Reformissionary , as cited by Blake W: From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here )

As I done said : I don't see why...tourism adviser [Hermann Schuetzenhoefer] is so upset. If [the citizens of Graz] rename the stadium after Doctor Oba Saint Stanley Tookie Williams, they will attract huge new crowds of tourists. Specifically, the city will be a magnet for the 150,000 people who were saved from gang life by the Doctor Oba Saint. So what do you do in Graz? One of the popular attractions is, of all things, a mausoleum: Mausoleum and Cathedral - Tourist Attraction The nearest station is at Hauptplatz and together these are one of the towns main attractions. The Mausoleum is dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand II, to the north lies St Catherine's Church and his wife Marie Anna and mother, Maria is buried in the southern of the 2 sections. Herzgruftl is another section where the hearts of some Hapsburg family members are buried. The cathedral was built in the 15th century and although much has been damaged it still retains much of it's charm and is well worth i...

Quote of the day, from DadTalk : [M]ost of you know that a Dreidel is a spinning top used to celebrate Hanukkah....It’s a nice gateway toy for teaching your kids how to gamble. Takahiro delves into this aspect of the celebration, ignoring everything else about Hanukkah: now since i used to be a super jew, i prob know more about the dreidel than most....There are four letters on each side of the dreidel, which form an acronym in hebrew that stands for 'a great miracle happened there' or if you are in israel, 'a great miracle happened HERE' that miracle? well, the jews (macabes) defeated the greeks or something, its not important. there was also some oil that lasted for 8 days, also not so important. now that we know the history, let's get to the gambling. Or let's not. Incidentally, I found this hilarious parody of the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" story: “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there was no Judah Maccabee and that C...

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I previously quoted from various reports ( AP , Liberty's Blog , KTRK , more KTRK ) regarding the incident with Victoria Osteen and Continental Airlines, including Osteen's own statement on the incident. ...[I]t was truly a minor misunderstanding and did not escalate into what you saw or read in the news. Contrary to those reports it was my choice to remove myself from the situation. Nonetheless, it was a most unfortunate event and I truly regret that it happened. The last thing I would ever want to do is let any of you down. And I promise you that I did not act in any way that would cast a bad light on you, my family, Lakewood Church or our Lord Jesus Christ.... Today I looked at recent blogs on the incident, which still continues to be discussed. John Luke observes : As with any incident, there are (at least) two sides to the story. But my point is not whether Mrs. Osteen was at fault or not. It is that the mainstream media seems to think it rich when what I'll call a ...

A few days ago I was writing a lot about Kraftwerk, and I mentioned an album called Computer Welt. What I didn't say at the time was that this album (Computer Welt, not Computer World) was on my Christmas list, but that I didn't hold out much hope of actually getting it. Surprisingly, I got it. Although new copies could not be found in the U.S., or even in Germany, Santa brought me a CD which contained both Computer Welt and Radio Activität . I had never heard of the latter. Despite my love of Kraftwerk, the only two albums with which I am familiar are Autobahn and Computer Welt/World. And Tour de France came later. Here are excerpts from the(English) discography from Connolly Co: 1971 KRAFTWERK I (HIGHRAIL) 1972 KRAFTWERK II (VAR) 1973 November RALF AND FLORIAN 1974 November AUTOBAHN 1975 November RADIO-ACTIVITY 1977 April TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS 1978 May THE MAN MACHINE 1981 May COMPUTER WORLD 1986 November ELECTRIC CAFE 1986 ROBOTS Here's a portion of the Kraftwerk biogr...

I was reading Souls Road and ran into this : I haven't written any fiction in a very long time....I signed up for Nano in November.... Me being the ignorant and forgetful one, I asked myself, "What is this Nano"? After several false starts, I ended up here : National Novel Writing Month is now over. If you played along, the goal was to create a first draft of at least 50,000 words in a month. And even if you didn't, I know your little secret~you have a Really Shitty First Draft of something lying around somewhere. Perhaps it's your NaNo novel; perhaps it's something you've just boxed up for awhile.... And then I ended up here : What is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who...

Eric Bijeau? Bennett Landreneau? Joe Theismann ? Eric Bijeau has disappeared from media reports. Here's a recent request sent to Landreneau: December 9, 2005 Major General Bennett C. Landreneau Louisiana Army National Guard Jackson Barracks Office New Orleans, LA Dear Major Landreneau: As New Orleans City Councilmember for District “A”, I ask for your consideration and attention to this very important matter. It would be in the best interest of the community to increase Army National Guard patrols in the Lake area neighborhoods that are: Lakeview, Lakeshore, Lake Vista, Lake Terrace, Lakewood North and South, as well as the Country Club Gardens neighborhood. These areas have been plagued by burglaries and I believe that the increased presence of the Army National Guard is not only an added safety measure to help protect residents and their property, but it also gives people a piece of mind that is greatly needed as the city works to bring residents back. If you need more specifi...

As you know, and as everyone reminds you, the United States of America is a Fascist nation devoted to the suppression of free peoples throughout the world. Annika has proposed a solution to this problem, but it doesn't go far enough. First, let's look at Annika's proposed solution: Why don't we just propose a new law next year to quiet all the critics? The Unconditional Surrender Act of 2006. It might look like this: AN ACT To restore the United States of America to the safety of its pre September 11, 2001 status. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, TITLE I Section 101 FINDINGS Congress makes the following findings: (a) Life in the United States of America was easier when we didn't realize that there were people out there trying to kill us. (b) Protecting the citizens of the United States from future terrorist attacks necessarily requires that difficult choices be made. (c) Certain interest...

The saga continues : The mayor of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian hometown on Tuesday begged the California governor to reconsider his decision to cut ties to the city after locals assailed him for his death penalty stance. Siegfried Nagl, mayor of the southern city of Graz, said he wrote Schwarzenegger pleading with him not to return a ring of honor bestowed on him by officials in his birthplace in 1999 and reassuring him that most residents still admire him. "I hope that very soon we'll hear you say, 'I'll be back,'" Nagl told the actor-turned-politician, one of Austria's most famous sons. On Monday, Schwarzenegger caused a stir by turning the tables on Austrians who criticized the governor's refusal to block the executions of convicted killers. He sent Graz officials a letter asking them to remove his name from a soccer stadium and stop using it to promote the city, and said he was giving back the ring because it "has lost its meaning and ...

Thorn Pricks quotes a letter to the editor of the Saugerties Times, written by Erica Freudenberger (who was immediately placed on a watch list). Here's an excerpt: Now, it turns out, the government has been spying on and monitoring its citizens willy-nilly. The president says it’s to help fight terrorism, but look at some of the groups they’ve been monitoring. Quakers. The F.B.I. had a group of five Quakers and one grandmother in Lake Worth, Florida under surveillance. Perhaps I take such umbrage because I am a Quaker. I can’t imagine how Quakers could possibly be construed as a terrorist threat. Quakers are pacifists, based on Jesus’s teaching to turn the other cheek and the belief that there is the “Light” in every person. Unless the government fears an outbreak of silent vigils or potluck suppers, I’m hard pressed to think of why Quakers need monitoring. Perhaps it’s to send a message to the Amish and Mennonites.... Watergate Summer wrote the following in letter form: Dear Mr....

How to Surf, by O. Emperor. Not a doctor, not an oba, and certainly not a saint. Starting at a Buzzmachine post entitled "There's a reason models look bored," I left a comment and read another one, ending up at Mamutong , then at anina.net , which offers proof that there are models that are techno-savvy. Let me tell you about Anina: height 1,76 bust 83 waist 61 hips 89 shoe 39 dress 36 This tells me nothing, because I'm a dumb American. First impressions are that this is one of them Lane Bryant models. 61 waist? 89 hips? Dove Campaign for Massive Beauty? But of course, I'm not that dumb of an American, although I'll need to engage in huge calculations if I ever buy clothes in foreign countries. Back to Anina. Her site has a collection of videos , including one entitled "Milan Italy Test Commercial." Her description: I got to play a softdrink pusher-- i ran for 16 hours straight from the "police". The video shows a Coca Cola-dominated wor...