Jökulsárlón, Iceland’s Glacier Lagoon
Photos: Örvar Atli Þorgeirsson
Monthly Archives: March 2012
Quote of the Day
“He was completely cut off from reality.”
– Christian Etelin, about Mohammed Merah, a suspected Al-Qaeda-trained militant who was wanted by French police in the killings of a rabbi and 3 children at a Jewish school in Toulouse and 3 French paratroopers on March 11. Etelin is a lawyer who represented Merah in an incident earlier this year involving a traffic accident. Merah died in a hail of gunfire Thursday in Toulouse.
I know it doesn’t bring any real justice for the victims, but considering that France doesn’t have the death penalty – even for the most mentally deranged – this spares the families the pain of a long, politically-correct trial.
Filed under News
March 22, 2012 – 273 days Until Baktun 12
Survivalist Tip: Among the many things you might need during the likely power outages is cooking oil. Without it, foods must be boiled in water. There are different types of vegetable oil: corn, coconut, almond, olive, peanut and soybean. Oil from the face of your teenaged kids doesn’t qualify. Vegetable oil has been used as a cooking aid for at least 4,000 years. The ancient Mayans used coconut oil to prepare rice, corn and chicken flautas. But, they and other highly-advanced peoples of their time, like the Egyptians and Chinese, also used vegetable oil for health benefits. Vegetable oil baths can relieve muscle aches, respiratory ailments and hemorrhoids. Vegetable oil can even provide some sexual relief, but in the chaos of the apocalyptic aftermath, you shouldn’t be worried about that. You can warm up vegetable oil in pots or pans over a fire pit you build in your back yard or balcony of your luxury condominium. Keep it in glass or metal containers in a warm dry place to prevent spoilage. It may be a while before power is restored after the upheaval. Once things settle down in the “New Universe,” you can use any leftover vegetable oil for all the baths and sex acts you want. Believe me – I’ve tried that. It feels great! Even if I am the only participant!
Filed under Mayan Calendar Countdown
Pollen Counts Exploding
For those of us who suffer from seasonal allergies, this year is turning out to be one of the worst. I thought it was just the Dallas / Fort Worth metropolitan area, due mainly to the severe Texas drought, but this mess is nationwide. The South and Midwest are particularly hard-hit. Pollen counts in individual counties are setting records. A clinic at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, for example, measured 11,000 grains of pollen per cubic meter this past Tuesday, the worst they’ve seen. Normal pollen counts for this time of year don’t exceed 2,000 grains per cubic meter. Aside from the past year’s drought here in Texas (which is starting to diminish for most of the state), an unusually warm winter is exacerbating the pollen explosion. Yes, it snows in Texas! We used to get heavy snow and ice every year in the DFW area. But, within the past 20 years, I’ve noticed a considerable decline in cold weather days. We haven’t had snow in DFW since February 2011. This doesn’t bode well for summer, and I don’t want to get into a climate-warming debate. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to soak my burning eyes in Visine again.
Today’s Famous Birthdays
If it’s yours, too, Happy Birthday!
Composer Stephen Sondheim (Send in the Clowns, A Little Night Music; scores for West Side Story, Reds) is 82.
Actor William Shatner (Star Trek, T.J. Hooker, Boston Legal) is 81.
Actress May Britt (The Young Lions, The Hunters, Murder, Inc.) is 79.
Actor M. Emmet Walsh (Serpico, Blade Runner, Reds, Ordinary People, East of Eden) is77.
Singer – guitarist Jeremy Clyde (Chad & Jeremy) is 71.
Actor Bruno Ganz (The American Friend, Wings of Desire, The Last Days of Chez Nous) is 71.
Singer – guitarist George Benson (This Masquerade, On Broadway, Give Me the Night) is 69.
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, Cats, Phantom of the Opera) is 64.
Sportscaster – news anchor Bob Costas (CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Dateline NBC) is 60.
Actress Lena Olin (Romeo is Bleeding, Havana) is 57.
Singer – actress Stephanie Mills is 55.
Actor Matthew Modine (And the Band Played On, Pacific Heights, Full Metal Jacket) is 53.
Filed under Birthdays
On March 22…
1630 – The first legislation to prohibit gambling was enacted in Boston, Massachusetts.
1765 – The British government passed the Stamp Act in an effort to pay off debts incurred during the Seven Years’ War with France.
1859 – A powerful earthquake in Quito, Ecuador killed 5,000 people and destroyed some of the most famous buildings in South America at the time.
Landscape in Ecuador (1859) by Louis Rémy Mignot
1911 – Hermann Jadlowker became the first opera singer to perform two major roles in the same day at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Beer and Wine Revenue Act, which levied a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages.
1945 – The Arab League is formed when representative from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen met in Cairo.
1948 – The Voice of Firestone was the first commercial radio program to be carried simultaneously on both AM and FM radio stations.
1972 – The U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification.
1981 – RCA put its Selectavision laser disc players on the market. The units cost $500 and the video discs cost about $15 each, but the product failed in the consumer market.
1990 – Microsoft released Windows version 3.0. The program offered dramatic performance increases for Windows applications, plus advanced ease of use and aesthetic appeal.
Filed under History
Pictures of the Day
Every 30 or 40 years, the population of pine or white pine butterflies explodes in the Pacific Northwest, creating a unique kind of “snow” storm effect in the region’s ponderosa forests. The insects are native to the ponderosa forests of the West, but scientists still don’t know what causes such an increase in their numbers.
Filed under News
Quote of the Day
“I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob – there’s only one God, there’s only one God, and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me, if you don’t love America, and you don’t like the way we do things, I got one thing to say: Get out! We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammed, we don’t worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”
– Dennis Terry, pastor of Greenwell Springs Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, LA, in a sermon this week in which Rick Santorum was in attendance.
Goddamn, he sounds mad!
Filed under News
March 21, 2012 – 274 days Until Baktun 12
Survivalist Tip: As a token of appreciation to the Mayan gods for sparing your life when the apocalypse hits and allowing you to continue into the next Baktun, buy some traditional Indian blankets. I’m not talking about the flimsy ones made by kids in the slums of Mumbai. I mean good old fashioned North American Indian blankets; the type used for centuries by peoples like the Cherokee, Sioux, Kiowa and Detroit. They were hand-woven from the finest parts of bison and deer hides. Of course, you won’t have to slaughter any bison or deer and try to make an Indian blanket yourself. Just buy several from a reputable and authentic Native American shop or company. They’ll keep you warm during the likely power outages that will occur on December 21. Besides, they’re chic and fashionable; it’s how the native peoples of North America lived for eons before they invented centralized heating.
Filed under Mayan Calendar Countdown
Chief Writing Wolf 