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This Amazing Year! – What’s My Name?

Friends,

In a bid to find the silver lining amongst the roses, to make lemonade out of a sow’s ear, I’m determined to find something, anything, positive to write about. To this end, here’s are a couple of the greatest names I’ve seen in the last 24 hours.

This gentleman is not actually the Republic of China. Far from it. Friends, allow me to introduce you to Indianapolis Colts linebacker par excellence, Mr. Tyjuan Hagler.

Yes, it's spelled Tyjuan.
But wait, you say that local governments don’t have a sense of humor anymore? Then you’ll be surprised to learn that one of the newest streets in this here desert wasteland, the City of Festivals, is Jackalope Lane.

Not every town will name a street after a seldom seen but completely, no kidding, real rodent that tastes like lobster. It takes guts, determination, and maybe a belly-full of martoonies.

Next up: more things that don’t stink.

– bob

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This Amazing Year! – Global Warming Defeated!

Friends,

The cold snap facing the country means that the yammering, hectoring and screeching by the global warming alarmists (including nine out of ten scientists, number ten having been burnt at the stake) has paid off. It’s over people, and Mother Earth is the big winner. Hooray!

Even fancypants Los Angeles designers have lost their love for the green agenda. Sometimes when I’m confused about questions of sustainability, I wonder what the designers can tell me. I’m relieved to hear that it’s now about proper color reproduction and no longer about compactness or fluorescence.

Maybe the poor economic situation is saving the planet. Yippee! People aren’t buying anything or going anywhere, so those dastardly carbons aren’t scurrying about with the destructive verve they once did. If we’re not driving, we sure don’t need to replace family trucksters with hybrids so evil carbons aren’t released in their manufacture. See? We all win.

We can even do more. Hopefully, government-mandated alternative fuel vehicles will make the planet even cooler…

The California State Assembly in November 1972, contracted with two companies to develop steam-engine vehicles. One company, Aerojet Liquid Rocket Company of Sacramento, installed a steam turbine engine in a lengthed Vega. Photo courtesy Peterson Automotive Museum.

Much, much cooler. Bundle up!

– bob

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This Crappy Year! – Dispatched Like A Despised Despot

Friends!

Happy New Year everybody! There was certainly a lot to dislike about 2008, so the firing squad is lining up and taking aim. The assembled throngs are cheering with a morbid glee. “Take that, crappy economy!” the chant begins. “Burn in hell, corrupt politicians!” “Screw you, yammering chatterers!” “May giant amazons play field hockey with your skulls, genocidal madmen!”

Of course, it’s been 2009 for some time in most of the world with peace and goodwill already taking hold. Alternatively, they could already be asleep, but they’re surely having peaceful dreams. Right?

As for my own celebration, I’ve taken the advice of law enforcement to heart and rather than marking the new year with random gunplay, I’ll be firing pepper spray into the air. Don’t you try it though. Remember, pepper spray comes down as fast as it goes up. You could put an eye out.

Thanks for your patronage throughout the year. I really appreciate it. You’re the greatest readers ever in the history of forever. Maybe longer.

Your pal,

– bob

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50-Year Storm Alert! – Icicle Update

Friends,

I’m just gonna post the pictures. With temperatures in the teens overnight and the insulation in my roof ranging from poor to none, there’s enough runoff to build some monstrous icicles. Take that crappy Chinese Christmas ornament companies!

Icicles, Part I

Icicles, Part II

Icicles, Part III

More this afternoon (if I don’t kill myself putting tire chains on the Jeep first)…

– bob

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50-Year Storm Alert! – Command Performance Edition

Friends,

Our most frequent commenter, Mrs. Anonymous, wants more pictures and that’s what she’ll get! I hope she was talking about snow pictures…

To the left of the webcam image...
This is to the left of the frame you see in the webcam. That pile of snow in the foreground was pushed there by the local snowplow operators. It looks to be almost four feet high right now. Thanks CalTrans!

The gutters don't work very well, do they?
I see this view out my living room window and the icicles sprung up (down) overnight. Charming!

Loaded.
This view is a little to the left of the one above it. If you could remove all of that pesky snow from the tree, you’d see Lily Rock along the ridge.

That's a lot of snow - for here.
And this is the rest of the oak tree you see in the upper right of the webcam frame.

The roads out of here are shut down today, so I’m trying to get some work done with the power going off periodically and a dead or dying phone line. Even the wireless router has decided to stop working! It’s like living out on the frontier!

Yeah, right.

– bob

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50-Year Storm Alert! – The Snowplow Diaries

Friends,

The storm of the half-century has certainly delivered. There should be almost two feet of snow accumulation by the time this front has moved through. I’m staying put at my Secret Alpine Laboratory™, though. I don’t need the grief of, you know, crashing while trying to get off the hill.

A Jeepster for your love...
It was pretty nice up here yesterday, blue skies and pretty crisp.

Yes, it's a shed. What of it?
It’s snowing right now and the puppy dog is not at all happy.

A puppy dog.
Not as happy as she was dining on yellow snow yesterday. Geez.

– bob

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50-Year Storm Alert! – Upside Edition

Friends,

This shot is courtesy of our pals at the James Reserve just up the street from the Lodge and their robotic webcam observatory…

James Reserve Robotic Webcam shot from 15 December 2008
If you click on the picture, you can go there and fiddle with the camera yourself. It does require Java on your machine, but you can handle that, right?

What’s a little ice on the roads and blizzard conditions? You can’t make a landscape like that without cracking a few plastic bumpers, so to speak.

– bob

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Jaunty Notice: Service Interruption

Friends,

Well, that’s just great. I vehemently opposed California’s Proposition 8 last November on civil rights grounds, but the entire staff here at Jaunty Central has decided to “call in gay” anyway. My editor, my assistant Magdalena, everybody.

Posting is gonna be a little light today…

– bob

P.S. Here at work, the updated Websense web filtering system has definitely not called in gay and is diligently making life much more difficult for everybody. Myself included. Between its Victorian prudishness and its strange and ironic anti-technology bent, it just inspires the staff to devise fiendish methods to get around it. I don’t blame them.

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Blago Bagged, Big Bustup Befuddles Billet Backers

One more…

Bwahahahaha!

Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich was arrested this morning.

Bye, bye, Blago.

For more good news on this subject, let’s see what Reuters has to say about it…

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement.

This is good enough, but America’s favorite prosecutor had this to say about the charges…

“The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement. “They allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism.”

…and he’s seen some corruption in his time!

Ted Stevens Memorial Career Iconography

See? It’s not all bad news out there.

– bob

UPDATE: Edited to add Ted Stevens Memorial Career Iconography.

UPDATE II: Here’s a link to the news report on WSIL TV. I can see it through the filters here, so hopefully it’ll get past whatever foolishness is keeping you from seeing other video content.

UPDATE 3: The New York Times has a handy blog post with the complaint (Mrs. Anonymous notes in the comments that the complaint is hilarious). The link to the post contains this warning though:

Criminal Complaint (Contains Profanity) – pdf

Poor Pinch! Politics ain’t pretty!

UPDATE D: Yes, I’m enjoying the alliteration, why do you ask? (um, nobody asked. – ed But they might!)

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Time For Fun – Caption Contest!

Howdy Jeepers,

I’ve been traipsing about again in the Life Magazine photo archive on the Googles and stumbled on a series of shots of a Jeep trip taken some time in the 50s. Fun? Are you kidding?

A fine picture of a really fun Jeep trip gone wrong...
Apparently, somebody up ahead has broken down and held up the entire line. The yahoos who aren’t staying on the trail (Tread Lightly, you bastards) seem confused. Lots of cowboy hats are in evidence, but strangely, no hoods are up. Are these really Jeeps?

Your captions are welcome in the comments. The best comment will win a cabinet-level position in the Obama administration.

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: MSNBC’s First Read blog notes this morning that Agriculture, Education, Energy, HHS, HUD, Labor and Transportation are still vacant, so please also list which department you’d like to run with your photo caption. Thanks!

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Jaunty Dumptruck O’ News! – Dumptruck Edition

Friends,

The political theatre provided by Rick “The Rick” Wagoner of GM, Bob “Orange Apron” Nardelli of Chrysler, and Alan “Why Am I Here?” Mullaly of Ford at this hour seems to have secured their respective companies loan guarantees from the government.

A fine Chrysler product. (sigh)
Not TARP money, because the current president doesn’t like that. The money is coming from the fund already set up to help the manufacturers build green cars that run on mermaid spit.

Chrysler, in particular, dodged a bullet with this one. Most of the congresscritters gave Nardelli the what-for about his Cerberus overlords’ unwillingness to pony up more of their money to keep the Dodge Boys afloat. They have a point, but a little loan now should keep them going long enough to file for bankruptcy in February. Hooray?

A fine picture of Chrysler's fortunes.
Oy!

-bob

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Quaint Tree Lighting Ceremony

Friends,

Come with me to a place that time forgot, before the propane blew up. Come to my little burg where townfolk gather in the square…

Hey look, isn't that...
…to await the arrival of Santa and his missus on the back of a fire truck (shouldn’t that fire truck been waiting over by the splodey fields? – ed That was later. Check your history.).

Who's minding the store?
But what we were all waiting for, of course was the lighting of the 80-foot Christmas Tree in the center of town accompanied by clapping and cheers!

Tree lit!
Then the power went out.

Tree not lit.
Not kidding.

Your pal,

bob