Just Laura has been added to the League. Check out her sunnyside up take on Sea - Addle. I do not know her anymore than I know RANDY T., but thru the crazy webs Jim Dedman weaves, we'll all be linking to one another soon.

Interesting article here

Rummy is now petitioning for testing of new and cooler nuclear weapons. Apparently the weapons Rummy is looking to proliferate and thereby encourage other nations to build is a weapon which would somehow seek out WMD in their secret underground bunkers. I guess that's where he still is guessing Iraq's weapons went. The plan is to drop these magically useful weapons on nations which bury their WMD, say, in the middle of a city, making the weapon, say, useless. Or is it? And, hey, if you're wrong, who the heck knows? because nobody is going to wander into an irradiated area to find out if they got the right spot.

What an evil, evil fuck.

CORRECTION: My wife (AKA: The Killjoy) has brought to my attention that I am an illiterate boob and that it's 1 in 5 pre-teens who are having sex. Now society is going to say this is wrong, and I find myself hard pressed to disagree with society. Mostly out of spite, I'll admit, because when I was 13 and wearing stained Coca-Cola shirts and working to take 1st chair in the Canyon Vista Middle School Honor's Band Tuba Brigade, curiously, nobody wanted to climb Mt. Steaner.

Teens want to have sex! WOW! The study says it's 1 in 5, but as I recall, as far as the guys I knew in high school, it was 5 in 5. Guys who said they didn't were 1) lying or 2) already having sex or 3) thought I was offering when I asked "are you interested in sex?"

You know, we've got at least two wars going on, Eastern Europe to police and one crazy fat toad man ranting in the DPRK about nuclear annihalation, and CNN has this posted as a headline. Sigh. Didn't the Kinsey Report come out 50 years ago? And why is CNN just finding all of this out now?

Uncle Ry's Helpful Hints:

Uncle Ry wishes a report like this had been released when HE was in high school. In an effort to help you kiddies out there who look to your Uncle Ry for guidance, we've provided a helpful synopsis of what you should take away from this very complicated report:
Look for the girls who smoke cigarettes either behind the school or in their cars on the way to school. These girls are much, much more fun than the girls at the prayer meetings or who volunteer in the library. The girls who smoke will save you a LOT of trouble in the long run.

And in a moment of weirdness, my ex-roommate's husband has gotten some real-estate on Ain't It Cool News with a film he's working on about a guy with elephantitus of the gonads. I just lived with her, I claim no responsibility for she or her husband.

MIRACLE MONDAY

I took out the Miracle Monday image. For some reason it's been totally causing problems with loading the page.

Apparently today is Miracle Monday. Miracle Monday has disappointingly little to do with Mel Brooks or even Gregory Hines. Rather, Elliot S! Maggin wrote a Superman comic which took place in the future (let's say in 5902), and followed up with a "novel" which you can buy online. Miracle Monday is kind of like Passover, except instead of waiting for a prophet, you set a place at your table for Superman to show up. In the year 5902 crime, war, poverty and poor hygiene have all been eradicated thanks to Superman's influence in the 21st Century, but Superman disappeared, so he's supposed to be returning on "Miracle Monday." Like, you know, Passover or Easter or Festivus or something.

Okay, I like my comics, but this is kind of creepy even to me. Of course I find Groundhog's Day creepy, so obviously it doesn't take much to shake me. Anyhow, Good Miracle Monday, as they say in 5902. Have some nachos and make a plate for the Man of Steel.

Interesting. The BBC and other foreign press have been talking a great to-do about Private Lynch's rescue from an Iraqi hospital. It seems that the actual circumstances of Lynch's liberation are a mystery, wrapped in enigma, smothered in secret sauce. When Lynch was heroically rescued from the Iraqi hospital, CNN and other sources stated that a diversionary force was sent in, and was under fire. BBC says now that possibly things may have not been quite as heroic as they were portrayed (there have been reports that there was no actual firefight and possibly blanks were used). From my personal recollection of the video footage, I recall gunfire in the background, but I'm also as reliable as a Firestone tire, so take that as you will. Also, note the dismissive farewell the US anchor drops at the end of the interview.

Ever since CNN ran a story about how the photos Bush used at the UN of nuclear basis in Iraq were fakes, I've been a bit jittery.

Sometimes I miss Hoover.

It was only a matter of time...

And in an amazing bit of restraint for Hollywood, I was amazed to read this very candid explanation today of why the Mr. Show movie "Run, Ronnie, Run" had never been released.

I've added a new phrase to my vocabulary: Recreational Shopping. It's something I've done for years, but Arizona has brought out the bored consumer within me. Today's little spree ended in the purchase of two new screwdrivers (I lost my standard flathead and philips... most curious), a pack of scredriver heads for my power-drill (all Craftsman, of course), and a package of blue socks (from Target). I think I got away okay this time, and I actually needed all of these items (well, the screwdriver heads I might need one day in the future...). Past excursions have ended in the purchase of Playstations, metal cats, and a remote controlled car that runs into a robot with the push of a button.

It finally broke 100 degrees this weekend in The Valley of the Sun. When I moved here last June 1st and it was 104 degrees, I kept asking everyone "when will it end?" "Sometime around Halloween," they'd say, and the week of Halloween it cooled off. Since then, everything's been peachy. But no longer. Sol took to the sky and began cooking my chubby little innards around Thursday afternoon. I now have the next 5 months to stew in my own juices. Mel was devastated by the change, and keeps forgetting it's hot out. He runs outside, then immediately returns to the door. It's going to be a long summer.

On Friday I am returning to Houston for a whirlwind trip in which I will be celebrating my mother's retirement. She's taking a well-deserved break after teaching public school for the past 30 years. The actual start date is earlier, but she took a few years off to give birth to my brother and myself, and to ensure her littercould read as well as bone and skin our own kills. She received her degree from Northern Michigan University and her masters from Univ. of Florida. Her first job in Florida coincided with the desgregation of schools in Florida, and her final job has been teaching a bunch of little goobers at Kaiser Elementary in Klein ISD, Texas. I salute my mum for putting up with the world's second most thankless job (after Distance Learning manager, which I ASSURE you is a labor of love and not money). She's a hell of lady, and she's seen more kids learn their ABCs than you can shake a stick at. My old man, being the capitalist raider he is, has been kept from becoming a corporate monster by her good deeds in the classroom and for the other 6 hours a day of job-related hoo-hah she's done for the past thirty years. I am proud to say that this year she won the award for Teacher of the Year for her school. We should all be so lucky to have a teacher like my mom. Unless it's the middle of July, and you're on the porch doing math homework assigned to "keep you frosty until school starts" while all the neighbor kids are watching the A-Team and enjoying ice cream.

If you'd like to e-mail my mum to congratulate her on her retirement and to thank her for her tireless work in the classroom, you can do it here: ksteans@kleinisd.net

Texas Democrats in Oklahoma? Anyone wondering why Democrats, or any sane person, would reject the Texas GOP proposed redistricting plans need only look at this map. Whole cities are broken into bizarre chunks to minimize the effects of large groups of voters, areas are wrapped around voting blocks in unnatural curves and coves in order to avoid any potential threat. Yet, somehow, the Panhandle is a solid mass.

If the GOP is this interested in maintaining a majority, they should try actually meeting the needs of their constituents. In the meantime, pillaging whole cities of their ability to fairly elect candidates which represent the constituency is as undemocratic and even unrepublican as voter fraud (thanks, LBJ!). Anyone genuinely interested in serving the public would not feel the need to go to lengths this deceitful. By winning the game at any cost, the GOP threatens to undermine the very fundamentals the game was based upon.

The fallout of this exodus is going to be as hard felt as the ousting of the Republicans at the end of Reconstruction. In order to achieve anything for the remainder of the term, Texas Democrats will have to be prepared for nothing but an uphill battle. They've finally pulled the tiger's tail, but perhaps after 140 years of domination, it's fair to ask them to work for their seats and right to represent.

The Amazing Dedman has pointed me toward an article in the Houston Chronicle about a man who claims to have originally dreamed up American Idol, a concept he claims to have pitched in 1994 to several production companies in the US and Europe. He also claims that he DOES, in fact, have evidence of the pitches and the time at which he made them.

As American Idol is widely known to have originated from a show broadcast in the UK called "Pop Idol" (which also sounds like a creepy breakfast cereal to me), one wonders if there is any truth to the man's claims. The gentleman is asking for $300 million.

You know, I do lay awake at night trying to figure out how to make the big score, and this seems like as good a scheme as any. But here's the deal, kids... when you start making any money, someone is always going to want a piece of you and your fortune. Someone is always going to be trying to make a grab. If you get rich, do it low profile.