WTF Were They Thinking???

Do Not Want!!

Usually I'm a sucker for anything chambered in .45 Long Colt.

This time, not so much...

Courtesy of US Firearms Mfg, this is their Omni Snubnose model.
AKA, one seriously fugly pistol!

Too Late For Caturday?

Cat-Blogging? Better Than No Post At All.

One of the best things about cats is that they're always doing something that will make you laugh. They likely don't intend to, but I think it's inherent in their personalities.

Take this pic for example.


A bushel basket of cats crammed in a bathroom sink!

Look at 'em! They're just so gosh-darned cute!

But I'd still have to turn on the faucet, just to watch the explosion...

Feeding The Book Addict's Habit

Weekend? What Weekend?

Look what the Big Brown Truck of Happiness brought me!



See y'all in 1042 pages!

UPDATE: Plowed through 504 pages until I forced myself to quit at 2:20 AM Monday morning...

Very good so far!!

More Movie Quotes

When Things Get Slow, Run With An Old Meme!!

I was sorting through a stack of DVDs when I started quoting lines of dialogue to myself. So, I thought you might as well join in the fun.

While it would be very easy to Google the answers, you will not do this! It is against the Blogger Honor Code, and on some of the more obscure quotes, I'll know!!

So, here's a bunch of quotes from 20 of my favorite films. Post your answers in the comments, or if you want to keep your hard work between me & thee, email them to me! Addy's in the sidebar. <------

The winner gets a DVD of my choice!!

Have fun!

1) "I've been ionized, but I'm okay now."

2) Character #1 - "Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run."
Character #2 - "May the wings of liberty never lose a feather."

3) Character #1 - "I thought I was a hard man, sir."
Character #2 - "You are merely a general. I must be a king."

4) "Now listen to me you benighted muckers. We're going to teach you soldiering. The world's noblest profession. When we're done with you, you'll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men."

5) Character #1 - "Dear Lord, please don't let me fuck up!"
Character #2 - "I didn't quite copy that. Say again, please."
Character #1 - "I said everything's A-OK!"

6) "Yeah, I mean aside from the cheating, we were a great couple. I mean that's what high school was about, algebra, bad lunch, and infidelity."

7) Character #1 - "Teaching is just a way to pay the bills until I finish my novel."
Character #2 - "How long you been workin' on it?"
Character #1 - "Four and a half years."
Character #3 - "It must be very good."
Character #1 - "It's a piece of shit. Would anyone like to smoke some pot?"

8) "They were Methodists, a denomination my father referred to as Baptists who could read."

9) Character #1 - "Who's this? Who are you?"
Character #2 - "I'm the player to be named later."

10)Character #1 - "Well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That's my policy."
Character #2 - "Intent? How did you establish that?"
Character #1 - "When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher's knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross!"
[walks out of the room]
Character #2 - "He's got a point."

11) "They sent in their best man, and when we roll across the 59th Street bridge tomorrow, on our way to freedom, we're going to have their best man leading the way - from the neck up!"

12) "If you marched a hundred and six miles by the stars and your calculations were just one per cent out, you could pass the Eiffel Tower in daylight and never even see it."

13) "It's a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn't always hate her. When I was a child, I only kind of disliked her."

14) "All I did was say to my wife, That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!"

15) "Let me tell you what you're dealing with here. I run a franchise. The company hired me to dig as much ore out of this hellhole as possible. My hookers are clean, some of them are good looking. My booze isn't watered. The workers are happy. When the workers are happy, they dig more ore. They get paid more bonus money. When they dig more ore, the company's happy. When the company's happy, I'm happy."

16) Character #1 - "You passed out cigarettes for a smoke-a-thon on Earth Day. You installed speed bumps on the handicapped ramps and, most recently, you dumped 100 pounds of... MEAT on a peaceful vegan protest!"
Character #2 - "Oh, come on! That was way more than 100 pounds!"

17) "The only life I saw for the last million miles were the hypnotized bunnies. Most of them are now wedged in the tires."

18) Character #1 - "Can you give me one good reason why I should let my sons march down that road like a bunch of damn fools?"
Character #2 - "Virginia needs all her sons, {Character #1's Name}."
Character #1 = "They don't belong to the state, they belong to ME! When they were babies I never saw the state comin' around here with a spare tit!"

19) Character #1 - "Come on, we're headin' downtown."
Character #2 - "Where your warrant at?"
Character #1 - "Behind that preposition."
Character #2 - "What?"
Character #1 - "Didn't you go to school? You can't end a sentence with a preposition."
Character #2 - "Oh. Then, uh, where your warrant at, motherfucker?"

20) Character #1 - "Good luck to you, you Godless murderers."
Character #2 - "That's one of the most moving benedictions I ever heard."

GOOD LUCK!!

Collector's Firearms Is Taunting Me!

It Needs A Bayonet!

OK, now they're just f#¢%ing with me...

First, they drop a BREN gun on me. At $4000, it is, of course, well beyond my meager ability to acquire, even on layaway.

So, what do they do as an encore?

Dangle the #1 object of my .30-06 semi-auto desire in front of me!

Yes, the Browning Automatic Rifle. Inspired creation of John Moses Browning (PBUH), made with the expressed purpose of completely fucking up the shit of the massed Hun.

Also for the low low price of $4000...

Brit-Brit Is A Nit-Wit

When Showbiz Types Play With Guns, Darwin's Waiting Offstage!

Careful, there, Britney. Keeping a finger on the trigger when you stuff a revolver in your waistband is a real good way to gain an additional nether orifice!

Whoever the gun-wrangler is for the video shoot needs to have his trigger finger crushed in a vice. I don't care if it's unloaded, it's just bad gun-handling behavior!

One more time:

KEEP YER BOOGER HOOK OFF THE BANG-SWITCH UNTIL YOU'RE LINED UP ON THE TARGET!!

That is all...

Show Me Your Knife

Memes! Easier Than Original Content!!

To quote Og:

"Take the knife out of your pocket and take a picture of it, and post it. Or post a picture of the same knife from a brochure or whatever.

No, not your favorite knife, or your prettiest, but the one that never leaves your side."

C'mon! Show me yours! All the cool kids are whipping it out!

Here's mine!

This is Mr. Switchy. He's been riding with me for 4 years or so. Mr. Switchy started off as a pseudo-Boker button lock folder with a tanto blade. A handy coil spring ordered from eBay and 5 minutes with a Torx driver made Mr. Switchy a lot easier to open.



Mr. Switchy looks pristine because he's being reserved for the day he needs to cut some goblin from @$$hole to appetite. I've got a Kershaw Leek I use for everyday knife chores.

The Sky Is Crying

It's Not Easy Staying Green...

RAIN!!! GLORIOUS RAIN!!!

Hope we see a lot more before the furnace kicks on again.

Friday Night Gripes

Beech, Beech, Beech!!

Well, there's no better way to start off the weekend than to vent some steam.

So, here goes.

The Man switched us from Blue Cross to Cigna. While having any insurance is preferable to none, it's costing a whole lot more. I just refilled my prescriptions via mail-order. Blue Cross got them here in 3 days, and cost $177 for a 3 month supply. Cigna's cost $293, we're on day 7, and they're still not here. Hope my head doesn't explode for lack of BP meds...


Two dead rats on the road on the way home. Usually it's squooshed squirrels or possums. Odd to see dead rats out in the open. Hope they didn't catch the plague.


After years of waiting, they're finally replacing our drainage ditches with rain gutters, sidewalks & curbs. I was OK with the ditches. We'll have 456 days of effed up streets, culminating in a special month where we all get to park a block away every night. Won't that be fun!


Pookie Cat isn't getting any better. She's still eating, drinking & excreting, but doesn't do much more than lay in one spot all day. I'm picking up a new bottle of kitty get-well-juice from the vet's office in the morning. We shall see what happens.


I can't play an F chord on a guitar to save my life. In fact, just about any barre chord is quite beyond the grasp of my kielbasa-like fingers. Might be time to tune the thing to Open G and play slide guitar. Good thing I really like Little Feat!

OK, I'll shut up now. Y'all have a good weekend!

Better Late Than Never!

Old Glory Rendered In Poker Chips???

Almost forgot to post this...

What do you do over the 4th of July when they've banned fireworks due to dry conditions?

Mostly sit around and drink scotch and eat gumbo, but you can always turn over the poker table and chips to a couple of munchkins, and let them get creative!

By our nickel/dime/quarter stakes, there's $64.50 on the table, more or less...

Sign Of The Times

If I Was A Lab Rat, At Least I'd Have The SPCA & Humane Society On My Side...



Feeling a bit like a rat with electrodes stuck in my noggin...

The situation at work is growing tense. The Asst. Director really screwed the pooch yesterday, and tried laying blame on the innocent.

Long story short, a bunch of whiny A-holes volunteered to help with a training roll-out of major new policies, then reneged at the last minute, leaving a lot of scheduled classes uncovered. Asst. Director decided to cancel classes, informed trainers, but neglected to tell the training center.

So, at 8 am today, they had dozens of people waiting for a class, and no one there to deliver the material. AD decided to blame the trainers for not being there. Called us onto the carpet, started laying down fire & brimstone, waving around the old schedule.

When the AD was reminded of Friday's schedule adjustment and class cancellation, things should have gotten better, but suddenly it was an exercise in blame-shifting. Didn't we realize that the whiny A-holes who left us in the lurch were bad trainers, and it was our responsibility to get this training done??

Grrrr... This crazy bint is barely competent to be in a 3rd world brothel giving discount tug jobs to syphilitic UN peacekeepers, much less masquerading as an HR professional.

None of us are really trainers, either. We've each got other duties The Man hired us for, and while this shit is going on, those duties are boiling over on the rear burner.

Sigh. Beats the unemployment line. But not by much...

Those "Where Were You" Moments

10 Years Gone And The Pain Is Still Strong

9/11/01




I was browsing on Facebook this morning, and noticed that Nancy France had a quiz up asking if you remembered where you were 10 years ago today.

About 99.9% replied that they knew where they were, and knew exactly what they were doing at the time.

This isn't too surprising. Events like that just sear into your memory. You're stunned into inactivity. It's just too big to process.

For my grandparents, I'm sure the Pearl Harbor bombing announcement was a big one. My parents have a photographic image of November 22, 1963 when shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.

The first "Where Were You" moment I can recall with that sort of clarity was when Ronald Reagan was shot. I was walking down the back hallway on the 2nd floor at Spring Forest Junior High towards the main office. It was mid-period, and I was running an errand for the teacher. This kid comes bursting out of one of the classrooms, and with tears streaming down his face, screamed "The President got shot! The President got shot!" as he hightailed it towards the office. I guess they had a TV on in the classroom.

I was a senior in high school when the Challenger shuttle exploded. I remember sitting in the school library watching the news on the TV mounted over the checkout desk.

I remember talking on the phone with a friend of mine from Scout Camp named Thomas when the TV flashed to images of hordes of Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall.

I was sitting with my Dad in the den when the Columbia burned up over the skies of Texas.

As for 9/11, I recall that with great clarity as well. It was my habit to turn on the TV in the morning to CNN as I puttered around my apartment before going to work.
I came out of my bedroom to see on the TV images of smoke rising from the 1st tower. They were talking about a small plane impacting minutes earlier.

I can remember thinking about the WWII bomber that ran into the Empire State Building in thick fog in 1945, and wondering what kind of crappy pilot hits a building on a clear day?

Next thing I know, the 2nd hijacked plane streaked into the picture and impacted the South WTC tower, and for me, the world stood still for a few moments.

There's that old saw about "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action". In this case, Twice is all it took. No effin' way that two planes just happen to hit that close together within minutes. Something was seriously messed up.

I tore myself away from the TV and drove into work. Most of the 7th floor folks were in the training room, watching the TV we used for training videos. There was really crappy reception since we were in the middle of the building and didn't have cable.

There was a hushed mood, at least until the towers collapsed. At that point people started getting squirrelly. Some of the managers pushed for shutting down and sending everyone home. After all, we were in a tall building in Dallas, a major US telecom hub.

We didn't go home, but the rest of the day passed in a daze. All my training classes were cancelled, so I mostly sat there and soaked in the images on the TV. Seared into memory. Too big to process...

Thrown For A Loop

Next Time, I Take The Danger Train!

Note To Self: It's almost *always* faster to stay on the surface streets...

Out wandering around town again on behalf of The Man. Got to experience a different set of traffic patterns. Mostly the pattern involved stomping on your brake pedal for 45 minutes to go 5 miles.

For Houston Knowledge Points - Tell me in the comments what freeway I was on, and what direction I was going!

(Click Pic For Trafficky Goodness)


Fortunately, I had a destination in mind, and a tranquilizer waiting there for me. If you're into such things, the limited run of the Quesada Oktoberfest is a very tasty stick!

I Told You The Prius Was Crappy!!

"Don't Sit Under The Grackle Tree With Anyone Else But Me!!"

As a result of the extended drought, The Man has decreed that as a water-saving measure no vehicles shall be washed until further notice.

You'd think they'd make an exception for vehicles that have been shat upon by a horde of grackles!

Some Things Never Get Old!

There's A Million Reptilian Crocodilians In The Pavilion!

"OK, all you scaly snapperheads! I need a crafty alligator to go sneak up on Jimbo!!

Who's gonna volunteer??"



"EXCELLENT! Just don't mess up his farookin' good hair!"

Houston Mini-Blogmeet Version 2.0

From Hospital To Hacienda In Two Days!!

If the first one's a hit, why not do a sequel??

Blogger dinners are always more fun with a Jerry stirred into the pot! He was able to join Nancy, Leslie and my ownself at Guadalajara Hacienda for some conversation and Tex-Mex cuisine.



Everyone seemed to have a good time. Except for this guy. He seemed upset the whole time. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure we all ate chicken...

50+ Reasons Texas Is the Best State in America

Thank You, Lord, For Not Hatching Me In Iowa!

Saw this list on the Houston Press website...

I'd replace a few. Namely, there's no mention of Chicken Fried Bacon strips with cream gravy at Sodolak's in Snook, The Texas Ranger Museum in Waco, The Dallas Cowboys, Pearl beer, and giant armadillos.


50 Reasons Texas Is the Best State in America

50. Port Arthur: A gritty Golden Triangle refinery town that somehow produced Janis Joplin, Jimmy Johnson, Robert Rauschenberg and UGK.

49. Schlitterbahn is the greatest waterpark in America, and it makes excellent use of its Hill Country surroundings.

48. Chuck Norris. He doesn't sleep; he waits. And he's a Texas Ranger, dammit.

47. Dublin Dr Pepper -- for those people who think regular old Dr Peppers aren't Texan enough.

46. We gave the world the Quaid brothers, who have given us some great performances both off and on the screen. And we just don't mean Randy with the off-screen stuff, either.

45. You are never very far from a Whataburger.

44. Texas has produced some of the world's best music, but Bob Wills is still the king.

43. The stunning ecological diversity of the state, from the arid canyons of Big Bend to the shadowy forest of the Big Thicket.

42. No state income tax, suckaz.

41. Texas absolutely kicks ass in producing wind energy, and it doesn't get much greener than that.

30. The Gruene Dance Hall on a Saturday night, where it doesn't seem like the 21st century at all.

29. Earl Campbell was a legend in Austin and Houston and shows every bit of what it took to become one.

28. The State Fair on Texas-OU Weekend is an amazing, appalling, exciting thing to see, even if you're not wearing crimson or burnt orange.

27. ZZ Top have told the world about Texas and still revel in it.

26. If there's an ethnic food that's not available in Houston, it involves a very, very small ethnicity.

25. Selena remains in the hearts of fans long after her murder.

24. Strolling around the Buckhorn Museum in San Antonio with a beer.

23. We're the biggest state in the Lower 48 so, you know, suck on that, Delaware.

22. The remoteness of El Paso: Waaaaay out there in the desert, all by its lonesome, still considered part of the family.

21. You have to admit -- Texas politicians can be very entertaining. Dangerous, yes; misguided, almost always; but at least they provide lots of laughs, none of them intentional.

20. October in Texas almost makes up for August.

19. South Congress in Austin is always changing but always keeping the spirit that made it what it is, unlike Sixth Street.

18. The state's musical history is filled with blues greats like T-Bone Walker, Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

17. Blue Bell ice cream and the way Texans are fiercely loyal to it.

16. Bat colonies in big cities like Austin and Houston.

15. Fiesta Marts carry food you never knew existed.

14. Few states have legislatures that meet less often than Texas's, and we like to keep it that way.

13. The stunning art museums in Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth. And the fact that we know enough not to act shocked at the idea that Fort Worth would have a world-class art museum.

12. Hippie Hollow isn't as weird or free as it once was, but it's still Hippie Hollow. Everyone should get naked there once.

11. Houston took rap and made it its own and gave it to the rest of you. You're welcome.

10. The Frio River on a scorching summer day. There's a reason they call it the Frio.

9. The odds of meeting an actual astronaut are higher here than anywhere else.

8. George Strait populated the state with his exes.

7. The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo draws farm kids and their animals to Reliant Park and some of the biggest concerts of the year.

6. Sunrises over the Gulf. Even if you had a rough night, they can brighten your spirits.

5. Beyoncé: "Cruising down 8th Street, off-white Lexus / Driving so slow, but BK is from Texas." Jay-Z, she's just trying to keep you from getting one for going 55 in a 54.

4. Nolan Ryan is someone who can unite Houston, Dallas and Austin.

3. For better or worse, three of our last nine presidents have been from Texas.

2. Kolaches: You will never find better ones than you do here.

1. Texans are so damn charming when they brag about their state. (Um, aren't we?)