Thanks again, John

1. Memorial Day = John Sullivan
Memorial Day for me will always be remembering Felecia's nephew John Sullivan, who was killed in Iraq in 2003. He was a sweet, sweet guy.

1. Tribute on my site: www.williamt.com/johnsullivan/index.htm
2. Someone else's: www.militarycity.com/valor/256917.html

2. Reading for President Obama
President Obama recently decided to milk the political cow of Gitmo, "torture", the US is "bad", blah blah. Here's Dick Cheneys' outstanding, substantial response: No Middle Ground on Terrorism.

It's so tough to pick a QOTD from Cheney's piece. Alright, I'll take these two. One is a factual point that is important, but virtually unknown. The second is... well, read on.

QOTD1

"You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists."
- Cheney

QOTD2

"The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world--for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences--and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for--our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity."
- Cheney

Here's President Obama's speech on the matter: President Obama speech. The phrase "rule of law" appear 8 times. "Rule of law" competes with "for the children" as the best indicator of lying crap in any political speech.

3. 40-something Dating Advantage
40-something dating is a dang competitive proposition. And you've got to keep your edge to succeed. I'm studiously accumulating the box tops necessary to obtain my Frosted Flakes Star Trek flash drive wristband.

What 40-something Naper-yenta could resist? Imagine walking in a cougar-packed martini bar, full-a snooties, Frosted Flakes Star Trek flash drive dangling freely from my bony, effeminite wrist..."Here hot stuff, let me save those files for you." Ka-ching!

BTW, did you get your head wrapped around that one? A free 1GB flash drive with 8 boxtops of Frosted Flakes? It couldn't be more than 5 years ago that such a thing didn't even exist, and now they're giving the things away in boxes of Tony Flakes. WTF?

According to the Wikipedia page on flash drives, the first drive sold was in 2001 by IBM. It held 8 MB. That's less than 1% of 1GB. But 8MB was more than 10X the size of an old 700K floppy disk. Awesome technology.

4. Fisheads, Fisheads
Sammie the Schipperke is our crazy uncle who lives in the attic off buckets of fisheads we send up once a week or so. I've never met a crankier, crazier mutt. That's Sammie to the right as a killer pup, like 12 years ago. One of my earliest posts on the web was Brownie and Sammie from way back in 1997: Mutts

Here's a representative schipperke video... the dog is growling and snapping at its owner for like 2 minutes: Killer Schipperke video

People almost universally ignore me when I first tell them that Sammie will bite them. It takes a second earnest, "I'm not kidding; he will absolutely bite you" to get their attention. My favorite non-response is "Oh, dogs love me." SNAP! On a positive note, Sammie's jaws are really weak and it's never more than just a snap.

So, Sammie has been terrorizing the local critters at The Castle for years... deer, squirrels, raccoons, birds, children... just chasing them out of the yard or whatever. Well, Sammie ran at a deer yesterday in the backyard, and a critter finally turned on him. I heard Sammie's gol dang, blood-curdling shriek and ran out there, and that fucking deer was running at a downed and bloodied Sammie to finish him off. It was crazy. And intense. My appearance turned the deer around, and I grabbed Sammie up and ran inside.

We did a few hours at the doggie emergency room, and Sammie's gonna be OK. He got a good whack to the eye. It'll be interesting to see if Sammie goes back to his cranky, faux attack dog ways once he's all healed.
grrrrrr... yow, bill