So Help Me…Allah?

Man, you had to know this was coming…

Debate Brews Over Use of Koran in Court
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Traditionally, witnesses taking the stand in court are sworn in by placing their hand on the Bible (search).
But when Muslims in Guilford County, N.C., tried to donate copies of the Koran (search) for courtroom use, judges turned them down.

I find it especially offensive when the Bible/Koran/Torah/Tipitaka/Old Laws used to swear by is held by a person in Seminole costume. A person can only take so much.

Looking For The Perfect Gift For The Little Woman?

How about an 8’x 4 1/2′ abstract painting of a Feminine Naughty Bit*?
I didn’t think so.
*Edited for the tender dispositions of some of our faint-hearted contributors.

If You’ve Got the Time…

…I’ve got a fascinating read for you.

…Nor did he brag about his vast accomplishments. More than 600 patents to his credit. A fortune amassed. Powerful foes toppled.
As death approached, he believed his place in history had been secured, thanks to his most spectacular inventions: machine vision and the bar code scanner, technology that has dramatically altered the way in which we live.
“He was a simple man,” said his Houston oncologist, Dr. Giora Mavligit. “A mensch.”
But to his many detractors, Lemelson was something else.
They claim Lemelson’s patents were in fact worthless. Lemelson, they say, was one of the great frauds of the 20th century.

The Forgotten Ruined Man

Completely lost amid the press hoopla over the sentencing of scumbag Eric Rudolph is any mention of the man the press and the FBI villified: Richard Jewell
Funny how the press doesn’t want to mention him.

Shocking Police Brutality

My God man, it’s not like they were trying to steal tvs or other electronics. No, this was a gift from a benevolent Deity to His people:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) — Hundreds of looters battled police all weekend at the site of a beer train wreck in violence that left one woman dead, South African police said on Monday as they kept a heavy guard on the remaining alcohol.
The train carrying 180,000 crates of beer from South African Breweries derailed on Friday night near Waterval Boven, 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of Johannesburg, Superintendent Izak van Zyl said.
By Saturday morning, police were battling up to 200 people from the nearby township trying to make off with crates of beer.

Modern manna, my friends.

The ‘Six Feet Under’ Series Finale

They laid the series to rest.
And did it just right. It made up for the two unspeakably tedious and grinding seasons I missed. When I threw my hands up and said ‘I can’t watch this crap anymore’…because they were tedious and grinding. Another one of those ‘oh, give it a rest, would you’ disintegrations of something that had once been a pleasure and a Sunday evening staple.
But they ended it very, very well and I’m glad we took the time to watch.

Lighten Up, Francis

The trouble started, Mr. Rivers said, when a group of Norwegian soldiers on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo came upon the song in 2002 and decided to make a rock video of it.

The video is a tour de force. (Clever of moi, huh?)
Turns out the song was written by an American to protest the ‘nonchalance’ of U.S. involvement in the Balkans. Who knew? I thought it was brilliant commentary on UN/NATO ineptitude. No matter. The Serbs have a problem with it, since it calls them ‘bad guys’.

“Such things only help the Serbian side to prove that there is no security in Kosovo, no respect for human rights and no multiethnicity,” Agence France-Presse quoted the adviser, Slobodan Samardzic, as saying.
“The president was very shocked to learn about this,” said Vuk Jeremic, the senior foreign policy adviser to President Boris Tadic of Serbia. Mr. Tadic was especially upset because the soldiers came from Norway, a country with a strong record for peace initiatives and conflict resolution, Mr. Jeremic said in an interview.
The video showed that four years after the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic’s autocratic government in Serbia, the nation’s image abroad is still sullied. “This is what boys from Norway think about Serbs,” he said.

Not to let the insensitive Norwegian bastards off alone, they find a poor national Guardsman who caused trouble too.

The Norwegians’ video is not the only case of cultural insensitivity by NATO troops in Kosovo. In July, Express, a Kosovo Albanian newspaper, republished an interview by an American soldier with his hometown newspaper. In it the soldier, Sgt. Robbie Nelson, from the 635th Armor unit of the Kansas National Guard, compared local farming methods to turn-of-19th-century America. The article caused some amusement and some anger.

Sigh. For the record, all these indicted Serbian War Criminals seem to indicate pretty conclusively that they were, in fact, the bad guys. So, fl@ck ’em. And according to this 2004 Serbian government veggie .pdf, what they are touting as progress would seem to bolster the Sgt.’s assessment of the state of Serbian agriculture. So, again, fl@ck ’em. Let’s all make luscious summer tomato sammiches and watch the video. (I think that one hunky Norwegian looks like the lead singer for A-HA…gah-rrrowllll!)

Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd

His skin was pale and his eye was odd.
He shaved the faces of gentlemen,
Who never thereafter were heard of again,
Did Sweeney, Sweeney Todd….

…The Demon Barber of

Street

And yaHOO buddy, Mrs. Lovett’s (Patti Lupone!! WOO hoo! Bingley and I saw her in Evita) back on Broadway! One of my favorite Bingley/THS adventures was seeing the original, front row balcony ~ my hiding my eyes and him hooting as Sweeney (Len Cariou) slit another throat in the barber’s chair. I always got them open in time to see the body slip down the chute to Mrs. Lovett’s (The INCOMPARABLE Angela Lansbury) meat grinder.
UPDATE: Hmmm, not sure what to think about this…

Producers may be taking the hint.
The 2005-6 Broadway season has exactly one commercial musical revival planned. And it is not a splashy enterprise: “Sweeney Todd,” Stephen Sondheim’s dark classic about a murderous barber. A slimmed-down, acclaimed British production starring Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris – both Broadway stars but not exactly bankable names – it features a cast of nine actors who all double as musicians, a creative choice that has the additional advantage of lowering the show’s weekly running costs.

Morons

Morons.

San Francisco Shuns Retired USS Iowa
The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation’s most deadly military accidents.
Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific…
…Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman’s Wharf its new home.
But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military’s stance on gays, among other things...

If I remember correctly, the Iowa is a big part of the reason San Franciscans still speak English (Or whatever language that is they speak on the Planet SF.), instead of Japanese.

Read more »

It’s Carnival Time

Joisey, that is.
Update: I fixed the link. I am a moron. Carry on.

Nothin’ Like a Sunday Treat

We were charged when we found out our neighborhood has one. I love that dorky music.

Old-fashioned ice cream trucks in demand
Booming business sees growing number of new vendors
ABOARD TRUCK NO. 95 – As music-box tunes tinkle from the white van rolling down Greentree Place in sweltering heat, a man rushes forward, digging into his pocket and scanning the photographic menu.
“I haven’t been to an ice cream truck in 40 years. I have no idea what I want,” says the white-haired man from Massillon. Moments later, he plops a dollar bill on the counter, remembering his childhood favorite.
“How about a Creamsicle?”

Nope. Chocolate Eclair Bar for me, please.

Keep Small Children Away

‘cos there’s a big spider on my house.

The Things You See In The East River

I looked over the side of the boat today and saw this:

That, my friends, I believe is a condom filled with cocaine that is floating around in NY harbor tonight. Somebody’s gonna be upset.
Blech

Signs in Crawford

Powerline has them. Oh and I’ll bet you won’t see them anywhere on the news.

The photo below depicts a sign posted by the neighbord nearest to the roadside crosses. The neighbor does not agree with the anti-Bush protesters.

Let the Games Begin

Jury finds Merck at fault in man’s death
ANGLETON, Texas (Reuters) – A jury in the first civil trial against Merck & Co.’s popular painkiller Vioxx on Friday found the pharmaceutical company liable for the 2001 death of a Texas man, awarding his widow a total of more than $250 million..

Ho boy.

Predicting a Bittersweet Homecoming…

…as noted in a dismal little Der Spiegel article.

WANTED: PIOUS PEOPLE
When the German Pope Returns Home, He’ll Find an Unchristian Land
When Pope Benedict XVI lands in Cologne for World Youth Day, he will be arriving in a country that has become foreign to him. The churches are empty, the politicians are non-believers and the people in the east are complete strangers to God. And now organizers of the biggest religious festival of the post-war era plan to turn it into a launching pad for a new religious awareness…
…The German pope’s first trip abroad is essentially a homecoming to a strange land, a country in which more people enter training programs to become orthopaedic shoemakers and equestrian managers than to join the Catholic clergy; a country in which just eight percent of the population in a city like Magdeburg, in the former East Germany, has been baptized…

Read more »

“Who Speaks For Casey Sheehan?”

Casey Sheehan’s deeds were heroic. By laying down his life for this nation, he delivered the kind of message that is written in blood, that lives forever. Why on Earth would a loving mother choose to refocus the nation’s attention onto her words and away from his deeds?
And what was Casey Sheehan’s message? It had nothing to do with President Bush. It didn’t even have to do with the war, necessarily. It said something much simpler: “I love my country.”

Please read the whole thing.

I’d Say So

“When you have the situation that we have in Arizona — where, by some estimates, over 4,000 illegals attempt to cross every night — this is not just a crisis, it’s a full-scale invasion,” Rep. J.D. Hayworth (search), R-Ariz., told FOX News on Friday.

What else would you call it?

Rough Weather in Wisconsin

What an awful mess. Oh, I feel for them, dang! Having been through our meesly little tornado here, I need a valium and three quaaludes everytime there’s a thunderstorm, less mind when the Alert Radio starts blaring. (As Bingley can tell you, there are nights around here when it stays on.) But it seems there’s always a bright spot somewhere in the midst of destruction…

Lenny Peaslee, executive chef at the Stoughton Country Club, said the twister tore the roof off as about 40 people took refuge in the basement.
“We were … hiding behind the bar,” he said. “We had beer, anyway.“

Why am I never with that person on days like this?

Australians Say ‘Sod Off’ to Anti-G’Day Mates

‘G’day mate’ OK again in Australia
‘Mate’ ban in parliament is lifted, ridiculed as ‘pomposity gone mad’
CANBERRA, Australia – A ban by Australia’s Parliament House on the term “mate,” a popular colloquialism and symbol of egalitarianism, has been overturned following a barrage of protest.
Security guards at Parliament House in Canberra had been directed on Thursday to refer to people as sir and ma’am. The ban was imposed after the head of a government department complained about being called mate, local media reported.
But a parliamentary circular issued on Friday removed the directive warning staff not to use “mate” when dealing with the public or members of parliament, instead suggesting they use their judgment on when a more formal approach is required.

They’re a few tinnies short of a slab, I’d say. “Pomposity gone mad‘? Like kangaroos in the top paddock.

My Favorite Building In NY

Can’t really put my finger on why it appeals to me, though.

What Is This Ship Doing?

I think it’s a bulk vessel, my guess is carrying cocoa or some other agricultural product and they have had to fumigate the hold. The hatches that you see are now lifted and opened to air the ship out.
Any other ideas?
(UPDATE: Read why Bingley is “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”!)

Zipping By Governor’s Island At 35 Knots

A Worthy Road Trip

If you’ve got some time on your hands, someone to watch the dogs and don’t mind the gas prices, you might want to join up. If you can’t, ask our left Coast Swillers to honk and wave for you when they go by.

Supporters of U.S. Involvement in Iraq Plan Caravans to Texas
The anti-war protest by a Vacaville mother outside the president’s Texas ranch is galvanizing some who support the country’s continued involvement in Iraq. One of those is a serviceman’s mother who feels now more than ever the country must stand strong behind the troops.
Roseville resident Deborah Johns’ son William is a Marine stationed in Iraq. She sympathizes with Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war protester who lost her son to enemy fire 16 months ago. However, Johns believes a pull-out now would negate what troops are fighting for in Iraq. She takes exception to Sheehan’s protest and plans to do something about it.
“It absolutely mushroomed, but that’s our liberal media,” said Johns. “They continue to like to hear the negative and not the positive that’s going on.” Johns is organizing what could be hundreds of others to participate in a caravan leaving San Francisco on Monday. The caravan is destined for Crawford, Texas, in a gesture of support for President George W. Bush.

A Swill Salute to a commentor at our bud The Gateway Pundit, who’s also pleased to report the “Cindy Hour” in ST. Louis was a BUST-OLA. Pity, that.

FLASH !! This Just In…

Gentle, Grieving Mother Sheehan Channels Daily Kos

No film at 11. If there’s a God.