new candidate for the darwin awards

A bullet fired in the air during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony came down and struck a participant in the head
(via jim)

Tony on the Tallulah*

*note expression of mortal terror in third shot ;)

starting them early

For you kayakers out there, EJ is launching his own line of playboats. They look pretty slick. You can check them out here, but don't expect them in stores anytime soon. Also, check out his new trick, the McNasty. What is additionally cool is his line of kids' boats, which is on one hand is good because they will probably help get people into the sport at a younger age, but on the other hand may mean you'll be rescuing twelve-year-olds from whirlpools and strainers. Do we really want kids on class IV rivers? Where do we draw the line?

a place I'd rather be

This is so stupid I've just got to get one for Scout.

Blame this one on Nate

Why can't Episcopalians play chess?

Because they can't tell their bishops from queens.

eschew obfuscation

Need a completely meaningless essay on the poststructural dynamics of Madonna's music? Marxist-Freudian interpretations of blue shoelaces? Interpersonal Hegelian beanpole dialectics? Look no further than the Postmodern Generator, a funny take on the excesses of modern cultural theory. My favorite: "The Failure of Culture: Pretextual capitalist theory and subtextual feminism"
What!?

wow. these are rabbits.

just a thought

There’s very little occurring in Ada tonight but the weather. I’ve heard my neighbors talk about the winter wind around here, how during November the northern currents move absolutely unimpeded through the area, but I’d not noticed it until tonight. The wind has descended. As I sit upstairs in my little cubbyhole, trying to study, sipping tea and listening to a bit of Gillian Welch, the wind has wrapped around my house. It is a constant murmur, building and slowing and building again, enough to make the neighborhood dogs bark. When a particularly large gust arrives, after its untold movements across a full day over the western flatlands, the house records its presence, creaking here and there around the windows, something on the front porch whistling. This afternoon a storm passed over borne on this same progression of air and was gone within minutes, thunderheads piled up to the sky, prairie schooners moving east. Leaving the town wet and washed. I walked outside and watched bright orange gold from the setting sun spread outward from behind clouds larger than the Midwest itself. Rain clung to the air. Now it is dark, the moon’s light barely a pale wash on the rim of the horizon, and a damp wind coils and races through the streets, eddying against houses and released again over the fields east of town. It grows colder each hour. The squall that moved over us this afternoon is probably somewhere in western Pennsylvania now, wetting down the forests and cornfields around Pittsburg and worrying the dogs there. By tomorrow morning the wind will be tossing waves out over the Atlantic. But now I get to enjoy it, listening to its soft cycles against my house, walking outside and watching it swish the trees around like brooms. As I stand in the street and watch the neighborhood lean and sway I suddenly feel like I am at the bottom of a great river, feeling the water flow past me, bouncing off houses and bending the dogwoods downstream. This river might be huge, spreading its shores from Maine to Georgia, smoothing its channel here. I am caught in its current.

Happy Birthday, me

Today is my birthday. It is cold and rainy and I have to study all day. It is Tuesday.
Darn.

Anyone care to attend service with me Sunday?

Oh

I just got this email from Ali. Anyone out there who's read Bush Sr.'s memoirs (I know all of you have) care to corroborate this? "In his memoirs, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Bush, Sr., wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War: 'Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of International response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.'"

There will be a lunar eclipse Saturday night. Impress your friends! Impress tribal chieftans in Zaire!

Surely this is a joke.

the pedal v. the metal

Why do people hate bicyclists so much? Is it because we blatantly flaunt our independence from the pollution, death and flab-causing automobile? Or do we just look really dorky wearing those stupid helmets? A few nights ago I was riding my bike home, minding my own business, when this car pulls up beside me and the two guys started cussing at me. What? I ignored them and took my turn, but as I pulled away they yelled something else so, without thinking, I flipped them off over my shoulder. Now New York City this is not, so I should have expected to get a rise out of these goons, and I did. They immediately peeled out and started following me, right on my tail. A minute before I had been a random bicycler, now I was the guy these idiots wanted to beat up. Was it my fancy new mudguard? My all-purpose backpack? I calmly rode home with these guys right behind me, and it wasn't until I pulled into my driveway that they sped off. This is not an isolated incident, either. For years I have had stuff thrown at me, been almost sideswiped and had random things yelled at me, all because I wanted to get some excercise while traveling from point A to point B. I'm used to it now, but articles like this really burn me. Know the feeling?

A question

You are in hell and facing an eternity of torment, but the devil offers you a way out, which you can take once and only once at any time from now on. Today, if you ask him to, the devil will toss a fair coin once and if it comes up heads you are free (but if tails then you face eternal torment with no possibility of reprieve). You don’t have to play today, though, because tomorrow the devil will make the deal slightly more favourable to you (and you know this): he’ll toss the coin twice but just one head will free you. The day after, the offer will improve further: 3 tosses with just one head needed. And so on (4 tosses, 5 tosses, ….1000 tosses …) for the rest of time if needed. So, given that the devil will give you better odds on every day after this one, but that you want to escape from hell some time, when should accept his offer?

Lawyer Friend Makes Strong Case for Nachos

Dog days

I know I'm prone to prattle on about my dog at probably all-too-often intervals, but for the Scout fans out there, this may amuse: She caught a swan. Yes, a big ol' black swan that lives on the pond in the middle of campus who tries to bite anyone who comes near. He had it coming, if you ask me. You see, every day when I get out of class I hop on my bike and take Scout running down the large grass promenade that bisects the campus. This is arguably the high point in her day. After laying in the grass by my bike for 2-3 hours, she is ready to RUN so we tear out across the place, scaring pedestrians and tormenting all the squirrels we see. And every time we get to the pond Scout leaps into the water and swims after the swans, who keep just out of her range and hiss to beat the band. I think she's pretty much convinced she'll never catch them, but lately, when she does finally give up and heads back to shore, the swans have started to chase her, biting at her tail. Absolutely hilarious. She gets freaked and swims even harder for shore, then stands there and barks at them. Whatever it is she's saying to them, I agree.

Well today they were off their guard. Scout comes swooping down the grass only to find the swans were resting on the shore. By the time they realized what was up, she was on top of them and tackled one into the water. I yelled for her to stop but I was laughing too hard to do much good. All you could see was this big spray of water and big black wings flapping, the swan hissing and squawking, Scout somewhere under the water. When she finally emerged, the swan had flown off but Scout had the biggest grin on her face I've ever seen. Aaaah yeahhh.. She climbed up on the shore, shook her fur and just sat, watching the swans with utter satisfaction. Peace, one might say.

I should probably feel bad for letting Scout torment these poor swans, but the way I see it, they're assholes and they need the exercise. I would never let her kill them, but as for the chase, let it be. Mr. Jose Ortego y Gasset, in his book "Meditations on Hunting," put it best:

"The only adequate response to a being obsessed with avoiding capture . . . is to try and catch it."