Word is in that BigWig and Clif just spent upwards of $260 dollars on beer at the beer store. Clif says BigWig was like a kid in a candy store. I can see it now.
I just got back from a lunch-hour trip to Gander Mountain. Too much fishing equipment to even know where to start.
A hurricane is a terrible thing, but you have the power to make it worse by following these simple rules.
Before the hurricane arrives…
1) Don’t evacuate. Tell the press how you and your family stayed put through the Category 9 hurricane of 1962, and you’re not leaving now.
2) Try to surf in the dangerously elevated waves that precede the storm. This will get you on TV in that little segment right before the end of the half hour. Then they’ll cut back to the anchor, and he’ll be shaking his head with the “that crazy nut” smile on his face. Wouldn’t that be cool?
3) If everyone else evacuates, stay and loot. Life, and especially George Bush, has been unfair to you. This is your only chance to get the high-quality stereo equipment your starving children need to survive.
4) If you must evacuate, wait until the last minute. Complain. Blame the government for the totally unnecessary traffic jam that happens when 4 million people try and leave your city at the same time. Blame George Bush for not having the Barbara Eden-like power to blink you and four-thousand-thousand people into a place that welcomes you unreservedly and isn’t in the path of the next hurricane.
5) If you are a local politician, declare the evacuation a success when 80% of the population has fled. Do not use school buses to evacuate the citizens that remain. Park the buses, police cars, and other municipal vehicles in a place where they are certain to be destroyed.
6) If you are a governor, hold on to every bit of power you possess. If the federal government offers to help, treat the offer like an invasion attempt by the Red Chinese. If you are asked to make a decision, tell them you’ll get back to them tomorrow.
7) If you are a Democrat in the House or Senate, do nothing. Your job is to rejoice when bad things happen to America. Nothing has happened yet. Hang loose. Pretend you could have handled Iraq better. Pretend you have some control over the Supreme Court vacancy.
8) If you are the media, rub your hands together and lick your lips. This is what you live for. Deploy rain-slickered reporters onto abandoned beaches. Interview a weather geek who will gladly explain what “storm surge” is. Repeat this piece hourly. Break into popular programs every time the storm moves five miles closer to land. If you are FOX, in lieu of popular programs, break into “The War at Home” or “American Dad.”
While the hurricane is striking…
1) If you didn’t evacuate, hunker down. Maybe it won’t be that bad.
2) If you were looting, stop. You’ll have plenty of time after the storm passes. If it was worth risking your life to steal a vacuum cleaner, you could have broken into the vacuum store last week.
3) If you are 1000+ miles away from the storm, place calls to relatives in the storm area every three minutes. Their phone lines can take it.
4) If you are in the media, continue running the storm surge piece every hour. Rotate your rain-slickered reporters from beach to beach, making it look like they’re in danger, while not actually putting them in danger. Find a car in a tree. This is gold. If necessary, place a car in a tree.
After the hurricane strikes…
1) If you did not evacuate, camp out on anything that is above water, and wait for help to arrive. Your city is under water, so you’ll have to be reached by boat or helicopter. No boats can be brought to your city, because the roads are impassable for 100 miles. No helicopters are nearby. They were all evacuated to avoid destruction in the storm. By your estimation, and this is the same estimation that figured staying in the city was a grand idea, rescue should arrive in an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.
2) When rescuers arrive, refuse to leave your home. You made it this far, didn’t you?
3) If you evacuated, ask to be let back into town immediately. It’s your right, dammit.
4) If you are a local politician, blame everyone but yourself. Go on a whirlwind tour. Revel in the media spotlight, because hell, any publicity is good publicity. Estimate the death toll at 100,000. Trust the media not to challenge your made-up number. Move your family to a very nice neighborhood in Texas. Make a covert call to Carmax and see if they can work you a deal on a few thousand water-damaged buses and police cars.
5) If you are the governor, blame everyone but yourself. If you’re a little lacking in the brains department, trust the media to gloss over it. Don’t allow the feds into YOUR state. They’re just trying to steal your magic bag.
6) If you are a black political leader, suggest that the storm rescue was slow. Suggest that the reason it was slow is the skin color of many of the victims. Use innuendo. Don’t present facts. The message is: “We all know white people want black people to die.” Trust the media to put the message out often. Blame the local mayor. If the local mayor is black, blame the governor. If the governor is a Democrat, blame George Bush.
7) If you are an insane black political leader, suggest that whitey done blowed up the levees.
8) If you are a Democrat in the House or Senate, then this is your chance to shine. The American people have chosen to take all grown-up decisions out of your hands, so the only thing that really makes you smile is a pile of dead Americans. Blame them on George Bush. It is your only function.
9) If you are the media, cancel all programming. Thirty solid minutes of footage can be looped and shown in perpetuity. Add the occasional storm surge piece to taste. Do NOT blame George Bush. You are neutral observers. Interview only people who will blame George Bush.
10) If you are George Bush, accept all blame. Think of a very large number. Triple it. Offer to send this much taxpayer money into one of the most corrupt cities and states in our union. Repeat this exercise until people stop blaming you, or the country is bankrupt. Whichever comes first. YOu may not rebuild New Orleans, but you’re gonna build Ray Nagin a damn nice house.
11) If you are the director of FEMA, this is what people meant when they told you it was a thankless job. It doesn’t matter that not one of the idiots blaming you could have done the job better. This is all your fault. Except to the degree that it is George Bush’s fault for appointing you.
12) If the storm wasn’t that bad, blame George Bush for forcing you to evacuate for no reason.
Remember. The wind and rain are caused by nature. The rest of the disaster is up to you.
The 158th edition–An Avignon Edition–of the Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by This Blog is Full of Crap this week.
If you’d like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here. If you would like to be added to the Carnival announcement list, send an email to cotvanities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
October 5th – TechnoGypsy
October 12th – The Uncredible HallQ
October 19th – The World According To Nick
October 26th – Baboon Pirates
November 2nd – Free Money Finance
November 9th – Ravings
November 16th – The Examining Room
November 23rd – Don Surber
November 30th – File It Under
December 7th – Denali Flavors
December 14th – Multiple Mentality
December 21st – Ravenwood’s Universe
December 28th – Chicken Soup For The Damned
All other dates are currently open for hosting. Also, be sure to check out the Carnival’s multitudinous offspring, most of which can be found via the Meta-Carnival.
Is there a scion of the Carnival missing? Drop us a line and let us know.
Finally, if submitting to the myriad of carnivals spawned by CoTV has proven difficult, head over to the Conservative Cat and take a look at his tool.
Quicksand Myth Debunked: You Can Float Free.
Good thing I found this. ‘Cause I’ve wondered how I might escape if ever trapped in quicksand.
Don’t look at me like that. You know you’ve pondered it too.
All alcohol has cardiac benefits.
I expect after fishing all next week, some of us will be have especially healthy hearts.
It’s been a fairly calm week, so I have had time to add another bird to the page.
The Collared Pratincole, Glareola prantincola, is a member of the family of Glareolidae first described by Linneaus in 1766. Glareolidae are one of three Suborders in the Order of Charadriiformes, the other Suborders being Lari: gulls and their allies; and Alcae: auks. Glareolidae are one of fourteen families of the sub-Order Charadrii: the waders; are all Old World birds, and include coursers and pratincoles, with a total of 17 species.
They are shore birds, with slim, elongated bodies, and often long wings – Birds of the Middle East says the typical habitat for the Collared Pratincole is “sun-baked mud flats and flat, firm plains with low vegetation, often near water” which perfectly describes where they were seen here. The Collared Pratincole ranges from southern Europe to north and central Africa through central Asia, and winters south to southern Africa & India.
It is roughly the size of a dove, a “highly aerial wader resembling marsh terns in graceful fast flight, long pointed wings, deeply forked tail and short bill.” It feeds primarlily on insects, especially grasshoppers and beetles. Several of these birds passed thru Camp Victory in late spring/early summer, and were seen in the dry fields in the area. The Collared Pratincole looks like a souped up mourning dove, perhaps. It certainly gives the impression of being built for speed.
Also rather imposing from the front view…
More pics here.
Previously: The Spur Winged Plover
Next: The Indian Roller
The Spur-Winged Plover, Hopolopterus spinosus or Vanellus spinosus, depending on who you ask, is widely distributed across the north half of Africa, into Egypt and the near East. They are monogamic, and both male and female share in nesting activities. Unlike other Charadriidae, Spur Wings are determinate egg layers according to this study, and will not lay additional eggs in a nest if some are destroyed. The Spur Wings showed up here at Camp Victory in early March this year, and the pictures here are from 15 May 2005. Here is mom or dad – male and female have the same markings – a friend remarked that they could be called “Tuxedo Birds”.
Spur-winged Plovers normally lay a clutch of 4 eggs, so unfortunately it looks like two chicks were already gone by the time these two were sighted. The camoflage these guys have is incredible, they blend right in to the dry lake bed they were standing on.
Extremely cute little guys – although I think the Black-winged Stilt chick here is even cuter…
More on the Black-winged Stilt here.
Previously: The Black Francolin
Next: The Collared Pratincole
Mexico tests slimming powers of tequila’s agave – Yahoo! News.
Sadly for the world’s growing band of tequila lovers,
agave’s possible health benefits are lost when the plant is
distilled into alcohol.
That’s not true, you know. I always lose weight when I drink tequila.
I usually attribute it to the vomiting, however.
Last night at around 8:00 PM, sitting at home in the D.C. suburbs, I get a phone call. It’s a nice young lady, slight, indistinguishable foreign accent, inviting me down to the Mall in downtown D.C. for a series of events to support our troops.
“Really,” I asked? “Supporting our troops? What kind of events?”
“Oh, you know, a big rally, lots of people, marches, bands, food” she said.
“What’s the political theme?”, I asked.
“Supporting the troops.”
“You sure this isn’t some anti-Bush thing, or some anti-war demonstration?” I asked, aware that the Stalinists and Trotskyites of International ANSWER were planning a weekend of patchouli, not bathing, and demonstrating. International ANSWER, of course, is a wholly owned subsidiary of of the Workers World Party, which split from the American Communist Party in the 1950s, deeming it insufficiently supportive of Stalin’s massacre of the Hungarians.
“No, it’s to support our troops, that’s all.”
She wouldn’t give me any details other than to say this weekend’s activities are to support our troops.
So I checked the times & locations against some web sites like this one and some news accounts.
Here’s the big rally “to support the troops.”
The headline on that Washington Post article reads “Anti-War Rally Will be First for Many.”
Yeah, I don’t doubt it will be the first anti-war rally for many in attendance, considering these scum are getting people to attend by promising them it’s a “support the troops” rally.
Just remember that when you see the breathless media coverage of the rally and the stellar crowds.
I don’t know how they got my contact information and came up with that particular appeal; my charitable giving runs mostly through the Catholic Church, my political giving through conservative or libertarian causes. Odd that, that a really radical anti-war group would try to sell itself to conservatives as “supporting the troops.” In a way it is fitting: the anti-war cause is just another (dishonest) way to advance their radical left wing openly anti-American agenda, so I shouldn’t be shocked that they are dishonest in the methods they are using to get people to attend their lame demonstration.
Of course she may have been telling the absolute truth when she said the protests are meant to “support our troops,” in the sense that the hard left has adopted Al Qaida and any insurgents / terrorists in Iraq as their “troops.”
Bastards.
