"Alas, hunting for the continuous witch"

Funniest English/French/English translation ever:

The American [Lance Armstrong] did not change a iota his speech, repeating with the envi his innonence. "Once again, a European newspaper reports that I was controlled positive with drugs supporting the performance. Alas, hunting for the continuous witch and the article of tomorrow (this Tuesday) are nothing other than journalism with scandal.

[snip]

After its victorious fight against a cancer of the testicles and its return in the group, Lance Armstrong always defended nozzle and nails [would they mean "fought tooth and nails"?] used unspecified produced doping in spite of suspicions. With only one recovery, the American champion had been controlled positive, at the time of the turn 1999, but had been bleached after its the US team Postal one had produced a medical certificate showing that it had used a pomade to look after a pain with the saddle [a pain with the saddle?!?] containing a prohibited corticoid.

Read the whole thing. It's a hoot.

Oh, and as to whether the charges are true? I have no idea. But this article (via Drudge) sure makes it all clear as mud.

Don't EVER do what I did today!

Don't ever, ever, hit that "next blog" button.

You know how I said I'd wandered into the wrong neighborhood in the blogosphere? Well, that little wrong turn also unleashed spambots from h*ll that loaded my post with spamments.

AAAAaaaarrrrrrrgh! I thought I was going to escape the scourge of bloggers. Now I have to waste time deleting stupid spam comments, and figuring out how to block them in the future.

UPDATE: Wow, that was easy! I deleted all the spamments, and discovered that Blogger has a new, "permanent delete" feature, so you can trashcan the offending comment and it doesn't even leave a trace.

Second, I discovered that Blogger has a word-verification setting built right into the new settings menu. Who knew? I really hadn't messed around with the settings or template much lately. (Probably because I hadn't blogged much lately, either.)

So, I think it should be fixed now.

Oh, and obviously I have discovered a reason to use the "Flag this Blog" button from now on... if those spam blogs would just sit there quietly waiting for people to stumble across them, that's one thing, but to send spam bots out on vicious blog attacks, well, that's beyond the pale.

Depressing takeover of Blogger

I just did something I haven't done since I started blogging a year ago: I hit the "Next Blog" button (upper right corner).

Well, it was very depressing. Virtually all of the blogs were junk blogs, spam blogs. "Windows XP and other stuff." "Home equity loans". "Payday loans." "Industrial Shelving Units."

I felt like I'd wandered into a bad part of town in the blogosphere. It used to be that you could occasionally find a good blog that way, but my little experiment seems to indicate you can't anymore.

Improve your Vocabulary

John McAdams is a professor, so he knows some really good words. Like:

Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

Click on the link; you may find others that make you chuckle even more.

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Yes, it was. We didn't really get anything here other than a little rain and a fantastic light show high up in the southern sky, but places west of us were hit hard.

Heard this morning that 18 tornadoes touched down in Wisconsin last night. In the town of Viola, 80 to 90 houses were destroyed; about 30 were flattened in Stoughton.

During dinner, at about 7:30, our 8-yo son said, "What's that coming down from the sky?"

"Probably a leaf, honey," said I.
"But mom, it's blue, and kind of squarish, and coming down sort of like a kite" (here he demonstrated a twirling sort of motion with his hands).

It wasn't until about 9:00, watching the news, that I realized he probably saw some debris from the tornadoes coming down.

A woman just a mile or so south of us found an intact utility bill in her yard -- from Stoughton.

A man found a photograph of an unidentified woman in his yard. Others found tar paper and shingles.

There's nothing in our yard today. Whatever came down yesterday must have blown eastward again.

"End depression, shred newspapers"

I couldn't top that headline, so I just quoted directly from Chrenkoff. Haven't been reading him enough lately, but in the face of the Sheehan spectacle in Crawford (or the "Crawford quagmire") I think that should change.

Here's a quote from the above headlined post:

LAUER: Don't get me wrong, I think you're probably telling the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that might be possible with the conditions you're facing and with the insurgent attacks you're facing... What would you say to people who doubt that morale could be that high?

CAPTAIN SHERMAN POWELL: Well sir, I'd tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers I'd be pretty depressed as well.

Starbucks? NO. Local coffee shops? Yes.

And here's why (hat tip to brand-new blogger Michele):

Not only is Starbucks sponsoring "Pride" week, but an event that places innocent children in the middle of sexually explicit materials ... and registered child molesters will be there running the show? If Starbucks is doing this knowingly, it is blatant irresponsibility, and if they are doing it unknowingly, it is irresponsible of them not to have done their homework. I started pacing back-and-forth, and all I could think was "Starbucks hates children."

[snip...]

I overestimated, but discovered that if I drink five grande lattes a week for a year, the total number of lattes would equal 260, coming to a total cost of $1,040. So, in my four post-college years, I could have contributed as much as $4,160 to a company that supports the volunteer work of child abusers, "Pride" events, abortionists, and do I really need to go on?

I've never been a Starbucks person, except for the Barnes & Noble cafe, but then again, I'm not much of a Barnes & Noble person, either. I'm mostly a Mrs. Sippi's / internet shopping kind of person. But this gives me just one more reason to never step foot inside a Starbucks again.

Two words that sum up the sole but significant benefit of a hot, dry summer:

No bugs.

Hoax!

I was right; it is a joke.

Thanks to The Husband for sending me an email just now; thanks to our friend Jim S. for the catch on Rizzn.com:

I spoke with Maura Buxbaum at ID PR today; Maura is Christopher Walken’s publicist. She said that she’s been innundated with calls all day about Christopher Walken’s ‘bid for public office,’ but she did in fact confirm that the site is a hoax.

“Mr. Walken has no intentions for public office,” said Buxbaum. “Perhaps one of his fans got a little excited seeing him play Secretary Cleary with presidential aspirations in Wedding Crashers.”

Later in the post quoted above, the blogger (Mr. Rizzn???) says

most of us bloggers imitiate Mainstream Media most of the time to get past the gatekeepers.

Au contraire, mi amor! Whenever I've called a government office or any other entity (including the Crawford newspaper that published the endorsement of John Kerry), I always say I'm a blogger. And you know what, I always have been given the same access to press briefings or answers to questions as any other media person, for what it's worth.

Which isn't much, usually.

(But still... gotta have MORE COWBELL!!! And again, thanks for the link, honey!)

Christopher Walken for President?

This must be a joke, right?

But Instapundit (Michael Totten filling in) says it's so, and here's the website.

My family loves the goofy Fatboy Slim video he dances his way through, and Tom and I often do the "Cham-pag-nya?" bit from Saturday Night Live.

But want him to be President? Ha!

Summer of my Discontent

I despise August. I really don't like heat much, and so by August (especially this summer), I'm really sick of it. I'm longing for cool days, chilly nights, a brisk northwest breeze to knock leaves off the trees, a hint of snow in the air, and dusk at about 4:30.

I must have the opposite of SAD. It's in the cool, dark evenings of fall and winter that I feel most invigorated and happiest.

Of course, my summer discontent isn't helped by the fact that all my children were born in either March or April, which means I spent lots of Augusts feeling queasy.

For several years after my last child was born, I would physically react to the sound of crickets chirping in August; I'd feel a sense of dread, almost depression.

Finally I realized I'd been classically conditioned to feel ill at the sound of crickets because of all those awful first-trimesters that were spent in the doldrums of August.

Today is shaping up to be another in a series of relentlessly sunny, hot, dry August days.

Good Lord, I can't wait for November.

Some interesting pro-life news

Quoting from a Pro-Life WI email today:

Contraceptives don't reduce unplanned pregnancies

A new report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI, the research arm of Planned Parenthood which openly supports abortion and widespread access to birth control) includes support for the claim that readily accessible contraceptives do not reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies.

The report claims that 48 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are "unplanned." Of those pregnancies, 47 percent end in abortion, 40 percent are carried to full term, and 13 percent end in miscarriage. Advocates of abortion often argue that to decrease abortions, unintended pregnancies must be reduced through increased access to contraceptives. But AGI’s own research indicates that 53 percent of women who have “unintended” pregnancies used a contraceptive method during the month they got pregnant.

The data also indicate that marriage plays a unique role as a protector of the unborn. And cohabitation is not an adequate substitute for marriage. (emphasis mine)

The report also reveals that women choose abortion overwhelmingly for reasons other than health, or for extreme reasons. According to AGI, only four percent of abortions are obtained as a result of rape, incest, or for the “health” of the mother.(emphasis mine)

Meeting the BBA

Well, finally had a chance to meet some of the BBA folks in person at State Fair. Had a very good time, though as you can see from Jib's post, there's not much that I can actually blog about.

But welcome to everybody stopping by here from the other BBA blogger's sites! Pop back again soon, as I'm returning to blogging more consistently and hope to have some good stuff over the next week or so.

And if you hear any remarks about typing speed on those other guys' blogs -- just ignore! (Off the record, off the record...)

Blogging elsewhere

You can find me over at the BBA today, as well as on a new blog that I've been invited to join.

Hoping to post some pictures here today; we'll see how the day goes!

UPDATE: In my haste this morning, I cut and pasted the same link twice. The link to the new blog is correct now. Sorry about that.

Sen. Frist and stem cells

Jim S., who commented here, also wondered what I thought about Sen. Frist. I assume you mean as far as stem cells, Jim, unless there's something I missed.

Frankly, I'm disappointed with Frist, while my admiration for Bush has gone up again. I'm not sure that Bush is as forceful as he should be with the Democrats, nor as stingy with federal spending as he needs to be, but on the moral issues, he stands firm against the wishy-washy and all those steeped in the culture of death.

Here's a little fisking -- or should I say, "fristing" -- of a NYT editorial:

The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, deserves credit for moving gingerly toward a more expansive policy on stem cell research.

He deserves no credit at all; he ought to be censured for pandering to the left.

Mr. Frist - the transplant-surgeon-turned-lawmaker who was last seen catering to religious conservatives by questioning whether Terri Schiavo was really in a persistent vegetative state - showed courage and common sense yesterday by endorsing a bill to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research.

If you take a position consistent with a pro-life ethic, you're "catering" to "religious conservatives", but if you agree with the pro-abort nihilists at the NYT, you're showing "courage" and "common sense". Yep. Not to mention the fact that there was very good evidence to believe that Terri Schiavo was not, in fact, in a PVS. But what matter evidence when there's a liberal axe to grind?

Such research has the potential to provide cures for a range of diseases someday, but it is anathema to the religious right because the stem cells are extracted from microscopic embryos that are destroyed in the process.

Actually, such research has bombed out again and again, as opposed to the truly promising research with adult stem cells, and "someday" really should read "probably never". And apparently if an embryo is "microscopic", it's really not human. You would think that the NYT would be smarter than to fall for the cruel bigotry of sizeism. And just to top it off, they use the loaded word "anathema".

There's such an insidious assumption that true scientists must be void of religious belief or ethical standards (other than perhaps agreeing it's wrong to torture animals). I'm just sorry to see Sen. Frist cave in so quickly to the anti-life lobby, all in the name of science.

A serious post

Haven't had the time or inclination for serious posting lately; thus, the silly coffee stuff.

But today is different; I heard this morning on the Today show that Susan Torres had her baby, by Ceasarean section. The baby is premature, and tiny (less then 2 pounds), but apparently doing OK.

I'd blogged about this very sad situation here. A commenter had asked a couple weeks ago, "What happened? Did we ever hear?" and I tried to post about it then but just as I was about to hit "publish", I lost my wireless connection and thus the whole post. Just didn't have the time to re-write it.

But now we know. We know that the baby is alive, which surely must bring some joy to Susan's suffering husband and relatives.

Still, there are an awful lot of rocks that have been thrown into that young man's cart. I pray that he will continue to get lots of help in pulling it.

UPDATE: Jim S. comments below, adding this moving essay as found on The Corner. The essay was written by Susan's brother-in-law, who is part of this online magazine. Thank you, Jim; I hadn't seen that.

Coffee

People seem to be getting a kick out of that last post with the coffee photo, so here's a link to where I got it from. My husband was the one who originally found it, and downloaded the jpg.

So, in honor of hubby, here's another good one:


Disclaimer: I am not associated in any way, shape, or form, with the company selling these funny coffee items, nor do I necessarily endorse all the sentiments they express (like this one... or maybe I do... hmmmm....)