Random Nuclear Strikes

was Saturday. Go to Kirk’s place to see some celebratory musings.

“You all know what holds up a chicken, right?”

Can civvies be Legs? ‘Cause if so then I guess I’m just a damned Leg. Maybe this will help my condition. 

1.1 billion people. 1 gold medal.

Read the whole thing.

Aftereffects here:

Call it the Abhinav Effect. In the 24 hours since the shooter shot for gold at the Beijing Olympics, 65 air rifles have flown off shelves from just one shop in Chandigarh.

Fresh orders have been placed for 50 more and there has been, according to happy faced attendants at Ahuja Arms Company, telephone queries from about three dozen anxious parents, excited children tugging at their sleeves for the latest must-have.

Cool! My Indian buddy will be pleased.
h/t: Bitter Bitch.

I would dearly LOVE IT if Obama picked Biden for his VP, as seems to be the buzz since Biden was summoned to Georgia. Does no one recall why Joe B. left the race in 1987? I was a youthful Biden supporter (forgive me), perhaps the only one in Oregon that early in the race. Oh, the pain of finding out your guy is a fake. I remember it well.

But actually, I think Obama will pick Hillary. He needs to re-energize.

As for Our Side, I think McCain will pick Rudy Giuliani. Post-Heller, I got no problem with that. Two American Heroes (TM) vs. a neophyte and a crook. Works for me.

No, it’s not a synonym for suicide anymore.

I recently read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons to see if it was any better than The Da Vinci Code. Yeah, it was better, but not enough to make me want to read anything he writes ever again.* The only point in Angels and Demons of interest was a vertical wind tunnel at CERN the staff used to take skydiving breaks. Now that was a cool idea!

Well, now it’s come to my neighborhood. I’m definitely dragging the wife to this one.

She won’t go on roller coasters because she’s worried about vertigo. But I think she could handle this. At $50 for two flights, it’s cheap at the price!

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* One of the most annoying things about Dan Brown’s writing: he cheats.

Modern readers (and too many current writers) are so unaware of the requirements of a consistent point of view that they can read (or write) something like The Da Vinci Code where the author has no understanding of or control over point-of-view whatsoever – where the narration leaps from mind to mind in each scene for no reason at all, like a grasshopper in a hot skillet, with no benefit to the story – and they (the readers, the writer) don’t even seem to notice. I mention The Da Vinci Code not to dis one particular writer – it is a common, almost universal malaise among current popular writers not skilled in their craft – but because in one chapter, which may be the ultimate example of out-of-control viewpoint inanity, we view a long scene through the viewpoint of the arch-villain who, in his own thoughts, does not seem to know that he is the arch-villain! Or a villain at all. He chats with our heroes and thinks his thoughts about recent outlandish events without ever once acknowledging – in his own mind – that he has been the architect of all this villainy. What a cheat! What horse puckey! What sales!! (“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” – P.T. Barnum.)

–Dan Simmons, Nov.-Dec. 2005 Message from Dan