Some Recent Disclaimers On Consumer Products

Some recent product disclaimers (or at least new to me). A big list of disclaimers appeared here over a year ago...

•King Size Mattress -- Warning: Do not attempt to swallow
•Hardware Store Rotary Drill -- This product not intended for dental purposes
•Sleeping Pills -- Caution: May make you drowsy
•Dog Shampoo -- The contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish
•Shampoo -- Intended for use on hair only -- not eyes
•Stroller -- Remove infant before folding for storage
•Curling Iron -- Not for internal use
•Microwave Oven -- Do not use for drying pets
•Child's Playhouse -- This is not a toy
•Toilet Bowl Cleaning Brush -- Do not use orally
•Can of Insecticide -- This spray is harmful to insects
•Firecrackers -- Do not light while holding in mouth
•Peanut Butter -- Warning: May contain nuts
•TV Dinner -- Remove plastic wrap cover before eating
•Batteries -- Do not swallow. C or D batteries may cause choking
•.22-Caliber Rifle -- May cause injury or death
•Hemorrhoid Suppositories -- Remove aluminum wrapping before insertion
•Disposable Diapers -- Dispose of after use
•Electric Cattle Prod -- For use on animals only

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What Is Pi Good For? The Answer Is Sitting On Your Shoulders

I've waited over fifty years to find out the answer to the question "What is Pi [1] good for?" I found out today when I was trying to figure out my hat size (somewhere between 7 3/4 and 7 7/8). Huge.

One of the common methods of calculating hat size (aside from looking at a chart) is to divide the circumference of your head by Pi!

1. Measure the circumference of your head across the forehead, an inch above your eyebrows and just below the curve of the skull in back.
2. Divide the result by Pi (3.14159).
3. Convert that number to the nearest eighth. This is your hat size.

[1] A transcendental number (approximately 3.14159), Pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle and is a constant in many mathematical expressions.

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The Big Rock Candy Mountains Lyrics

My friend and reader, Pete Backes, sent along the lyrics to this great song by Harry McClintock. Harry was a Wobbly songwriter and wrote at least one other memorable one: Hallelujah I'm A Bum! You may know this tune from the great Cohen Brothers movie, O Brother Where Art Thou? Pete sent the song because he remembered my fascination with hobos. It evokes a vanishing world I had a few glimpses of, growing up as I did, a couple of blocks from the Burlington North railroad to the west, and the Northern Pacific to the east.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hiking and he said boys I'm not turning
I'm headin for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains
So come with me we'll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain't no short handled shovels, no axes saws or picks
I'm a goin to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

I'll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains
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Sopranos' Matt Bevalaqua a/k/a Lilo Brancato Charged In Bronx Cop Killing

Lilo Brancato, Jr., was charged with killing NYPD officer Daniel Enchautegu in The Bronx over the weekend. Brancato appeared in numerous films, including starring (as an unknown) in the DeNiro-directed A Bronx Tale in 1993. He also played the role of Matt Bevalaqua in The Sopranos.

He and his partner (who seems to have been the actual shooter) were seriously injured by the officer they gunned down "when they capped a night of drunken partying at a Bronx strip club by breaking into the apartment of a dead man in a sick search for drugs, officials revealed yesterday. "

You may remember him as Matt Bevalaqua in The Sopranos. He played one of the flat out dumbest characters on The Sopranos (and to be the dumbest on that show requires some doing). His character attempts to assassinate Capo Christopher Moltisanti. He didn't feel they were moving up the ladder as quickly as they could. His partner was killed by Christopher during their assassination attempt calculated to win Richie's Aprile's favor. Pussy and Tony kill Bevalaqua in Episode #22 - From Where to Eternity. It's not easy to be a despicable character on The Sopranos, but Brancato pulled it off. Now we learn it was just method acting.

Click on the title of this post to link to the New York Daily News story with all the sordid details.
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Alien Lore 51 - The Most Popular UFO Landing Spot: Bonnybridge, Scotland

Some people speculate that either the residents of Bonnybridge or the aliens themselves greatly enjoy Scotland's most famous product: whisky. Whichever is the case, around 300 UFO sightings are registered each year. There was one UFO sighting per 17,000 inhabitants in Scotland compared to one per 61,200 in Canada, and one per 136,450 in the United States.

There are a great variety of spaceships spotted in the region. People have described observing various kinds of objects from flying discs to cigar-shaped craft in the skies.

Firemen, police officers, military personnel, civil pilots and a police helicopter pilot are among those who have reported sightings. According to Nick Pope, UFO expert, who ran the Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994; "It is difficult to arrive at a precise number of sightings in any one place as there is no central data collection point..."

"We must also take into account widespread under-reporting due to fear of ridicule and the fact most people are unsure where to submit reports." "However, it is certainly possible to gauge the intensity of current UFO activity." "Our listed hotspots exhibit up to 20 times as many sightings as anywhere else."

For more details and information go to the UFOAREA.COM website to read more about this UFO hotspot.
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Is This The End Of The Line For Karl Rove?

Many months before Karl Rove corrected his statements to the Grand Jury in the Valerie Plame case, his lawyer was told that the president's strategist might have disclosed Plame's CIA name (on July 11, 2003), to Time's Matt Cooper.

Uh-oh. Doesn't this mean endgame? Doesn't this make a perjury conviction a foregone conclusion? I don't really know. My attorney would know, but she's asleep (and she might not take kindly to me going downstairs and asking a fine point of law at midnight, just so I can keep the facts straight[1]). I know we'll hear over the next few days just what Prosecutor Fitzgerald has in store for Karl Rove. . .

[1] That presumes that keeping facts straight or maintaining any kind of normal division between fact, art, fantasy, or wild exaggeration, and telling the truth, is a mission of this blog. It's all true whether it happened or not. It all happened whether it's true or not. Which, is perhaps not a part of this footnote, but the germ of a new poem. Or both.

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Pope Benedict Warns That Materialism Pollutes The Christmas Spirit / Images From The Papal Jewlery Box

Pope Benedict warned on Sunday that rampant materialism was polluting the spirit of Christmas.

"In today's consumer society, this time of the year unfortunately suffers from a sort of commercial 'pollution' that threatens to alter its real spirit," the Pope told a large crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square to hear his weekly Angelus blessing.













A few small examples (from among thousands) of the jewelry, crowns, and gold His Holiness wears (or at least gets to play with)

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A Salute To Senator Joe Lieberman!

Click Image To Enlarge

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Alien Lore 50 - The August 1945 New Mexico UFO crash

click image to enlarge

In August 1945, a military mission passed through San Antonio, New Mexico on a recovery operation. The detail was from the White Sands Proving Grounds (where weeks earlier, an atomic bomb was exploded as a final test for the bomb the U.S. would drop in early August on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan). Soldiers in Army fatigues loaded what was left of a flying saucer onto a huge flatbed truck and hauled it away.

Two children--Remigio Baca and Jose Padilla, seven and nine years old--witnessed the aftermath of the crash that took place between about Aug. 20 and Aug. 25, 1945. Padilla and Baca later watched the military recovery work from a nearby hill.

The kids seem may have been the first people to see the crash site. They saw a long gash in the ground, and a saucer partially buried and a large field of debris. They believed the saucer was occupied by aliens that were still alive and moving after the crash.

They reported their discovery to Jose's father, Faustino Padilla, on whose ranch the craft had crashed. The military soon asked Faustino's permission to remove the flying saucer and debris.

This incident occurred well before the later, more publicized events at Roswell and Soccorro, and only resurfaced when Baca and Pedilla decided to tell their story.

click image to enlarge

Jose and Remegio didn't talk to others about it on the advice of their parents and a police friend. Their parents didn't want the scrutiny and publicity (and scorn and derision) that would engender. As time went on, however, the import of what they had witnessed grew. There were more and more reports of Greys and UFOs all around the country, and especially in New Mexico.

You may remember the story of Lonnie Zamora's April 24, 1964 report of a "manned" UFO just south of Socorro, 10 miles north of this Padilla Ranch crash.

Jose and Remigio reunited a few years ago, after more than four decades out of contact (on the internet, of course!). This amazing event they had witnessed was a big topic of discussion. They decided to tell the story to a reporter, Ben Moffett, who had gone to grade school with them. The entire story by Moffett is collected on http://rense.com.

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With Friends Like Joe Lieberman, The Democrats Need No Enemies

An article in today's New York Times discusses Senator "Crazy" Joe Lieberman's sinking popularity in the Democratic Party.

You may know from previous articles in All This Is That that we consider him a Republicrat at best, and at worst, a Judas Goat and a turncoat spoiler, leading Democrats astray in the guise of moderation. Is anyone even listening to him except the G.O.P.? Any sane Democrat wrote him off years ago; he reinforced our thinking with his bumbling, pathetic run for the Presidency in 2004.

He was a disastrous pick for Vice President in 2000, and his recent defense of, and cozying up to The White House only leads us to believe he will switch parties sooner or later.

While we'd hate to lose another Democrat, with friends like this sawed-off weasel, who needs enemies?

The Senator has recently outraged Democrats with his spirited defense of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. It's disgusting to see the little runt cozying up to The President and Vice-President.

From The New York Times: "Mr. Lieberman particularly infuriated his colleagues when he pointed out at a conference here that President Bush would be commander in chief for three more years and said that "it's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that."

"We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril," Mr. Lieberman said.

We take Joe Lieberman seriously at our own great peril.
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Photo: Day Of The Dead Figures Of JFK And Jackie In Dallas

Click on the photograph to enlarge
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Moron, Imbecile, Idiot Defined

The development of the IQ test was followed by a classification system that used terms to describe degrees of impairment:

Moron (51–70 IQ)
Imbecile (26–50 IQ)
Idiot (0–25 IQ).

These terms were later softened and the classifications redefined.

somewhat to mild retardation (55–70)
moderate (40–54),
severe (25–39)
profound (0–24) retardation.

The phrase mentally retarded itself, although still used, has been replaced in some settings by the term developmentally disabled.

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