The consensus is that her name is Dori Kelly, but not the Dori Kelly who had a minor part in the horrible horror flick “Winterbeast.”
She apparently has some of the most incompetent managers and publicists in the business, because there doesn’t seem to be anything about her on the Internet. Her biographical information is apparently as hard to find as Obama’s birth certificate, college records and medical records.
Autofocus on point-and-shoot digital cameras usually locks onto whatever is closest to the center of the frame.
So if you set your camera on a rock and use the self-timer to shoot a picture of you and your wife on the short of a mountain lake and a squirrel pops up at the last second, this is what you get.
I got a complete 12k service, plus a replacement accessory outlet on the upper fairing and a new oil level sight glass. Turns out the old sight glass really was murky and dark and my difficulty using it was not because of failing vision.
All things considered, my visit to Grass Roots BMW was very pleasant and I was especially pleased to find they have free wifi.
They also have plenty of new bikes to ogle, including this K1300GT
I got back on the road about 1:30 p.m. and stopped about 20 miles down the road at the other Boomland – the one at Exit 80 on I-55 – where I gassed the bike and wolfed down one of the new McDonald one-third-pounders.
The skies turned threatening around Kennett, but I thought I might skirt the rain because the road angles southwest from there. My luck ran out about 5 miles east of Paragould on U.S. 412 when I pulled to the berm and struggled into my FroggToggs rain gear.
I rode through patches of torrential rain over the next 10 miles or so and pulled into my garage about 4:30 p.m. Here’s the bike serving as a drying rack for my rain gear.
That’s the big expensive service interval, but my bike has been under-serviced for nearly three years because of time, distance and money constraints, so it’s long overdue.
And, I’m not about to undertake a major ride to Indiana and then Colorado without a once-over from BMW service techs.
It was dark and foggy when I gassed at the Brookland Citgo and got $40 from the ATM so I wouldn’t be penniless on the road.
Once I got down off of Crowley’s Ridge east of Paragould, I ran through patchy fog that occasionally muted the glare of the rising sun.
I covered the 140 miles to the dealer in one shot, dropping my 
Firing up my netbook, I was stunned to discover Grass Roots has free wifi for the convenience of their customers. A-freaking-mazing! If only every bike and car dealership had wifi for people stuck in the customer waiting lounge.
The late Wendell C. Phillippi, former managing editor of The Indianapolis News, was given to conjuring up bizarre (to our way of thinking, anyway) story ideas and couching them in sometimes indecipherable language.
He loved stories that spotlighted traffic problems in Indianapolis and often came back from lunch at the Indianapolis Athletic Club with odd story ideas.
Reporter Frank Salzarulo, who was the farm writer and also the auto writer, went on a tour of eastern Europe in the early 1970s with then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz.
When Frank got to Belgrade, he found this missive waiting for him and, thinking it was from Phillippi, filed a traffic story from the former Yugoslavian capital. Phillippi, we can only suppose, was puzzled. But the story ran.
Frank never did figure out what the “eagles” reference was about (it had no meaning at all) apparently didn’t recognize the initials at the bottom as being the co-conspirators who authored the note: David Mannweiler, Gerry LaFollette, Ed Ziegner, David Rohn, Art Harris and John Flora.
Jane Stegemiller has the note in her archives and posted a scan of it today on the Great Hoosier Daily Facebook group.
About 15 minutes after I handed over the key, the service rep returned it to me and announced the problem was a tiny piece of metal that they removed and patched the hole. At no charge. You gotta love that kind of service.
After a fruit parfait breakfast at McDonald’s, I’m back at my regular stand at Hastings.
The only luna moths I’ve ever seen had pins struck through them in moth and butterfly collections.
Until this morning.
As I walked to the Subaru this morning to drive down to Books-A-Million for my morning coffee and blogging, I glanced at one of the carriage lights by the garage door to make sure it was turned off. That’s when my eyes fell upon this somewhat worse-for-wear luna moth. It’s the first live luna moth I’ve ever seen and one more flora and fauna first for our new Arkansas home.
I called Maria and Austin out to see it and shot a few photos with my Olympus point-and-shoot.
Our former Indiana home is within the range of the luna moth but I never saw one there, probably because they have an adult lifespan of only seven days. They may produce as many as three generations a year at this latitude and as few as one generation a year up in Canada.
When I downloaded the moth photos from my camera’s memory card, I also grabbed some flower pictures from yesterday morning’s visit to the ASU Farmers Market. These were among the Whitton Farms offerings:
I was 32 days old at the time.
The official surrender documents were signed aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2.
And contrary to what President Obama believes, Emperor Hirohito was not present at the signing.
Obama told ABC news last month, "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur."
Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed for the Emperor and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu signed for the military.
Maybe this knowledge will ease Obama's concerns about using the word 'victory.' We could stand to hear it a bit more often.
The new radiator for my del Sol that was supposed to arrive at Honda of Jonesboro today, is still somewhere out in the parts pipeline.
The service department guy who called said the tracking info indicates it won’t be here until next Tuesday, so he booked me for a 10 a.m. Wednesday appointment to get it installed.
In the meantime, my del Sol will sit in our driveway trying to hang on to its coolant long enough to make the trip in to town on Wednesday.
From American Thinker:
Doubtless, you are well aware of the “beer summit” that took place the other day.
However, I’m not sure if you saw a certain photo that speaks volumes as to the character of Sergeant Crowley.
You can find the image at the White House’s official blog here (I wonder how long it will be up there, though?).
I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain.
The body language is most revealing. Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own.
So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious? And they are right. Sgt. Crowley had no reason to help Dr. Gates. After all, wasn’t it Gates who had insulted both him and his family? Furthermore, isn’t Obama supposed to be the empathetic one here (after all, it’s a trait that only Democrats are supposed to have because they “feel your pain”!) for inviting them down in the first place in the hopes of reaching some sort of understanding that never came to fruition?
But, in this unusually candid photo, the truth comes out. Obama keeps on walking paying no heed to Gates; and it is Crowley, who has been demonized throughout this entire incident, who is left to help the man.
I can’t help but think back upon a certain photo of President Bush and Senator Robert Byrd.
President Bush had no reason to even want to help Senator Byrd, who had spent much of his time in the Senate railing against the Bush administration, particularly on the war in Iraq; yet, he helped the old man regardless. Note the difference between the two Presidents. Furthermore, note how both Bush and Crowley helped men who didn’t deserve it, at least not from them.
Character isn’t about who you are when you know the spotlight is on you; it’s about who you are when it isn’t, or when you THINK it isn’t.
I was feeling adventurous, yet cheap, last Sunday evening as I stood before the beer cooler at Mr. T’s Riverside.
Scanning the 12-packs, I noticed a brand I’d never seen before – Steel Reserve High Gravity Lager.
The word “steel” in the name didn’t excite my imagination in a good way, but the “high gravity” part was intriguing. It was also the cheapest 12-pack in the case.
So I ignored my guiding principle that “you get what you pay for” and bought a 12-pack of cans.
When I got home, Austin recognized the package immediately and gave me the young man’s perspective that its best quality is its high alcohol content of 8.1%. A little Internet research confirmed that “high gravity” refers to its high specific gravity, a measurement used to quantify the amount of alcohol in a fermented beverage.
I still had a few Budweisers left in the fridge, so I didn’t get around to opening my first Steel Reserve until last night.
The taste was kinda watery with a hint of corn and a noticeable absence of hops. We had dinner on the screened back porch and in the Arkansas August that’s a venue that calls for a beer with a lively, refreshing flavor. Steel Reserve is not that kind of beer. In fact, it’s more accurate to call it a malt liquor. Thanks to the high alcohol content, the buzz comes on quicker, but the flavor – or lack of it – made me ready to stop after the second round.
Once again, I proved to myself that you get what you pay for.
Just a taste:
Everywhere I turn they are there; bitches of both sexes spewing goddamn hysteria about the need for universal health care and global fucking climate change dooming us all. Two issues that the American people as a whole do not even have in their top 20 list of things that fucking matter to them. It is like having a hoard of 15 year old girls in charge of the world. We have given them a fucking black Amex card and set them loose in Hot Topic! Problem is they are not spending a few bucks on a Twilight T-shirt and a hello kitty thong, they are killing the fucking economy!
That's Jen whose blog, Demure Thoughts, is my Internet Discovery of the Week. Read the whole brilliant, no-bullshit rant here.
Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording and had a string of hits, many with wife Mary Ford, died on Thursday. He was 94.
According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.
He had been hospitalized in February 2006 when he learned he won two Grammys for an album he released after his 90th birthday, "Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played."
"I feel like a condemned building with a new flagpole on it," he joked.
As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock 'n' roll and multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the "tracks" in the finished recording.
With Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records and 11 No. 1 pop hits, including "Vaya Con Dios," "How High the Moon," "Nola" and "Lover." Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul the inventor had helped develop.
"I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished," he recalled. "This is quite an asset." The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.
The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock the 1950s.
"Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music," Paul once said. "To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn't think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system."
A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called "The Log," a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.
"I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut." He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.
In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.
Pete Townsend of The Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.
Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie's auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.
If I seem a little preoccupied with the debate over Obamacare, it’s because I have a dog in this fight.
Actually, I am the dog in the fight.
I was born July 14, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was hoisted to the top of the steel tower in the New Mexico desert. Depending upon whose definition you use, that may or may not put me in the Baby Boom generation. Either way, it makes me 64 this year and a member of the demographic group whose quality of health care will be seriously compromised by the various plans being advanced by the Democrats.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those“who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”
Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”
Fuck Dr. Emanuel and fuck his attenuated “chances!”
This is the slippery slope to eugenics. Here’s what Jonah Goldberg has to say about it:
“More children from the fit, less from the unfit…” [Margaret Sanger] frankly wrote in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization. (The book featured an introduction by [H.G.] Wells, in which he proclaimed, “We want fewer and better children…and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.” [...]
Of course, orthodox eugenics also aimed at the “feebleminded” and “useless bread gobblers” — which included everyone from the mentally retarded to an uneducated and malnourished underclass to recidivist criminals. When it comes to today’s “feebleminded,” influential voices on the left now advocate the killing of “defectives” at the beginning of life and at the end of life. Chief among them is Peter Singer, widely hailed as the most important living philosopher and the world’s leading ethicist. Professor Singer, who teaches at Princeton, argues that unwanted or disabled babies should be killed in the name of “compassion.” He also argues that the elderly and other drags on society should be put down when their lives are no longer worth living.
Singer doesn’t hide behind code words and euphemisms in his belief that killing babies isn’t always wrong, as one can deduce from his essay titled “Killing Babies Isn’t Always Wrong” (nor is he a lone voice in the wilderness; his views are popular or respected in many academic circles). But that hasn’t caused the Left to ostracize him in the slightest (save in Germany, where people still have a visceral sense of where such logic takes you).
So what we have is a government plan to withhold quality-of-life enhancing health care to those of us who were responsible, productive tax-paying citizens all of our adult lives so it can extend health care benefits to able-bodied younger people who refuse to work or engage in any activity that would get them private health care.
Can you see why I take this personally? And why it pisses me off more than I can say?
I didn’t work and contribute to society all of my life just so I could be denied quality health care during my retirement years and have to listen to some government “death panel” counsel me on my end-of-life options.
I’m heartened today to see I apparently have a lot of company. The most recent Rasmussen polls show public support for Obama’s health care reform is dropping like an anvil. Fifty-three percent of the respondents in a national telephone survey say they oppose Obamacare, up 9 points since late June.
More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those under 30 favor the plan while 56% of those over 65 are opposed. Among senior citizens, 46% are strongly opposed.
And, Rasmussen Reports said today, Obama’s poll numbers are below the 50% approval level and still falling.
Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That’s the lowest level of total approval yet recorded. The President’s ratings first fell below 50% just a few weeks ago on July 25. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.
I’d like to believe the tide is turning, but I refuse to underestimate the forces of evil.
Good God! Why did Rep. Lee even show up? What breath-taking arrogance!
Whenever I do that, I like to use my Mont Blanc rollerball pen because it has a distinctive blue-green ink that stands out on the page.
My pen was out of ink, so I went to the supply cabinet and got a refill, determined it worked, put it into the pen and signed the documents.
Then I glanced at the individual cardboard container from which the refill came.
It was marked "Made in W. Germany."
Holy crap! Mont Blanc packages their refills tightly!
West Germany, i.e. the Federal Republic of Germany, ceased to exist in 1990 when it was reunited with East Germany. That means this rollerball refill was made before 1990 and, therefore, is at least 20 years old. And it writes perfectly.
A-freaking-mazing!
I bought all of the Mont Blanc blue rollerball refills an Indianapolis jewelry store had back around 2003 when they were getting out of the pen business and blowing out all their Mont Blanc stuff. I worried that the refills might dry up before I could use them. I guess I needn't have worried.
Well, I ordered it and we expect it to arrive at Honda of Jonesboro Friday morning. It supposedly will take about 90 minutes to install and the whole job is estimated at about $470.
It turns out that the reason my temperature gauge was pegged in the red zone was because almost all of the coolant had leaked out. I suppose I shouldn't complain, considering that the car has nearly 215,000 miles on the odometer.
So the del Sol will sit in our driveway until it goes back to the shop on Friday and whatever to-ing and fro-ing I do will be in the Subaru or on my bike.
He’s there because I’m in the waiting room of Honda of Jonesboro.
You may recall that I was here a few months ago for an oil change on a cool, rainy day. I told them I have a hot weather overheating problem, but since they weren’t able to replicate it on such a cool day, they suggested I bring it in when it was overheating.
That would be today. I was headed home after lunch in town with Maria when I noticed the temperature gauge needle was pegged in the red. I immediately shut off the air conditioning, did a U-turn on the Arkansas State University campus and called the Honda Service Department to let them know I was inbound with a hot car.
The agreed to work me in, saying it may be an hour before they can get to my car, but I have no pressing business elsewhere so I’m cool with that.
