Guarding the border 3

Well if that don’t beat all. Back in July I posted a couple of Blogs regarding the proposed security fence that some United Stations would like to have built along their southern and northern borders, the northern of which was once known as ‘the longest undefended border in the world’. I, apparently still being stuck in the oldthink paradigm of a fence being a physical wall of some sort, suggested first; a giant concrete sort of affair, and second; a folksy, laser armed white picket fence. I should have known better. Those pointy headed folks down in the Department of Homeland Security are not there merely because they are spiffy dressers and have fabulous hair. There are some bright sparks working in the Homeland Security bunker and in their bright sparkish sort of way they have come up with a concept that I had not even considered; an invisible, or a ‘virtual’, fence.

This is great stuff. For a very reasonable price (about $2,5000,000,000.00 or so and that's a lot of 0's) a system of motion sensors, radar, tower mounted cameras, guard towers and drone flyers will be set up along the northern and southern borders. Eighteen hundred guard towers are to be set up, divided equally along both borders which means, if math is anything to go by, that there will be nine hundred, World War II, POW camp style towers along the Canada/US border (actually right now there are some pretty ferocious debates going on at the H.S. bunker. Some want German POW camp style towers while others are advocating for Japanese Internment camp style towers. The debate becomes quite passionate at times and there are stories of hair pullings and eye pokings .) This huge number of towers is expected to let the terrorist hoards littering the Canadian landscape know that they are not welcome in the United States. It is estimated that the tower mounted cameras will be able to see twenty kilometers in to Canadian territory which will come in handy should a bunch of terrorists decide to whip across the border en mass for some quick terrorist activities. The tower guards will have time to put bullets into their guns (or however you make those things work) and they will be ready.

One place where my plans definitely had a flaw was when it came to the Great Lakes. The Canada/US border passes through some of the lakes making a physical fence kind of unpractical. No problemo, say the clever dicks at Homeland Security. The United States Coast Guard has begun to patrol the lakes, screaming back and forth in their custom built speedboats, spraying huge sheets of water into the air and spraying even huger amounts of bullets every which way. There have been twenty-four live-fire drills since the start of the year, with more planned, and thirty-four top-secret permanent live-fire zones have been set up. They are top-secret because; A – you don’t want the terrorists to know where they are and; 2 – if you accidentally blow apart a fishing boat or a pleasure craft, it’s nice to have an excuse.

Some bleeding hearts have pointed out that this goes against a ninety year old treaty forbidding weapons on the Great Lakes, as well as going against an even older treaty dating back to the War of 1812 forbidding military weapons on the lakes. Get a grip people, do you think the terrorist navy worries about treaties like that? In recognition of this fact both Homeland Security and the Coast Guard dismiss these complaints as pro-terrorist nonsense. As Coast Guard spokesman, Chief Petty Officer Robert Lanier points out, “We’re trying to be prepared in case something happens. I don’t know what it is, but I know I want to be prepared for it when it happens. We need to conduct these live-fire exercises so we are prepared for whatever it may be.” He then added, with what sounded like an understandable amount of regret, “We don’t have any cannons or rocket launchers or anything like that.” Good point.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Proposed guard tower with the new 'Banner Of Friendship' at the Guard Tower Testing Facility in Manzanar, California, USA

Dixie Chicks - Americans?

Well those Dixie Chicks are at it again. Hot on the heels of their last brush with anti-Americanism whereby one of them dared to use her “right” to free-speech and expressed her embarrassment that President George W Bush came from the same state that she did, the Chicks have now released the first single from their new CD and it’s a defiant little tune called, I’m Still Not Ready To Make Nice. For shame!

One can only imagine the nerve of these ladies. Have they already forgotten the storm of righteous American anger by righteous Americans after they purposely insulted the President, AKA: the Commander-in-Chief? Those righteous Americans headed to the barricades, frothing indignantly, and then there were the boycotts, the death threats, and the good old American tradition of CD burning (inspired by those good old folks of the Third Reich). It was a good time to be a real American, ruled by the mob mentality, with a fear and a hatred of all that was different. You would think that they would have learned their lesson. In their shoes any real American would have slunk off whit their tail between their legs and sinned no more. Not these chicks. Instead they hide behind their “rights” and choose defiance. How American is that, not surrendering to a superior force out of fear?

Bill ‘Shut-up’ O’Reilly, Sean ‘Ape’ Hannity, Rush ‘Fat Creep’ Limbaugh and Ann ‘Probably not a guy’ Coulter all agree, the Dixie Chicks, through their blatant disrespect for all that makes the US great, are supporting the terrorists and not supporting the troops. This modern tendency to speak ones mind, coupled with that ancient Communist mindthink, “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” has gone far enough. There are some things you just do not do during times of war and one of them is that you do not insult the Commander-in-Chief. When President Bill Clinton was in office (and Commander-in-Chief), American soldiers were involved in, and dying in, far off lands and there was not a right-wing commentator in the United States who would have dared to insult him in any way at that time. The Dixie Chicks should have shown the same restraint, but they did not and now to add insult to injury they release the defiant I’m Still Not Ready To Make Nice. Terrible.

My intention is this; I will be going out and buying as many of their new disc, Taking The Long Way, as I can find and handing it out to friends and family so that everybody can see just how defiant these ladies are. In fact I encourage everyone to do the same and buy all of their discs. Buy, buy, buy and spread the word and let’s show these lefty liberals just who’s in charge. Yeah!

Anyway… Humouroceros

Right, like I would have used any other picture of these ladies.

A digital Enterprise

The folks at Star Trek industries have announced that as this is the 40th anniversary of the beginning of Star Trek all of the original series shows will be digitally remastered for a Fall 2006 release. The special effects, which were state-of-the-art at the time but which look a little dated to the modern eye, are all going to be redone through the digital magic of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) and it has been implied that some ships mentioned by name but never shown may now be seen. The original music is being rerecorded as it was back in the day, and the entire look of the show is being upgraded. I figure that as long as the original design of the show is not changed, then go for it.

Personally I think it would be cool to see things only previously described on the show. The Federation and Klingon fleets facing off in the episode Errand Of Mercy, or the battle between the Enterprise and four other Constitution Class starships (one of which is destroyed) in the episode The Ultimate Computer. The various other ships named but never seen during the series because of a limited budget. It’s all good. You can go to startrek.com to read more and to see video of what they’re doing.

Generally I am not a fan of people changing movies or TV shows. Those people who colourized movies that were, and should be, in black and white should all be dipped in tar and lightly dusted with feathers before being run out of town on a rail (and whoever it is that colourized the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol [AKA: Scrooge] starring Alastair Sim should have a large tinfoil log shoved into whichever orifice would cause them the greatest discomfort. And while I’m on this little rant, God help anyone who ever dares to touch To Kill A Mockingbird with Gregory Peck.) However I do like what George Lucas has done with the original trilogy of Star Wars. But since Star Wars is his original vision, he had the right.

A good example of where digitalizing do-gooders should have left well enough alone is the British science-fiction series Red Dwarf. True, some of what they did is just fine; new star fields, some new vehicles, and some new holographic effects for the holographic character named Rimmer. But then they went too far and they did change how the ship looks, taking a squant little blob of a ship built into an asteroid and making it into a boxily sleek sort of ship that just doesn’t fit in with the original concept of the show. I understand that in the greater scheme of things this doesn’t matter, but they still shouldn’t have done it.

Anyway… Humouroceros

"Crop Circles"

Lately there has been more news regarding what the media insist on calling ‘crop circles’ but which are actually called ‘agriformian communiforms’. A local farmer found one in his cornfield in August while he was out flying in his ultra-light aircraft. “I looked down,” he says, “and there it was, just as big as heck and just as round. Sure beats the dickens out of me!” Therein lies the crux of this phenomenon.

Agriformian communiforms have existed for millions of years and there is compelling evidence that prehistoric cave-farmers were finding them way back at the dawn of time. Of course at that time the communiforms were of the most basic design and while still circular in shape, they tended to be slightly oval. Roman farmers frequently found agriformian communiforms in their grape fields although they tended to blame either unruly slaves or the Huns for making them. They had a name for them but it looks to be in some foreign language and can be safely ignored.

During the middle-ages there were reports or Monks finding agriformian communiforms in their fields. As is usual with Monks they just assumed that there was some sort of Diabolical explanation and their usual defense was to pray more, go to bed earlier, rise earlier, pray even more, eat less, and pound the old vino like there was no tomorrow. Oddly enough even with all of this activity the communiforms kept appearing.

In the 1970s after a large number of increasingly complicated communiforms appeared in England, a couple of ‘lads’ or ‘guys’ came forward claiming to be the ones who had created the communiforms as a hoax. These ‘hoaxers’ said that they would go out at night and with the use of a length of rope, a four foot plank, a battery powered umbrella and a couple of ‘crates of beer’ they would make a communiform in less than fifteen minutes. The obvious answer to this is that as these boys were self confessed hoaxers, or ‘liars’, then why should anyone believe them. To quote another drunken buffoon, Homer Simpson; “D’oh!”

In fact all the evidence suggests that communiforms are increasingly frantic attempts by an inter-stellar alien race to communicate with mankind. Over the millennia as mankind has become more sophisticated and able to toss aside the needs of a less advanced civilization (needs such as pyramids and opposable thumbs). One can almost sense the rising frustration levels as these attempts are not being responded to.

Some would ask how we can be expected to respond to questions we don’t even understand, and had the communiforms not actually been translated this would be a god question rather than merely a stupid one. In July, 2006 Professor Barnyard F Waterfowl BS, MBS, EMBS, of the Canadian Institute of the Theoretical Sciences produced a pamphlet entitled, This Is What They Are Saying, which is easily available if you know where to find it. In this pamphlet he provides a detailed translation of what the communiforms have been saying since they were first found. After years of painstaking research and deduction the professor has concluded the extra-terrestrial message to be; “Pluto is so a planet!”

This astonishing message has been taken by some to mean that extra-terrestrials do not think that Pluto should have been downgraded from planet to dwarf-planet (or ‘little-person-planet’), and apparently they have been trying to tell mankind this for a very long time. Since before mankind even discovered Pluto in fact. This begs the question, how did they know? The only logical answer is that since they are aliens they can see into the future. This would be an alien sort of thing to be able to do.

I hope this has cleared up any confusion regarding the so-called ‘crop circles’.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Artists rendering of the Porkins Agriform found near Porkins On Porkins, Porkinshire, England, May 1976

William Shatner

Hey, here’s an idea! What say everybody lay off William ‘Bill’ Shatner. Leave the man alone, quit trying to bug him and let him get on with his own action. I’m just a little bit tired of listening to smarmy little creeps who feel they have the right to make fun of everything the man has ever done. Cheap shots are easy shots, kids, so let’s all grow up, move away from mommy’s house and, to quote Bill himself, Get A Life!

Honestly, it seems that any time Bill’s name comes up some smirking little jerk feels he has to fill the air with utterly clever comments about ‘Captain Kirk’ or ‘T.J. Hooker’(as if ‘Captain Kirk’ could in any way be considered an insult). Totally hilarious things are said regarding Bill’s ‘overacting’ followed usually by general insults aimed at Star Trek itself.

Okay, stop right there; the reality is that the original series of Star Trek was in the nineteen sixties and was the first science-fiction made for television that wasn’t complete crap. Look at the competition of the time, I mean, Lost In Space? And no offence to the millions out there who love Lost In Space and have been trying for decades to get it back on the air, but come on. Science-fiction on television up to that time was not worth watching and everybody involved with the original series was treading new ground.

Did William Shatner overact? Maybe although I recently watched a couple of the original series shows and it all looked good to me. I think it’s called being a professional and it’s what actors do; creating a character. Lots of folks know that the first inter-racial kiss was on Star Trek between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), but a little known factoid is that the producers of the show were worried that they might offend some bigots if they showed the kiss. The plan was to film the scene in two ways, one showing the kiss and the other implying the kiss. William Shatner thought this was BS and he purposely kept ruining the implied shot so they only had the scene with the real kiss to use. Good on ya, Bill, and all the bigots can go choke anyways.

Post the original series Bill was typecast by the usual bovine intelligence that Hollywood seems to so often run under, the thinking apparently being that no matter what he did the audience would still think he was a Starship Captain. Stupid audience. Work became scarce but the guy never gave up and after the Star Trek movie series started he began to work more, with the TV series TJ Hooker and Rescue 911, and I hear that today he is on a show called Boston Legal. He’s written books, recorded a CD, paints, raises horses, and for all I know he Morris Dances and carves ducks. The point is that at 75 the man does more on a slow day than your average TV (or movie or book or music) critic does in three lifetimes, so back off you flapping little creeps.

To once again quote Mister Shatner himself: “I'm not a Starfleet commander, or T.J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-1701, or own a phaser. I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock. And no, I've never had green alien sex, but I'm sure it'd be quite an evening. (Pomp and Circumstance begins playing.) I speak English and French, not Klingon! I drink Labatt's, not Romulan ale! And when someone says to me 'live long and prosper', I seriously mean it when I say, 'get a life'. My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg. And tribbles were puppets, not real animals. PUPPETS! And when I speak, I never, ever talk like Every. Word. Is. Its. Own. Sentence. I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal. And I believe in priceline.com, where you never have to pay full price for airline tickets, hotels, and car rentals! I've appeared onstage at Stratford, at Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, and the Monkland Theatre in NDG. And, yes, I've gone where no man has gone before, but... I was in Mexico and her father gave me permission! My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!” - From a Just for Laughs appearance; a parody of the popular Molson Canadian Commercial entitled "I Am Canadian"

Anyway… Humouroceros

The famous "These are the voyages of..." opening monologue delivered by William Shatner at the beginning of every episode of the original series of Star Trek, presented here in Feanorian script (from the Lord Of The Rings). Enjoy.

DVDs Gone Wild

The latest DVD Star Wars were released recently. These are the “original theatrical releases” for those who couldn’t handle the Special Edition versions that were released on DVD last year. Here’s my problem; why weren’t these versions released on the same DVDs as the Special Editions were? I know it’s possible because the recent releases have both the Original and the Special Editions in the same package. One really hates to think that good old George Lucas is trying to rip off the fans of his movies, but it sure looks like it. Isn’t the man rich enough?

While I was in my favorite entertainment and electronics store looking at the Star Wars stuff I notice that there is another “Extended Edition” of the Lord Of The Rings. These DVDs have some new special features personally approved by Peter Jackson. Peter Jackson, who should actually be out working on The Hobbit is spending his time personally approving special features for DVDs? Newsflash, Pete: I have already bought my copies of the Extended Editions and I will not be spending any more money on these movies.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Ted Baxter

I found this on a news site. The story is about how Katie Couric did on her first solo broadcast. The following paragraph is about her troubles coming up with a distinctive, personalized sign-off (italics mine):

"Couric's only real nod to her newbie status came at the end, with a joking report on her difficulties coming up with a signoff. She showed clips of Cronkite, Chet Huntley, Dan Rather, Ted Baxter and even fictitious movie anchorman Ron Burgundy giving their final words, then invited viewers to submit suggestions via the CBS News web site."

Maybe I've missed something, but I thought that Ted Baxter was a fictitious anchorman too. It sort of puts a whole new spin on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I wonder what Murray is doing these days?

Anyway... Humouroceros

Euro-trash

The Europeans in a fit of self-righteous pomposity have taken things to the next level and are now polluting the moon itself! Not satisfied with trashing their own tiny little continent, leveling all the forests and producing so much acid rain that the medieval castles that they are so proud of had to be rebuilt from the foundations up, they have now started shooting garbage at the moon. To add insult to injury they have tried to make this into a media event, announcing to the world, in that arrogant way that the Europeans have, that the peoples of the Earth would even be about to see the package hit the moons pristine surface. Rather, the moon’s formerly pristine surface.

It wasn’t so many years back when your average European upon finding out that one was from North America would spend hours telling one just how rotten ones home country was. Apparently all that United Stations want to do is spread McDonalds and Wal-Marts all over the world and we Canadians only stop eating salmon burgers long enough to beat the daylights out of baby seals. Right. Well you European monkey-people, here’s the true grit. A continent that isn’t even capable of building and maintaining a functioning toilet should not point fingers. The formerly neat and orderly site on the moon known as the Lake of Excellence was blasted with a 366 Kg garbage bag of condom wrappers, lousy coffee grounds and shoddy souvenirs that nobody would buy. What’s even worse is that they couldn’t even launch this stuff from their own scabby continent, but sent it up from Kourou, French Guiana (in South America). The arrogance. Cut and paste this link to see the impact in action: http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/News/Smart1/anim2.gif

Anyway… Humouroceros

366 Kg of European crap hits the Moon!

Van Impes

For those who are in the know yet don’t follow the crazies on the ultra-“religious” right, “Drs” Jack and Rexella Van Impe are a pair of the more annoyingly dangerous evangelicals out there contaminating the word of God. For years Jack has posted his misinterpretations of the Bible on the Internet (making the entimological connection between the words ‘Bible’ and ‘babel’ even more interesting, if you define interesting as ‘not very interesting at all’) and now due to the advent of Women’s Lib he has allowed his spouse, Rexella, to add her two-bits. Here is the beginning of a recent one from Rexella; “On the closing night of our citywide crusade in Rochester, New York, I went down front after the service to greet people, sign Bibles, and just enjoy a time of fellowship with our friends there” (italics mine).

Hmm, I thought to myself as I read this. As completely out of the loop as I tend to be it does seem to me that at one time the only person who would sign a book was the person who wrote it. I admit that I may have missed it but I don’t remember hearing about Stephen King and Robert Graves arm wrestling over who got to sign To Kill A Mockingbird (which as we all know was written by Harper Lee). Is this something new, or is it just something from the ever more messed-up-ed-ness world of the televangelist? I wonder if when these people are popping and hissing like big globs of bacon as they burn in one of the deeper pits of Hell whether it is going to occur to them that perhaps the way they behaved here on earth wasn’t quite proper? I have to admit that as long as they are popping and hissing, I don’t care.

Anyway… Humouroceros

jacK and rexellA Van Impe