Star To Asterisk

I'm fond of symbols.
They are a form of communication that can be straight forward or secret.
The advertising industry uses symbols to sell products, quite often wrongly without knowing what they mean.

So when I drove by my neighborhood grocery store and noticed it had a new sign I just had to wonder why? So what did that design mean?

Wal-Mart it seems is no longer Wal (star) Mart but is now Walmart (asterisk).

Say what? Asterisk? It's a starburst says the new alloneword Walmart. Naw, it is an asterisk.

Asterisk:: the character * used in printing or writing as a reference mark, as an indication of the omission of letters or words, to denote a hypothetical or unattested linguistic form, or for various arbitrary meanings.

At least it originally ment little star, but starburst?

Well Walmart* is going green and endorses Obama's Health Bill so what the heck, I guess I won't bitch too much. But it is going to take me a while not to automatically look at the bottom of the sign to see what the asterisk is refering to.












Source

And My Wife Slept Through It

No, not that. You do have a dirty mind don't you.

I'm talking about the first time man set foot on the moon.

I'd been back from Vietnam for about three weeks on July 20, 1969. My wife of two years had already gotten deep into my s..t about my bad language and bad attitude that I had carried home from Southeast Asia. We were in Warrenton Virginia. I had spent the day reporting in to my new duty station out in rural Fauquier County and we had just checked into the cheapest motel we could find. It was not only cheap but it was Very Cheap. The TV was an intermittently functioning fuzzy 13 inch black and white set with a rabbit ears antenna. I knew that Apollo had landed on the moon and that the moon walk was to be tonight, so we drove down to the A&W early got burgers and stuff and went back to watch it on the TV.

It was about five when they began showing (talking heads mostly) the landing on the moon. Excitement ensued when we heard that the select spot to land was to rough and they were going to "fly" LEM to a different place. After Eagle had landed and the historical script was read then there was a shot of not much in B&W fuzz out the window. It took the astronauts six and a half hours to get ready for their excursion (is that what the E means in LEM?). We went back to the A&W for root beer and fries at least once.

There were no chairs in our room only the bed so naturally Wife was lieing down, and so went to sleep. I woke her up several times, kind of. Finally they opened the hatch. They are coming out says I, and woke her up. She watched, and watched as nothing happened. Walter Cronkite talked and talked and she went to sleep on my shoulder.

Sometime long after my bedtime, Armstrong crawled out onto the LEM's platform and down the ladder. I elbowed Wife and said see, she looked and said , Wow! and rolled over on the bed asleep.

I watched the EVA, for a long time. At one point I went outside and looked up at the moon. I thought to myself, we have finally left the Earth.

U.S. Senators Display Their Inner Most Fears

Been watching the reruns of the Senate hearing on Sotomajor tonight. C-Span has edited out the pauses and hemhaws and breaks. So it flows much faster and unfortunately that even flow accentuates one of the traits of many of the Senators. Their butts were out.
Senator John Kyl of Arizona was one of several white male Senators who opened their long john flaps and showed their hinenies in the SCOTUS Justice hearing last week. They are afraid of losing their culture, their power, their privilege. How can you tell? They are accusing minorities and females of trying to bring their non white male judgements to the culture, such as on the SCOTUS. The overwhelming inference is that white guys either don't have a problem bringing their white maleness into their judgements or their way of doing is the right way of doing it. We are the world, they say, and don't you dare presume to change it.

The Republicans were the worst offenders, although Democrats had their moments as well. At least the Democrats were pandering to a diverse audience. The Republicans were kneeling to the most crass of elements within their constituencies. What exactly will that get them? What State is predominately white male rednecks with their submissive wives? I think the last State like that died in 1976.

It is disturbing to see so many Senators who are scared and in over their heads and/or who so readily kneel to the scroungy side of the population.

Nationalize Goldman Sachs Today!

"The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?

First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.

Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.

Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely."

Read more here.

Also FIRE all the Goldman Sac castoffs in the Obama Administration. Yes all of them!

Dang! This Old Dog Learned a New Trick

Always peel a bannana from its top. Top?

Watch and behold and learn: here

Black Core Thundersrtorm Warnning for Wierd Named Towns

It was well over a hundred today and a "cold-cool-less than warm" front is slipping by West of Oklahoma City. Black color on Doppler radar means winds above 60 mph. So this is a compact but serious severe thunderstorm full of wind gust over 75 mph, base ball, size hail, and several hundred lightening strikes per minute.

Right now there are warning for the towns of Newalla, Little Axe, Thunderbird area, Pink, and Slaughterville.

For some reason for just a second upon hearing that I thought I was somewhere else.
Just hearing them all in the same breath made them sound, well, weird.

Local Weatherman Infected With HUMA Syndrome

I was reading our local weekly free rag the OKLAHOMA GAZETTE as I was eating my Polish sausage sandwich at Earl's Barbeque's last night when the Chicken Fried News Quote Of The Week almost made me choke on my side of green beans.

It basically said that my trusted source of weather information Gary England at Channel Nine News was a Global Warming Denier. Shades of Jim Inhofe, tell me it isn't true that the man that has saved literally millions of Oklahomans' lives by repeating what he is told by the Norman, Oklahoma National Severe Weather Lab doesn't believe the science behind the concerns of global warming.

So off to

http://www.news9.com/Global/story.asp?S=10630678

and sure enough there as part of an article about how wrong the U.S. House was to pass a Global Warming bill was this:
"The measure to curb global warming has come at a time when many in the international community are questioning whether there's really a problem and whether it's man-made.
NEWS 9 Chief Meteorologist Gary England has long questioned the science on the issue of global warming.
"It's just not there. What they're finding is proof otherwise. In fact, the earth has been cooling for the last 10 years," England said."

Astounding indeed! Why hasn't that "cooling" kept both polar ice caps from melting rapidly, much more rapidly than anyone predicted? The Northern Polar Bears and the Antarctic Penguins might not think Gary is quite right on this subject. One thing about drinking the big oil laced natural gas fizzy Oklahoma kool aid is that has a serious side effect. It is known as the HUMA Syndrome. After a few quarts it just makes you want to bend down, to grab your ankles, and to yell "I love it" and "I want to stick my Head Up My Ass (HUMA)".

Few actually accomplish full-blown HUMA but Gary England and Jim Inhofe seem to have done so.