Extreme Makeover - Christmas Tree Edition (Update)

Well, the final stage of the Christmas Tree Makeover is temporarily on hold. My nine-year old and his ten-year old cousin got a little overzealous in their desire to put the ornaments on.

Frankly, it's a God-awful mess right now. And those #%$@*&! beads that I spent so much time on need some serious adjusting. So I have to wait until the wife rearranges the balls, er, the ornaments before I would even consider taking another photo.

Still sick, BTW.

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Tolkien Geek Update

The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter Eight is posted.

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Hoo-kay

Well, thankfully my Giants won a hard-fought game today. I would be elated if I weren't so miserably sick.

Just crashed on the couch and watched "Scrooge" on AMC. For me, this 1951 version starring Alastair Sim is the best one ever made. The casting is perfect and it includes many scenes from past, present & future that are often left out.

My personal favorite version of the story, however, is Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I've just loved it since I was a kid and the original songs are really catchy. And the Bill Murray "Scrooged" is a really enjoyable update of the tale.

Anyway, since I may not be posting until well into tomorrow - consider this an open thread to promote YOUR favorite version of A Christmas Carol".

Gunight.

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This Is THE Game Of The Week

Simply put, this game WILL decide the NFC East. The winner advances to 8-4 with their destiny in their own hands. The loser drops to 7-5 and will struggle to fight for the wildcard.

It's lousy, snowy and miserable at the Meadowlands today. And if you believe this report, the Giants are up for this game. It's time to put up of shut up. So I'm either going to be a really happy camper this evening or a moody SOB. I can't even watch this game as I have a family holiday function to go to from 1pm to 4pm which I will spend chasing my kids around, making sure they're not getting into trouble. Taping it and watching it later is not an option as I've got too much to do when I get home.

Not to mention that I am sick as a dog this morning. No sooner did the wife and kids come home last night after I finished my part of the tree, when dear old Dad collapsed on the sofa, hacking and coughing and sweating up a fever. It was a tall NyQuil cocktail and bed for me and I woke up feeling no more rested that I was the night before.

So strap in, kids. It's going to be a helluva game. Hopefully I'll be able to sneak out to my car radio for enough updates to keep me sustained.

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Extreme Makeover - Christmas Tree Edition (Part One)

Well, we got the tree last weekend, but I wanted make damn sure the thing was still fully alive before I put anything on it. So by mid-week, the tree was taking water and I made preparations to give it the big makeover this weekend.

Now a Christmas Tree is like a woman. Every one is different and you really have to evaluate them carefully before you decide how you're going to approach them. Now take this one:

She's short, squat, full in the front and round in the back. Not unlike a young lady I once dated. Hopefully the tree won't be as difficult to handle.

But by just looking it over, I figure I'm going to use a little less lighting than normal. So it's time to rig the lights. And damn me, if every strand doesn't have a couple of bulbs out. Of course, I didn't bother to pick up any more strands or replacement bulbs so I'll have to canabalize one strand for replacements. Luckily for me I'll have one to spare with this baby.

OK, so the lights are up.

Wait, what are those nasty orange blobs on the tree? Well, they're these ugly wicker stars with bulbs in them. The wife figured I didn't have enough work to do stringing lights together. So she stopped by the Christmas Tree Shop (and no, I don't just love a bargain) a couple years back and picked these up. Actually, they're more yellow but my crappy digital camera doesn't pick up that nuance.

Now what? Well, step two is putting on these pearly-pink, gay-ass strings of beads. I really hate these because you're supposed to "drape" them over the tree so they look "natural". What exactly does that mean? I don't know, but my wife tells me when it looks right. She's not home right now, so this is what will be waiting for her when she gets home:

I once suggested to the wife another use for the beads, which was sounding rejected. But, hey, you don't get what you don't ask for.

Now that this much is done, it's her party. She puts on the rest of the stuff. So until tomorrow, you'll just have to wait to see what our little tree looks like with all the trimmings. This year my nine-year old wants to be more involved. Should be interesting.

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Diane Lane Photo of the Week

Under The Tuscan Sun

Note: For the full archive of lovely Diane Lane pictures, go here.

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Tolkien Geek Update

The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter Seven is posted.

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Atheists Sue To Remove Crosses Honoring Fallen Policemen

I don't know why anyone should be surprised. Once again, they're "offended".

A group of atheists in Salt Lake City is taking on the State of Utah and the Utah Highway Patrol over the law enforcement agency's use of crosses on roadways to memorialize troopers killed in the line of duty.

The lawsuit has triggered a debate about whether a cross is an appropriate way of honoring troopers killed in the line of duty.

The American atheists filing the lawsuit said they respect the sacrifices the troopers have made, but they are offended by the use of what they call a religious symbol to honor them.

Oh what load of crap. This group doesn't respect anything except their right to be openly hostile to Christianity.

Who cares if they're offended? Where in the Bill of Rights is there a right "not to be offended"? Hmmm. Can't seem to find that one. Do they honestly expect people to believe that they're being "oppressed"?

Aw c'mon, I thought these folks were liberated from the "opiate of the masses". How can they be made to feel uncomfortable or intimidated if they've risen above those cultural shackles? Aren't they secure enough in their convictions? These crosses are SYMBOLS, everyone. They only have meaning if you ascribe it to them. If you don't believe in it, fine. Move along.

I mean, do atheists feel pressure to go to a house of worship or pray in public or take part in certain religious practices? Of course not, they can do whatever the hell they want. And nobody is going to bother them about it.

But some of them feel they have the right to bust everyone else's balls? Whatever.

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Stop Ruining Christmas...

...You neo-yuppie scumbags or I'll beat you with the baby Jesus! Love, Foamy.

Click the center pic for the 'toon.

Warning: You'll need headphones if you're in in the vicinity of folks with "sensitive" ears.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

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Perfect For A Friday

Open thread over at Ace of Spades HQ: Cool Facts About Dick Cheney.

Warning, lots of naughty words and penis references. Funny as all hell. Go there only if you have LOTS of time.

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A Rebuttal

To the latest aborted MoveOn.org ad - here.

Courtesy of Pam of Blogmeister USA.

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Jack Murtha: Just What Bush Needed

John Podhoretz makes the case today in his NY Post column that Jack Murtha's call for withdrawal and the GOP's forced vote on it taught the White House a valuable lesson:

Suddenly, withdrawal was off the table. But Murtha had demonstrated something important: In the absence of a constantly echoed positive line of argument about the U.S. role in Iraq, over time the debate will be framed by the war's opponents in a way injurious to the overall goal of prevailing over the enemy.

Had Bush been talking about victory throughout 2005, had he informed the American people over and over that we are in Iraq to win, he might not have found himself with a distressed and disillusioned American public sorry we had gone in there in the first place.

Evidently, what he and the rest of the GOP needed was for Jack Murtha to go out there and lose one for the Gipper.

Now, if the President can stay focused on offense, maybe he can undo some of the damage that Democrats have done to our military's morale.

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Self-Abusing Intruder Caught On Tape

This has got to make every female's skin crawl. A woman, concerned that her apartment was being broken into, set up a camera in her house to catch the guy red-handed. Well, his hands were involved alright (edited video accompanies the story):

On November 15, while she was at work, the camera captured images of a man entering her apartment appearing to use a key. He leaves, then returns and walks right into a trap.

"Right by the door was the sofa, so I laid some lingerie and other things on it and so it worked," she said.

He handled the lingerie, put on a camisole and underwear, and engages in self-gratification. Before he left, he arranged the underwear as he found it.

And it made the evening news!!

Imagine this guy, unaware of the news story, going to work the next day and wondering why everyone is staring at him? The woman in question has not returned to the apartment since. "I don't trust people as much and I don't feel comfortable being alone," she said.

Apparently, he does.

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Tolkien Geek Update

The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter Six is posted.

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Hillary's Precarious Position

It seems in all this brouhaha over Iraq and the Dems' call for troop withdrawal, Sen. Clinton is trying to have it both ways. In an email to her supporters, she defends her vote back in 2002 but on the other hand she still pushes the "Bush Lied" meme. On the one hand, she says the U.S. needs to "finish what it started", but on the other hand she says the Administration is making a mess of it. Rather than take a firm stand one way or the other she's purposely muddying the waters.

John Hinderaker at Powerline weighes in:

No doubt Clinton's approach, which recalls her husband's policy of triangulation, will be hailed as another shrewd move by the mistress of calculation. But I wonder. There is a certain sourness in the position Clinton has staked out: the war was a mistake which I voted to authorize only because I didn't know the facts; ever since, it has been bungled horribly; nevertheless, we have no choice but to see the mistake through to the bitter end. It smacks, somehow, of the purse-lipped, take-your-medicine feminist First Lady of the early days of Bill Clinton's presidency.

It strikes me that Hillary's cod-liver-oil approach to Iraq could well lose to a more emotionally satisfying, back to the '60s antiwar campaign in the Democratic primaries, or, in the general election, to a proponent of President Bush's idealistic vision of the Iraq war as a key element in the nation's long-term strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism.

As if to confirm Hinderaker's analysis, Jimmy Breslin of Newsday - an outspoken and often annoying Liberal columnist - today slams Hillary over another email he got from her asking for money and not even mentioning Iraq as an issue:

"Hillary Clinton today holds the new North American record for fakery.

She copies. She sneaks and slithers past you with her opinion on a war that kills every day...

...We now have Hillary Clinton blowing on her fingers as she goes about cracking the combination to another safe. If the one hand glistens, it is from the wedding ring that she has used to hypnotize the public so far. Beautiful."

Hillary has a real problem looming before her. If she wants to shore up her base for 2008, she needs to satisfy the moonbat activists who vote in the primaries. But on the other hand if she is going to stave off a challenge from a more "moderate" Democrat like former VA Governor Mark Warner and go on to win a general election, she has to try to convince voters she can be a credible Commander-In-Chief fighting the GWOT.

Unfortunately for Hillary, her party is making Iraq THE issue of 2006. How is she going to emerge from this battle without doing serious political damage to her 2008 run for the Presidency? She can't go on forever saying "talk to the hand".

UPDATE: 10:15am
Ouch. Drudge is reporting that on Air America radio this morning actor Tim Robbins - no doubt a big donor to HillPAC - was quoted as saying "Hillary Clinton can kiss my butt!"

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France To Launch Satellite News Channel

In an effort to compete with the dominant BBC and CNN channels, the French government has announced that it will launch it's own 24-hr news network, en francaise.

Executive marketing decision #1 should be:

Hire THIS woman, Melissa Theuriau, and CNN will end up closing their Paris bureau.

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Economic Growth Revised "Up"

Third-Quarter GDP which originally clocked in at a solid 3.8% has now been revised to an even more robust 4.3%.

The upwardly revised reading for GDP in the third quarter also exceeded the expectations of business analysts. Before the report was released, they were forecasting the economy to clock in at a 4 percent pace.

Consumers and businesses did their part to keep the economy rolling — even as they coped with elevated energy prices during the third quarter.

Must be all those Bush "tax cuts for the rich", huh?

Add this news to the rise in consumer confidence, the surge in home sales and the Dow approaching the 11,000 mark and it's easy to see why Democrats are putting all their eggs in the "Iraq" basket.

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Liberal Projection

Michelle Malkin has a column up at TownHall.com about how ironic it is that the Left tries to play up this idea of "right-wing rage" rather than look in the mirror at themselves. Yeah, Conservatives are passionate about their beliefs, they get annoyed with Liberal Moonbattery from time to time and they may even be rightly indignant when they see those on the Left trying to undermine our National Security. But "rage"?

Air-America host Janeane Garofalo accused the Right of having "an anger management problem". Granted, if that were true it would make it a lot easier to laugh off Conservative ideas and positions. But election after election, those ideas and positions end up winning elections. And the more Liberals lose, they not only get angrier but they start acting on their anger. In fact, many are become downright "Unhinged".

Consider the examples of anger-induced behavior on the Left that Malkin gives:

It isn't out-of-control conservatives tossing Molotov cocktails at police officers in San Francisco, burning American soldiers in effigy, and smearing pig's blood and feces on the walls and windows of military recruitment centers across the country to protest on behalf of peace.

It isn't rage-blinded conservative professors who embrace fragging (the murder of American soldiers by their fellow soldiers on the battlefield) as a legitimate anti-war tactic.

It isn't vengeful conservatives torching SUVs, condo developments, and research facilities, and targeting biotech and pharmaceutical company employees and their families to protest on behalf of the environment.

It wasn't mad conservatives sporting "F--- Bush" license plates, punching cardboard cutouts of the president, and vowing to secede after losing the 2004 presidential election.

It wasn't rabid conservatives who gloated over Ronald Reagan's death or John Ashcroft's pancreatitis.

It wasn't a gut-busting conservative journalist who vowed to kill herself if Dick Cheney ran for president. (That would be the perpetually aggrieved Helen Thomas.)

It wasn't hate-filled Republican officials who reportedly screamed "faggot" and "fruitcake" and "I'll break your nose" at their political opponents. (Those were all Democrats: Pennsylvania state legislator Vincent Fumo, California Rep. Pete Stark, and Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, respectively.)

It isn't fanatical conservatives joking about the assassination of President Bush and the execution of his Republican aides. (That, Ms. Garofalo, would include your Air America colleagues. But I'll forgive you if you weren't tuned in to them. Few are.)

And it wasn't ruthless conservatives who cheered last week when a liberal Bush-hater wrote on the popular DemocraticUnderground.com website last week:

"I am an American, Born and Raised, but I am NOT a citizen of BUSH'S America. I want nothing to do with the country these people have created.

And for those who support them, Let's get Something Nice And Sparkling CLEAR:

Stay The [F---] Away From Me. Stay OUT of my personal space. I want NOTHING from you. I want NOTHING to do with you. I want NOTHING to do with your "vision" of what the world should be.

What DO I want from you?

Honestly?

I will freely admit there are days, and they are becoming more than not, that the Alien at Area 51 in Independence Day and I share quite a common ground on the answer to that question.

And I am NOT apologizing for it.

In the words of the Late, Great Bill Hicks, about the most conciliatory thing I can say for those people at this point is simply this:

Kill Yourself"

And it's the Right who's angry? Hmmm. One would be hard pressed to come up with examples of this kind of insanity from Conservatives. But all one has to do is read through sites like DU and you'll find commentary like this is pretty standard.

This is the fuel of today's Democrat Party machine. It's where the money comes from and it's where the grassroots organizing comes from. It's also the beast that must be fed red meat by Democrat politicians on a regular basis or the beast will turn its anger on them.

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Naive Dipshits Blame U.S./U.K. For Hostage Taking

So four idealistic idiots get kidnapped while trying to "reason" with terrorists, and it's the American and British governments who are to blame?

Well, apparently that's the story that the Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is pushing.

"We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. governments due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people," Christian Peacemaker Teams said in a statement.

Um, no. It's because you freaking fools have no clue what kind of evil you are dealing with. Do you think these animals will think twice about beheading your friends simply because they act as useful idiots for their cause?

It's really a shame that these people have gotten themselves into this mess because of their own stupidity. It's a bigger shame that organization that they represent has no ability to comprehend the fact that kidnapping and killing hostages has less to do with American foreign policy than it has to do with the Islamofascists' desire to wipe out all "infidels". Having the word "Christian" in the name of their organization probably qualifies for an extra dozen virgins in the terrorists' minds.

These were probably the same idiots who volunteered to act as human shields for Saddam before we went in there. What the hell is wrong with these people?

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What Men Want

Dr. Joy Bliss over at Maggie's Farm posts a list of 16 things that she believes (as a mental health professional) men want. Speaking as a man, I'd say she's pretty right on with most of 'em.

I tried to compile such a list once. All I could come up with was Boobies and Beer.

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