Over a pitcher of fluorescing ‘Witch Head’ lambic, specialty of the Ale Blue Dot Nanobrewpub, Van Loan punctuated a sloshed treatise with a deep fried spear of  pickled zucchini. His audience, the five members of the Modular Orchestral Transcription band Fugue State, faces eerily under-lit by the phantasmal blue light of the brew in the dark, cardice swirled interior of the pub’s melodramatic interior, watched his pickled performance with  amused interest.
“... You schee,” He stabbed Zucchini at the band members :  “itsch rheally schimple! Mushic ish schience, UND,” he channeled his inner Rotwang, “schience IST mushic!” He chomped his organic pointer.
“Ohhhh, Deep!” The bottle-blonde pixie Japanese drummer, Suki2-- Suki Suki to her friends-- enthused so intently that one might suspect irony if one did not know Suki Suki : her only affection was her hair.
“You play, then?” The question, lobbed with an inquisitive twinkle, emanated from the most bewilderingly beautiful intersection of physical traits that belonged to the Lead Guitar, Asada Strangelove. Her genetic heritage could only be expressed as  Transcendent Pan-Racial : she was a Teutonic Indian Meso-American African intersect that was somehow impossibly gorgeous. Her ice blue almond eyes further tapered with elegantly applied Elizabeth ‘Cleo’ Taylor makeup and separated by a decidedly Roman nose, dilated with pleased humour. Even her rich and  oddly burred voice seemed distributed across the tracts of many lands.
“Ab-shou-utely!” Enthused Van Loan. “I have a collhection of shur-a...Schera...heh, I might be a thad dhrunk!” That was good for a group giggle. Van Loan took a deep breath, collected his scattered, wandering wiles ; and enunciated : “I co-llect and play ther-e-mins!”
“Ther-a-whats?” Khimera Chang, five-foot-four Japanese Second Guitar was floored by the fact that there was some sort of musical instrument that had escaped her knowledge.
Asada winked at Van Loan : “Radio frequency modulated tones utilizing the heterodyne principle.”
“Oh!” Chang decided to accept that nugget of esoterica with a pull off of her Shirley Temple.
Asada addressed the decidedly even more green than Wandblume final member of the band, Dazzle Ardent. “Think we can incorporate a theremin into Der Rock Ring des Nibelungen ? “
The punk Orion, all spiky raven hair, piercings  and dark eyes grinned roguishly ruby lips. “You’d think that my Moog would be up to it, but I couldn’t get a decent theremin out of it if I fucked Apollo himself!”
“Leave it to Dazz to express herself so colourfully!” The dry comment dropped by the ebon Kenyan bassist, Aerial Cypher, was almost as rich as the full bodied notes she could trick out of her Gibson. “A theremin in the band would be the cat’s ass! I say give him a go!”
Van Loan bowed,  lost his footing ; planted his forehead in the corn chip guacamole.
Asada surveyed the band. “All in favour say, ‘Awesome!’
The reply was loud, unanimous and affirmative.
“We’ll audition you during our gig at your reception, tomorrow night.”
“Huzzah! I’ll bhreak out Blhack Bhetty : she’s my scherious rhock’n out ghirl!” van Loan poured out a round, even managing to fill at least fifty four percent of the targeted tabled tankards.
A resounding toast of, “Rock on, Wagner!” sloshed a sizable strobed spray of luminous suds as the dance floor lighting commenced. The band, a unit, steered the man of the hour towards the dance floor.
****
Wandblume was in the midst of amassing suitable table settings at the The Island’s Holy Matrimony! emporium when she abruptly found herself surrounded by a black garbed  tactical team. A fancy black doily in one hand, and a swath of green taffeta tablecloth in the other, Wandblume looked positively piqued at the interruption.
“Rain check, boys! I’ve got a marriage to plan, attend, receive & honeymoon! She held up her wristwatch wrist. “Come back in, say, twenty four hours and whisk me away.”
The squad leader, feminine under the bulky ‘Sam Fishers’ touched her throat mike.
“Vigil, Vendor reporting : the Jade consignment’s secured.”
Wandblume snorted. “Jade. Cute.”
“Vendor, delegate consignment delivery.”
The fact that Wandblume could actually hear the command chatter confused her. It seemed like terrible unit protocol until it became patently obvious to her that she was meant to hear the conversation : it was Mikuru of the recently spanked Patrol.
Vendor snapped up her helmet’s smoked visor, a bemused expression clouding her pretty puss.
“Delegate, Vigil?”
“You’ve got a wedding to prep, Vendor! Jade, brief her!”
Wandblume sniggered, handing over her samples to the chagrinned looking Vendor. “Black, green & blue colour scheme for forty guests in a fifty square meter hall. Here’s the guest list for place setting tags.” She fished a PDA out of a pocket, added it to the items in Vendor’s hands. “Don’t make it too paramilitary!” Chuckling, she presented her hands for cuffing and her head for bagging. “Okay, Mikuru, time to spank the Doe!”
****
“Good day for a martial wedding!” Vendor, pushing a cart piled high with sundry articles, exited from the store directly across from Holy Matrimony! She sang a bit of this store’s advertising campaign as she headed towards  Space Truck’n cargo rentals : “Survive with taste, outlive the waste, entrust the taste of Jim Bob’s!”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/showbiz/e ... ?hpt=hp_t2]Elmore Leonard has passed away.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

They see you as small and helplessThey see you as just a childSurprise when they find out that a
Warrior will soon run wildPrepare for your greatest momentsPrepare for your finest hourThe dream that you've always dreamed
Is suddenly about to flower
We are lightningStraying from the thunderMiracles of ancient wonder
This will be the day we've waited forThis will be the day we open up the doorI don't wanna hear your absolutionHope you're ready for a revolutionWelcome to a world of new solutions
Welcome to a world of bloody evolutionIn time your heart will open mindsA story will be told
And victory is in a simple soul
Your world needs a great defenderYour world's in the way of harmYou want a romantic life
A fairytale that's full of charm
Beware that the light is fadingBeware as the dark returnsThis world is unforgiving
Even brilliant lights will cease to burn
Legends scatterDay and night will severHope and peace are lost forever
This will be the day we've waited forThis will be the day we open up the doorI don't wanna hear your absolutionHope you're ready for a revolutionWelcome to a world of new solutions
Welcome to a world of bloody evolutionIn time your heart will open mindsA story will be told
And victory is in a simple soul
-- Jeff Williams featuring Casey Lee Williams, "This Will Be The Day", from RWBY
(And y'know, I would just love to see a piece of fanart with Sailor Moon and Ruby Rose back-to-back, facing a horde of enemies together...)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

If you're driving a motorcycle (hell, anything really), make sure you pay attention to what's going on in front of the car in front of you (at least!).On the bright side, I got away with only some fairly impressive bruises. On the not so bright side, as least 2-3 thousand in damage between my bike and the car.

I know CSI did an episode on the Fen, but what about NCIS?  With the Stingray launching in 2012, and their history of actually getting naval vessels to shoot on and their habit of at least trying to get it right, they might well do a better job of it than CSI.  Especially if the Ninja proceeded to continually photobomb CSI after their bad episode on the fen.

In fact, it could be a replacement plot for the overall arc of Season 10, with them getting called Up to deal with a crewmember of the Stingray that was murdered via being kicked out an airlock in the main belt; and actually have the cast and crew go Up to shoot it.  Any ideas?

I was going through the Faction page on the wiki (all but one of the Minor Factions now have quickie writeups, BTW) when I remembered that there were still parts of the Senshi page that weren't written. So I took a look at what wasn't there. (I patronize a very good optometrist.) One of those sections is "Religion," which currently has only the template boilerplate text:

Quote:(TO BE DEVELOPED: if there's an official religion, give it a quick description; otherwise, discuss what religions if any are practiced by noticeable groups in the faction)

Once upon a time, there was a collection of fairytales. This was a wise collection, in the way that the everyday person was wise, and it knew things that the more literary collections did not. But it was not as beloved as the literary collections of fairytales, so it went into a deep, deep sleep for over a hundred and fifty years, until it was awakened by a cultural curator...

But this isn't a fairytale; this is real life, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/m ... ed-germany]according to The Guardian. And that page has a link to a translation of one of the tales.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

 (Because I can't think of anything else to put as the subject.)
 So, last night, I went out with my family to celebrate my middle sister's graduating as an RN.
 (FYI: the party for this consisted of: Me, my parents, the newly graduated RN sister (middle child), and my youngest sister and her husband.)
 So we're all standing there, waiting for a table to open, and since this is a Friday night , that would take a while. I'm standing there, next to my brother in law watching him play a mobile game, when I spot a group of people coming in. Naturally I move to help hold the door open for them, and that would be that, right?
 Something about this group of people sparked something in my family, and in minutes they were all talking about it...except me, who had no clue what was going on.  In fact, that was my very question ("What?") to my brother in law, who finally clued me in on what I had done...
...which was to hold the door open for Muhammad Ali and his family/retinue.
 Holy. Shit.
 (In my defense, the only sports I pay any sort of more than usual attention to are the Super Bowl-for the ads, whatever Olympics are running at the moment, and occasionally gymnastics)
 As you can imagine, that was the talk of the night.
 So..yeah, that happened.
Brian Y.
Seed Chronicles

This article by Donald Sensing doesn't say anything that hasn't been said before. But it says it very well and quite succinctly. 
It’s a gloomy message. But it seems to be the truth, at least as I see it.

Quote:No one in America has both the power and the determination to hinder Obama from doing whatever he wants.

...
And so with President Obama and federal courts' rulings: they have no means of enforcing their rulings. As any intemperate two-year old knows, you can do anything you want until someone compels you to stop. And so Obama can order whatever he wishes until he is compelled to stop.

The courts lacks the means of such compulsion. That leaves the Congress to rein in the executive. (Please excuse me while I erupt in peals of derisive laughter.) Congress's only authority to rein in a president consists of two things:

• Withhold funding for departments and agencies under executive authority, or
• Impeach him. 

That's it. (In 1834, the Congress voted to censure President Andrew Jackson. Jackson correctly declared that there was no Constitutional authority for it and basically told the Congress they could either impeach him or get stuffed, although he put it a little more pithily.)

Since those are the only two options available, and since the Congress is controlled by the Democrats (the Republican majority in the House meaning nothing here), neither loss of funding nor impeachment will ever be used to restrain this president.
The goal of the entire Democrat party is to be the permanent, sole political authority in the country. This is the actual transformation that Barack Obama promised to great applause in his 2008 campaign. And we are getting transformed good and hard:

Quote:nstead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state. The real import of Barack Obama’s political career will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a permanently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it without legislative assistance — and, more troubling still, in plain violation of the law. President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party. Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that John Adams warned us about.

Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because [i]there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama's expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.
The media will not examine Obama's imperialist manner because they do not want to. They agree with it. The courts are literally unable to enforce their rulings contra this administration; Obama ignores them at will and without consequence. The Republicans are dominated by the Political Class and lack the numbers, influence, collective will and ideological conviction to rein in the administration even if they had the ability to do so, which they don't.
[/i]

I recently found on gizmodo a video that was supposed to do a hearing test tried it out of curiosity and it didn't really seem to work that well for me. So I proceeded to do a quick search and found one at an audiophile site which was more functional...
http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can ... ring-test/Using both laptop and a set of external
speakers I can hear every tone up to 21 Khz (barely) with one odd exception. I
can't hear the 16 Khz tone at all. With two different sets of in ear
headphones I hit a limit of 15Khz which I suspect is more of a demonstration of
the limits of the frequency response of the earphones I used than anything else.
If anybody is curious here's a link to the video with the test that gizmodo linked to...(watch at 1080p res) Same results as the noise addicts test other than the 19Khz tone doesn't work due to youtube's audio compression.
A different site which offers mosquito ring tones for download (not joking) has better audio quality. I can barely hear the 16Khz tone on that one...
http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."