Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Global financial crisis: Russians cut back on Vodka!

You know things are getting serious when the Russians cut back on their prodigious Vodka drinking habits.

Warehouses are starting to fill up with unsold Vodka, as the Russian public tightens their belts.

Pavel Shapkin, president of the National Alcohol Association told Rueters that "people are having to save money, including on drinks, and this is connected to the impact of the financial crisis on people's disposable incomes."

Bathtub Vodka is starting to show up. The last time that happened bootleggers poisoned people with their low-grade market brew which caused widespread liver failure, jaundice, and toxic hepatitis.

A half-liter bottle of Vodka goes for about $1.80 a bottle in Russia. 

Monday, November 24, 2008

FAIR WARNING!: Non-Bloggers Fear Us Because...

Pitbull vs Porcupine: it's apparent who lost this little encounter!

Miraculously, this female pitbull wasn't blinded or didn't suffer any permanent damages. She apparently wanted to play with a porcupine who didn't want to play, and in fact, felt quite threatened. The owner reported that it was a long and painful procedure pulling the quills out at the vets. The Queen of Quills, as her owner has dubbed her, is on antibiotics and pain meds and reportedly recovering just fine. I'll bet that given the chance...she'd do it all again!

Priestess with a Golden Eye is discovered in Sistan Desert in Iran

Note that there's two tiny holes in the gilded eyeball (inset). They were there to run a thin piece of silk through, which allowed the wearer to tie the eye on.

The 5000 year-old woman was six-feet tall and must have been imposing with her gilded eye and above normal height.

Archaeologists say the woman was a soothsayer or priestess. She was somewhere between 25 and 30 years-old when she died.

She was also buried with a bronze mirror so she could check her startling appearance. The eye wasn't made to mimic a real eye.

Instead, it was glittery and probably appeared mysterious to her followers. Perhaps even supernatural.

What an interesting story if they could find ancient records that told about her life. I could even see a movie being made about it.

Now who could star in the part? Hmmmmm.....

Here's one good reason I don't kayak along the north coast...

Another $20 million of tax-payer money pumped into Citigroup

Here we go again. More rewards for business with a lousy management team and greedy CEO. Regulators hope that plowing the cash into their coffers will avoid a worse global crisis than the one in the 1930s. Right now, every big corporate business in the country is running to the trough at Washington DC begging for a bailout. The Big Three automakers have been pleading their case recently, but were told to come up with a business plan. Well, imagine that.

A business plan. The same clowns who ran their companies into the ground now have the gall to ask for money. And the damn government is giving it to them. That's crap! Let them go bankrupt and re-do the way they do business. They won't learn their lesson if Uncle Sugar bails them out.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

RETI Gambit - Opening Theory & a fun way to fight the French Defense!

MOVE 4 - CASTLE Queen side

I use to belong to a chess club in Eureka many years ago and I do enjoy the game. I'm proud to say I taught one of my nephews to play chess and he's now a Grand Master! In other words, he can kick my butt now! We haven't played since he moved to Colorado eons ago.

Sometimes I pull out a book on chess moves and read about different games from one of my favorite all time players - Bobby Fischer. As a person he was a complete asshole...but his game was other worldly! I like going through the games he played against Boris Spassky, the Soviet Union Grand Master, and world champ at the time. Fischer went to Reykjavik, Iceland in 1972, at the height of the Cold War, and beat Spassky to become the one (and still only) American World Chess Champion.

  

"CHESS IS WAR OVER THE BOARD. THE OBJECT IS TO CRUSH THE OPPONENT'S MIND" - Bobby Fischer

Have you ever heard the adage 'smiling' like cats and dogs?

  

 

   

AS IT STANDS in the Times-Standard - Presidential Pardons & Turkeys!

While our Chimp-in-Charge wraps up his lame duck presidency, he has two more official perks that are full of irony - the pardoning of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey and any criminal he wants.

This photo shows last year's turkey pardoning which was never released to the public for obvious reasons.

AS IT STANDS takes a look at some past pardons that will ruffle your feathers when you read them. There's also some speculation on who Dubya plans to pardon before he slinks away into history.

He's got so many cronies doing illegal things that he may just issue a mass Pardon to anyone that worked for him in the last eight years!

To read today's column CLICK HERE.

Florida boy arrested for Gas Attack-He kept Farting in the Classroom!

A 12-year-old student was arrested earlier this month after he "deliberately passed gas to disrupt the class." The boy was also accused of shutting off the computers of classmates at Stuart Spectrum Jr/Sr High School. He was basically busted for disruption of a school function. "He continually disrupted his classroom environment by breaking wind and shutting off several computers," said the Police report.

Looks like his parents are going to have to make sure the boy doesn't eat beans or other gassy foods or he may not graduate from school! I can imagine the kids in the classroom got a big kick out of his hijinks however.

Trump's Lowest Grift Ever Saved for Holy Week

This is a story about how the devil's puppet, aka Donald Trump, mocked Christianity by selling a book combining the Bible, the Constitu...