Palookaville used to be a thriving, bustling
neighborhood on the edge of the city. Inhabited by circus folk, the
neighborhood depended on the circuses, carnivals, parades and parties
that went on throughout the city. When the economy took a downturn,
the residents of Palookaville found themselves unemployed and
disenfranchised. Unfortunately, most banks, auto garages and
landscaping firms have no use for someone skilled at making balloon
animals or throwing cream pies. The out-of-work Clowns and other
circus people turned to crime and the occassional rioting in the
streets. The police cracked down hard but that only served to make
the situation even worse. Finally, the Mayor (Da Honorable Joey
Boombatz) signed a peace treaty with the leaders of Palookaville and
created a special police force comprised of Clowns. The Clown Cops
were born.

Continue reading Clown Cops RPG →

Bears Burn Forest
============================
Smokey Bear might have stern words for some of his Alaskan cousins. Brown bears pawing through debris at a land fill on Alaska’s Afognak Island, about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage, touched off a four-acre wildfire earlier this week, officials reported.
“I haven’t actually heard of bears doing anything like this,”

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/05/31/bears.fire.reut/index.html

Teller Talks About Jackasses
=================================
When I first heard the story, it went like this: One winter night a thirteen-year-old boy was watching TV with his friends. No adults were in the house. On came a show in which a handsome hipster doused himself with gasoline, set himself afire, and danced around. The hipster was dressed in a protective fireproof suit, but the innocent boy didn’t know that. To him it looked as though soaking oneself in gasoline and setting oneself afire were safe and fun. The boy took some gasoline and a lighter into his snowy back yard and tried the stunt himself. He was gruesomely burned from head to toe—a victim of parental neglect, or irresponsible media manipulation, or maybe both.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/06/teller.htm

74 Immigrants Held for Ransom in Home
=================================
Police found 74 suspected illegal immigrants being held for ransom in a South Los Angeles house Wednesday evening; a third of them were crammed in a small attic.
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20010531/t000045482.html

I’m Calling My Mom!
=================================
Pupils are using their mobile phones to call their parents during lessons to complain about their teachers, heads say. Unaware of the situation, head teachers were then finding themselves face to face with angry parents, general secretary of the National Association of Heads Teachers, David Hart, told delegates at the union’s annual conference in Harrogate.
“There are too many ‘parents from hell’ who delight in making the lives of heads and their staffs as difficult as possible.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_1362000/1362196.stm

Attention Spans Shorten So Much, People Forget AIDS Will Kill Them
=================================
Young gay and bisexual men, especially in the black community, are becoming infected with HIV at rates similar to those seen when the AIDS epidemic peaked in the mid-1980s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. In a study released to mark the 20th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, U.S. health experts warned that the disease might be poised to make a strong comeback, particularly among gay and bisexual males between the ages of 23 and 29.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010531/ts/health_aids_dc_2.html

Republicans Get Threatening Over Defection
=================================
In the wake of his announced defection from the Republican Party last week, soon-to-be Independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont has received a number of death threats, his spokesman said Thursday.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/05/31/jeffords.threats/index.html

Dead Thrift Store Find
=================================
Fran Osborn considered the box carefully. It certainly wasn’t anything she’d display in her home – a modest box sealed in faux-black-marble shelf paper, with the initials M.P.G. written in rhinestones. But it intrigued her. She shook it. It rattled. Probably rocks, her husband said. “Jewelry,” she thought, and she decided to gamble. So Ms. Osborn carried it to the counter at the Genesis Thrift Store on Oak Lawn Avenue, paid a dollar plus sales tax and carted the mystery package to the car…Inside the box, Ms. Osborn found a second box with a tag on top. On the tag was a name: Millard P. Griffin, and the words Metrocrest Funeral Home, Carrollton. And in that second box lay the cremated remains of Mr. Griffin, a Dallas resident who died on July 10, 1996, at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
http://www.dallasnews.com/metro/stories/380416_newashes_30met.html

http://www.msnbc.com/news/580455.asp

The newest email virus hitting the Web doesn’t even have a virus attached to it. In fact, it isn’t even *about* a virus.

An email making the rounds warns Windows users they should immediately delete a file on their computers called Sulfnbk.exe because it’s a virus undetectable by any software inoculation – and that’s because it’s not a virus, its an applet that changes short file names back into long ones.

But people are forwarding the message to all their friends to be, what, helpful or something.

don’t spread the fraud.

anchorite (ANG-kuh-ryt) noun, also anchoret

One who lives in seclusion; a hermit.

[Via Middle English, Medieval Latin, Late Latin, Late Greek, from Greek anakhoretes, to withdraw.]

And now, for something completely different:

The most referenced frog in Iraq, after the crunchy ones….

The frog-7 rocket. For More info, look here. http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/frog-7.htm

Hubris and Gnosis
and psychohypnosis
the land of livejournal
is not in the knowsis
if your holding bag’s handy
you may need some doses
the minister’s daughter
is missing some toeses
there’ll be fewer survivors
than midwinter roses
Hubris and Gnosis
and psychohypnosis

Things seen on the walk this morning… looks like road construction is completed over on Atlantic, so I can take my ‘regular route’ again tomorrow. Lots of car traffic, but minimal pedestrians. I stopped in at the Walgreens, got a big honking bottle of water (1/2 gallon jug) and polished it off before I was halfway home… I think I’m going to try to cut down and slowly wean out soda-pop again.

Lots of little things on my mind, like fizz-bubbles in a soda. I move my mind to one thing, and a different bubble spins up, and gets in the way, making me think of something else. Story ideas, character studies.

Just did a little research… I’ve noticed that I’ve posted at least once a day (I’d say my average is maybe 5 a day) since mid-august of last year.

I wonder if I’ll make it a whole year without breaking stride? I also notice that I’ve plateaued with readers… I’ve been at about this number for the last few months… some come and some go, but the count remains the same. I notice that some people run away when I go on a post-frenzy (more than ten in a day seems to be what it takes) and I can understand that… I’m amazed that so many people really care about anything I have to say, and share my taste in what I find to be amusing. I feel good about that.

In other news, I just got an e-mail that a hippie acquaintance of mine died of a heroin overdose early this week… It’s a real shame, because I thought he had gotten past that part of his life, cleaned up in a detox about a year ago. I don’t know the whole story, but what I do know is that he was between places to live, having had an argument with his dad (Mikey was 26, and had moved back in with his father, last I’d heard). I guess he started using again as a result. I had really thought he’d gotten his act together… He was going to a trade school to be an electrician, had a girlfriend… I wonder how she’s taking it (I never even met her, he hooked up when he moved back up north.)

Ah well, his funeral is a long distance away…I can’t attend, but I’d better make arrangements to send flowers, and make a donation to the local shelter in his memory today. Maybe I should call his father, but I really don’t know him. How sad to outlive your child… and to part on what I assume were less than warm and fuzzy terms.

I’m really not too sad about this, maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet, more disappointed in the loss… a waste of a good, useful member of society. He was going to make a point of being more of a benefit to the species than a drain on it. He was friendly, and good company even with strangers. I hope you’re in a better place now, Mikey.

Well, I’m back on my schedule of waking up early to synch with my sweetheart, and to go on walkies while she’s tooling into work.

sun’s just getting up. I’ll be cruising out ther from 8 to 9 this morning.

pervicacious pur-vih-KAY-shus, adjective:
Refusing to change one’s ideas, behavior, etc.; stubborn; obstinate.

Pervicacious is from Latin pervicax, pervicac-, “stubborn, headstrong,” from root pervic- of pervincere, “to carry ones point, maintain ones opinion,” from per-, “through, thoroughly” + vincere, “to conquer, prevail against” + the suffix -ious, “characterized by, full of.”

Ostriches (from AZ Ostrich Company, Inc.)

The ostrich, Struthio camelus, is the world’s largest living bird. It is in the family classification of ratites, which includes emus, kiwis, and rheas. Ostrich fossils have been found in North Africa, Europe and Asia, but today the bird is indigenous to Africa, where it has been raised commercially for more than 100 years. They are not endangered species.

The ostrich is a flightless bird, but it can run up to speeds of 40 mph. It can sustained this speed up to 30 minutes. The ostrich is the only bird that has two toes on each foot. During the mating season the male develops a red coloring on the beak, around the eyes and on the skin on the leg bones. The blown-up, thickened neck is related to the strange sounds the male produces when courting a hen or challenging another male. Other sounds are produced by both sexes, hissing when enraged, low gurgling sounds when in fear and a short, sharp cry warning of danger.

It has thick black eyelashes that surround it eyes, which are almost two inches in diameter. Its speed and unusually good eyesight help the ostrich escape from its enemies. The ostrich does not hide its head in the sand, but is eating gravel, small pebbles or sand to aid in grinding food for digestion or for curiosity. Domesticated ostriches eat corn, alfalfa and soy bean meal and need to drink lots of water.

Ostriches are polygamous. Domestic breeding of ostriches are either in trios (one male (cock) and two females (hen)) or colonies with a prevalent number of hens. An ostrich reaches its breeding maturity at 2 1/2 to 3 years. An ostrich can breed for about 35 years and can live to be about 70 years old. They can weigh from 250 to 400 pounds and stand 6 to 8 feet tall.

A hen can lay from 10 to 70 eggs each year. Each egg weighs about 3 to 4 pounds and is nearly 6 inches in diameter. It has a thick shell and a dull yellow. One ostrich egg is equivalent to two dozen chicken eggs. The gestation period is 42 days. An infertile egg can be turned into objects of art by painting or engraving. Most birds are slaughtered from 10 to 14 months.

An ostrich will yield 70 to 100 pounds of meat, 2 to 4 pounds of feathers, and 12-15 square feet of leather.

spielen Sie ein Spiel

Sie erhalten, mir irgendeine Frage zu stellen, die ich antworten muß, indem ich ein schlechtes Programm in Übersetzungslinie benutze, und in der Rückkehr ich Sie um einen bitten kann.

(richtig habe ich die Regeln geändert).