I Wish I Saw This Video Back in the 1990s

Do you remember “Baby Got Back,” the rap song by Sir Mix-A-Lot that praised black women with oversized rear ends?  Well, now here’s a Christian parody, called “Baby Got Book.”  Watch, enjoy, and get inspired!

Our Blind Squirrel Congressman Gets It Right

Yesterday morning I woke up to learn that in the dead of night, the House of Representatives passed the health care bill.  This is all the more amazing when you consider that lawmakers aren’t finished writing the bill yet, and they probably haven’t read the 2,000 pages that we know exist (so far).  They basically voted to give the San Francisco ex-hippie, Nancy Pelosi, a blank check.  Most amazing of all is their timing.  Just before midnight on a Saturday?  For me, that’s about as close to the middle of the weekend as you can get.  These are guys with an attendance record that would get them fired from most jobs in the real world.  Earlier this year I heard that a lot of them don’t show up until Tuesday afternoon, and head back to their home districts by the end of Thursday, so most of the important voting is scheduled for Wednesday.  No doubt they did it to sneak the bill past us, and Pelosi did it with a bunch of arm-twisting.

The good news is that the vote was so close (220-215) that it might not get passed in the Senate; senators seeing their careers pass before their eyes are likely to think twice first.  Apparently that happened with my congressman, Ben Chandler.  After he voted against offshore drilling and in favor of “Cap & Trade,” the energy tax that is sure to ruin our coal industry, I was ready to declare him a moonbat; he just happens to be less obnoxious than Alan Grayson, the new congressman they have where my father lives.  This time, though, he voted against the health care bill, so I guess the “Blue Dog Democrat” description is more accurate.  It sure must have taken a lot of calls from unhappy constituents like me to make him see the light.  Maybe also the current mess-up over flu vaccines.  If the government can’t get enough of that out when they say they will, how are they going to do when they control the whole health care industry?  I’ll file the news from Ben Chandler with the statement that even a blind squirrel can find a nut occasionally (no ACORNS, please!).

Over the weekend, I also got an e-mail from Victor Schlatter, a retired Wycliffe missionary I saw two or three times when I lived in Florida.  Last May 17, I wrote an essay where I gave thirty reasons why I believe Barack Obama is a “stealth” Moslem.  Since then, I have added five more reasons to the list.  Now Mr. Schlatter has referred me to a video that makes the same points.  Around the beginning of this year I learned the code for posting YouTube videos on webpages, so this one is going there as a second opinion.  It makes you think about what we have gotten ourselves into, doesn’t it?

Family Fun Night, October 2009

This evening I finally found time to sort, edit, and upload the best pictures that I took last October 31, from the event at my church we call Family Fun Night. Sorry for the delay; I hope you like what you see.

This time it was too cold and wet to do anything outside, so the inflatable castle was brought inside. It barely fit in the right rear corner of the sanctuary.

But as you can see, the kids had a good time playing on it anyhow.

Beanbag toss games, called “Cornhole,” are popular at outdoor events here in Kentucky.  Here it is Gene’s turn, and Leive has a good laugh.

And here is the other team, which included Randy Merriman, Rick Lewis, and Pastor Dave McCowan.

Now Leive gives it a try.  It turns out she has a good arm for this; she said she got it from doing the javelin throw in high school.

And now for a look at the wonderful dishes we brought for the potluck.  From front to back, here is what Leive made:  halang-halang, curried pancit noodles, lumpias (egg rolls) and yellow rice.  The halang-halang was more popular this time; last May I ended up eating most of it for lunches the following week, but now the folks finished it all off, leaving none to bring home.  I don’t know if it was because Leive used beef instead of chicken, or because she used a darker sauce.  Rezia claimed it was spicy enough to clear out her sinuses, so it even had medicinal value!

And here is a closer look at the lumpias and yellow rice.  The sauces are Thai sweet chili, and Philippine banana sauce, which looks and tastes just like ketchup, believe it or not.

What’s a potluck without salad and rolls?  As you can see, somebody brought that.

The pastor recommended people bring chili, so here are the chili and pasta dishes.  Of course, Leive’s halang-halang is the Philippine equivalent.  Don’t worry, everything was yummy!

A peek at the dessert table.

Leive with one of the other cooks, Carolyn Pappy.

Leive with Sherri Masters, at our table.  The two ladies in the background are Sherri’s mother and Rezia.

At the next table were some more good friends:  Terrell & Heather Cherry, and Krystal McKinney to the left.

As usual for an event like this, we finished by showing a Veggie Tales video after dinner (“Where’s God When I’m Scared?”), something the whole family can enjoy, and had a drawing to give some toys away to the kids.  Thus, it was another fine evening I’ll remember for a long time to come.

Did a Pigeon Just Save the World?

You may remember when the story from a year or two ago when the world’s most powerful atom-smasher was built by the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. I heard some less-than-rational folks, both online and in the real world, express fears that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would destroy the world, or even disrupt reality as we know it. The scientists themselves have suggested–seriously!–that the particles produced might be able to travel in time.  I didn’t say anything here about all this, but I felt the fears of non-scientists were groundless. Now it looks like I was right, but not in the way I expected.  The fears are groundless not because of what happened, but because the LHC doesn’t work!

Those poor scientists haven’t gotten the LHC to work properly since it was finished. No surprise there, since this is probably the most complicated machine ever built. I’m reminded of my favorite scene from “Star Trek III”, where Scotty disables the starship that is supposed to replace the Enterprise by removing one computer chip, and says, “The more they out-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain.”  First, a liquid helium leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam; they need temperatures close to absolute zero to work as superconductors.  Then the restart of the machine was postponed so some more safety features could be added.  Now the magnets have overheated again, and the scientists say it happened because a piece of a baguette, one of those long loaves of bread the French are famous for, fell onto the machinery.  Everyone thinks a passing bird dropped the bread; oops!

Of course, operation of the LHC will have to be delayed some more, while the scientists and engineers try to find a way to keep this freak accident from happening again.  In the meantime, doesn’t this story, where a lowly animal stops one of man’s greatest inventions, sound like something you’d read in a book or see in a movie?

Part of the LHC, and what may have defeated it.

Large Hadron Collider broken by bread dropped by passing bird

I Have Been in the Penalty Box

I suppose my regular readers want to know where I’ve been.  Would you believe that WordPress, the managers of this website, wouldn’t let me write anything for four days?  They found the links and ad I put up for the new Blastoff Network, and said that’s a no-no.  They didn’t even let me in to remove the offending material until today.  I guess it’s like Google Ads; they don’t want any advertising or business ventures if there is no money in it for them.  What I do know is that in the nearly three years this blog has been here, I made sure I did not post links to websites that promote the “Sinful Six” categories of content (pornography, gambling, crime, hate, tasteless material and violence), and Blastoff has none of these.

I wonder if any of them have been to Pizza Hut’s website lately?  Pizza Hut has a Blastoff page and is promoting it with ads, so the new business is legit for them.

In other news, we are still experiencing a colder and wetter year than usual.  Normally October is the driest month of the year in Kentucky, but according to Tuesday’s paper, this year October got three more inches of rain than normal.  And whereas Lexington normally gets 45 inches of precipitation per year, this we’ve gotten 49 inches, and there are still two months left to go!


The basketball season is beginning, too.  On Monday the University of Kentucky Wildcats won their first game with John Calipari as coach.  I guess the hype over the new coach wasn’t misplaced after all.


What is a pedway, anyway?  A week or two ago they were talking on the radio about bringing a pedway into town, and they mentioned with streets would be blocked on the way.  Now they’re talking about putting one up (presumably the same one) near the UK hospital.  Is that what they call covered walkways around here?  Or is it some kind of moving sidewalk?


That’s all I have time to write now.  Hopefully tomorrow I can finally post the pictures I took at my church’s Family Fun Night.

Erudite Quotes

I tried looking up information on one Boswell D. Rabbitsmith, because he is credited with a long list of witty quotes, statements that seem to require more thinking than most of us do. All I could find was that he is an “erudite scientist” who once said, “I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates.” Of course, that makes his quotes perfectly suited to go on The Xenophile Historian’s page of smart quotes, so here they are:

1. I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
2. Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back.
3. Half the people you know are below average.
4. 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5. 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6. A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8. If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain.
9. All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
10. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11. I almost had a psychic girlfriend, but she left me before we met.
12. OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
13. How can you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
14. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16. When everything seems to be coming your way, maybe you’re in the wrong lane.
17. Ambition is a poor excuse for not being smart enough to be lazy.
18. Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.
19. I intend to live forever… so far, so good.
20. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21. Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
22. What happens if you get scared half to death…twice?
23. My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
24. Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
25. If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26. A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
28. The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30. The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
31. Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
32. If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

An Old Picture, But Still Funny — A Florida Jack-O-Lantern

I believe I saw this one growing on a farm, just outside of Gainesville (LOL).

A Busy End to October

Boy it looks like everything is happening at once as October draws to a close!  For a start, tomorrow is Halloween, or as I like to call it, Reformation Day, because it was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther started the ball rolling for Protestants by nailing his 95 theses to the door of his church.  In Philadelphia, I believe they will have the third game of the World Series tomorrow, while here in Lexington, UK’s football team will play Mississippi State.  At Keeneland, this weekend marks the end of the fall races.  Normally the horses race from the first through the fourth weekend of April and October, but this month they are running a week later; I don’t know why.  Finally, we’re having what we call Family Fun Night at our church tomorrow, where everybody brings a dish for the potluck, and we watch a Veggie Tales video afterwards.  Now what are we going to do to top all this in November?

Will Global Warming Fears Create a World Government?

Last October 17, Mohammed Nasheed, the president of Maldives, held a meeting underwater.  He and his vice president and Cabinet met at desks in the Indian Ocean, wearing scuba gear.  He did that stunt as a warning of the danger rising sea levels pose to his country.  For those who don’t know where Maldives is, it is a collection of tiny islands southwest of India; the highest point in the archipelago is only six feet above sea level.  Hence, the government there is awfully concerned that the earth’s glaciers might melt and flood them.

Now it turns out that Nasheed’s fear is probably groundless.  According to a Swedish scientist, Nils-Axel Morner, from 1790 to 1970 sea levels were 20 cm (8 inches) higher than they are today.  This means that while temperatures are a bit warmer now, the sea has gone down, not up, since 1970.  What’s more, over the past two thousand years, even during the warmest periods, the highest the ocean got was 120 cm (4 feet) above its present-day level, a problem for those living on beaches, but not a catastrophic one.

Maldives’ President All Wet on Sea Level

Naturally I’m going to add those statistics to my list of reasons why we shouldn’t take global warming seriously.  Meanwhile, have you heard of Lord Monckton, a British noble who is gravely concerned about a global warming treaty that is to be signed in Copenhagen next December?  He predicts in this video that if we sign it, it will be the end of the United States as we know it:

The video has caused quite a sensation in the past week.  Then last Tuesday, Roger Diaz, the new pastor of the church I used to attend in Florida, posted a second video on Facebook, where Glen Beck interviews Lord Monckton.  Pastor Roger added this comment:

“The stuff of yesteryear’s conspiracies are today’s realities. This makes me wax nostalgic for the good old days when all of this was so easily dismissed.”

Unquote:  Over the years, I have been led to believe that a world government will arise in the end times, right before the Lord comes back, and a natural disaster like an asteroid impact would make people rush to form that government.  Now it looks like just the threat of a disaster might be enough.  Unfortunately, I don’t think a world government is a good idea; we botched it at Babel, and governments that control all or most of the known world tend to be absolute monarchies or dictatorships, not democracies.

The good news is that ocean currents have shifted in the north Atlantic.  Normally the Gulf Stream moves up the east coast of the United States as far as Long Island, before turning east and going to Europe.  But on October 20 it turned east at North Carolina instead, so that now the only part of Europe touched by the Gulf Stream’s warm waters is Portugal.  This means the rest of the continent is in for a mighty cold winter, including Copenhagen.  The Gore Effect strikes again!

The End of Geocities, and Colonel Sanders at the UN

This morning I learned that Yahoo! closed the doors on Geocities, for the last time.  This marks the end of an era in Internet history.  Launched in the mid-1990s, Geocities told web-surfers to “get your free home page,” and it offered 2-3 megabytes of free server space to each person who signed up.  That was a lot of space in those days; now it’s not enough for a good video or MP3 file.  Consequently a lot of folks built their first websites on Geocities, including me.  I still remember The Xenophile Historian’s original address:  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/1591/ .  It was there from 1997 until 1999, when I went shopping for a new host for the site, eventually choosing Freeservers, where it is now.  At its heyday, around the end of the 1990s, I believe Geocities hosted more than 3 million websites.  That means a lot of my bookmarks won’t work anymore; I hope Archive.org can keep its promise to recover/save as much of the old Geocities sites as possible.

Closer to home, there’s an interesting story concerning the most famous person in Kentucky’s recent history, Colonel Sanders.  No, it’s not the real Colonel; he hasn’t been in the news much lately because he died 29 years ago.  It turns out that Bob Thompson, the former mayor of Lawrenceburg, KY (a town 30 miles west of Lexington), got hired by Kentucky Fried Chicken to impersonate the Colonel, when he won a lookalike contest after he got tired of being mayor.

This week the “Colonel” goes to the United Nations for a commercial stunt, claiming he is there to get the “Grilled Nation of Chicken” admitted as a UN member.  A Libyan diplomat, the current president of the General Assembly, recognizes the Colonel, though they don’t have any KFC restaurants in Libya.  The diplomat posed with his family and Colonel Sanders-Thompson for pictures, and invited the Colonel inside the building for a tour, before guards sounded the alarm.  Now they are claiming that a major security breach took place, and that it’s in bad taste to use the UN for advertising anyway.  Obviously they forget how powerful capitalism is here in the West.  In my former home of Orlando, for example, the home court of the Orlando Magic was originally called the Orlando Arena, until an investment firm paid enough money to rename the place the T.D. Waterhouse Center; since that contract expired, the place has become the Amway Arena.  Will the UN resist a billion dollar offer from some big corporation, in return for the right to rename the UN?

KFC “colonel” dupes UN security

Meanwhile, Debbie Schlussel, a conservative Jewish columnist/blogger, is impressed, and wistfully asking why some terrorists didn’t think of disguising themselves as Colonel Sanders first, if it is so easy to get into the UN that way.

Punk’d of the Week: Wishing Terrorists Had Tried the Col. Sanders Ploy @ the UN