Some Gigs ARE Better than Others

No, really…

My favorite “local” gig is at Cibolo Creek Ranch, a high-zoot resort for the rich and famous, as well as people who just have a lot of money (It’s a 130 mile round trip, which is nothing out here). I only get out there a couple of times a year, mostly because a few other local musicians who have been around here longer than I have ins to the place. So…

I had a blowout on the Ranch on the way in to the gig. Fortunately, the photographer was five minutes behind me, and she gave me a ride to the office. Unfortunately, her Honda Element was too small and packed with camera gear for me to put my stuff in. Fortunately, the hotel and events manager had a ranch truck handy, and so we went out and got my stuff.

I had been wanting to get some face time with this guy, and since it was a five mile ride back to my truck, I had my chance. This guy, it turns out, has managed hotels on Saipan, Guam, and three Hawaiian Islands… I’ve been to all of those places, and we hit it off great.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to change the tire before the gig, so we left my truck out on the ranch, and went back to do the shindig. I played really well… considering my stress level: “Am I going to have any light left to change that tire in?!” Fortunately, the gig was short.

Unfortunately, the HM had to schmooze with the guests; fortunately, the General Manager was available. Nobody ever gets face time with this guy! He was kind of distant at first – typical white person typical hard-ass cowboy – but then he asked… about my vehicle. Cowboys. like. trucks. We hit it off too, and both of them made sure they had my contact info before I left. Yesssssss!

Unfortunately, I had to change the tire wearing my suit (Well, the pants anyway), and it’s a disaster. ARG!

And I need new tires… at $450.00 a pop (Pun intended). Fuck. More beer.

And An Even Happier Easter!

Pope converting muslims.

I wonder if this is a part of his call for reciprocity. After all, the Muslims have been declaring for years that they are the world’s fastest growing religion. (Some comment on that particular piece of prop found here.)

If all these Catholics are converting to Islam, then surely in the name of fairness, we Catholics can expect a few Muslims to cross over to the dark (sic) side?

And a fantastic Easter/Purim/holiday of your choice to you all!

Heh.

PM Kevin Rudd was visiting a primary school and he went into one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.

Teacher asked PM if he’d like to lead the discussion on the word “TRAGEDY.” So our illustrious leader from Queensland asked the class for an example of a ‘tragedy.’

One little boy stood up and offered “If my best friend who lives on a farm is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him that would be a tragedy.”

“No,” said Kevin from Queensland, “that would be an accident.”

A little girl raised her hand, “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff killing everyone, that would be a tragedy.”

“No” said PM. “That’s what we would call a great loss.”

The room went silent. No other child volunteered.

Kevin searched the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of tragedy?”

Finally, a small boy raised his hand. In a small voice he said, “If the plane carrying you and Ms Gillard was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy.”

“Fantastic!” cried Kev from Qld. “That’s right! And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”

“Well,” said the boy, “It has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss and it probably wouldn’t be a flamin’ accident either.”

-via Andrew Bolt reader Tess of Brisbane

Happy Easter

Christian Origins

Easter is the annual festival commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the principal feast of the Christian year. It is celebrated on a Sunday on varying dates between March 22 and April 25 and is therefore called a movable feast. The dates of several other ecclesiastical festivals, extending over a period between Septuagesima Sunday (the ninth Sunday before Easter) and the first Sunday of Advent, are fixed in relation to the date of Easter.

Connected with the observance of Easter are the 40-day penitential season of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding at midnight on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday; Holy Week, commencing on Palm Sunday, including Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, and terminating with Holy Saturday; and the Octave of Easter, extending from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday. During the Octave of Easter in early Christian times, the newly baptized wore white garments, white being the liturgical color of Easter and signifying light, purity, and joy.

The Christian festival of Easter probably embodies a number of converging traditions; most scholars emphasize the original relation of Easter to the Jewish festival of Passover, or Pesach, from which is derived Pasch, another name for Easter. The early Christians, many of whom were of Jewish origin, were brought up in the Hebrew tradition and regarded Easter as a new feature of the Passover festival, a commemoration of the advent of the Messiah as foretold by the prophets.

Dolly Parton Releases Album on Her Own Label. There cannot be enough said about this fine lady. I know, I live in the area she was born and raised in AND SHE has supported this area through and with MANY ventures.

This says it much better….”I don’t think there’s anything that woman can’t do,” said rising country star Kellie Pickler, who calls Parton her greatest influence. “She just walks into a room and lights it up. She’s got that ‘it’ factor that money can’t buy. She’s the whole package.”

Breitbart

Pope Baptizes Prominent Italian Muslim

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Italy’s most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service. An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book “Long Live Israel.”As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

Vatican Television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with six other candidates for baptism. He later received his first Communion.

Allam, 55, told the newspaper Il Giornale in a December interview that his criticism of Palestinian suicide bombing provoked threats on his life in 2003, prompting the Italian government to provide him with a sizable security detail.

The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy—which Allam has frequently criticized as having links to Hamas—said the baptism was his own decision.

“He is an adult, free to make his personal choice,” the Apcom news agency quoted the group’s spokesman, Issedin El Zir, as saying.

Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of Coreis, the Islamic religious community in Italy, said he respected Allam’s choice but said he was “perplexed” by the symbolic and high-profile way in which he chose to convert.

You must have missed this part Yahya….“along with six other”.

Hey, Yahya, we have an internet thingy, named after you. How neat, huh?

Breitbart

Dominus vobiscum

May have seen this…BUT if not, another firebreather…No minced words here, but a TAD different than Rev. Wright

From our friends at Stable of Zionist

A REAL…Fire Breather…DAMN!

You know, if Leftist’s concentrated their efforts on their candidates running for President instead of despise for George Bush, who knows…Some Americans might even be interested in what they plan on doing, versus being mesmerized by an empty suit..that just happened to slip the race card in, in a slick way, though…Nothing blunt, of course.

Slate Video

Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.

Naked Woman Picture Gains Popularity On Internet

SAN FRANCISCO—According to leading web experts, a photo of an unidentified naked woman has caused an online sensation after appearing on the Internet sometime last week.

The inexplicably popular photograph, which features the woman exposing both breasts as well as providing an unobstructed view of her vagina, has been visited an estimated 750,000 times since it was first discovered two months ago.

Let the above in bold…be your guide!

The Onion

Read the “Wiki” link provided (if one desires). Seems The U.S. has some Iraqi-Americans being held, IN Iraq on terror charges, which of course the Iraqi-Americans vehemently deny.

SCOTUS Blog

More on Saddam and the Terrorists. LIES all lies, just ask any indoctrinated (by their own choice) Leftist. Should any want to dirty their eyeballs and then have to wash, rinse and dry your computer/laptop, just visit The Daily InterKos. OH and to be fair, some conspiratorial extreme right wing nut houses.

The Washington Times reports on the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) paper on Saddam Hussein’s connections with terrorist groups, which we’ve already commented on a number of times. The IDA report concludes that “Iraq was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism”:

“Many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States,” said the report. “State sponsorship of terrorism became such a routine tool of state power that Iraq developed elaborate bureaucratic processes to monitor progress and accountability.”

Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad group, which merged into al Qaeda with Zawahiri as al Qaeda’s number two leader, worked closely with Iraqi intelligence and received Iraqi help in organizing terrorist attacks. So the IDA report, which is based on a review of only a fraction of the Iraqi intelligence documents that are now available, confirms the threat to the U.S. and its allies that was posed by cooperation between Saddam’s regime and Islamic terrorist groups. It’s hard not to agree with Rep. Pete Hoekstra:

Mr. Hoekstra bemoaned the White House’s refusal to highlight the Islamic Jihad-Saddam connection, or, for that matter, recent disclosures that Saddam told his FBI interrogator that he planned to resume production of weapons of mass destruction.”It just points out from my standpoint how pathetic this administration has been in really talking to the American people about the threat from radical jihadists in general and what was going on in Iraq in particular,” he said.

White House spokesmen did not return calls seeking comment on the IDA report.

SCOTT adds: Tom Joscelyn writes to comment:

Unfortunately, I think this Washington Times account shows how much confusion there still is regarding al Qaeda. There is a subheading in the article that reads “Al Qaeda out” and the article goes on to explain that the IPP study found no “no direct operational link” between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda. That’s true, the report does have one throw away line in the executive summary that says that. But it is also highly misleading and based on a false premise. Then, under another subheading that reads “Egypt jihad in,” the article explains how the IPP study found that Saddam’s regime had an “an alliance with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)” dating to the early 1990’s. The second point is true, and it also directly contradicts the first.

Here is where the confusion comes in. The EIJ, as anyone who has studied al Qaeda knows, is as much “al Qaeda” as Osama bin Laden himself ever was. A number of accounts have pointed out that the EIJ merged with al Qaeda in 1998 (or not fully until 2001, depending on who you talk to). The implication being that the EIJ wasn’t really “al Qaeda” until that time. This is nonsense for a lot of reasons.

The EIJ and its leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, who is al Qaeda’s #2, have worked closely with bin Laden since the mid-1980’s. There is ample evidence of this close working relationship from then on. Montasser al-Zayyat, an Islamist attorney in Egypt who represented Zawahiri’s terrorist colleagues in court, has explained this in his book The Road to al-Qaeda. Zayyat writes: “Zawahiri managed to introduce drastic changes to Osama bin Laden’s philiosophy after they first met in Afghanistan in the middle of 1986, mainly because of the friendship that developed between them. Zawahiri convinced bin Laden of his jihadi approach, turning him from a funamentalist preacher whose main concern was relief work, into a jihadi fighter, clashing with despots and American troops in the Arab world. Zawahiri gave bin Laden some of his closes confidants to help him. They [EIJ members] later became the main figures in bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.” Zayyat goes on to recount how the influence went both ways, but clearly Zawahiri was an important influence on bin Laden early on. There is much more, of course. Lawrence Wright documents the close dealings between the EIJ and bin Laden from the late 1980’s on in The Looming Tower. Regardless of when the EIJ “formally” merged with bin Laden, whether you want to claim it was 1998 or 2001 or whenever, the two were working hand-in-glove long before – since the mid to late 1980’s. They cooperated on attacks, in al Qaeda’s founding in the late 1980’s, shared the same financing and training infrastructure, etc. Bin Laden even put the EIJ’s members on his payroll in the late 1980’s.

The point is that it takes a special brand of myopia to claim that a significant relationship between Saddam’s regime and the EIJ does not somehow represent a “direct connection” to al Qaeda. Zawahiri and the EIJ are as much ‘al Qaeda’ as bin Laden ever was.

And now, thanks to the recently released Iraqi Intelligence documents, we know that Saddam had a working relationship with the EIJ going back to at least 1990.

Power Line

Put On Your “Shocked!” Face…

…because you ain’t gonna believe this!

… oh, wait.

Retired General, Obama Adviser Compares Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy

God, betcha this made Bill’s crotch hot and sweaty.

SALEM, Ore.  — A retired Air Force general compared former President Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator, on Friday after Clinton seemed to question Democrat Barack Obama’s patriotism.

Merrill “Tony” McPeak, a former chief of staff of the Air Force and currently a co-chair of Obama’s presidential campaign, said he was disappointed by comments Clinton made while campaigning for his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech Friday in Charlotte, N.C.

“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” Clinton said. “And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

Personally General McPeak, I see not a damn thing wrong, with Bill’s statements. Tell me where I’m wrong. Oh General McPeak, so glad you were in the service, you did well for your country…How many stars did the Soviets award you?

Fox News

Ummm, McPeak…you do know that the racism brought into this campaign was brought subliminally by Hussein Obama…then BLEW UP…with his friends interjecting themselves…You know, like Rev. Jeremiah, Black Panthers and Obama’s acceptance of…until of course it wasn’t politically expedient, to continue to do so…in PUBLIC anyway. Lest I be accused of being a “racist”, McPeak…I should add, et al on the list after those mentioned. In fact, General…you are part of the…et al.

I love capitalism.

Buy it here.

.

-via Instapundit (where else?)

Did John Kerry Help Barack Obama With Tuesday’s Speech? See Sir Spot, this article includes a shot with Johnny and A prophylactic on. To big a word? Try Rubber…:).

Did John Kerry Help Barack Obama With Tuesday’s Speech?

 

Newsbusters

AFL: West Coke Eagles v Brisbane Lions

First Quarter:

The West Coke Eagles suck. As do the Lions.

That said, a team whose colours are maroon and blue should not be wearing white shorts. They should be wearing blue ones.

The Eagles just kicked a cute little goal. Kind of dainty. Just what I would expect from the Ladies of the West.

I’m not sure who I’m going for here. Both teams suck, but I think I may have to back the ilEagles just because they gave the Chosen Team Chris Judd.

An Eagle just booted the ball back between the goal posts, bringing the score to Coke Eagles 2.0.12 to Brisbane’s 0.0.00.

A third goal to the Eagles. They must be completely iced and increasing speed tonight.

The Eagles just missed a goal but got a behind there, score now 3.1.19 to Lions’ 0.0.00. Lookin’ good for the Eagles, but the game is still very young.

Daniel Kerr (WCE) is playing very well tonight. I wonder what his incentive is…

The Lions just got themselves on the scoreboard with a behind, but to show off, the Eagles trumped that with a goal. ilEagles 4.1.25 to 0.1.01.

Brisbane are handling the ball well. The Tigers (Richmond) clearly aren’t the only team who have handled balls before.

Speaking of playing well with balls, the ilEagles just booted another goal through… WCE 5.1.31 to 0.1.01.

Another behind to the Eagles, making it WCE 5.2.32 to BL 0.1.01, with seven minutes left in the quarter.

Random Fact: The Lions are drinking yellow Gatorade today.

The Eagles have just scored another goal, making it 6.2.38 to that grand total of 1 point held by the Lions. Right now, I’m wondering how the huge pussies ever won a Grand Final, much less three in a row.

Random Fact: The WCE have really cool jerseys.

The Lions just missed a perfect opportunity to raise their score from a whole, huge, whopping one point… but just like the Cowardly Lions, they are, they didn’t take the opportunity.

After kindly being given another chance by the Eagles (albeit accidentally), the Lions finally got a goal, with one minute before the quarter is over. Score is 6.2.38 to 1.1.7.

Right on the siren ending the end of the quarter, the Lions miss another chance at a goal, but get a behind. Score 6.2.38 to 1.2.8. HA HA!

Damn future… it just keeps on growing uglier.

There was a time when this was enough to make one fear for one’s grandchildren.

Planet of the Apes

But that was a vision of the merely apocalyptic. Today’s vision of what lies ahead is full on climb-screaming-up-the-inside-walls-of-your-skull horrifying… because it’s here already.

Idiocracy

Interesting…

You White People Are Hilarious