Transylvania - 6 -5000

Bugs at his best.

Carolina Naturally is read in ...

Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Raleigh and Shelby, North Carolina

As well as

Prattsburgh, New York; Big Bear Lake, California;
Scottsdale, Arizona; Thibodaux, Louisiana; Highwood, Illinois;
Mountain Home, Arkansas; Mora, Minnesota;
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;
Hays, Kansas; Providence, Rhode Island

Matt Damon 'honored' by Joe the Plumber's shout-out

Matt Damon is honored that the most recent celebrity of the presidential campaign - "Joe the Plumber" - dropped his name in an interview.

"That was a surprise. I hadn't heard that Joe the Plumber dropped my name," Damon said.
"I'm honored to be in the little passion play, to be an extra."

The plumber, whose real name is Samuel Wurzelbacher, became an overnight media sensation after he was referred to constantly in the final presidential debate.
When the press arrived at his Ohio home, Wurzelbacher, a Republican, said he hoped he wouldn't make a fool of himself with all the attention, "I don't have a lot of pull. It's not like I'm Matt Damon."

Damon - a hardcore Democrat who has spent as much time campaigning for Barack Obama recently than he has acting - was in San Francisco promoting a charity, OneXOne.

Along with hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, Damon was promoting the group's work to end hunger and suffering for children in poverty in the U.S. and Africa.

The actor said he's headed to Florida this weekend to work with the Obama campaign on getting out the vote in a key battleground state.

After that, Damon is off to Morocco to finish shooting a movie, but he said he would stay engaged with the Obama campaign."I'm sure I'll be on the phone over there after filming every night," he said.
"I'll do telephone interviews or whatever they'll have me do. I want to sprint to the finish with the millions of us who really have been desperate for this change."

Damon previously had been openly critical of John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, calling the campaign's pick for the vice presidency "a disaster."
On Thursday, Damon said he would not comment on the Republican ticket.
"The Obama campaign has decided to focus on the positive, and I should be a bigger man and be able to do that with them," Damon said.

Woman with 8-foot-long dreads hopes to set record

Asha Mandela has hair that could rival Rapunzel's.

The South Florida woman who started growing her hair 20 years ago now has locks longer than she is tall.

Mandela has submitted her hair, which measure 8-feet, 9-inches long, to the Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Dreadlocks, the first entry in a new category.

It takes one bottle of shampoo and one bottle of conditioner every time she washes her hair and can sometimes take days to fully dry after she washes it.

Mandela, 46, said she "used to wash it three times a week. Now I do it once a week. It's very tiring. Sometimes I don't have the energy."

Woman gets into tussle with an aggressive deer

A 61-year-old woman got into a tussle with an aggressive deer after it attacked one of her poodles at her home on Monday.

Carol Lince said she let her three dogs outside, then heard one "screaming bloody murder." She went outside her home and saw a doe attacking her smallest dog.

Lince kicked at the deer's hind legs to try to get the animal off her dog, but she said the doe began to ram her with its head, pushing her into a fence.

Lince started walloping the deer's head with her fists until it eventually jumped the fence and ran off.

Lince said she sustained bruises after the deer rammed its head into her abdomen.

The dog was pronounced OK by a veterinarian.

Raccoon unfazed by cop's Taser during wild chase

DALLAS Police learned something during a frenetic burglary call to an elderly couple's home: Tasers don't work on raccoons. Police arrived with guns drawn after receiving a 911 call from an 85-year-old man who heard noises near his front door Tuesday night. Officers surrounded the house but pretty quickly - in the words of the police report - "determined the suspect was a raccoon."

In the meantime, the masked burglar apparently made its way into the house through the chimney. And that's when things got really interesting.

With officers in pursuit, the raccoon took off through the house, ripping up Venetian blinds, pulling down drapes, knocking over a lamp and toppling a flowerpot. Finally, Officer Daniel Ek tried to let it out the back door when the suspect apparently turned threatening.

"While unlocking the back door, the suspect ran at Officer Ek," the police report says.

Ek used his taser, but the raccoon ran up the chimney with the stun gun's prongs in its back. An animal control officer tried unsuccessfully to flush it out with ammonia, homeowner Bill Hyde said in Thursday's editions of The Dallas Morning News.

A neighbor helped secure the front of the fireplace to keep the raccoon from returning. The next morning, when the neighbor returned to put a cap on the chimney, the raccoon had escaped.

"He got away clean," Hyde said.

As of this moment ...

549 Brave men and women will not be returning from Afghanistan
ALIVE!

Support OUR Troops ... Bring them home now!

Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote

What McCain Has Lost Our Vote

By CC Goldwater

Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics ...

Read the rest of what she has to say here.

Oldest toy in Britain?

The carved animal figure above may be the oldest child's toy in Britain. Archaeologists from the University of Bristol found it last month near Stonhehnge and think it's at least 2,000 years old. They dug it out of a young child's grave. There is some debate about whether the toy is a pig or hedgehog.

The Bronze Age figurine was likely made as a toy or in memory of the baby being stillborn or dying in infancy, archaeologist (Joshua Pollard) said...

Evidence of toys during this period in British history is "extremely scant," Pollard said.

"In fact, it's very rare to find any kind of representational art in British prehistory—almost to the extent where you get the impression there's a bit of a taboo on making images of animals or people."

"Britain's Oldest Toy Found Buried With Stonehenge Baby"

Retro-Future

Way to go Ron!
Way to go Andy!
Way to go Henry!

Conservatives for Change

Having come to their senses, conservatives are voting for Obama and telling everyone why!

Tokyo store has not had a customer since 1972

Must have on helluva game of Solitaire going on then!

According to Tokyo Times, this broom shop hasn't sold anything since 1972.

A store that, perhaps due to a niche that’s not exactly necessary nowadays, unfortunately hasn’t had the pleasure of a patron since 1972 — Saturday, September 2nd, to be precise. And even then the customer in question was after a hand brush that unfortunately they didn’t have.

Tokyo Times

People over 55 dream in black and white?

Psychology researchers have suggested that if you grew up on black and white TV, you are more likely to dream in monochrome than people who have watched color TV all their lives.
Dundee university psychology student Eva Murzyn studied data on the color (or lack-thereof) of people's dreams dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. Then she ran her own survey on more than 60 people, half older than 55 and half under 25.

From The Telegraph:

Only 4.4 per cent of the under-25s' dreams were black and white. The over-55s who had had access to colour TV and film during their childhood also reported a very low proportion of just 7.3 per cent.

But the over-55s who had only had access to black-and-white media reported dreaming in black and white roughly a quarter of the time.

Even though they would have spent only a few hours a day watching TV or films, their attention and emotional engagement would have been heightened during this time, leaving a deeper imprint on their mind, Miss Murzyn told the New Scientist.

"The crucial time is between three and 10 when we all begin to have the ability to dream," she said.

"Television and films which by their very nature are interesting and emotionally engaging and even dreamlike. So when you dream you may copy what you have seen on the screen.

"I have even had a computer game player who dreams as if he is in front of a computer screen."

"Black and white TV generation have monochrome dreams"

Not to be a party-pooper, but this old man's dreams are in vivid Technicolor.

Global Warming on TV ... in 1958!

Hum ... I wonder why some are still claiming all this "Global Warming" is new stuff thought up by Liberals to con 'Real Americans'?

This election cycle

Gordon Smith had this to say today over at Scrutiny Hooligans about the atmosphere around the Asheville, North Carolina area this election cycle ...

"Full applause and genuflection to everyone who’s been out there registering voters. The Obama team, MoveOn, Buncombe County Democratic Party, and all the folks I don’t know diddly about have been out there making it happen. A 9% increase in voter registration?!?! Since February?!?! Absolutely amazing.

The local Republicans are wandering a static wilderness, caught between equally powerless factions, hovering in a power vacuum, and it’s going to be years before they get their acts together to do anything approaching what’s been accomplished by Democrats this election cycle."

What makes this statement relevant outside of the immediate Asheville area is that it could almost be said verbatim by anyone in any area of the country right now.

Now as to how many years it will take them to get their act together - I for one am looking at decades before the repugicans are even approaching the status of a viable political party.
They have always been a 'third party' party who have through machinations of all types attempted to rig and steal every election they have been in since the mid-1800s.
They have never had the numbers to win outright and the numbers have held pretty much constant from the beginning so that if every registered repugican voted the party line while only one-third of the Democrats voted the party line and no other votes were cast the repugicans would lose and lose by a landslide.
The only hope they have ever had has been to mislead, misinform, beguile, distract, divert and any means of suppressing the vote they think they can get away with.

This time, T'aint working McGee.

Al-Qaeda Endorses McPain

Al-Qaeda is watching the U.S. stock market's downward slide with something akin to jubilation, with its leaders hailing the financial crisis as a vindication of its strategy of crippling America's economy through endless, costly foreign wars against Islamist insurgents.

And at least some of its supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend.

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush.

On Al-Qaeda Web Sites, Joy Over U.S. Crisis, Support for McCain

Daily Funny

An old, blind cowboy wanders into an all-girl biker bar by mistake. He finds his way to a barstool and orders some coffee. After sitting there for a while, he yells to the waiter, 'Hey, you wanna hear a blond joke?'

The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.
In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says,

'Before you tell that joke, Cowboy, I think it is only fair, given that you are blind, that you should know five things.

1. The bartender is a blond girl with a baseball bat.

2. The bouncer is a blond girl.

3. I'm a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blond woman with a black belt in karate.

4. The woman sitting next to me is blond and a professional weightlifter.

5. The lady to your right is blond and a professional wrestler

'Now, think about it seriously, Mister. Do you still wanna tell that joke?'

The blind cowboy thinks for a second, shakes his head, and mutters, 'No...not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times.'

Fake cop busted after pulling over real one

From the "Oops!" Department:

Police say a Connecticut man playing police officer picked the wrong person to pull over. Israel Gomez was arrested Tuesday after pulling over an off-duty Hartford police lieutenant.

Police say 20-year-old Gomez turned on flashing lights and used a siren and loudspeaker to coax police Lt. Ronald Bair off the road.

Bair called for backup, and officers arrested Gomez and 20-year-old Esteban Cardona.

Gomez is charged with impersonating a police officer, reckless driving and improper use of red flashing lights. Cardona, who was driving another car involved in the bogus traffic stop, is charged with reckless driving.

*****

Proving once again the 'dumb criminals' stereotype is actually well founded.

Dead bear under Obama signs a prank

Authorities said Tuesday that a student prank, not a political statement, was the motivation for dumping a dead bear cub draped in Barack Obama signs on a North Carolina campus earlier this week.

Seven Western Carolina University students were involved, and possible charges were being discussed with the local prosecutor, said Campus Police Chief Tom Johnson. Police did not release the students' names.

The students told authorities they took political signs at random to cover the bear's wound and prevent blood from spilling into the bed of the truck they were driving.

They discovered a carcass of the cub, which had been shot in the head, while camping over the weekend and brought it back to a gathering at an apartment near campus Sunday night, according to a statement from the school.

It was during that gathering, officials said, that a student suggested placing the bear at the base of a statue at the main entrance to the campus.

Maintenance workers found the bear cub's body early Monday morning near the school's entrance.

"I am pleased to hear that this situation appears to be a stupid prank," Western Carolina chancellor John W. Bardo said.

*****

Whew! This is 'good news' - (relatively speaking - whomever shot the bear cub needs to be hung by their short hairs, but that is another story) - because the area around Cullowhee, North Carolina is as Liberal as you can get and to think the troglodytes might be attempting to gain a toe hold there is disgusting.

Dumb college kids being stupid ... an all too common theme.

Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago

Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.

Read the rest at Science Daily