It occurs to me that my last entry will be completely lost on anyone for whom Reagan or later was the first President they remember.

Mine was Nixon. Man, I feel oooooolllllddddddd.

By William Branigin and David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 31, 2005; 6:33 PM

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

WTF? What happened to Linda Lovelace?

Beth has redesigned her blog for her 2nd blogiversary. Go say happy blogday and tell her how pretty it looks.

This is a “hose bibb”. We now have a new one.

Everyone knows that when you’re doing plumbing work, the first thing you do is shut off the main water supply, right? But what if, after you turn off the water main, the water is still on?

It’s a puzzlement.

Some people would think better of it and stop right there until they could either call in a professional or figure out how to turn off the water that won’t turn off. Other people…

Well, I’m here to tell you that you can in fact remove an old and leaking hose bibb and install a new one with the water flowing at full pressure — but it ain’t easy. And you’re going to get wet. Very wet. And your back yard will resemble a wading pool before you’re finished. But as long as you can keep your cool and continue fighting water spraying everywhere under incredibly powerful pressure until you somehow miraculously get the threads on the hose bibb and the pipe to line up in spite of the spraying water pushing the hose bibb out of position as soon as you get anywhere close to being in position and you can then impossibly keep them lined up as you rotate the hose bibb 360 degrees several times to screw it in while fighting the water pressure pushing it out of position, well, you’ll be just fine. And wet. Very wet.

I’ve added some new links to my, uh, links. PostScript really touched me.

Here’s a sample:

Oh look, another eerily prescient quiz. Snagged from the Moronosphere boyz, Karl and Ray.

You are the Spiteful Loner, the personality type that is most likely to go on a shooting rampage. You are a rational person and tend to hold emotions in very low-esteem; not only that, but you are also rather introverted, meaning you probably bury any emotions you feel deep inside yourself. Combine these traits with your hatred of others and your brutality, and it seems that you would be quite likely to shoot innocent people in a rampage. Not only that, but you are also a very humble person–not a braggart at all–meaning you could possibly have low-self esteem. This is only yet one more incentive to go on a shooting rampage, because you wouldn’t care if you died as a result. Granted, you probably haven’t gone on a shooting rampage and probably never will, but all the motivations are there. In conclusion, your personality is defective because you are too introverted, brutal, insecure, and rather unemotional. No wonder no one hangs around you, you morbid, cold-hearted freak!

To put it less negatively:

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Televangelist.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Capitalist Pig, the Smartass, and the Sociopath.

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

This test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 86% on Rationality You scored higher than 0% on Extroversion You scored higher than 92% on Brutality You scored higher than 39% on Arrogance

Thank you, veterans, and all who serve today. I support you 100%.

My dad came out for a visit last week and stayed with us for a week. I’ve started several entries talking about it and dumped them all for being too… Something. Too “too.” Hell, I’m only four sentences into this entry and it too is veering toward going the way of its predecessors already.

Let’s just say that my relationship with my father is “complicated” and leave it at that, shall we?

So. The old man was out for a visit last week. This was the follow-up from my visit to see him back in September, when I “made him an offer I don’t think he can refuse.” The offer I’d made was for him to move to L.A. and live with us, so he was out here to give the arrangement a test ride. Post-visit, I think the verdict from both sides — his and ours — was: Eh, maybe not.

My dad’s a small-town guy and the culture shock of the big city was kind of hard on him, and me and Beth and Zoe have our own habits and environment that didn’t adapt quite as well as I had hoped to having a new roomie. I think he was uncomfortable with being here and I realized the enormity of what I had offered, and both of us… Well, I don’t know, it was a sketchy conversation when we finally talked about it after he went home, and we never really came out and talked about it, we more talked around it. But I think — I hope — that we both agreed that it was an interesting idea that didn’t quite work out in practice.

But I still think he should come out here, where the climate and altitude will be easier on him and where he’ll be closer to family, and I think he’s open to the idea of coming out this way if he can live independently. So now I’m looking at options in some of the more rural areas of Southern California, where he can get the climate and still have the small-town feel he needs. Even if living with me doesn’t work out, I’d still like to have him nearby — for both of us.

Here he is over breakfast one morning last week. Yes, he’s smoking while on oxygen. That paints his personality far more effectively than I could with words.

When I was in Bozeman, MO over Labor Day weekend in 2003, I rented a Road King and rode it all weekend. I went through Yellowstone National Park and over the Beartooth Highway and I learned why Harley lovers love Harleys. It was the best motorcycling experience I’ve had in my life, and I say that after riding for 20+ years.

I kept my digital camera hung around my neck and did a lot of one-handed navigating as I snapped pictures while I rode — not exactly a recommended safety procedure when you’re going through a hairpin turn at 10,000 feet or are stuck in a traffic jam 10 feet away from a 2,000 pound buffalo who hates loud noises. I took a lot of pictures that weekend but didn’t have the webspace to share them. Now that I’ve leapt aboard the flickr bandwagon, I do.

Check out my Yellowstone slide show.

This week’s conservative panty-twist is over Nine Inch Nails’ foiled plan to perform at the MTV Movie Awards using “an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop.” MTV said thanks but no thanks, and Trent Reznor and NIN dropped out of the show.

So far, so good. But…

On several of the discussion boards I read, conservative wingnuts are frothing mad over Reznor daring to get up on stage and express his political opinions. They’re tiredtired!TIRED! of entertainers not being trained monkeys and just singing and dancing on cue, they want them to stop with the opinions and the criticism and the statements and the thinking and get back to just entertaining us.

And so they’re going to boycott Nine Inch Nails now! (Because NIN have so many Republican customers already — not.) And Dixie Chicks! And Springsteen! And Star Wars! And a bunch of other entertainers who have opinions! Because they’re tiredTired!TIRED! of having politics mixed into their entertainment, so they’re not going to reward that behavior any more! [Pout, stamp foot, whimper.]

So I wonder… Should Toby Keith be worried? Dennis Miller? Mel Gibson? Alan Jackson? And a host of other conservative-leaning entertainers?

I doubt it. Because if there’s one thing a conservative loves, it’s a double-standard.