Davin and I borrowed The Men Who Killed Kennedy from the library. It's an interesting miniseries, but like every other treatment of this or any conspiracy theory, it spends less than 10% of the time discussing anything relevant, provable or reproducible. The rest of the film is taken up by a parade of lunatics who do more harm than good to their case.

It did cause me to go looking for information, and I came up with some interesting websites. If you scroll down on this page, you'll find film footage of the "jet effect," or how objects react under gunfire. As my dad, who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after 32 years in the USMC and served in Viet Nam and Desert Storm, will point out, JFK's body movements after the head shot in the Zapruder film weren't impossible even given a single shooter in the Book Depository building. He says that any combat veteran will tell you that bullets and bodies don't act like you'd expect.

Here's a neat site called The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK. They have gone point by point through the movie and sought out the real facts. For instance, who was Col. X? (Answer: Apparently some kind of wide-ranging conspiracy loony who believes in alien autopsies and that US intelligence agents murdered the cult at Jonestown, as well as being a Holocaust revisionist, but I always like Donald Sutherland so I'll give him points anyway!)

I really do think there are some interesting questions about that day. And as my friend Cheryl (who is from Texas, so she ought to know!) points out, they sure acted in a manner as if they were covering something up, but it wasn't necessarily a conspiracy to assassinate the president. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more going on than we know. And after watching recent media portrayals of these events I have to suspect these directors are part of the cover-up. I mean, REALLY, how better to throw people off than to muddy up the waters with such grave ineptitude? Sigh.

I wish they would stick to the meat and bones of the case, and quit going off on tangents that are just ridiculous and easy to prove wrong. Here's a quote that I ran across that sums up my feelings:

My research has shown over 75% of all alleged facts in this case are false. Just take any book and compare the author’s conclusions to another author’s conclusions. Check each alleged fact in each book and see how many cancel or contradict each other. If all the alleged facts in all the conspiracy books were true, we could expect to have the following conclusions:
1. The Grassy Knoll was a very busy place with many gunmen who never saw each other.
2. There were at least 10 individuals depicted in the photos of the three tramps.
3. There were at least 30 gunmen firing from 4 different buildings, the overpass, the Grassy Knoll, the South Knoll, the Presidential limo, the Secret Service follow-up car, the curb on Elm Street and the sewer.
4. There were at least 100 conspirators in Dealey Plaza.
These "facts" seem absurd and ridiculous but this is exactly what we end up with if we believe all of the conspiracy books which have been published. (Source: Bill Adams, "The Enemy Within") From the page Bogus Evidence.

Anyway, back to reality...

.*.*.

  This is Davin:

You Are Edward From "Edward Scissorhands." You are very shy and often misunderstood. Innocent, sweet, and artistic, you like to pass your days by daydreaming and expressing yourself through the arts. You are a truly unique individual. Unfortunately, you are quite lonely, and few people truly understand you.

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!


This is me:

You Are Ed Wood From "Ed Wood." You definitely have your name in history, although probably not for the reason you believe. Yet you are very accepting, non-judgemental, and optimistic almost to a fault. You also have a thing for angora sweaters. How could anyone not like you?

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!


Who are you? Let me know!

.*.*.

  but I think this is kinda funny! Someone has written a blog from the perspective of "Buffalo Bill," the serial killer Clarice Starling is hunting in The Silence of the Lambs.

If you follow his links through to his old site, he shares some poetry he's written, including this haiku:

I can’t lift my couch
Hey, can you help me out here?
Man, you’re really dumb

Anyway, I just thought I'd drop some twisted into your day...

.*.*.

  on the Terri Schiavo situation.

I have to say, I don't trust Michael Schiavo to determine what is in Terri's best interests. He seems very slippery.

.*.*.

 
Tiernan's just so happy to be ON the ambulance at our field trip to the fire station today! He was excited enough to be in the garage with it, and then was nearly overcome with joy when he was allowed to actually come on board!Email me for more pictures (if you're family or someone we know ;-D ) 

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Japan's mambo musician Paradise Yamamoto introduces his 'mambonsai,' the combination of a bonsai (dwarf tree) and his hand-made miniature figures, near his studio in Tokyo(AFP/File/Toru Yamanaka)

 

.*.*.

  Does the above look like gibberish to you? That's because it IS! It's "gibberish" in |_|17|2@-1337, which means "ultra-leet" to those of us who are old enough to drive... Anyway, if you want to translate things between regular English, "leet" and "ultra-leet", you can do so here.

BTW-Here's an article from Microsoft aimed at grownups, in case you're totally lost here.

.*.*.

  This gave me a giggle! :-D

.*.*.

  Is Your Car as Dirty as a Toilet Seat?

Well, given the fact that I clean my toilets regularly, and that my car is shamefully filthy, I'm willing to bet that my car is several times more dirty than my toilet seats!

The worst offenders were pets, who brought fecal material including e. coli into the cars. We're OK there! But, after that came food being left in the car, which is a HUGE problem for us. And the drinks are the worst, which seems particularly frightening, given this tidbit of knowledge:

Spilling drinks creates further problems - the drink holder of the Land Rover Defender, for instance, had 430 million bacteria around stains from spilled liquids.

It's a wonder we're all alive!

.*.*.

  for Scott Peterson. I hope Laci's family has been able to find some peace through all of this.

.*.*.

  The Urban Legends Reference Page does a write up on folks who retire to cruise ships rather than nursing homes. Apparently it can be a good deal depending on who you are and what you're looking for. Who knew?

.*.*.

  I would pay $168 for you to take your stupid jeans with the poetry inside the pocket and disappear for a few years.

Do you think if you applied yourself, you could be even more of a pompous ass, or have you reached the pinnacle yet? It's hard to tell, every few years I think you've hit the top, but then something else comes along and I'm surprised at your resourcefulness.

Quote: "I'm sick of Bono - and I am Bono!" he says.

Imagine how the rest of us feel.

.*.*.

  NationStates is a quirky little political game. You create your own political entity, and then you respond to crises. Over time, your responses mold your nation.

Here is my nation, Hipmamia. I got started playing this because of BlaBlaBla at Macca Funhouse, so I'm playing in their closed region. But if anyone would like to play let me know and we can create a new region together, I'll just make a second nation.

Gotta go, I need to decide if we should allow human cloning in Hipmamia or not...

.*.*.

  I wanted to see the movie that was part of the reason the 70s landscape was so littered up with Jennifers, so we Netflix'd Love Story.

Released in 1970, it holds up well in some areas but not in others, as you would expect. They never mention what it is she's dying from, but you assume it's leukemia. Also, the doctor tells her she's fine, and tells her husband to act normal and not to tell her right away that she's sick. Wow, I can't imagine! Although, in these days of HIPAA it's amazing they tell anybody at all, INCLUDING the patient what's going on... Seriously, if any of you all find out I'm sick, I want to know about it right away. And, like Ali McGraw, I hope I just keep getting more and more beatiful as I waste away!

It was a sweet story, and I normally stay far far away from tear jerkers and romances. So, on the whole it was pretty good I guess.

.*.*.

  This makes me wish we wore more wool sweaters! I'd love to do this to them when they got worn out. But, they're too expensive, hot and itchy, so we don't ever have them around in the first place...

.*.*.

  Check out the Balloon Face Girl Game!

It reminds me of Samorost and The Quest for the Rest in that it's kind of maddening and takes a lot of trying to "get it," but if you keep plugging along you'll manage it. You can't get hopelessly stuck anywhere, there's always an answer. :-D

.*.*.

  I've blogged a few times before about people who had nails in their head and didn't know it. But, this really is unprecedented! This man lost most of a knife in his skull and had no idea where it went, in spite of the fact that he actually looked for it after his kitchen accident and found only the handle.

Although, to give him credit, I suppose he DID have a head injury...

.*.*.

  Look at all of the neat stuff at Viceversa!

I surfed in here on the Voodoo knife rack, which is impressive enough. Then I saw these hilarious doggy brooms, and chic clear knife rack.

But, hands down, my favorite product on the whole site has to be the Pinocchio toilet brush!!!! I need one for my main floor guest bath, what a beauty! The blue one would probably go the best, but honestly they'd all fit right in...

Thanks to Khan at Macca Funhouse!

.*.*.

  I don't normally link to other blogs. Not that I have anything against blogs, usually, it's just that good ones change so quickly that linking to them is like trying to point to a neat bit of water in a stream. But, this one is really fun and a particularly interesting part is very easy to stick, because it's right at the top of last month, so I can just shoot you right to it!

You'll have to scroll down a bit and then read backwards, but you can watch her dye her own wool from fluffy fiber to finished yarn. It turns out in these gorgeous colors, which you'd hardly imagine could come from where she started.

I love yarn, it's just one of those things that makes me happy no matter what's going on in my life. But, even if you're not like my, you may like a quick zip through her blog just to see the neat stuff she's doing.

To get the front page of her blog, so you can access everything, go here.

Also, if you're wondering how I surfed in here, it was from this article called Political protest turns to the radical art of knitting. It sounds way more interesting than it is, but mostly it just consists of people knitting large scale copies of tart cards, and includes a pattern for a "purse grenade." I'm sure in some alternate universe this is all very relevant...

.*.*.

  This is an amazingly cool site, the Baby Name Wizard!!!

You can type in most any name and get a graph of how popular it was during the last century. Some rise in the middle, but drop at the ends like Karen. Others spiked at the beginning, like Adelle, or the end, like Madison. Others started off well, took a hit in the middle, then made a comeback, like Emma. Still others just have a funky pattern that makes you wonder, was there a reason the name Caesar spiked in 1910 and 1950, otherwise dropping out of sight almost completely?

I just thought this one was a lot of fun to play with.

.*.*.

  I have just been enjoying the heck out of this site. It's funny, snarky, smart (I have to look up words, wow!) and just so entertaining!

If you're at all interested in Hollywood or pop culture, grab a big cup of tea and plan on spending a while digging through Fametracker...

.*.*.

  My doctor was telling me about this theory on autism today. It's interesting to see another idea wade into the fray, I'm curious what the final answer will be.

.*.*.