Here's to 50 years...

...of The Flintstones, that modern Stone Age family!

First created and aired in 1960, The Flintstones was something of an animated version of Jackie Gleason's famous mid 1950's series, The Honeymooners, set in a Neolithic version of Middle America.  Although I'm sure the kids back then enjoyed the show, most of the humor was aimed at adults and looked at through the lens of history, was pretty topical, with many popular celebrities and institutions of the day immortalized in animation. The Flintstones paved the way for cartoon shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park. A couple of years later, Hanna-Barbera Studios would repeat the formula with The Jetsons, and set it in a future full of robots, rockets, and flying cars, which of course we're all still waiting for.

I remember watching The Flintstones when I was a kid, and I still enjoy the show. I like the original-don't give me Pebbles and Bam-Bam or The Flintstone Kids-some things you just get right the first time and can't improve on. And I like The Flintstones over The Jetsons, though it's fairly close. It might be like The Munsters vs The Addams Family. Each show, though similar in concept, probably has its loyal core of fans. Personally, I liked The Addams Family better. If you're a Munsters guy, well, we all have our flaws and failings and that's the way life is. Seriously...both were fun shows to watch.

Anyhow...Happy 50th to Fred, Wilma, Barney, Betty, Pebbles, Bam-Bam, and Dino!



Now I happen to like the Harvey Birdman episode, The Dabba Don, with a little different spin on Fred Flintstone-a Fred Flintstone mixed with Tony Soprano- and a different intro:



Love it!

-----------

My brother picked me up a box of stuff from an auction, which ordinarily wouldn't thrill me, but when I opened it, there were a whole bunch of ThinBooks! ThinBooks are great, because you can have a whole library of them and they take up about two feet of shelf space.

Here's one. It's called After Vanuatu, by some guy named Sheffield? Manchester? Sounds like the name of an English city-whatever, I can't remember. The plot involves a mysterious Wave that causes everyone on the island of Vanuatu to disappear. How will the world react to this vacuum? Well, I'll read it to you and we'll see:

AFTER VANUATU

The patrol vessel Ambush circled the island of Vanuatu. Nothing alive moved on the tiny speck of land.

"They appear to all be...gone, sir."

"A shame. Well, where will we build the resort?"

THE END

I dunno. Maybe expand on it and use a bigger country and you'd have something. But that's a ThinBook.

What else have we got here...let's see...The Chicago Cubs-The Championship Years. Good, I like baseball. Your Government's Guide to Fiscal Responsibility. Like to hear how the government takes care of our tax dollars. The Swiss Navy and Sea Power. Military history-awesome. Advanced Acting Techniques by Shatner. I'd like to try acting someday. Stephen King's How to Write a Short Novel. Custer's Indian Fighting Field Manual. I Was A White Guy On The Harlem Globetrotters. Abstinence And You by Bill Clinton. A rarity here-Why We Need Religious Tolerance, printed by the Iranian Government Printing Office. The Greenland Tourist Guide. The New Jersey Tourist Guide. The Ipswich Tourist Guide. Yahoo Serious-Rising Star. A Canadian Love Poem To America. How To Take Care Of Your Dodo Bird. Great Fashions of the 1970's.

These are going to give me MINUTES of great reading! Can anyone out there suggest some ThinBook titles I should be looking for?

Do svidaniya!

yankeedog out.

Imperfect Perfect

Whoda thunk it? The only undefeated team in the National Conference of the NFL is our Chicago Bears. 3-0 after beating Green Bay 20-17. Actually, the Pack beat themselves with 18 penalties-way too many for what is supposed to be a contending team.

That the Bears are 3-0 is probably more of an indictment on the NFC being not very strong this year. In fact, I haven't seen ANY team in either conference look all that dominating. This might be a bit of a down year in the NFL. Perhaps they've accomplished the goal of parity in the league-or mediocrity.

As for the Bears themselves, there are still some of the problems from last year. The offensive line can't protect Jay Cutler. Cutler himself is still prone to trying to make a play happen that got busted at the start and tossing an interception. The tackling reminds me uncomfortably of a bunch playing school intramural flag football. They wrap around and the ball carrier bulls forward another five yards after the tackle.

On the other hand, teams that have successful seasons do get their share of breaks along the way. So we'll see. I need to see another couple of weeks before I start beating the drum big time for the Orange and Blue.

-------

Sad to hear about our Doc Yobbo having to deal with that which Lance Armstrong fought. Good luck, Doc. It's fairly easy to recover from that particular cancer, but still not great fun. First Al, then Tricia, now the Doc. No more maladies from anyone for a while! That's an order!

-------

A minor story here involves a possible pumpkin shortage here in Illinois. The weather around here was too wet for optimum pumpkin growth this summer, so the crop isn't what it has been in past years. The pumpkin, of course, is the symbol of Autumn and Halloween. Most people just buy one to carve a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween then after October 31 give it to their kids to toss in the street. Of course, most pumpkins are grown then made into pie filling (mmmm-pumpkin pie...drool). You can bake them like a squash, with brown sugar and bacon (bacon being the universal flavor enhancer), and roast the seeds for a snack.

I'll just bet as I get to the farm stands this fall, all of them have pumpkins stacked up in a great orange wall. There never really seems to be a shortage of the things, so I'll believe there's a shortage when I see it-or don't, as the case may be. It does seem to have been a good year for apples, at least so far. The orchards look to be full.

------

Finally, we finish with another episode of 'Pimp My Military Vehicle'.

This week, it's the BRDM-2, classic 4-wheel-drive Soviet built recon vehicle. It serves in a lot of the armies of the world as a scout car, anti-aircraft missile carrier, anti-tank vehicle, and (in incompetent hands) as a mobile target for your A-10 and helo jockies. For those of you not familiar, it looks like this:

Take one, strip it down to zero, give it a snappy repaint, some chrome, lights, and some tender loving funky, and you get this:

Sweet! The perfect vehicle to cruise the main drag, drive to the store or out on the town, and still robust enough to take up to Wisconsin to deer camp come hunting season! I'd have chromed the wheels as well. Maybe put in a kit to make it bounce, too.

But what about the interior, YD? Everyone knows Soviet vehicles aren't built for comfort!

Oh, yes, the inside has been redone as well.

The stock version, right out of the showroom:

You can't be representin' with some shit milspec interior! Little more chrome, some rewiring, and a DEE-luxe bucket seat-and it ends up like this:

Awesometown! We'd look great cruising around in in our whack BRDM! The owner probably put in a kickass sound system as well, with big speakers so the bass reverbs in your gut as you wheel around town-something like this blaring:




And the people in the next car over saying "I'll thump your bass, you bastard!"

yankeedog out.

Alright then...

...I see the last post went over poorly. Ah well-can't win 'em all.

Today, went to work in the morning, then spent the afternoon doing some demolishing and cleaning. Some people are good with a surgical laser, others with a watchmaker's set of screwdrivers. Me? I'm quite good with a recip saw. Not too bad for a Saturday.

Was a bit of a long day, so we grabbed a pizza to bring home. We stopped by the local Godfather's, which for a change actually had some people in it. The management was so happy by this turn of events that they didn't charge me for the Coors I had while I waited. Sometimes timing is everything.

I don't know why this Godfather's never has anyone patronizing them, because they make a pretty good pizza, for a chain place. Which brings me to the 'audience participation' part of the show.

I come to the place where you live. I want the best local pizza. Where do I go? It could be a franchise, or a locally owned establishment, or your own homemade. What's the 'best around'? Mind that I'm not really a pizza connoiseur-it's got to be truly awful before I'll turn it down.

A couple of places that are 'the pizza place of renown' around my stomping grounds aren't necessarily my favorites. They aren't 'bad', but they just aren't my favorites. In the QC's, Harris Pizza is consistently voted 'best in the area'. I can take it or leave it-every one I've ever had has been a bit lacking. I find it too conventional to be a signature effort. Again-I won't turn it down. But I won't make a trip to buy one, either.

The place back in Savanna, where I grew up, was Manny's. He makes a thin crust, which I like. It has enough grease in it to lube a car or fuel an oil lamp, which I can do without. Manny's is, hmm, renowned? for their speed. Most of you readers are Australian. If you called Manny's, ordered up, got on the plane, took the 19 hour flight to Chicago, then drove the three hours to Savanna, you'd probably only have to wait about an hour and a half after that to get your pizza. Fast ain't their strong suit. I believe the strategy is 'Come on in and order up. While you're here, have a pitcher of beer.' Nothing wrong with that. Just don't be particularly hungry.

That's our local pizza joints of note. What's yours?

Hmm. Didn't like the previous music? Well, that's all right. Maybe this tune from the summer of 1966 will sit better in your ears. I love the original, but a Boston band should be singing a song about that Dirty Water along the banks of the River Charles:



Better? Lovely.

Finally, a few vehicle pics that caught my eye:

All this juice tanker needs is an escort by Mad Max's customized Falcon. This semi is in Russia, but it'd look good cruising the interstate in Montana or out in the open spaces of New South Wales.

Speaking of Russia, this is a reproduction of a Lebednovo Tank from the WWI era. The thought was that the giant front wheels would allow the tank to easily cross trenches. What actually happened was that the powered rear wheel got stuck and the powertrain wasn't powerful enough to lift it out. Not to mention that said wheels are exposed for everyone with a rifle, grenade, or howitzer to take a shot at. It would look mighty damn cool fighting a Martian tripod, though!

I've heard it said that guns, artillery, rockets, and the like, are some sort of phallic symbol in the recesses of our psyches. If that's true, then some Soviet designer back in the 1950s had some serious issues going on. These self propelled pieces are mounting 420mm guns-or around 16 inches (!). That's the size of a battleship's main gun! A damn big piece of artillery to be trying to drive around. Story is that the nuclear weapons designers in the USSR were having a hard time trying to build a warhead small enough to fit a rocket. Hence putting a monster gun on an overloaded chassis. The vehicle would have had terrible mobility over anything other than a flat paved road, and one would think that the recoil would knock it over on its side. I believe these were later sold to Japan, where they were used in the Godzilla Campaign of 1957.

This car looks like the perfect vehicle to ride around the streets of the Manhattan Island prison, or drive headlong into a horde of zombies with, or scrounge a post-apocalyptic desert for a quart of gas, a few cans of beans, and that last issue of Playboy.

It's a tank! It's a motorcycle! It's a Kettenkrad tracked motorcycle from World War II, used by the Germans on all fronts. It has decent cross-country capability, thanks to its tracks. I'd like to ride one of these someday.

Finally, someone built this electric-powered replica of Luke Skywalker's landspeeder from Star Wars. Call me a nerd, but this would be awesome to drive around in! Think how much fun this would be if you got pulled over or stopped at a roadblock:

Officer: Do you know how fast you were going?

Driver (performs a peculiar motion with his fingers): I'm not the speeder you're looking for.

Officer (perplexed): You're not the speeder we were looking for.

Driver: We can go about our business now.

Officer: You can go about your business.

Driver: Move along.

Officer: Move along! Move along!

I bet you could get out of a lot of tickets if you had your own landspeeder.

yankeedog out.

A load of crap for a Thursday

I'm tired tonight. Had a late night taking care of family stuff back in the old hometown (100km away). Didn't get home until 10:30ish, then up at 4:45am. I've been on the go since last Monday with various and sundry items. This weekend promises to be more of the same. Still, I think I'm going to bed early tonight.

I'm sort of wondering where the summer went. The Better Half planned and ran several church events for the children, which generally means that the Yankeedog Glorious Proletariat Labor Battalion gets drafted as well. Her aunt died in July and there was the cleanup (bureaucratic and furniture) involved with that, in addition to all the other stuff that goes along with having a passel of elderly relations. Oh, and business has picked up at work, so overtime, which I hate to pass up since it's paid OT.

It wasn't until driving up to Savanna a week or so ago and seeing the rapidly drying cornfields that it struck me-summer's over! Fall is here. The NFL will be starting Week 3. Modern Woodmen Park is all closed up, the 2010 Midwest League season ending. The trees are showing a twinge of color. There are combines in those cornfields. The apple orchards are opening for the season. Soon there'll be pumpkins for Halloween. The current crop of scoundrels are airing ads for the midterm and state elections.

But the summer just got here! What the hell?!?  Time flies, and way too fast.

Now...time for YD's Musical Confession. I was listening to the radio driving down Route 84, late, when I heard John Denver's Rocky Mountain High. You know, he gets a bit of a bad rap, but I have to say I liked most of his music. He wasn't a guy you'd 'rock out' to, but he wasn't a rocker anyway. He was country/folk/regional, something of the Rockies version of Jimmy Buffett. I imagine he had that 'aw, shucks' squeaky-clean image that didn't really match his personality (he was on the fringes of the 60s rock scene, with all that entailed), and by today's standards his act is considered 'cheesy'. He WAS one of the biggest selling acts of the 1970's, though. He didn't buy up all of his own albums, so somebody out there is lying when they say 'John Denver. Hated him.'

Ah, well. You can laugh it up-but here's some music to pull up a chair by the fire and have a beer to:



To finish the trifecta, finally:

The USS Gallipoli is finished and ready for my project. Those microscopic decals are a pain but the final product looks good, in my own slightly humble opinion.

Now we're going to play 'Name My Other Models', cyberspace's favorite gameshow.

These two ships were some of the first ships created in Trek fandom, from 1975's Star Fleet Technical Manual. They were never seen in any of the series or the movies, but they're 'plausible'. I expect our Mr. Barnes will recognize these.

The three-nacelled ship on the left is a dreadnought, the heavy 'punch' ship of the Fleet. The ship on the right is a transport/tug, with two modular cargo containers. Actually makes sense-in space there's no need for streamlining.

I need names for the two. Y'all pick one for each ship. Majority wins.

Dreadnought: Federation NCC-2100, Commonwealth NCC-2117, Dominion NCC-2115

Transport/Tug: Ptolemy NCC-3801, Al Rashid NCC-3802, Hawking NCC-3805

I know. 'YD. Your geek is showing.' Like I said, tired. I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT ISN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!!

yankeedog out.

A topic I'm tired of...

...what to do with our homosexuals that want to serve in our armed forces.

The 'don't ask, don't tell' policy will stand for a while after a proposal to drop the policy (which was attached to this year's defense appropriation bill) got quashed in Congress.

I find most of the arguments against having gays openly serve in the military wearily familiar to a similar argument that raged in the defense establishment in the late 1940's, when President Truman signed the order to racially integrate the armed forces. Then, it was 'Blacks will degrade the ability of our armed forces to fight'. Now, it's 'Gays will degrade the ability of our armed forces to fight.'

Really? Based on what data?

Some of the things I hear asked or announced:

I never served with any gays and wouldn't want to!

I suspect many of our veterans have served with homosexuals and didn't know it. Not declaring your preference doesn't make it go away, it just makes it not a big topic of conversation around the barracks. Recently, the old hometown paper had an announcement of two guys who entered a 'civil union'. Both of them were Vietnam-era vets. Evidently they gave up their sexuality when they did their time and picked it up after they got out. They served with a lot of other guys and I doubt anyone they served with caught the gay from being in the same latrines or eating in the same mess hall. More power to them.

Having gays in the service will be detrimental to morale and fighting ability!

The Israeli Defense Force is regarded as pretty good, right? They've had to be, given that they're surrounded by a lot of people that don't like them. The Israelis have been very resourceful in using the abilities and talents of everyone in the country, which is why they allow gays to openly serve. Everything I've ever seen indicates that most of their troops don't think it's a big deal. I always figured that getting shot at or a missile lobbed your way kind of focused your attention toward surviving and taking care of your squadmates.

We'll have all kinds of sexual issues!

Please. I'm hetero. Not all women turn me on. Why should it be any different for gays/lesbians? Sorry, I just don't see that as an issue. Now, if we catch one of our troops raping children (homo or hetero), that is and should be grounds for a dishonorable discharge and a few years at the military Graybar Hotel. I've not seen a lot to indicate that the percentage of  'deviant' behavior is higher among homosexuals over heterosexuals.

Would you want to serve with a homosexual?

Can he/she hit center of mass with an M16? Can he/she lob the grenade where it needs to be? Can he/she call in an airstrike of get a track put back together under fire or get a hull patch welded into place or drop bombs on target? Yes? Then I'm good serving with him or her. I don't much care what they do on leave or after hours. 'Nuff said.

On the minus side, the Democrats in Congress shouldn't have thrown what is in most facets a social issue into a defense appropriation bill. Holding up funding for operations for this issue isn't the right thing to do. There will be a lot of time and place to debate this. If the Congress is serious about getting this pushed through, they should put it in the bill authorizing their OWN pay raises (overpaid as they are).

The possibility exists that I'm all wrong about this. I'm not a veteran. Maybe the dynamics really ARE different in the military. But the Armed Forces survived racial integration and performed well on numerous occasions since then. I think it would do just as well after sexual integration. Might be, 20 or 30 years from now, the military looks back and collectively says 'What the hell. That wasn't as bad as we thought.' We'll see.

yankeedog out.

There's danger in them thar sports...

Couple of sports-related items for this post:

On Sunday, Cubs outfielder Tyler Colvin got speared with a splinter from a bat that shattered. He's out for the season. Currently he's in the hospital with a chest tube since the splinter punctured his lung. He'll live-but it'll be next year before he's playing.

The bat in question was made of maple instead of the traditional ash. Maple is a hardwood, but not as much as ash. I don't remember seeing bats shatter this much back even twenty years ago. MLB says that there is a shortage of ash for bat production, so we're stuck with maple. One wonders if it's time to look at the shape of the bat. As we all know, a baseball bat has a large contact area and a rather severe taper toward the hilt to save weight and allow the hitter to get around on the ball. There's obviously a lot of stress transmitted through that narrow handle which is contributing to all of the shattered and splintered bats. The older models of bat had a smaller 'sweet spot' and a much more gentle taper. It might be time to go back to that style for safety. We could go with aluminum bats-if one of those explodes the batter's taking TOO many 'roids-but the speed of the ball coming off an aluminum bat is faster than from a wooden one.

I've seen a lot of bats splinter, and the head of the bat go whizzing off into the stands, spinning like a helicopter blade. That more people haven't been hurt is a surprise. Hazard of the game, I suppose.

The second issue making the rounds of sport is the study of repeated concussions in football players. There appears to be a definite correlation between repeated head trauma and the occurrence of early onset Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and loss of motor skills in ex-players.  The average NFL player's life expectancy is several years less than that of the rest of the population. The NFL and the major colleges are beginning to note this and being really careful about having players with concussions go back into the game after getting the hit.

I wonder if the NFL has studied similar games like rugby and Australian rules football to see what the incidence of head trauma is in the average season, and how players fare after their careers. My theory is that those sports have smaller players and a lot less padding and armor, therefore there is less mass in a collision. Rugby and Aussie rules players don't weigh 325 lbs plus 25 pounds of armor and helmet. Not that you can't get a concussion in a rugby scrum-or a finger in the rectal socket if you have the ball-but one might think that the frequency of head injuries should be about the same for all of the ball/contact sports. Thoughts/links, anyone?

yankeedog out.

Carnival post-mortem

Whew.

That's done.

My church's children's carnival went off...if not without a hitch, certainly with a lot less strife than last year. We were better prepared compared to last year-but we've identified a definite problem, which should be obvious to anyone who's studied the military arts, pro sports, or started a company.

We get to a certain point in time-about two hours before the event-and volunteers start rolling in to get their orders. The person in charge (The Better Half again this year) gets swamped with people wanting to know what to do, where stuff is to be located, how to lay out the food area, etc. We Americans are good at logistics...but one person can't be in twelve places at once, trying to direct thirty people, many of which are there for the first time. Even explanatory emails don't always do the trick.

The answer, of course, is for there to be a director, a second-in-command, and leaders/coordinators for each group of the event-in this case, games, food, prizes, and grounds. Each person takes a small chunk of the event and runs with it. The group leaders could be where they need to be 'in the field', answering questions and directing people, and not relying on the director to answer basic questions.

Makes sense, right? Eisenhower didn't personally plan the Normandy invasion, clothe the troops, take a turn in the mess hall, build the ships, and make sure the mountain of beans and bullets got to the field. He had a staff of experts to do all that for him. A college or pro football head coach has offensive, defensive, and special teams coordinators, in addition to equipment managers and groundskeepers, to make sure everything runs well on game day. I've not seen Bears head coach Lovie Smith painting yard lines on the field or repairing shoulder pads.

Well, same deal applies here. The bad part was that we knew this would be a problem last year. TBH asked the Children's Council three times for subdirectors. The lack of sound was people not volunteering to step up to the middle management echelon. If the Council is lukewarm on having an undertaking like this, then that should have been brought up and we'd have scrubbed the event. We could desperately have used the time for other things.

I regret that I didn't get any pictures of the event. I was busy with the prize table. I now know how a farmer feels when a plague of locusts overtakes his field. What a bloody zoo!!

I've made it clear that I don't want any part of Carnival 3: Electric Boogaloo. The neighborhood kids, though, had a good time. Most of the people behaved decently, though the area around the church is full of, hmm-how do I say this...people that think the world owes them, and owes them NOW! I think most of you get the picture there.

Pluses and minuses:

Plus: The volunteers that came in did a great job! Yeoman work by a lot of people.

Minus: Needed people to step up to staff level. This might be a bit much for one person to do if they have a full-time job and other commitments on top of planning this event.

Plus: Boy Scout troop ran the food area, freeing up our people. Might be a merit badge in it for some of the Scouts.

Minus: Our menu was too extensive-walking tacos, sloppy joes, and hot dogs, in addition to salads, cake, and ice cream. I'd go with two entrees. We had a lot of stuff left over. Good thing I like Sloppy Joes!

Plus: The kids loved the prizes.

Minus: We may have gone too 'high-end' on same. We used a ticket system: win tickets at the games, then redeem the tickets for prizes. That's a pain. Maybe just have a big bucket by each game full of trinkets, candy, and maybe one or two 'big' prizes-say, a gift card, and hand out smaller prizes there. Little kids don't care what they get for loot.

Regarding the prizes-the two items that went quickest were basketballs (perhaps not a surprise, given the demographics of the immediate area), and paddleballs. You know, the wooden paddle with a ball connected to it by an elastic string. I got a chuckle out of that. My mom kept one of those paddleballs around, except that she took the the ball and string off and used it as a swatter. I felt the sting of that enough to know not to do that which would make her deploy that particular weapon! Obviously these kids don't know this can be a dual-purpose instrument, otherwise they'd not have been in such a hurry to snap them up!

Plus: A good sized crowd for a midweek event.

Minus: Having the event in midweek. Next year the carnival needs to be done on a Saturday afternoon. The carnival on Wednesday vs. Saturday became a political football this year. In the past, there were children's activities on Wednesday nights at church and the thought was that having the carnival as a kickoff would remind them that Wednesday night was for Gospel Games. It'd be much easier to get adult volunteers on the weekend as opposed to having them take time off of work. Plus having the event in the afternoon would mean we'd all be packed up and squared away at a decent hour-and we'd have Sunday to rest up afterward.

The big thing, I suppose, is that the kids had a good time as kids are wont to do when they get to play simple games and get to take home something 'cool'.

Still, this has been a hell of a lot of work and time expended, doing something I don't feel 'called' to do. I'm not good with most children, but even I have to say when you hear thanks from some of the kids, or their parents, it kind of makes the effort worthwhile.

At any rate, it's over for another year. Will there be another? Not if I have to run it.

I'm going to relax with the old but smooth sounds of this quartet from Melbourne:



Though I like the original just as well, the song about the rebel of the Don Cossacks, Stepan (Stenka) Razin:




Must see the Red Army Chorus sometime. The British have the skirling pipes of the Black Watch, we have the spit, polish, and brass of the US Marine Band, but the Russians have the best vocals.


yankeedog out.