Not a blogiversary, but getting close

No AM "grunt" job today, and it is the middle of the post-Christmas dead period at my "real" job.  Boredom overload.  Which leaves me too much time to wander the political blogs.  Depression overload.  Gingrich, Perry, and to whomever else this may apply:  When you are finished curb-stomping your own dingleschnitzels, lemme know. 'Cuz I'd like a turn.

So then I started trying to write something funny about the Iranian nuke-sci guys getting themselves mysteriously blowed up.  Not really coming together, unfortunately.  I can hardly think of a more enjoyable topic, but it just isn't translating into good blog fodder.  Dead end.

But a comment Max left in the previous thread brought to mind one of the funniest things I've seen: I was in about 5th grade, and I was with my family was on a jet-boat excursion on the Rogue River.  The boats are big and fast and POWERFUL.  They're about the size of a bus and have multiple big-block V8s.  They have a driver and a guide who says things like "on your left you'll see an eagle snacking on a steelhead."

Anyway, as we were tooling down the river, there were a bunch of hippies skinny-dipping.  One was standing on a rock, naked as a jaybird, struggling to put on his wet socks.  The guide said over the PA "This is a family tour!  Put some clothes on, hippie!"  Rather than take the guide's suggestion, the hippie chose to elevate a finger.  (Thankfully, that's all he elevated.) This made the boat driver a bit irate.  He swung the boat around and mashed the gas, creating a GIANT roostertail which blasted the hippie right off the rock!  I've always dreamed of seeing a hippie get nailed with a fire hose or water cannon.  This was the closest I'll likely come to realizing that dream, and it was hilarious.  I will cherish this memory for all of my days.

Speaking of these boats, I love 'em.  I've been on their excursions a few times and look forward to doing it again.  Maybe this summer.  There are some spots where it gets really shallow.  Especially in summer.  Like maybe a foot or so deep.  Here, the boats have to go really fast and stay on-plane to keep from dragging hull on the rocks below.  Of course the river is twisty, so the driver has to drift sideways through the corners to keep his speed up.  Lotta fun.  They also do this maneuver where they do a panic-stop kind of thing and flip a quick u-turn.  This causes a big wave to come over the side and "dampen" the riders.  Nothing like seeing some little old tourist lady from Pasadena getting nailed in the face with river water.  Below is a YouTube clip.  I wasn't on this trip, and don't know any of the people on board, but it gives you a sense of what the rides are like.  (skip to about :25) (video now below the fold since youtube is taking forever to load the preview)






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I was looking through some really old posts, and realized I've been doing this for almost 3 years.  Actually, I started before that but all the pre-Obama posts really sucked so they got deleted a long time ago.  I'm thinking it might be time to spiff this place up with a fresher template.  And the new threaded commenting thing doesn't seem to be working with this template, either.  And the blogroll is way past needing updated.  And this layout is ugly.  And it is fixed-width so it doesn't take advantage of the wider screens most people have nowadays.  And, and, and.  Need to just get off my rear and make it happen.  If you have a blog I don't know about, please let me know.  I like visiting readers' sites.  Or if you know of some good ones that I may not know of, I'd like to know that, too.  If yours has gone dormant, I'm a gonna de-list ya.  So hurry up and post something!