Comes a hearty, happy email from my American Express account touting an untimely trip to Jamaica:
"Use your Card to book three nights in an ocean-view accommodation at the AAA Five Diamond Ritz-Carlton Golf & Spa Resort in Rose Hall, Jamaica."
Rose Hall is on Montego Bay, on the north side of the island, which got not so much of Dean, as it happens. Reports from there (scroll down) are that the hotels are okay, with only a few fallen trees, but still trying to get the power back on.
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Posted in Scribbles, Weather/Climate
Tagged Jamaica, Montego Bay, Rose Hall
The daily made the cut, coming in at No. 8, even getting praise for letting anyone blog on its site. Despite still using what Instapundit calls "a lame and buggy registration scheme." Who knows, maybe they’ll drop it, like I’s Knoxville News Sentinal (also on the list at No. 6) did.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, Texana
Tagged 2007, Austin American-Statesman, The Bivings Report, Top Ten Newspaper Websites
"Purchasers just looking for something cheap from China will get it — cheap in every sense of the term. That’s not China’s fault: it’s early stage industrialization. Britain’s factory life was dirty, slipshod, and dangerous in Charles Dickens’s era, and America’s was in the day of Upton Sinclair. And, frankly, American consumers just looking for something cheap will get it too. So avoid Chinese toys if you feel you must. But let’s not make this the basis for a big fiesta of anti-China-ism."
Considering that my shirt comes from Honduras, Mr. B.’s new sandals from Vietnam, and his mother’s new shorts from Mongolia, that’s good advice. Globalization is only all bad if you’re a Marxist.
Comments Off on Those lead-painted Chinese toys
Theoretically, I’m a little old for Ben Folds. Okay, a lot old, particularly for his repeated preference for cuss words. But his piano playing is fine and some of his lyrics are quite funny, or insightful, or both.
"Rocking the Suburbs," for instance:
"We’re rocking the suburbs
We part the shades and face facts
They got better looking Fescue
Right across the cul de sac"
Also "Army":
"cause my peers they criticize me
and my ex-wives all despise me
trying to put it all behind me
but my redneck past is nipping at my heels"
Most of his clips on YouTube have terrible audio. This one of his hit song "Brick," about a guy accompanying his girlfriend to an abortion, is admittedly a little weird. But the music and lyrics (despite the absence of the F-word) are a good introduction to him.
The American Automobile Association, a service agency Mr. B’s mom has long insisted on belonging to, isn’t just about maps and emergency road help anymore. It also rents cars, sells used ones and offers travelers checks and foreign currency exchange. But my favorite extra is one I discovered this morning when I called them to come honor our membership and jump start the dead battery I discovered in the CRV when we got back from Port A last night. I figured if the battery wouldn’t start, they’d obligingly tow the Honda to a place that could sell me a new one. Instead, when they discovered the battery was truly dead, they offered me a service they’d just begun: selling me a new battery on the spot, and then installing it. Whole problem solved in about thirty minutes, instead of most of the morning. Now that’s a service that makes me glad I carry a AAA card.
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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles
Tagged American Automobile Association, selling car batteries
If this is true, and knowing the recent machinations of the Associated Press, it’s hard to tell…
"Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol."
…then it is a comment on the poor planning of the bullet industry, considering that the current military campaigns are puny compared to previous wars.
UPDATE Scott, at The Fat Guy, thinks its the cops’ fault. They’re wasting ammo.
MORE: Ha! The AP story is bogus. More MSM anti-war narrative bull. Now why am I not surprised? But it also seems Scott came closer to the truth, i.e. the militarization of our domestic police forces is unnecessarily running up the ammo bill.
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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Scribbles, The War, Troops
Trying to figure out why the muffler on the Honda CRV sounds like it has a box of rocks in it, a noise that only began this week. After Googling the problem, and discovering that mufflers have nothing like rocks inside, duh, I started the engine, which got the sound to resume, then got out and, just for the heck of it, nudged the muffler with my shoe. Not a kick, just a nudge. The sound has stopped. Weird. It’s off to a muffler place first chance I get.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 