I talked about it here, and checked back today. You should too, because the winners are up in the Extreme Pumpkin Carving Contest. Way cool!

Too many great ones to choose a favorite.

Posted by: Ted at 01:43 PM | category: Links
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Here's a mouldering pile of bones links to ghost stories and information about haunts and real haunted houses.

Didja notice the tagline over on the right column changed? I do that once in a while ya know.

Here's some spooky quotations for you:

Just like a ghost, you've been a-hauntin' my dreams,
So I'll propose... on Halloween.
Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you.
--Dennis Yost and the Classics IV, "Spooky"

He's not stupid; he's possessed by a retarded ghost.
--Unknown

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it makes him landlord to a ghost.
--Lloyd Douglas

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about but few have seen.
--Anonymous

ON HALLOWEEN

The witches fly
Across the sky,
The owls go, "Who? Who? Who?"
The black cats yowl
And green ghosts howl,
"Scary Halloween to you!"

--Nina Willis Walter

From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!
--Scottish saying

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
--William Shakespeare Witches in Macbeth

There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
--Jean Baudrillard

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!
--Washington Irving - From "The Legend of Sleep Hollow"

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble
--William Shakespeare Witches in Macbeth

I got a rock.
--Charlie Brown

Posted by: Ted at 08:02 AM | category: Links
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"Sure, the Sweat Hogs were all fairly popular in their day, but to think some poor 7 year old kid was wandering the streets dressed up as Gabe Kaplan is a crying shame. If you were really cool, you could wear the mask with a basketball uniform and go as Gabe Kaplan from FASTBREAK, or just go naked with it as Ron Jeremy."

Great commentary and more from this font of inspiration for those who just can't decide what to wear this year.

Thanks to Transterrestrial Musings for the link.

Posted by: Ted at 04:54 PM | category: Links
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Expand your horizons.

Posted by: Ted at 05:45 PM | category: Links
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Volksmarching (literally people's walk) is a popular German pastime where folks take a stroll through the scenic countryside. The routes are marked, and there are checkpoints along the way where you get your route card stamped. At the end you get a trinket of some sort (pin or patch or similar item) and your milage and event cards get updated so you have a record of how many you've done and how far you've walked. It's a nice way to spend a day.

If you want information about volksmarching in your area, do a Google search. They've pretty much spread worldwide, and you can probably find one reasonably local to you.

The German word for large is 'gross'.

Professor Hall talks a little bit about the motorcyclists version called an Iron Butt Rally, and the troubles you can have on the road.

So what do all these tidbits of information have in common? Keep reading... more...

Posted by: Ted at 04:08 PM | category: Links
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... is a better Christian than you.

In fact, according to her website, she's "so close to Jesus, he uses her birthday when he plays Lotto."

Sharp satire and penetrating parody, but be prepared to spend a little time, because there's that much good stuff to go through.

Posted by: Ted at 01:18 PM | category: Links
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Happy Tree Friends! It's cute, it's gory, it's sick. It's hard to find good childrens programming like that these days.

Thanks to mnavarre for the pointer.

Oh, if you've never seen Joe Cartoon, well, you've lived a sheltered life.

(bandwidth alert for everything linked here, and some of the language gets a little rough)

Posted by: Ted at 05:56 PM | category: Links
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Six British schoolboys were rushed to hospital after taking the erection-enhancing drug Viagra at lunchtime for a dare, the school said on Thursday.

Sorry about the headline, I couldn't resist.

Posted by: Ted at 01:01 PM | category: Links
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Short but intense. Busy busy week.

The guys at Random Nuclear Strikes keep posting quality stuff. As I scrolled through their blog, I couldn’t decide whether to link to the bit about rebels without a clue, or the one about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, or Noah. Until I found their new effort, the Bellicose Woman’s Brigade, and its primary topic – the right of self defense. Personal note to oldest daughter and Mookie: go read this, and think about it.

While IÂ’m on that subject, go check out the ShooterÂ’s Carnival too. Lots of good stuff for beginners, in a group blog format. Entries by Publicola, Alphecca, and Say Uncle.

ThereÂ’s a nice little debate going on over at Across the Atlantic about the most beautiful airplane ever, prompted by the soon-to-be-retired Concorde.

This guy always has something thought-provoking to read. You should stop by, and while youÂ’re there ask him why IÂ’m not on his blogroll.

ThereÂ’s always a party going on at Madfish WillieÂ’s Cyber Saloon.

Mr. Helpful is going to be posting chapters of his novel online (there are a lot of bloggers writing novels, which I suppose isnÂ’t all that surprising). Megan is also writing a new story for the Second Spherewide Short Story Symposium. With an owie, no less. That is a dedicated wordsmith.

Kin's back, and he's picked up right where he left off.

Nic talks of charity walks and poor pumpkin crops. Blame Canada!

TwoDragons is having problems with our comment routines not remembering her. We discussed the problem and unofficially decided that it’s the ‘system’ keeping you down.

New peeps. Say hello.

Alright, lunch is over. Later.

Posted by: Ted at 12:14 PM | category: Links
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1 Your Blog Comments just doesn't like me, I guess. Oh well...
I wouldn't mind it, except I keep having to go back and make sure I haven't typed my name and password out of habit. D'oh!

--TwoDragons

Posted by: Denita TwoDragons at October 21, 2003 01:25 PM (8+9uF)

2 Mr Jones: I'm honored that you would link me. Thanks for stopping by the joint.

Cheers!

Posted by: The Bartender at October 21, 2003 10:08 PM (zShau)

3 Damn, Rocket....I'm sorry. I'll fix that oversight right away.

Thanks for thinking of me.
...and if you have a problem with me, in the future, feel free to tell me so yourself.

Posted by: Jon Henke at October 21, 2003 10:40 PM (1jtR9)

4 Behold the power of the Queen of Suck. Mwuh ha ha ha!

Posted by: Jennifer at October 22, 2003 05:34 AM (PbT+r)

5 Hey Bartender, I know a good party when I see it!

Jon, I was going to say that it's more fun to send my evil minions to do my bidding, but if Jen is the Queen of Suck, then I guess I'm *her* minion. Truly, thanks for adding me. You write some great stuff.

Posted by: Ted at October 22, 2003 05:46 AM (2sKfR)

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Professor Hall left a comment in my druid story about a 1/3 scale model of Stonehenge at the University of Missouri at Rolla.

Further digging shows that the UM-Rolla site is entirely appropriate as it is also home of the Rock Mechanics & Explosives Research Center, where they do experimental work with high pressure water jets used to cut stone. Their ROTC detachment is nicknamed the Stonehenge Battalion. UMR was also the site of the first nuclear reactor in the state of Missouri.

And then I found this page - Stonehenge Clones and Metaphorms - which covers North America only. Among the nifty links are the UMR model, Nebraska's Carhenge, Texas' Stonehenge II and Cadillac Ranch (the link wasn't working when I tried it). If you like surfing for the unusual, then these links are fun and interesting.

Posted by: Ted at 08:52 PM | category: Links
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1 The druid story was cool.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 16, 2003 10:42 PM (LBXBY)

2 Thanks.

Posted by: Ted at October 17, 2003 05:26 AM (2sKfR)

3 rock on you all

Posted by: soulreaver at January 05, 2005 12:13 PM (hBwqT)

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One of my favorite groups is The Rainmakers. Today I found an interview with their main singer/songwriter Bob Walkenhorst. You really should give 'em a listen.

Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 02:29 PM | category: Links
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High-profile people doing advertising in Japan.

From the site:
Pander: n. 1. go-between in clandestine amours, procurer; one who ministers to evil designs. 2 v.i. minister (to base passions or evil designs, or person having these)

Japander: n. 1. a western star who uses his or her fame to make large sums of money in a short time by advertising products in Japan that they would probably never use. ~er (see synecure, prostitute) 2. to make an ass of oneself in Japanese media.

Enjoy the weirdness at Japander.com.

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Jeff at Alphecca talks about lists and who keeps them. I’m firmly in the list-making camp, but only because my memory is so lousy. I’d hate to forget someone on my ‘must bite’ list if I ever get rabies.

Annika shares my shame. They should change the Raiders motto from “Pride and Poise” to “Every time the Raiders play, the baby Jesus cries”.

Navarre is excited about the ArmyÂ’s new 12 gauge shotgun that mounts under the M4 carbine. Me too! I used to carry the M203 grenade launcher and although itÂ’s comforting to carry a 40mm round full of double-ought buckshot, the M203 was a single shot weapon. Besides, he quotes Army of Darkness, so bonus points in my book!

The Meatriarch gives valid advice to guys taking a leak for urinalysis testing. “Clink” is bad.

Dana writes about this years hot new Christmas toys. My favorite:

"Politically-Correct Crayons - New set of crayons assures that your child will never offend a classmate with their drawings. Crayola has removed any color that, when used to draw a bodily feature, might cause emotional hurt or discomfort to minorities. Out are brown (Latinos), black (African-Americans), red (native Americans), yellow (Asians), orange (Middle Easterners), gray (the elderly), green (Martians), blue (Smurfs), and purple (one-eyed, one-horned, flying people eaters). The boxes of white crayons will sell for the same price as the regular, racist crayons."

Publicola discusses a new California law and its impact. The inability to consider consequences by some lawmakers is truly frightening.

"The law officially defines guns lacking these features as 'unsafe guns.' As a result, nearly every single handgun used by California law enforcement officers will be officially defined as an 'unsafe handgun,' a notion certain to be exploited in lawsuits involving police use of firearms.'
In short, California sheriffs and police chiefs must now choose between issuing mechanically unreliable guns to their officers or issuing guns deemed legally 'unsafe'. "

SilverBlue has posted a hilarious cartoon!

Over at USS Clueless, Den Beste contrasts elections held in America vs most everywhere else. This line cracked me up, but you should read it all:

"We [Americans] have to take candidates as packages, and can't really pick and choose features to create a best-of-breed candidate (i.e. Clinton's charisma combined with Dole's erectile dysfunction)."

Kevin of Wizbang! writes the following about a neat new blog tool:

"Jay Allen's MT Blacklist is a Swiss Army knife for comment and trackback content management as well as a spam killer."

Which is all well and good, but what we need is an American Army knife feature like automatic ‘track down and kill the spammer’.

Did you know that the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. has a stained glass window that includes a piece of moon rock brought back by Apollo 11? I didnÂ’t either, but Chris Hall did. Thanks!

In November, the Discovery Channel will be airing a program called “Rocket Challenge” (I’ll post dates and times when they become available). Well, a grass-roots effort to buy commercial time during the programs to promote hobby rocketry has really taken off (pun intended). The goal was to raise $68,000, and it was done in a matter of weeks. I’m proud to be a rocketeer! Thanks to Rocket Forge and all those who contributed for working hard to promote the hobby.

Blackfive honors fellow blogger Baldilocks for her service to our country. IÂ’d like to add my congratulations and appreciation as well.

Wanna read about a situation where timing is absolutely key? In this case, being a little late to the party is a good thing.

Megan always has intriguing and thought provoking posts.

Jon reports about yet another poll, but this one is interesting in so many ways besides the fact that it was conducted in Baghdad. Get this:

"Almost everyone responded to the pollsters' questions, with some pleading for a chance to give their opinions."

Man, how could we do this to these people?

See what happens when you have a Militia and a Sheriff willing to talk? My God, reasonableness breaks out all over the place!

Remember the story about the German day-care for men whoÂ’re out shopping with their wives? Jay of Sophont makes a good point:

"This may not be as silly as it sounds. After all, the last time German men were left without adult supervision, they ended up overrunning Europe."

The Delusional Duck gets a link, just because heÂ’s from Waldorf, Maryland. I lived in Fort Washington long ago, when you took back roads over one-lane bridges through beautiful countryside to get to Waldorf. Now itÂ’s four-lane divided highway through housing developments. Progress can really suck.

Thanks to Velociworld for the pointer, for he has fine taste in unknown celebrities bearing (not baring) impressive chests.

Nic gives with her super secret chili spices. She doesnÂ’t specify, but I bet you could change the character of the chili a bit by using sweet paprika vs the hot stuff. IÂ’m going to have to try her recipe.

Over at Jockularocracy, there’s a pointer to one of those must-have products for today’s world. I can’t wait till it shows up in the ‘As Seen On TV’ store, so I can save on shipping and handling.

Enjoy!

Posted by: Ted at 12:21 PM | category: Links
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In a late episode of the television show Happy Days, Fonzi jumped a shark tank with his motorcycle on waterskis. This became the standard metaphor for the defining moment at which a series began it's decline into crap.

For some interesting comments on classic (and not-so-classic) television, see Jump The Shark. I especially enjoyed reading and reminiscing about Barney Miller, which is one of my all-time favorites.

I saw this in an article in Entertainment Weekly which has a policy of being accessable online only to subscribers and newstand buyers, so screw 'em - no link for them.

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A collection of more than 12 million historic photographs, capturing scenes from the Boer War to the D-Day landings, was published on the Internet Monday.

The images, which date back to the turn of the 20th century, have been captured from the archives of the British Pathe newsreel, a cinema news service that pre-dated television.

Peter Fydler, archive marketing director at Britain's Independent Television News, which owns British Pathe, said the collection should provide a powerful learning aid and a trip down memory lane.

"By using the newsreel archive to create a huge collection of still images, people can have access free of charge to printable pictures which will add to their enjoyment of history," he said.

The collection can be accessed at www.britishpathe.com. This morning the link was very slow, I suspect due to the amount of traffic trying to reach it. The quotes above come from a story accessed via Yahoo! News, which has more details.

Posted by: Ted at 07:12 AM | category: Links
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I'm going to take my time going through this one, because Kelley is headed to Hawaii for a vacation. If you've been wanting to expand your reading circles, then you definitely need to check it out.

Posted by: Ted at 07:21 PM | category: Links
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One year I took one of those decorated kiddie bedsheets, this one had cartoons of Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Mickey Mouse and Pluto, etc. I cut out eyeholes and draped it over our son for trick or treating. When people asked what he was supposed to be, he told them he was the ghost of Walt Disney.

This is cool - Extreme Pumpkins. Thanks to TwoDragons for the link posted at Suburban Blight.

Q: How do West Virginians celebrate Halloween?
A: They pumpkin.

(Every state has a neighboring state that they make fun of. Washington has Idaho, North Carolina has South Carolina, Virginia has West Virginia, and everybody has California.)

Posted by: Ted at 01:49 AM | category: Links
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I've been meaning to add some folks to my Links Roster, and tonight I finally got around to it. Most of these I've been visiting from other blogrolls or technorati, so all I've really done is make it easier on myself.

(in no particular order)

Spacecraft
Rocket Forge
Backstage
JimiLove, Inc.
Madfish Willie's Cyber Saloon
Say Uncle
Sophont

If you haven't seen them yet, drop in and check 'em out, you might find something you like.

Posted by: Ted at 09:29 PM | category: Links
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Bonus points if you understand the title without reading ahead to the end.

Tonight’s Final Jeopardy answer was about someone being killed by a spear (1700’s I believe), and the price said spear fetched in auction. The correct question – which I didn’t know – was Captain Cook, who was skewered in the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii. The host of the show tossed in another little tidbit. The spear was recovered from Captain Cook’s body by his navigator, a man named Bligh who later became a captain of his own ship – the Bounty.

This kind of historical trivia floats my boat, so off I went into the realm of Google to see what more I might find.

HereÂ’s a site maintained by a distant ancestor of Captain Cook with some nice background information about the man and his voyages. I especially like this part:

What he had bequeathed to future generations was at once grand and simple: a coherent map of the Pacific.

Helluva legacy.

After reading this stuff for a while, I became curious about historic maps in general. Back to Google.

The very first site I found was this nifty online collection of historical maps. I love maps, especially old ones. They just fascinate me. In fact, when I worked at the US Department of State in Washington D.C., I went to a special seminar once in their research library that was totally devoted to the maps in their collection. So I went looking for a link to that.

What I came across instead was this extensive link list to online cartography resources, which includes the above link, the Library of Congress archives, and much more both modern and historic.

Back to Google, and looking for ‘antique map’ brings up a long list of map auction houses and retailers. This non-commercial site jumped out at me, it lists antique maps of Iceland. Their home page displays a map from 1547, and there are many more to view.

Frozen rocky bits of land in the middle of nowhere made me think about maps of the planets in our solar system. This link, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is pretty cool. The maps are stitched together from satellite images and such.

Further Googling led to this page containing a map that many scientists believe shows positive evidence of the asteroid strike that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. You can read more about it here.

From NASA to Vasa. Why? Because I knew a little about the Vasa already, and was curious about the progress. You see, the Vasa was a Swedish vessel that was designed to be the most powerful warship afloat. Unfortunately, she capsized and sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 – within a mile of her starting point and in sight of throngs of people gathered to watch her launch. After more than 300 years on the bottom, she was salvaged and raised, and a museum built to display her and tell her story. There’s another nice site about her here, which includes detailed lists of the items salvaged from the wreck.

The Vasa wasnÂ’t the first ship to sink in such a manner. The British ship Mary Rose had suffered a similar fate about 80 years before. This site gives a little history, as well as a look at underwater archeological techniques.

Unlike James Burke, who manages to neatly wrap everything up at the end of his columns (no longer in Scientific American – drat) or shows on the Learning Channel, I’m going to take the easy way out here. By the way, if you’ve never had the chance to read or watch his Connections, you should. It’s a fun look at history, in ways you’ve never dreamed of.

Anyway, back to my copout... The Mary Rose was a British ship, and Captain Cook was the leader of a British exploration voyage. All wrapped up into one neat little package, right back where we started from. C'mon, if I was any good at this, I'd get paid for it!

Here's a little personal map story. When we first got married my wife could not read a map. One long weekend we travelled to a nearby city to shop and just get away for a few days. When we got inside the city limits I handed my wife a street map and told her that she had to navigate every bit of the way around town. We spent most of that weekend lost, but by the end of it my wife could read a map and get us to where we wanted to go. To this day she keeps an accordian folder full of maps in her trunk, and she knows how to use them when she travels.

Posted by: Ted at 09:27 PM | category: Links
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Dana at Note-It Posts tells of a great Google search result. Hilarious!

What caught my eye though was a little farther down the page, the listing for Dean Guitars. Way back when, I wanted one of these in the worst way. Not that I was hurting for a quality instrument, because at the time I was playing an Ibanez (the one on the right).

Then I got married and did some serious growing up and re-prioritizing in my life. (I'm going to bookend this whole post with another) Dammit!

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