BoWilliams.com

These roads lead to BoWilliams.com

Bo — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:57:41 +0000

Here are some recent search terms (put into Google, Yahoo!, and so forth) that led someone to this blog:

need to pee in airplane
I am proud to say I never have. I plan carefully to avoid needing airplane bathrooms. Checked one out for Nathan once; that’s the closest I’ve ever come.

wife pierced
That’s alarmingly general.

prison girls
Oh yeah man, I know. I get you.

synthetic opioid like over the counter
That’d be another step to, like, a utopia.

what the fuck is my pin number?
7942.

corn flakes look like people
Some of them. Some of us.

stimulate my economies
Your economies are filthy little perverts.

boots for rabbits
Be careful. Fur freaks ‘em out.

are car dealers the most hated profession in the usa
Nope. Attorneys.

fire les miles 2012
The mind of a corn dog is a mysterious thing.

kenny stabler beer
Yeah. It’s a problem.

be nice to obama
No.

this here’s the duck
This here’s the orange sauce.

tabasco sauce kid
That’d be a cool cowboy name.

redneck wife
Don’t have one. I know a few.

what is a damp washcloth
I can’t believe this one recurs, but it does.

i want to fuck ssheep
I can believe this one recurs. And it does.

is there a vulgar word for female genitalia or behavior that starts with a q?
Yes. Quitoris.

These roads lead to WmWms Here are some recent search terms (put into Google, Yahoo!,...
These roads lead to WmWms Here are some recent search terms (put into Google, Yahoo!,...
These roads lead to WmWms Here are some recent search terms (put into Google, Yahoo!,...

Ben Gazzara, Road House’s Brad Wesley, dead at 81

Bo — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:47:45 +0000

Prolific and Emmy award-winning actor Ben Gazzara died this morning. He was 81.

The New York Times article—which I somehow was able to read an hour or so ago but which is now demanding login credentials, therefore preventing me from linking to it— disingenuously and snobbishly avoids any mention of what is surely Gazzara’s greatest role: that of Brad Wesley in the masterpiece Road House. (The briefest of mentions can be found here.)

(Note that Patrick Swayze and Jeff Healey are gone already. Is there a Road House curse? Mind yourself, Kelly Lynch.)

RIP.

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Thursday miscellanea #173

Bo — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:01:19 +0000

My Google+ profile is on the ropes. In fact, as soon as I get out of my Android phone, I may see if I can go Google-free. I think I’ve decided that Microsoft is my faceless megacorp of choice.
It’s another #1 class for Alabama (and by the way, the Tide signed 8% of the ESPNU 150). Also, I’ve noticed that even the most breathlessly optimistic detractors have abandoned any fantasy of Coach Saban retiring anywhere but the Capstone. Gird up, folks. This is where Alabama belongs. More hardware to come (in my house, not yours).
RIP, Don Cornelius. I posted a video of him introducing Vanity 6 on my Facebook profile not two weeks ago. I’m not one to overvalue coincidence, so I’ll leave it at that.
Nathan didn’t make it his first time trying out for Scholar’s Bowl. He’s got the knowledge, but he can’t yet lay his brain (and his mouth) on it quickly enough. He seems okay with it, but I told him that if it was important to him, I’d help him, and we’d see next year. (Scholar’s Bowl was kind of my thing.)
I loved Runaway, for Gene Simmons, Cynthia Rhodes (yum!), and the smart bullets, roughly in that order. Now, in early 2012, the smart bullets are almost here.
The CD player in the Technical Writing Express has perished. I’d been uncommonly impressed with the ’08 Versa’s service record, but this early failure yanks it back to average. I think I’ll get an aftermarket head unit with additional capabilities for my birthday.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 scared the living hell out of the boys. We had a disjointed Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, with multiple journeys to the master suite and closet lights left on and what-not. We’ll finish the series this weekend (read: on a non-schoolnight).

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Mitt Romney is in a cult!

Bo — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:16:31 +0000

I have reservations about Mitt Romney because he’s demonstrably supportive of government-run medicine. It’s also relatively easy to establish that his positions have been rather more fluid than those steady tracking movements likely to be informed by increasing wisdom. (That is such a horrible sentence, but I got in the middle and couldn’t stop. Forgive me.) Finally, I don’t necessarily think it’s a good thing that he is so “electable.” This, so far, seems to translate as “utterly without passion.” You don’t have to go all the way to velvet robes, goblet of wine, and turkey leg to have a little spunk about you.

I am not bothered in the least that Mitt Romney is a Mormon.

You know, Mormonism is a cult. Such is a claim with quite a lot of traction in Southern Baptist churches, anyway. I got that at least twice that I can remember during my adolescence in such a church (which, despite its shortcomings, was more good than bad for me). I’ve had two people express that concern to me about Mitt Romney. One is still gaga for our dear Barack, so her vote isn’t in play anyway. However, she wondered about what kind of effect that might have with Southern religious voters, to which my response was a hearty “none.” Think about it: wouldn’t folks who think Romney’s in a cult be the same folks who think Obama’s a stealth Muslim?

So where are they going to go anyway?

And to anyone who’s genuinely, first and foremost put off by Romney being a Mormon: seriously? Can you really find anything in that narrative that’s any more objectively ridiculous than any other major religion? Now I know it’s trendy and probably metrosexual or something to be a jackass loudmouth atheist. But good luck finding a major presidential candidate without a Judeo-Christian profession.

So within that framework, you’re going to excoriate a guy because there’s a bit more to the story of his faith than that of a “normal” Christian?

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Florida arrives

Bo — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:29:53 +0000

The day of the Florida primary has arrived. I guess there might be 20 minutes tonight between the last poll closing and the call for Romney.

A couple of Rush’s callers yesterday were stoking the narrative that the damned liberals were hijacking the polling and that Newt still had a great chance today. Rush didn’t stoke with them, but he didn’t throw cold water on the idea either. We’ll know soon.

I stuck a NEWT 2012 sticker to the Technical Writing Express yesterday. Might as well. It’s difficult for me to see from whence it would come, but I’m trying to remain hopeful that February will bring some excitement to this race.

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A murder party with my monkey

Bo — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:34:29 +0000

I was whisked away to Arabia last night. Beth hosted a murder mystery dinner party set in a market in the kingdom of Ardalan. I was an entertainer named Nihad, with a pet monkey named Sinbad. (Terri snapped this photo. I suspect others shall surface.)

Have you ever attended a murder party? I can access a vague memory of playing a drug dealer with slicked-back hair for one of these with an old girlfriend, but that’s been 20 years ago now. Further, I’m confident the scope of this one dwarfed the other, both in the game’s design and Beth’s quest for total environmental immersion when decorating for something of this nature. (Wow, what an effort, too!)

I’m really a pretty smart fellow, but to play this game well requires a degree of mental plate-spinning of which I’m apparently incapable. It’s necessary to keep up with three or four times the amount of information than I can manage. This manifests as a) one character asks me about trading information or items; b) I put him off so I can flip through my packet and see what he’s talking about; c) I figure out I need to do what he said; d) I go back to him and say let’s do it; and finally e) he’s already gone a different way. This happened to me at least twice. (I had most of what I needed to know well in advance, but the pacing and the amount of simultaneous interaction buried me.)

It concerned me enough that I pulled Beth aside and told her I was worried my ineptitude was messing the game up, but she assured me there was enough flexibility designed in to accommodate such. (You know, I can also generate some guilt thinking about the fact that she gave me an extroverted character that I never really did enough with because I was having to try too hard to keep up!) She’ll swat that down too, because she’s gracious and she’s my friend. Then she’ll say that she just hopes I had a good time, which I certainly did. It was food, drink, and lots of laughs with folks I enjoy very much.

If we do it again, though, I think I should probably tend bar.

Thanks so much for all of the trouble and the invitation, Beth. It was a blast!

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Technology’s insidious cerebral assault

Bo — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:46:42 +0000

Our longtime friend Alex is an architect. As systematic as he is, he may be better suited to his occupation than anyone else we know.

So six or seven years ago, we were visiting over a beer, and he was telling me about his Saturday morning. He had a backyard construction project going, and he told me “so yeah, I thought I’d try it this way, and if it didn’t work out I’d just Undo it and try it another way…”

See what happened there? He spends his days mostly in software, where a mouse click or two wipes away a mistake. That mindset momentarily invaded his real world convincingly enough to plant an absurd thought.

I’d remembered that as an interesting anecdote and nothing more until today, when I realized technology had similarly compromised my thinking. I was listening to talk radio at lunch and wanted to hear something said, but hadn’t been listening closely enough. My immediate thought was “well, I’ll rewind it and…”

…except I can’t rewind the radio in my F-150, can I? Oops.

My DVR, and probably to some degree online video, have apparently wrecked my attention span. My default level of attention is now less than it ever has been, because I’ve been conditioned to believe that I can simply rewind if I want to truly listen to something.

You know, everybody worries about nuclear holocaust or environmental calamity as the cause of humanity’s potential extinction during its ontological adolescence.

What if it’s just that we’re eventually going to be unable to listen for thirty damned seconds in a row?

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Thursday miscellanea #172

Bo — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:01:46 +0000

It’s raining again. We have some neighbors to the northwest who have a pond that periodically dries up, but it’s rather impressive right now. Also, this body of water is back in a big way.
There’s a marked (but smooth-top) trooper in a Charger prowling 565 this week. Also, that unmarked Tahoe is still around. Finally, Madison Police has a new predominantly black color scheme. That’s on a new Charger too, which is a departure. MPD has run Crown Vics and Impalas for the past 25 years.
BamaDan and I saw Haywire last night. That’s a marvelous film. Solid 8/10.
I have perfectly rationalized mooching Wi-Fi without patronage, because lots of times I go to such places and buy things without using the Wi-Fi. This is the same logic that allows me to guiltlessly use McDonald’s restrooms when traveling without buying anything.
Speaking of, I’m delighted to be able to still mooch said Wi-Fi on my netbook. I grabbed it in a hurry on Tuesday morning, thinking I might blog at lunch. When I went to get it out, it had hung trying to hibernate, so the hard drive had run continuously for almost four hours while enclosed completely in its bag. It was so hot I almost couldn’t touch it. Cooled it off and recharged it, and it’s good to go.
I went poking around the Adobe site on another matter, and discovered they’re about to make essentially all of their multimedia and graphic software available for lease at $49.99 a month. I’ve sometimes considered catching back up on Director and Flash, but the prices have always turned me off. This is something I’ll consider carefully. After all, it wouldn’t take much freelance work at all to keep it paid for.
Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye IPA is tasty, but at least one area Publix appears to be stocking it instead of Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA. That won’t do, folks.

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Alabama illegal immigration law slashes unemployment

Bo — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:19:31 +0000

Alabama’s unemployment rate fell to 8.1% in December. It was 8.7% one month earlier. In September, it was 9.8%.

Most of Alabama’s illegal immigration law—widely regarded as the toughest in the country—went into effect on September 29.

It seems “jobs Americans won’t do” might be a rather more diaphanous notion than any of the phrase’s supporters realized, eh?

We’ve got to get over the idea that it’s harmless to allow, and in some cases even actively enable, illegal aliens to access our country’s job market and government benefits essentially unfettered. The above result startles me in its degree. Clearly, it does matter—a lot.

Even if you believe it is a legitimate function of government to provide for people without regard for whether the government actually belongs to those people, how is it compassion for us to cut our own throats? Is that not what we’re doing?

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Joe Paterno dead at 85

Bo — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:44:02 +0000

Longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died this morning. He was 85.

This really should have been an easy post to write. There is quite a lot to say about Paterno’s extensive contributions to the Penn State community, his commitment to academic excellence, and his coaching accomplishments.

There aren’t many things that could have slapped an eternal “Yeah, but…” on such a legacy, but Jerry Sandusky’s alleged behavior qualifies.

Most of what I’ve read and heard today cautions against defining Paterno’s career by the mistake that ended it, on the basis of what I’ve said above. People are saying it because they wish it were possible. I do too. It isn’t. Ask Woody Hayes.

RIP.

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