All Things in Moderation

I’m taking a page from Ace of Spades,

http://minx.cc/?post=336709

What are the best whole albums? The one’s where every song is great. The author of the post listed the following:

“#1 Dark Side of the Moon, #2 Back in Black, #3 Led Zepplin IV, #4 Who’s Next, #5 Joshua Tree, #6 London Calling, #7 Van Halen, #8 The Cars, #9 Purple Rain, #10 Appetite for Destruction,, with Honorable Mentions to: Quadrophenia, Synchronicity, Making Movies, Los Angeles (X), Bloodletting, Pet Sounds, Armed Forces, Yellow Brick Road, Revolver, Holy Diver, Paulie’s Boutique, Hysteria, OK Computer, Violator, and In the Court of the Crimson King. “

Some I agree with and some I think are wrong. I would add (or substitute):

Allman Bros., Eat a Peach as well as
Live at the Filmore East
Led Zepplin, Led Zepplin II
Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bullocks
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
AC/DC, Dirty Deeds
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pronounced

I’ll add more in the comments. Ace’s commenter’s skew younger than me, but there are some great suggestions in there.

What about your favorites?

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I hope everyone’s holidays are going well. I wanted to show you some pictures of a dog my wife and I rescued, we call him Puppa. About 6 months ago he showed up in my neighborhood, starving and looking forlorn. Whoever had him had put a shock collar on him:

Puppa was very scared of people, yet wanted companionship. If you walked a dog, he’d follow you, but at a distance of no less than 10 feet. We took to feeding him, he loves hot dogs, and leaving out water. It took us two months to lure him over to my street and in front of my house. We couldn’t catch him however. No matter what we did, he’d never come any nearer than 10 feet. we even got some tranquilizers from my vet, with no luck. On Christmas morning I went out to feed him his holiday hot dogs when a SUV approached me, a woman inside asked me if Puppa was my dog. I told her it was a stray that I’d been trying to catch. It turns out she lives in an adjoining subdivision, works for a private animal rescue, and had noticed Puppa on a walk with her dog. She agreed to set up a trap that day, and if we caught him, to get him to the vet. Well, sure enough it worked! That afternoon, Puppa was in the trap!

The vet cut off the shock collar: though I wont torture you with pictures of the horrible wound it left.

I take Puppa home on Wednesday and have visited him everyday. Yesterday he put his paw on my hand:

I haven’t had all that great a year, but it sure is ending well.

I miss commenting here, so I am going to resume

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

George

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Characters: 1] The evil but seductive twin sisters.

Imagine that they are sleeper agents for Hizbollah. One marries an Irish-American MD who is a sympathizer with the IRA and took a quickie course in intel gathering from Hizbollah. One marries the chief trader for American interests in Iraq, but sheds him when the Iraq War has no more useful intel.

2] The well meaning, but over-sexed former HS athlete and valedictorian, WP grad, reserve Major, and scholar/author, who we imagine learns of the evil twins through her time embedded with the CIA chief, who is too blind to have seen through them.

3] The we imagine honorable but manipulable CIA chief and generals who protect our land.

4] Jack Reacher [tm], who brings everyone to their senses, probably by slaying the evil twins, turning the Irish doctor, bedding the oversexed scholar, and redeeming the reputations of the honorable men, in some way I can’t figure out yet.

5] The Real Housewives [tm] of Tampa.

Some possible connections and plot turns:

Hizbollah was floating the couple in Tampa to lavish living in order to gain access to Central Command, but cut them off because of the War in Syria, or because they were not getting enough good stuff from the couple, who were having too good of a time.

Evil twin got so many wheels involved in her custody battle that Hizbollah shifted its financing to her.

Reacher [tm] first met the oversexed athlete/scholar/author when he was guarding a missile base in ND and she was a curious HS valedictorian. Didn’t have sex with her then but did have to remove her from the missile base.

Reacher [tm] is not Tom Cruise.

All twists and turns and perversions are welcome.

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Bad Lip Reading makes performance art out of the presidential debates:

It’s party time, chumps!

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Never been a big fan of this holiday – not because I really care if CC really “discovered” America  or was good, bad or ugly.  It just does not rise to the importance of most of the other holidays, at least for me.  That won’t stop me from taking the day off, mind you.  My plans for the weekend are to head to a house we have rented with another family near the Shenendoah River, in the mountains, for a weekend of R&R.  Weather is supposed to turn crappy here so I am not sure exactly what we will be doing but it won’t be work.

Fortunately the place is wired and I won’t miss the news of day on Monday….which is Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner and his attempted record skydive from almost 23 miles and probably be the first human to break the sound barrier without a craft.  I love this guy.  I love that the current record holder is on his team.  I love that it is a private sector enterprise.  And I think that the one thing I do admire about CC is that he did have a spirit of adventure, just like Felix.  Well…maybe not quite that adventurous…  Here is the story:

On Monday morning (Oct. 8), Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner will attempt to break the world record for highest-ever skydive, leaping from a balloon nearly 23 miles above Earth’s surface.  If all goes according to plan, Baumgartner will step into the void 120,000 feet (36,576 meters) above southeastern New Mexico early Monday, then plummet to Earth in a harrowing freefall that will see him become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.

After Baumgartner deploys his parachute and floats safely to the desert floor, he and the other architects of his mission — which is known as Red Bull Stratos — can celebrate breaking a skydiving record that has stood for more than 50 years.

One of those congratulating Baumgartner will likely be Joe Kittinger, who set the current record of 102,800 feet (31,333 m) back in 1960 while a captain in the U.S. Air Force. Kittinger serves as a Red Bull Stratos adviser. If everything works out on Monday, Baumgartner will also shatter the marks for fastest freefall, longest-duration freefall and highest manned balloon flight. But the daredevil says his leap is about more than just etching his name in the record books.

“Red Bull Stratos is an opportunity to gather information that could contribute to the development of life-saving measures for astronauts and pilots — and maybe for the space tourists of tomorrow,” Baumgartner said in a statement. “Proving that a human can break the speed of sound in the stratosphere and return to Earth would be a step toward creating near-space bailout procedures that currently don’t exist.”

Baumgartner’s 55-story-high balloon is slated to launch from Roswell, N.M. at dawn Monday, weather permitting. Winds must not exceed 2 mph (3.2 kph) at liftoff to ensure that the balloon — whose material is 10 times thinner than a plastic sandwich bag — isn’t damaged, Red Bull Stratos officials said.

Baumgartner will ride aboard a custom-built pressurized capsule that weighs about 2,900 pounds (1,315 kilograms). A hard landing during a July 25 practice jump from 97,146 feet (29,610 m) damaged the capsule, and the daredevil’s record-breaking attempt was delayed while his team made the necessary repairs.

During the July 25 jump, Baumgartner reached a top freefall speed of 537 mph (864 kph) — about as fast as a commercial airliner. But while his capsule got knocked around a bit, the skydiver landed safe and sound.

Baumgartner said he is nervous about Monday’s leap from the stratosphere. But the 43-year-old daredevil — who has jumped from some of the world’s tallest buildings and soared across the English Channel in freefall using a carbon wing — regards a tinge of fear as a good thing.

“Having been involved in extreme endeavors for so long, I’ve learned to use my fear to my advantage,” Baumgartner said. “Fear has become a friend of mine. It’s what prevents me from stepping too far over the line.”

Red Bull Stratos has described the Oct. 8 attempt as a jump from the edge of space. However, space is generally considered to begin at an altitude of 62 miles (100 km), or 327,000 feet.

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http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/9/1/1611/dewey-nicks-strong-is-beautiful

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For some reason this reminds me a little of ATiM.

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