UPDATE OF PREVIOUS POST:

DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!

TSA RESCUES MY LOST CELL-PHONE
AT SAN DIEGO AIRPORT

BOMB SQUAD NOT INVOLVED

Yes, friends, the saga of the velvet glove continues: following a small Perrier water accident which caused me to shuffle my shopping bag, I shuffled my cell-phone into the seat cushions at Gate 22 -- a fact I did not discover until we were landing back in T.O. five hours late,r when the assembling of my travel goods did not yield the phone in any of my carry-ons.

I had been back in the house less than an hour, having dumped out all relevant bags and faced the horrible truth, when the phone rang and a sort of Grandpa McCoy voice* on the other end was asking me if I knew anything about this phone they had found at friendly Lindbergh Field. When I laid claim to it, the man said he would be taking it directly to the Lost and Found, and that I could call them on Monday at the number he provided.

Damn, he was cordial! How dare he?

When I phoned Lost and Found the next day, the gentleman was cordial-plus, retrieved my phone and asked me the skill-testing question: When I open the phone there's a picture -- what is it? A brand new baby!, I reply. We then exchange all the pertinent information, and they will hold the phone for 90 days until the designated family member can pick it up.

Cell phone found abandoned at airport gate -- probably by cleaners or another passenger, turned over to authorities, and probably x-rayed and examined. Not hammered to bits, blown up, or put into the crusher. Just sent to Lost and Found with a "Please look after this bear" tag on it.

This is not your father's TSA. It isn't even last week's TSA. I would have understood completely if they thrown a bucket of cold water over my phone instead of using it to call me. I'm inclined to believe that the bucket of cold water has been thrown on the infamous gropers and peepers of the San Diego security screeners.

My phone, by the way, is a 2003 model that was obsolescing even as I bought it. I was planning on getting a new one sometime this fall anyway.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the phone is junk.

Can we hope that the TSA in San Diego has gotten the message?: Don't touch my junk.


*[watch the clip -- it's a classic]

DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!!!

THEY'VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO MY FACE



Here I am at the globally infamous San Diego Lindbergh Airport, known for its draconian fascist Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (virtual waterboarding of the Naughty Bits) and I was ready for a fight, or at least an invasive pat-down. Instead, we find the lines short, the agents civil, the X-ray of Evil in very limited use (though I did see lanky blonde subjected to it) and by the time we got to the brink of The Sorting, there was a belt across the entrance to The Machine of Nudity, and we were whisked through in mere moments without so much as a friendly arse-pat.

Furthermore, there's a recorded message from the glolbally infamous John Pistole, current Top Dawg at the Transportation Safety Administration, extolling the virtues of his 50,000-strong staff, which appears to be set to run about every five minutes, but so far 4 out of 5 times somebody has hit the kill switch before he's gotten past introduding himself. Guess they figure this announcement is just another form of harassment.

Well, crap, is all I have to say. I was primed to offer myself as a Human Sacrifice in the interest of transportation consumers everywhere. But, even though the threatened Thanksgiving Eve Opt Out Day O' Rage was a bit of a bust, the general outrage and the horror stories of TSA dolts drunk on power seems to have brought about detente between passengers and State Gropers, at least here in Globally Infamous San Diego.

So much for my free mammogram.

Now the most annoying thing about my five hours in the air will be the number of times my movie is interrupted by pilots and flighty attendants giving me information I don't need. in two languages. And the fact that the in-house Air Canada announcements being made in the airport are the only ones with a sound quality slightly worse than the crackles we remember between Earth and Apollo 13. Sheesh.

BUY KODAK

Staples house brand photo supreme paper for inkjet printers totally sucks.

I'm just sayin'

Seasons Greetings.

COPYRIGHT, SCHMOPYRIGHT

I thought these things had come to an end because the makers of the movie Downfall thought that their territory was being violated. Maybe they've finally figured out that this is the best free advertising scheme any human being could ever have devised.

The latest instalment in the Downfall parody chronicles, perhaps the edgiest one ever.

Delicious.




MORE FUN

Michael Ramirez, greatest living editorial cartoonist, strikes again.

Apropos of nothing much....


CATHOLIC

Peter Noone, eternally youthful,
still and always
Herman, with Hermits






NOT CATHOLIC

Marco Rubio, new Senator
from Florida, of Cuban
descent, with bundles
of family.

Who knew?






NO LONGER CATHOLIC

Mark Steyn, columnist
to the world, some sort of
Protestant, loathed by
anti-semites who don't realize
that his last name is actually
Afrikaaner. What a Boer.







ALSO NO LONGER CATHOLIC

Sarah Palin, whose parents seem
to have bailed on the Church
when she was quite young.
But is the Pope Catholic? Does
the Mama Grizzly do things in
the woods? (like eat the
namby-pambies for lunch)
Still a fisher of men, I'm
thinkin'.



This is all very important news to people for whom this is very important news.

HONOR AND REMEMBER

...from one year ago today, Capt. Kyle Van de Giesen, USMC.

Prayers and support for his wife, daughter, and son who turned one year old yesterday.

Requiescat in pace.
Semper Fidelis.

HONOR AND REMEMBER

at the 11th hour
of the 11th day
of the 11th month

and always



















Happy 235th Birthday, Marine Corps!


Fair winds and following seas.

WELL SAID

The [London] Times Literary Supplement arrives on our doorstep every week, and I use it to make myself expert about books I'll never read. Recently I even had a foray into the Letters to the Editor section, got published, got answered back, all very satisfying.

In a summer issue someone named Sudhir Hazareesingh reviewed Christopher Hitchens' autobiography Hitch-22. The follow-up issue (September 3) just came before my eyes this week, and the Letters page made me smile. Hitchens himself had some darts to shoot at the review of his book, but the prize zinger came from another reader, Gunde Green, hailing from Glenview, Illinois. He [she?] writes:

Sir, – Perhaps Professor Hazareesingh, in his review of Hitch-22, can clarify his comment that:

"Hitchens also shows no sense of nuance or measure when it comes to Islam: he has no conceptual apparatus to make sense of Islam’s complexity and diversity, as well as the very real potential of its democratic incarnation . . . ."

Is this in reference to Islamic beheadings, stonings or hand amputations?

Nyah nyah nyah nyah!


I ISSUE A CORRECTION
(I think it's my first)

Apparently the rumors of a 34-ship escort for the President's Indian safari have been greatly exaggerated. Okee-fine. Point taken. [The story about the coconut disarmament, however, was absolutely true.]

The more important point to be made is that Mr. Obama has danced and dallied and Israel-bashed his way through an excursion to a country whose relationship with the United States was brought into magnificent bloom by President George W. Bush in a way which has been far misunderestimated and under-appreciated (and under-reported) in the public and media mind.

But this relationship has actually deteriorated since 2008, due to the current President's neglect of America's friends, even as he bows and scrapes to her enemies -- one of the prime examples (England is another) of Obama's rank failure to do as he promised, that is, to boost the world's regard for the United States.

How's that hope and change working for everybody?

HOPE AND CHANGE

New voices will be bouncing around the the halls of Congress, and may be saying interesting stuff like this:




OR NOT?

On the other hand, this is really disturbing:

...Bishops from the Middle East who were summoned by Rome by the pope demanded on October 23, 2010 that Israel accept UN resolutions calling for an end to its 'occupation' of Arab lands...

...Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, Greek Melkite archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Boston, Massachusetts has stated that "[t]he Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands." Furthermore, Bustros said that "[w]e Christians cannot speak of the 'promised land' as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ[.]" And finally, Bustros affirms that "[t]he Palestinian refugees will eventually come back and this problem will have to be solved."

Mmmm, sounds like the recent Vatican Synod of Middle Eastern Bishops was a real winner. Who lets this stuff get so out of hand? (And where's Malachi Martin when you really need him to be sniffing around behind the arras?)

[hat-tip American Thinker, where there's lots of other good stuff to read]



QUESTION: WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?

The Imperial Presidency of the Alinsky Apostle goes on apace, as Barack Obama and 3000 of Rabbit's Friend & Relations head for Mumbai (or "Bombay" as once was), and in addition to fleets of cars and planes and floors of hotel rooms, it appears that 34 warships are deemed necessary for his protection out in the nearby seas. (Wouldn't they be more useful off Baja California?.......)

But even the warships couldn't cope with the coconuts.

[hat-tip the Drudge man]

ANSWER: Joe Bite-Me.



HOUSE FRAU


[hat-tip: the genius of Michael Ramirez]

IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY....

The Onion gives us the best reminder of the passing of the Obama Moment.

Heh.



Or, as true Boomers might anthemize it:



On the other hand, some of us are quietly humming to ourselves:

Can't help it.