The Evil Eyebrow

  • September 11th

    Is it being unamerican when I totally forget that it’s September 11th? Raise your hand if you’re with me. Without the Sunday morning news programs, I’m not sure I would have remembered.

  • Political Bullshit

    If you reference my blog entry from yesterday titled Inexcusable Behavior, you might note that I advocated contacting your Senators to explain how the treatment of evacuees in New Orleans was deplorable at times.

    Well, I did that. I send an e-letter to Senators Isakson and Chambliss, both of Georgia. The letter was composed at the Senate Website on a submission form, so unfortunately I do not have the exact text, but to summarize: The story referenced my blog entry mentioned criminal behavior on the part of authority figures and I felt that the Senators should take that into consideration when they do whatever it is they do in the Magical DC Land.

    Senator Chambliss’ form had a check box for “do not send response” which I checked. Senator Isakson’s did not have a similar check box, and here is the reply I received (all of the random HTML garbage has been removed, including the pretty header with his headshot in it).

    From: senator@isakson.senate.gov
    Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 11:42 AM
    To: bill .junk@jbwr.net
    Subject: A Response From Johnny Isakson

    Dear Mr. Ruhsam:

    Thank you for contacting my office regarding the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I appreciate your thoughts and the opportunity to respond to you.

    In the last week of August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the Gulf Coast region of the United States . In its wake, the people of Louisiana , Mississippi and Alabama have been faced with the loss of their homes, businesses and lives. My thoughts and prayers are with all those individuals and families affected by this tragedy.

    Congress has passed emergency supplemental appropriations to assist those agencies involved in the rescue efforts and will continue to provide the resources necessary to the affected areas. Congress has established a bipartisan committee to review the immediate preparation and recovery from Hurricane Katrina. I am pleased that these issues are being addressed, but stand fast that we must remain focused on completing the immediate response rather than placing blame without facts. Those impacted by this crisis will need the support and assistance of all Americans throughout this process.

    Please feel free to visit my website at http://isakson.senate.gov to get more information on relief assistance programs. Thank you again for contacting me, and I hope you will not hesitate to call on me in the future if I can be of assistance to you.

    Sincerely,
    Johnny Isakson
    United States Senator

    For future correspondence with my office, please visit my web site at
    http://isakson.senate.gov/contact.cfm

    First off, no one uses indents anymore in electronic communication! Get with the times. Second off, the code attached with his message was the worst amount of javascript crap I’ve seen in a while. I love how in the second paragraph he/they explains to me that a hurricane apparently came ashore somewhere on the gulf coast. Hmmmm… I’m glad they’ve got Senators to tell me things like this.

    But most importantly, this crappy response treated me like I’m an infant. I object to that. Here is my re-response (or my regift, if you will).

    To: senator@isakson.senate.gov
    From: bill .junk@jbwr.net
    Re: re: A Response From Johnny Isakson

    Dear Staff of Senator Isakson,

    This canned response to my missive beggars my intelligence. Sending me an obviously pre-written message does not endear me to you. Please, in the future, try not to so hideously embarrass yourselves by simply not sending a response. A simple, “Your message has been received and will be given its due consideration” is enough for those of us who do not want the bullshit political psychobabble.

    Good luck with this senate term,
    Bill Ruhsam

    Thanks, Senator, for all of the fish.

  • The Interdictor

    If you haven’t been following the developing situation in New Orleans, you’re probably not an American or you live on the Moon. It’s a mess.

    The Interdictor‘s blog on Livejournal.com has a unique perspective on the situation.

  • RSS Feeds are UP!

    Yayyyy! The RSS feeds for Billblog are working. As usual it turned out to be something simple, obvious, and over looked. The href tag had “feed:” before the

  • Battlestar Galactica

    As mentioned in my post concerning Dragon*Con ’05, I saw two of the actors from Battlestar Galactica over the weekend: Tricia Helfer and Richard Hatch (not from Survivor). I refuse to link to his website because it belongs on webpagesthatsuck.com. If you must see it, go to http://www.richardhatch.com/ but don’t if you’re on dialup. You are warned.

    Mr. Hatch played Apollo for the original Battlestar Galactica and now plays Tom Zarek for the new one. He does a good job on the show with his character. I am suitably impressed. He’s not all that in person, though. I showed up for his panel (which was supposed to be with Jamie Bamber and James Callis, but they cancelled at the last minute. Apparently they were called back to Vancouver for shooting), and expected to hear about Battlestar or things related to Battlestar.

    Unfortunately, we got a lot of Richard Hatch talking at us. He had some interesting stories, but he sounded more like an inspirational speaker than someone answering questions about his work. It got rather boring after a while.

    I was amused that he kept staring at Jenn, though. I think he liked her.

    Tricia Helfer was much more interesting. Her panel was on Sunday. She was a stand in for Jamie Bamber and nicely flew out to give us a Battlestar fix. She answered questions about the show–without revealing any spoilers–and herself. She mentioned that the Pegasus storyline would be coming up in an episode or two, but we knew that already (Pegasus is another surviving Battlestar).

    I asked her the following question: “We have seen five human-looking Cylons. That leaves seven. Do you, Tricia, know who they are, and if so, have we seen them on screen?”

    She answered that she knew who one of them was, and she did not think that that character had been on screen yet. She also said that the actors are always the last people to know about the plot twists and anyone we’ve already seen could be a Cylon. I’m still waiting for Adama to turn into a Cylon. That or Colonel Tye’s wife.

    I’m glad I went to those panels, even if Richard Hatch was a bit preachy. Tricia Helfer was engaging–and nice looking!

  • Inexcusable Behavior

    A friend, Mike Steele, posted this in his LiveJournal Blog. It is a story of two EMS people in New Orleans from the get-go and how they evacuated.

    This story, if all true and accurate as portrayed, is aboslutely sickening. I can understand, if not condone, indifference and deliberate ignorance from on-the-spot authorities, but what is described here passes beyond into outright abuse. There is no excuse for this sort of criminal behavior.

    The only recourse I can see for myself, at the moment, is to forward this link to my U.S. Senators and demand some accountability.

    Inexcusable.

  • Dragon*Con!

    Dragon*Con, 2005, was a blast! I had no idea it would be as totally rocking awesome as it was! I’ve already made reservations in one of the conference hotels for 2006 (the main hotel is already ENTIRELY sold out of rooms for that weekend).

    Until now, I’ve been a purveyor of strict game cons; never a full-up sci-fi/fantasy/pop-cult convention. That has officially changed due to the sheer amount of fun I had last weekend. It was non stop, and the only mistake I made was not spending Friday night at one of the convention hotels. There is something quite amusing about walking down Peachtree Street in Atlanta on the way to Breakfast and seeing a Stormtrooper, followed by a Klingon, cross the road.
    Birdman!
    A brief list of what I did at this Con: A reading by Robert Jordan from Knife of Dreams; A reading by Anne and Todd McCaffrey from the new Pern book; A reading by Peter Beagle from his new book; A talk by Richard Hatch ostensibly about Battlestar Galactica, but really about the Philosophy of Richard Hatch (man does that guy like to hear himself talk); A Q&A session by Tricia Helfer concerning Battlestar and her character and about working with everyone else on the set; The Dawn lookalike contest; concerts by Belle Morte, Cruxshadows, and Combichrist; The art show; lots of gaming; playing Are You a Werewolf? (a lot); staring at people; ogling costumes; watching the parade down Peachtree; admiring the opposite sex; getting photographed with my Noodly Appendage T-shirt on; running into Lou Ferrigno on Sunday morning in the elevator with him looking much the worse for wear; getting robbed by the Hyatt (bring your own booze); watching the Killer Robots play; Blowing up the USS New Jersey!
    Mike Playing Memoir '44
    People Met and Spoken with: Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time), Tricia Helfer (#6 from Battlestar Galactica), Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk), Mike Lewandowski (the Man)
    People Met and Watched: Anne McCaffrey (Pern), Todd McCaffrey (Pern), Richard Hatch (Apollo on Old Battlestar, Zarek on New), Marina Sirtis (Star Trek), Peter Beagle (The Last Unicorn)
    People Seen: James & Oliver Phelps (Harry Potter), Kevin Sorbo (Hercules), Margaret Weis (Dragonlance), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12)

    The list just keeps going. That is maybe half of the people I recognized. The dude who played Chewbacca was there. Young Boba Fett was there. Darrell Sweet was there. So many people were there!
    Wookies on Peachtree Street
    Red Cross Stormtrooper from the 501st

    The 501st Legion, A.K.A. “Vader’s Fist”, put in a showing and did some charity work, collecting money for the Red Cross to aid Katrina victims.

    It is now my goal to convince as many of my friends who don’t live here to get their butts down to Atlanta for next year’s Dragon*Con. I’ll be there, and I hope they will be, too.

  • Katrina Narrow Escapes

    Reports are saying the 50 to 60 thousand people are waiting for or currently being evacuated from New Orleans. I’m going to go out on a limb and make some assumptions:

    1) They’re reasonably accurate on that number
    2) That’s not all of the people who are still within the city limits

    This means a couple things. One, between 10% and 20% of the city remained behind after the direst of warnings by the Mayor. Two, almost every single one of those people would be dead if the storm had not veered east and flattened Mississippi.

    A death toll in America of 100 thousand because people could not or would not evacuate was avoided narrowly.

    This is overwhelming to me. Things like this should not be happening in the worlds most industrial nation. I realize that the timeframe of the evacuation was short, but there better be a plan for the next time. I believe it is within the power of the Federal Government to nationalize the assets of the airline industry for emergency troop deployments. Something similar could have been accomplished with buses and railroads and taxis, etc. , if only to remove people from the environs of the city.

    There are huge holes in what I just wrote, I know, but if we’re going to have an entire Department called Homeland Security, they better earn their pay, or dissolve and put the Coast Guard back into the Dept. of Interior.

  • Help Katrina Victims

    Please visit the Red Cross and donate some money. The thing most needed right now is for organizations that are already set up to send relief to disaster victims to have the funds to do it with. You can also call 1-800-HELP-NOW.

    Take time and send some of your extra money. It only takes a moment, and you can think of $50 increments as a tank of gas each.

  • Bad Astronomy Blogs Astrology

    There’s an amusing entry today over at The Bad Astronomy Blog.

The Evil Eyebrow

There is no knowing the Evil Eyebrow

Twenty Twenty-Five

Designed with WordPress