Nazi squirrel?

I never dreamed that slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous. Little did I suspect!

I was on Brice Street, a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me. It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it — it was that close. I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should have posed no real danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact.

Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves! Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Harley with steadfast resolve in his beady little eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt!

I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, "Bonzai!" or maybe, "Die, you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!"

The leap was nothing short of spectacular... He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Then, instantly, he set upon me. If I had not known better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans, this was a bit of a cause for concern. The furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, in the fight of his life with a squirrel...and losing!

I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw. That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there... It really should have.

The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely-kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed on home. No one would have been the wiser — but this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary, angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, landed squarely on my BACK, and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him! The situation was not improved...not improved at all.

His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking ba! ck, unfortunately, put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle.

A healthy twist on the throttle of a Harley can only have one result — torque. This is what the Harley is made for, and she is very, very good at it. The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement. The squirrel screamed in anger. The Big Harley screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in...well...I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly-squirrel-torn t-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back. The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder.

With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike. This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle...my brain was simply overloaded.

I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser. Also, about this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me. As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly-torn and blood-stained T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out of the mostly-closed full-face helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse.

Finally I got the upper hand...I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked...sort-of. Spectacularly sort-of — so to speak.

Picture a new scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn, blood-stained T-shirt flapping in the breeze, wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and with all his strength throws a live-squirrel-grenade directly into your police car. I heard screams... They weren't mine.

I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street. I would have returned to 'fess up (and to get my glove back)... I really would have. Really... Except for two things.

First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody's front yard, quickly moving away from the car. The cop who had been in the driver's seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car. So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway.

That was one thing. The other? Well, I could clearly see shredded and pieces of foam and upholstery flying from the back seat. I could also swear I saw that squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me. That was one dangerous squirrel...and now he had a patrol car. Granted, it was a somewhat-shredded patrol car, but it was all his.

I took a deep breath, flipped on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves...and a whole lot of Band-Aids!

APOD

APOD brings us...

Eta Carinae, one of the most massive and unstable stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, has a profound affect on its environment. Found in the the South Pillar region of the Carina Nebula, these fantastic pillars of glowing dust and gas with embedded newborn stars were sculpted by the intense wind and radiation from Eta Carinae and other massive stars. Glowing brightly in planet Earth's southern sky, the expansive Eta Carinae Nebula is a mere 10,000 light-years distant. Still, this remarkable cosmic vista is largely obscured by nebular dust and only revealed here in penetrating infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Eta Carinae itself is off the top left of the false-color image, with the bright-tipped dust pillars pointing suggestively toward the massive star's position. The Spitzer image spans almost 200 light-years at the distance of Eta Carinae.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Boiling water

Did you ever wonder what would happen if you threw a pot of boiling water into the air in Antarctica while it was -50C?

Well, I never wondered that, either. But that's what the picture at right is all about — the folks at Halley station in Antarctica, with apparently way too much time on their hands, are having a little fun with the extremely cold temperatures.

Don't miss their video!

Dohuk

I'd never heard of Dohuk before, but I know it now through a wonderfully uplifting post by Michael Yon. It's a town in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish section — and it's thriving. The people are safe in their everyday lives, the markets are full of goods, and the economy is in good shape (at least, by the evidence of Yon's eyes). An excerpt:

The Army left me behind and I stayed alone. I walked for miles and miles.

Through the marketplace, up and down the streets.

There were shoeshine boys, flower shops and computer stores. The computer stores in little Dohuk are much better stocked than those Milano, Italy. This is fact.

I walked into a store called Zanest Computer & Electronics, at 14th Anthar Street, and there I sat with Mr. Abdul Shukry, and asked him about business. Mr. Shukry said business is good, and that the US Army had come a few days earlier and purchased sixty computers and sixty UPS's and gave them all to Dohuk University.

"That's great," I said, "But how are sales if you do not include the Army business?""Still is good," he said, "Since the war has ended, all is good.""Are the people happy?" I asked.Mr. Shukry paused for a moment, as if it were the simplest question he'd been asked in months, "Of course they are happy, " he said."Are you Muslim?" I asked."Yes," he said."Sunni, yes?""Yes, Sunni. Most Kurds are Sunni.""Many people think the Sunnis all make war.""Not us. We are Kurds."

We talked on, exchanging answers to questions like, "What do you think of the police?" "What do you think of the U.S.?" "What do you think of the U.K.?" "Of Germany, of France?" "What do you think of Yezidi people?" "What is on your mind?"

You don't want to miss this post; go read it before you forget to. And don't miss the link to Dohuk University in his post!

Egyptian protests

At Rantings of a Sandmonkey, there's an interesting post (with photos) about the recent "Black Wednesday" protest in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak has committed publicly to holding free elections. These elections, were they truly free, would likely throw Mubarak out of office. So what's really happening, according to nearly all information I've been reading on the subject, is that Mubarak is mouthing "free elections" but using every tool at his disposal to suppress anything even remotely resembling an opposition. And because Mubarak is actually a dictator, those tools are numerous and high-powered. An excerpt from Sandmonkey:

The great country can set the example, no problem. It's Mubarak that has to set it really by punishing the kind of behaviour that took place the day of the referendum, and maybe, just maybe, follow some standards for a far election.

Oh look, Bush has some for you in case you can't come up with some on your own:

"People ought to be allowed to vote without being intimidated, people ought to be allowed to be on TV, and if the government owns the TV, they need to allow the opposition on TV, people ought to be allowed to carry signs and express their pleasure or displeasure. People ought to have very vote count," he said.

See Hosny? It's not that hard is it? No? Ok, then why don't you stop being a douche bag and let us have our free fu**in elections? God knows you will probably win any way with the current state of the opposition, so why don't you just give the people a real right to chose for once? It may forgive some of the shit you've put us through those past 24 years.

Blogs are one of the few things that Mubarak and his ilk have very little means to control. I do not know how widely read the Egyptian blogs are, but I know they are quite numerous. Relatively few are in English, of course, and Sandmonkey is one of them — albeit an unusually pro-American, pro-Western example.

As readers of this blog know, I subscribe to the blogospheric theory that once the protest babes show up, the opposing side is in big trouble. So the best news of all (from Sandmonkey's post) is that the protest babes have showed up supporting the Egyptian opposition. Telegram to Mubarak: it's all over but the shouting. You might as well start planning your retirement...elsewhere.

Deep Throat

By now you've probably heard the "sensational" news about the Watergate source code-named "Deep Throat" finally being revealed, as the then number two man at the FBI, former Director W. Mark Felt. The MSM is all over this story, trying as hard as they can to create an instant hero in Mr. Felt, and in reliving what must be the most glorious days in living memory for the MSM.

As many have pointed out, there are good reasons to wonder about Felt's motives — and even better reasons to question his actions, whatever his motives were. Any law enforcement office with knowledge of a crime has an obligation to report that crime — not to a newspaper reporter as a secret source, but through ordinary law enforcement channels. Even if one were to buy the argument (that some have made) that Felt had good reason to be suspicious of his superiors, then there were still other legitimate channels he could have pursued. For instance, he could have spilled his guts to any ranking Democrat — the political process would have ensured that Watergate was fully exposed, just as it was after the press reported it. So why did Felt take this route? Almost certainly for the most pedestrian of reasons: it was the safest thing for him to do personally. Not hero stuff in my book.

From the always-informative Captain's Galley, here's another interesting and related tidbit. It seems that this story (about Felt being Deep Throat) has been being shopped for several years, by his family members who are interested in making some money from the story. And it's been turned down at least a couple of times by enterprising MSM journalists who did not believe it was ethical to pay for a story, or who couldn't get reliable enough information to pursue a book deal. My current sense of journalistic ethics in the MSM is such that I have to think that either this story is incredibly rotten, or that the journalists involved are unusually principled. An excerpt from the Captain's Galley story:

Even Felt himself claimed during several sections of the taped interviews that Woodward made up the source Deep Throat.

"I just thought he was making it up," the then 90-year-old Felt told my partner. ...

The problem with Felt is that three summers before, he had suffered a stroke and briefly was sent to recuperate in a convalescent home. ... On Nov. 8, 2003, Felt told my writing partner when asked if he wanted to come forward: "You can tell them that I am Deep — that I was Deep Throat. The only thing is that Deep Throat is a little different than you probably have in mind. Deep Throat was not anybody real inside that was furnishing information. It was somebody confirming information."

Then Felt described his motive for coming clean then: "I guess I want some money for my family."

Earlier in that same interview, Felt said he didn't remember anything about Deep Throat, even saying at one point: "Well, I wasn't a Deep Throat."

Of Woodward, he said: "I don't think I ever provided information to him."

Later, Felt said: "I thought Deep Throat was another source entirely."

Don't miss the rest of the posting; it's fascinating stuff...

Quote for the day

The minute you read something you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.

   William Penn Adair Rogers