You Say It’s Your Birthday

It's my birthday, too - yeah. Blue Crab Boulevard went live on January 6, 2006 on Blogger. Here's the first post. Quoting myself:

This Blog is a work in progress. I do not yet know where it is going or what it will look like in the end.

And one year on, it still is and I still don't. But it has been a heck of a ride so far. There have been highs and lows, good days and bad, some posts I am proud of and some not worth re-reading. A work in progress, indeed. I can not even begin to list all the people who have helped me out along the way in this first year. (I am really afraid I will leave someone out and offend them. And I would not want to do that.) I'll just say that I deeply appreciate all of the help, all of the links, all of the coaching and all of the encouragement along the way.

I also want to thank everyone who reads this blog, whether it is daily or less frequently. Enough of you have left encouraging comments or sent emails to convince me it was worth carrying on. I've also attracted a few trolls along the way - you know who you are - and even their comments have been a learning experience (and yes, those of you who cannot or will not understand the comment policy are still banned and will remain so. I do love the new spam plugins - they send banned commenters into neverland without me having to intervene). I especially thank all of you who actually voted for Blue Crab Boulevard in the Weblog Awards. I honestly did not ever expect a nomination and certainly did not expect the finish I made on that. Those of you who thought enough of the Crabitat to vote for it really mean a lot to me.

I have been really, really lucky to have met so many of you, even if it is only in a virtual sense. Thank you all for sharing this ride with me.

So, I'll leave you with a couple of videos. Thanks to my good friend, The Anchoress, I finally figured this one out - I am still very much learning how to do all these things.

Is this guy having fun or what?

And just to keep up with the extremely high tone we try to maintain here all the time, there's this:

Thanks for visiting, thanks for reading.

Thank you.

Drugs Kill

Even the Animal Uprising™ is experiencing some problems with the ill effects of certain chemical substances on its minions. The evils of modern life are everywhere. 

Many thanks to George for bringing this tragedy to my attention via email. It almost makes me feel sorry for the spiders. I'll shed a tear when I squash the next one.

Hogzilla! Hogzilla!

A really, really Enormous wild hog joins all the other huge livestock we've been reporting on around here lately. This one, however is no longer a threat - he's dead and hanging from a tree. 1,100 pounds worth of wild bacon. That is a lot of pig. (They have pictures).

FAYETTE COUNTY — An urban legend comes to life, and meets its death in northeast Georgia.

A boar weighing 1,100 pounds was shot and killed in a Fayette County neighborhood.

Residents say the wild hog had been tearing up their yards for years.

These so-called "hogzillas" have been spotted and killed in south Georgia in recent years, but the Department of Natural Resources is trying to determine if the pig shot in Fayette County this week is a state record.

People passing by the Coursey house are amazed by the boar hanging from a tree in the front yard. William Coursey, an avid hunter, shot the pig in a neighbor's yard.

Coursey says the boar is one of four that had been roaming the neighborhood, uprooting yards for seven years. He says the other three animals may have been killed previously.

If any of you have ever been to a hog roast, you may have seen a cooker made out of a 400 gallon oil tank, they are pretty commonly used. I once cooked a 105 pound pig in one of those. It just fit.  A rough estimate says that to cook this over-sized oinker would take a converted 747 fuselage. I may have dropped a decimal here or there while working that out, though.

Somalis Recover American Passports

Dozens of foreign passports have been recovered from the bodies of islamist fighters who were not brisk enough while never running from their enemies. Several of the recovered passports are American, according to ABC News. 

A senior official in the Somali government's new Ministry of the Interior told ABC News government forces had recovered "dozens of foreign passports," including several American passports, on the bodies of al Qaeda fighters killed in combat between forces affiliated with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Ethiopian forces in Somalia.

According to the same source, most of the foreign passports were Sudanese, Pakistani and Yemeni, but several American, British and Australian passports were also recovered.

The senior Somali government official told ABC News that the American passports found on the dead bodies near Baidoa, in Somalia, would be turned over to the American government.

Al Qaeda's plans to turn Somalia into another base of operations appear to have been destroyed. And not a few extremists from around the world killed in the process.

UPDATE: Here is the full text of the sniveling whine brave exhortation from al Qaeda's enormous number two begging for someone - anyone - to come save the islamist agenda in Somalia. Given that it is not at all certain that the brave islamists would not have run like rabbits briskly walked away from a troop of girl scouts, it is not at all certain that Zawahri's plea is not falling on deaf ears.

after all, they're all too far away to hear his speech.

An Update On A Very Important Subject

You'll all be happy to know that the state of Maine officially approves of Santa's Butt. No, really. They gave Santa's Butt a stamp of approval.

The decision to let Shelton Brothers sell Santa's Butt Winter Porter and two other European beers reverses a decision last fall to deny the company's application to sell the beers in Maine.

After the denial, the Maine Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Belchertown, Mass., company in U.S. District Court in Portland accusing the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement of censorship.

While welcoming the decision, owner Daniel Shelton said it's too late to sell the seasonal Santa's Butt beer because the holiday season is over. He said the lawsuit will go forward unless the state changes its rule allowing it to deny applications for beer labels because they contain "undignified or improper" illustrations.

"You can't have a law based on propriety and dignity. It's too vague," said Shelton.

By law, the state reviews between 10,000 and 12,000 applications annually for beer and wine labels. It typically denies about a dozen a year because they contain inappropriate language or nudity, or might appeal to children.

The label for the English-made Santa's Butt beer features an illustration with a rear view of a beer-drinking Santa sitting on top of a beer barrel.

The state also denied applications for Les Sans Culottes, a French ale, and Rose de Gambrinus, a Belgian fruit beer. Les Sans Culottes's label is illustrated with detail from Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting "Liberty Leading the People," which hangs in the Louvre and shows a bare-breasted woman. Rose de Gambrinus shows a bare-breasted woman in a watercolor painting that was commissioned by the brewery.

Original post about this wide - er - far reaching issue can be found here, including links to several interesting beers offered by the Shelton Brothers. The lawsuit will continue, according to the Shelton's lawyer. The state is currently looking at its own rules (having suddenly discovered this thing called the first amendment, that is probably a good idea) but won't comment further because of the litigation.

A Fleet Of Dug Out Canoes

That is how a senior British Naval officer is describing the Royal Navy after word came out that the fleet will be cut in half. At one time the most powerful and feared navy in the world has now been reduced to little more than a coastal defense force. The fleet currently stands at 44 surface vessels. Plans now call for 19 of those ships to be deactivated. They will very likely be sold for scrap. Good Lord.

The Government has admitted that 13 unnamed warships are in a state of reduced readiness, putting them around 18 months away from active service. Today The Daily Telegraph can name a further six destroyers and frigates that are being proposed for cuts.

A need to cut the defence budget by £250 million this year to meet spending requirements has forced ministers to look at drastic measures.

MoD sources have admitted it is possible that the Royal Navy will discontinue one of its major commitments around the world at a time when Sir Jonathon Band, the First Sea Lord, has said more ships are needed to protect the high seas against terrorism and piracy.

News of further cuts to what was once the world's most formidable fleet comes as critics say failings across the Services are becoming increasingly apparent.

More details are emerging of the near-squalor that soldiers are forced to tolerate in barracks when they return from six months of dangerous overseas operations.

Questions have also been raised about the poor pay for troops and equipment failures which continue to dog operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The six warships to be mothballed are the Type 22 frigates Cumberland, Chatham, Cornwall and Campbeltown and two Type 42 destroyers Southampton and Exeter.

It is likely that they will eventually be sold or scrapped. There are also fears in the Admiralty that two new aircraft carriers, promised in 1998, might never be built.

This is very bad news for both Britain and for the West. The article also adds the helpful little bit of information that the British could not mount an operation to retake the Falkland Islands as it did in 1982. You can bet that little fact has not been missed by Argentina.

This is a picture of the USS Abraham Lincoln and the ships assigned to the carrier battlegroup. There are 21 ships. The US Navy has 12 of these. Good Lord.

A Heartwarming Tail*. Or Is It?

In one of those stories that is supposed to make you feel all warm inside, today the AP is reporting on a lost dog who was found. Now this sort of thing doesn't normally make it to the national news, since it is actually a mundane daily occurrence all across the country. But when it involves the "across the country" part, it becomes news. You see, the dog was lost in Colorado seven months ago.

And found in Knoxville, Tennessee on Christmas night.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Seven months after disappearing from her yard in Colorado, a rat terrier named Daisy walked into the arms of Tracie Crass in Knoxville, some 1,300 miles away. Thanks to Crass, Daisy got an airplane ride home.

Crass spotted 2-year-old Daisy wandering down her sidewalk on Christmas night. She assumed the 12-pound dog had slipped out of its home amid holiday festivities, so she brought the pooch on her porch and waited for its owner to come looking for it.

When no one showed up by the next day, Crass telephoned the number on Daisy's rabies tag. She reached Daisy's veterinarian, who contacted Daisy's owner, Vonda Lundstrom of Aurora, Colo.

Now we're as susceptible to having our heart warmed as the next crustacean, but we are also the main clearinghouse for information on the Animal Uprising™, so we tend to be a bit on the suspicious side. We noticed that Daisy is a rat terrier. Then our extensive investigative skills turned up another item after much arduous searching (it was the very next story on the news site). This makes us ask the question: Is it possible that Daisy was making a delivery?

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - No child became sick, but the thought of finding mouse remains in cooked green beans at a preschool lunch has officials feeling ill.

About half of the Oak Ridge Preschool's 206 students had been served Wednesday when a teacher distributing the meals spotted suspected rodent remains.

Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp., which provides food service management to Oak Ridge and more than 420 other public and private school systems around the country, was investigating, spokeswoman Karen Cutler said Thursday.

"The object has not been identified. There is no confirmation of what the object is until it is tested," Cutler said, noting that the local health department considered the health risk so minor "they declined to come out. They are not going to take any samples or anything."

Hey, these questions have to be asked. And who better to ask them?

*(And yes, the spelling was intentional)

Camel Carnage Confounded

Another Animal Uprising™ plot was foiled by alert German authorities. Apparently the guards at the Hanover Animal Jail (they keep using the euphemism "zoo") got wind of something involving the camels. And not the usual thing camels are noted for putting in the air, either. No, this was word of a plot, not an aroma. So the guards moved the camels to other cells and discovered what they had been hiding.

A 500 pound bomb.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Around 500 people and more than 2,000 animals were evacuated on Friday after a 500-pound (227 kilogram) World War Two bomb was unearthed in the camel enclosure at Hanover Zoo.

"The bomb was located during construction work because the cage is being remodelled," zoo spokeswoman Simone Hagenmeier told Reuters, adding that the device was about two metres (six feet) under the ground.

The frustrated camels are reported to be spitting mad. However, since this is completely normal behavior even when they are in a good mood, the report may be exaggerated. Not that we indulge in any exaggeration around here, we hasten to add.

New York Hero Week Continues

Close on the heels of Wesley Autrey's saving a man in the New York City Subway comes word of yet another courageous action to save the life of another. This time, the rescue occurred above ground. About four stories above it, in fact. Two men caught a 3-year old boy as he tumbled from a fire escape four stories above the pavement. You read that right. The two men caught the little boy.

Julio Gonzalez, 43, and Pedro Nevarez, 40, saw 3-year-old Timothy Addo dangling from a Bronx building on Thursday, police said. The boy had crawled out of a window when his baby sitter briefly took her eyes off of him, police said.

"He was hanging on for dear life," Gonzalez said.

Hearing people in the building scream for help as the boy's grip weakened, the men rushed over to position themselves under the fire escape to catch him.

"No one came," Nevarez said. "We knew it was up to us."

The boy tumbled and hit Nevarez in the chest so hard he knocked him off balance, but he bounced into Gonzalez' arms.

The boy suffered one small cut on his head. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is quoted as saying, "This is the week of heroes in New York." Yes, I think that's about right.

“What Better Way To Start A New Year….”

"….than saving a life?" Those are the words of Wesley Autrey, the man who jumped onto the New York City subway tracks to save the life of Cameron Hollopeter on Tuesday, January 2, 2007. He spoke those words after Mayor Bloomberg awarded him that medal I said he deserved. Autrey also received money from Donald Trump and a number of other people as well as a fully paid vacation to Disney World for him and his family.

Autrey, whose knitted cap was brushed with grease and dirt from the train passing overhead, played down his daring act as he accepted the Bronze Medallion — for exceptional citizenship and outstanding achievement — from Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"You see somebody in distress, you help out," Autrey told a news conference, as he was flanked by his 4- and 6-year-old daughters, who had watched their father jump onto the subway tracks. "I was just in the right place at the right time."

While Bloomberg called Autrey a "true hero" and the New York Post newspaper dubbed him the "Subway Superman," the construction worker — who went to work as normal after the incident — said the real heroes were U.S. troops in Iraq.

Along with the civic award, Autrey was also given a year's worth of free rides on New York's subway and buses, then met with real-estate mogul Donald Trump, who gave him a $10,000 check, along with two other checks from undisclosed donors.

The Walt Disney Co. gave Autrey and his family a one-week fully paid trip to the Disney World theme park in Orlando, Fla, and tickets to the Broadway smash hit musical "The Lion King."

The New York Film Academy, where Hollopeter studies, said it had given Autrey $5,000 and offered scholarships to his daughters, while The New York Daily News reported Autrey had been offered a television show apartment make-over.

And he still rejects the label of hero. He reserves that word for the troops in Iraq.

Thank you for making this world a bit brighter, Mr. Autrey. We need more people like you. (And you deserved every single reward you have received for your courageous act.)

Salmon School Skips Slammer

An enormous number of salmon operatives of the Animal Uprising™ have escaped from the network of Norwegian salmon prisons in a scaly imitation of The Great Escape. Of course, the salmon managed to slip a few more of their numbers out than the Humans did.

About 790,000 more.

OSLO (AFP) - Some 790,000 salmon and trout escaped from Norwegian fish farms last year, up 10 percent on the previous year and a trend that poses a serious threat to wild salmon, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries has warned.

The lax security at fish farms is "a criminal act that must be sanctioned the same as a hold-up or a rape," the head of the directorate, Peter Gullestad, told AFP.

The fish raised on farms are carriers of parasites such as sea lice, which infect wild salmon and other maritime life.

The fish that escape the farms, located in fjords and rivers along Norway's west coast, infect young wild salmon before they head off to the open sea, threatening their immune systems which are not yet fully developed.

"It's dramatic. We're talking about a genetic cleansing of wild salmon," said Espen Farstad, a spokesman for the Norwegian hunting and fishing association NJFF.

Gee, no rhetorical hyperbole there. You'd think we made that all up. But isn't it nice to know that farm raised salmon may be infested with sea lice? Yum!

A Primer On What Ethics Reform Really Looks Like

McQ over at QandO takes a look at what real ethics reform would look like. It does not resemble, in any way shape or form, the "reforms" being pushed by Nancy Pelosi. This really will not be a big surprise if you read the earlier post about Daniel Henninger's column in the Opinion Journal.

Well, not that. In fact the reform the Democrats are proposing isn't even as tough as some state legislatures have imposed on themselves:

Several states, responding to the federal scandals as well as their own statehouse imbroglios, have already adopted more sweeping gift and travel bans, broader measures to end the central role of lobbyists or government contractors in financing campaigns and new public campaign financing intended to reduce lawmakers’ dependence on big donors.

To enforce their rules, about half the states have also created independent ethics watchdogs, outside the control of the lawmakers they police — something federal lawmakers have so far resisted. House Democrats recently said they would create a panel to study the idea.

You've heard of the "Bridge to Nowhere?" Well meet the "panel to nowhere". My guess is a few Democrats can make most of a career "studying" the idea. And, frankly, as long as Dianne Feinstein and the California delegation oppose it, well, my guess is studying the idea is about as good as it will get.

Henninger started off his column by pointing out that Congressional ethics don't actually resemble what the population at larger would recognize as ethics. McQ shows that rather convincingly. He also points out that the problem is one that everyone should be able to get behind really fixing. As opposed to toothless, window dressing "reforms".

Ethiopians Offer To Help Islamists

Directly related to the previous post, detailing a call by al Qaeda's huge number two for Somali islamists to kill themselves, the Ethiopian Army is offering to help right away. They are preparing an all-out assault on the final stronghold the islamists have.

The Somali and Ethiopian force captured a southern town near the Kenyan border Thursday evening. Col. Barre "Hirale" Aden Shire, the Somali defense minister, said Islamic militiamen were dug in with their backs to the sea at Ras Kamboni at the southernmost tip of Somalia.

"Today we will launch a massive assault on the Islamic courts militias. We will use infantry troops and fighter jets," said Shire, who left for the battle zone on Friday. "They have dug huge trenches around Ras Kamboni but have only two options: to drown in the sea or to fight and die."

I'm still waiting to see if the islamists can get up sufficient velocity with their brisk walks to actually briskly walk across the Indian Ocean. I wouldn't bet against it at this point. Their brisk walks up until now have shattered every record.

Al Qaeda To Somalis: Kill Yourselves

Al Qaeda's big number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, has issued a plea to Somali islamists to kill themselves as quickly as possible. He also urges foreign islamists to join in the fun.

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden's deputy has called on Somalia's Islamic militants to carry out suicide attacks on Ethiopian troops fighting in their country, according to a taped message posted on the Internet Friday.

Al-Qaida's No. 2 also implores Muslims worldwide to support Somalia's Islamists with fighters, money and expertise.

"I speak to you today as the crusader invader forces of Ethiopia violate the soil of the beloved Muslim Somalia," Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahri said in the recording…..

…."I call upon the Muslim nation in Somalia to remain in the new battlefield that is one of the crusader battlefields that are being launched by America and its allies and the United Nations against Islam and Muslims," al-Zawahri said

"Launch ambushes, land mines, raids and suicidal combats until you consume them as the lions and eat their prey," he added.

One learns something new every day. Who knew lions used suicide bombers? I would have suspected jackals. While this has always been the real fear, the reality on the ground in Somalia may make the tactics Zawahri is calling for might not work. Given the sonic boom generating brisk walk the islamists made across Somalia, there may be a - shall we say - lack of intestinal fortitude for the kind of warfare Zawahri is calling for. But we do admire Zawahri's call for the islamists to immediately commit suicide and think the world would be a better place if they did so at once. Perhaps the Ethiopians could help them out.

UPDATE: AJ Strata also has a bit to say about the number two of al Qaeda.

As it happened in Iraq and Afghanistan? While the liberal Western media is easily duped (let me count the ways) most people find this laughable. Al Qaeda again claims success in the face of utter defeat. And they expose their impotence (they have no army) by begging for any rag tag group of wannabe martyrs to rush to Somalia and start killing people at a pace that doesn’t match one month of highway accidents here in the US. Contrary to media hype, Al Qaeda is slowly and continuously losing in Iraq. The Iraq government controls more and more of Iraq every month and the while the media keeps tabs on the US death tolls (in their ghoulish obsession) the fact is the numbers of martyrs that have gone to Allah dwarfs the casualty levels on our side (and by ‘our’ I mean US and Iraqi government forces - the ones representing the democratic governments of Iraq and America).

Contrary to liberal mythology, there is not an endless supply of mindless, desperate people for Al Qaeda to draw upon……

The only place al Qaeda can claim a real success is in its successful media campaign, which they are accomplishing with the active cooperation of the media. The media helped project an illusion of invincibility on the Somali islamists. The reality was a wee bit different when the Ethiopians decided they had taken enough blustering from the islamists. When the "mighty" Ethiopians sent their "armored fist" against the islamists, the latter set land speed records getting away. That mighty column of sixteen Ethiopian tanks and armored vehicles was apparently too much for the would-be jihadis.

Without the media's reporting help, the world would be collectively rolling around on the ground laughing at the brave islamists. And no self-respecting would-be jihadi would even consider joining such a group of pathetic losers. Look, these guys are genuinely dangerous in many ways, but if the media was not pumping them up right now the world would be disgusted with their behavior and they would be diminishing rapidly in both numbers and stature.

A Brief History In Snark

Daniel Henninger from the Opinion Journal offers up a brief, yet utterly snarky, history of ethics in Washington. It is absolutely hysterical and also spot on. All the high flown rhetoric coming from Nancy Pelosi about ethics reform should sound really, really familiar. Why? Because it has all been done before. And all undone quietly later.

Ethics in politics is not the same as ethics in real life. Ethics in politics is a martial art. The biggest mistake you can make is thinking that the ethics package proposed by new Speaker Nancy Pelosi is mainly about "cleaning up" politics. Maybe. But it's first of all about cleaning the clocks of the Republicans.

The House Republicans got lazy. Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, earmarks, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney. When Nancy Pelosi saw the Republicans had developed a compulsion to flagrantly throw their weight around, she grabbed them by the lapels of their Hickey Freeman suits, hoisted them into the air and slammed them onto the House floor, shrieking "the most corrupt Congress in history!" That's right. In history.

Ms. Pelosi started the long road to earning a black belt in political ethics (again, not to be confused with ethics as taught at, say, Aquinas College) back in 1987 by studying the Master–Newt Gingrich. That was the year Nancy Pelosi entered the House as a California freshperson. And that was the year Newt Gingrich turned ethics into a weapon against the imperious Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, who left in disgrace two years later. "We currently have the least ethical speaker in the 20th Century," said Grandmaster Gingrich. Nancy noticed.

Read the whole thing. It's always good to start the day with a chuckle. As Henninger points out, the "reforms" that Pelosi is ushering in are aimed outside of the halls of the House. The poor, innocent Congress will no longer be inadvertently led astray by evil outsiders. Um. Sure. I'm guessing that ways around the Pelosi rules have already been figured out. Ways around the rules always are. Which leads to more grist for the snark mill later.