Vive la France! Vive la France!

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, my ass!


HAT TIP:  Rod Dreher.

So much better without the Hellfire missiles

So . . . what does one see after flying a drone tricked out with a GoPro camera into a fireworks display?

This.

"This" would be pure awesomeness, as captured by videographer Jos Stiglingh in West Palm Beach, Fla., some time back. Watch in high definition and full screen; you won't be sorry you did.

And, for the record, how did he not get his drone blowed up good? That would have been bad.


HAT TIP: New York Daily News.

The world, explained

In case you were wondering how the world works, this short video is as good an explanation as any.

All you have to do to get ahead is . . . the utterly impossible. Just, in this case, repeal the laws of mathematics and physics and give the customer seven red lines, each perpendicular to all the others. Some should be made with green ink, others with transparent ink.

By the way, could you make at least one line in the form of a kitten?

Don't forget the kitten. Market research shows that people love kittens.

Meow.


HAT TIP:  CNET.

Damn! Missed it by this much

Dammit, I missed the deep-fried meteorological cataclysm that laid (burp) waste to eastern Tejas the middle of last month.

To see this sort of display of extreme weather, I could become a storm chaser yesterday. All you need is a camera, the local radar on your smartphone and a carload of ketchup, salt, pepper and mustard.

And wet wipes. Lots of wet wipes to deal with the storm's (burp) aftermath.

Obviously, the ideal position to take as an onion-ring storm chaser would have been Wac(k)o, where I could have hunkered down in not-so-safe shelter with a case of Dr. Pepper.

I do love me some Dr. Pepper.

Obviously, I need to pay more attention to the World's Best Weatherman up yonder in Nova Scotia.


HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Brilliant! Bravo!

If you love Mad Men -- and I love me some Mad Men -- you'll double love this.

More, please.

If you've seen one dead Rooney. . . .

"If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"We're doomed! We're doomed! We're all going to die!"

-- Kate Smith

HAT TIP: Romenesko.

India's Mr. Hanky apocalypse

NSFW. But your boss will understand, once he or she stops laughing.

Does a bear s*** in the woods?

No, if he's in India, he takes a big, fat dump on the street . . . and on the sidewalk . . . and in the gutter . . . and on the lawn, just like everyone else.

On one hand, this UNICEF video is screamingly hilarious. On the other hand, what can one say about a place where people have to be cajoled into not dropping trou and letting loose  . . . wherever. Oh, well.

Typhoid happens.

Especially in places where folks haven't figured out what even the ancients knew to some extent. (Toilets, even running-water toilets, go waaaaaaaay back.) From the Wall Street Journal story:

Mr. Poo stars in a techno-infused animated music video, “Poo Party.” He is also featured in a smartphone app, released last month, that encourages users to register human feces sightings, which are then overlaid on maps of Indian cities.

It is a calculated risk for the United Nations Children’s Fund, known for its more-earnest appeals. Joking about something so taboo— and, for many, a source of national embarrassment—could backfire.

Though the campaign has been widely praised on social media, some activists have said “Poo Party” doesn’t take its subject seriously enough. Pratima Joshi, executive director of Shelter Associates, a nonprofit that assists India’s urban poor, said it is simplistic and “demeans the poor.”

The video, posted on YouTube, is awfully funny.

In it, a goateed man wakes to find a menacing Mr. Poo waiting for him outside. He shuts his door, only to find Mr. Poo at his window, oversized, winking and jeering.

The accompanying song begins: “First thing in the morning, what do I see? A pile of s— staring at me.” After a dance-and-chase scene, the townspeople band together to build a giant, multicolored toilet and lure the poo inside. The toilet is flushed, to many cheers, and Mr. Poo is gone.

The campaign targets younger, urban, tech-savvy Indians who don’t relieve themselves outside but who don’t speak out against the practice. It exhorts Indians to sign a pledge denouncing what is known technically as “open defecation.”

Some 620 million people across India defecate outside, the largest number world-wide. About 70% of rural Indians don’t use toilets, and 28 million children have no toilet facilities in school, according to Unicef. It is common practice for India’s mothers to dispose of their children’s waste in the open.

Open defecation is a serious public-health problem. It can expose people to diseases such as polio, giardiasis, hepatitis A and infectious diarrhea. In 2012, nearly a quarter of all young children who died of diarrhea world-wide were Indian. Constant exposure to fecal germs can also lead to stunted growth, a condition afflicting some 61 million Indian children.

India has made progress: The percentage of Indians using toilets has increased substantially since 1990, when 75% of the population defecated in the open.

(snip)

Sue Coates, head of Unicef's water, sanitation and hygiene program in India, attributes the lag to India's population growth, which continues to outpace the building of new toilets. Then there's mismanagement and corruption. The latest national census showed that more than 50 million toilets were "missing"—appearing on state expenditure reports but not found in homes.

In addition, Ms. Coates said, India focused more on building toilets in people's homes than on encouraging people to use them. Access to toilets is crucial, she said, but equally important is undermining cultural preferences for defecating outside, an area in which Bangladesh has been particularly successful.

In rural areas, defecating outside has been the natural choice for centuries, said Vijayaraghavan Chariar, a sanitation expert at Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology. "There's a reason it's known as 'nature's call,' " he said. "Some feel suffocated by toilets, and don't see a connection between open defecation and poor health."

NO, WE MUST NOT demean the poor. It is far better to let them die stinky deaths instead.

And no, we must not be "suffocated" by bathrooms. It is far better to be suffocated by the stench when you walk out the front door.

I know, I know . . . people are dumb all over. People are ignorant all over. Sanitary waste disposal can be problematic all over. I get that. I've even seen that during the course of my Louisiana upbringing, where it wasn't uncommon, in the wilds of Livingston Parish, for one's poo to go straight from the loo into the river.

And, yes, I have used outhouses. More than once. And a "slop jar" (lots more than once) which we emptied, being that "camp" didn't have running water then, into a weed patch across the road where you only went to empty the slop jar. No, it wasn't a great public-health setup, but it wasn't a bunch of human turds lying all around the shack, either.

But at least there were outhouses and toilets (and chamber pots) -- even if you didn't want to play in a certain weed patch or go swimming in the river, and not because of the risk of water moccasins or alligators. Because even in the wilds of Livingston Parish, squatting in the yard and doing what came natural was a big faux pas. Especially if you just left it there.

Like I said, it ain't brain surgery. And God knows, back then you didn't find a lot of brain surgeons in Livingston Parish.

POO. LOO. Learn it, Love it. Live it.

And if that takes SWPL-hilarious videos that run the risk of "demeaning" the poor, so be it.



HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

%*(#!^& brilliant!

OK, this isn't safe for work. Or your little kids.

But come to think of it, neither is life.

Anyway, watch the brilliant video that came out of a social experiment by the British poverty charity, The Pilion Trust, to see whether people really do care about the poor. Turns out they do. Which sets the charity up to deliver the advertising kill shot.

Just watch.

Messin' with Ernie: The allegory

The Nebraska unicameral disrespected Sen. Ernie Chambers.

You know what happens when you disrespect people in the neighborhood? Nothing good. That the good senator, a north Omaha legend, is twice as smart as your average legislator and 47 times more cantankerous only adds to the s*** sandwich the body is having to eat now down in Lincoln.

Above, this is illustrated in a manner the SWPL crowd can understand.

Below, the particulars from the Omaha World-Herald about how some people never learn. That's why they go into politics.

After a legislative meltdown that concluded just before midnight, state lawmakers were admonished Tuesday morning to show respect for their colleagues over the final four days of the 2014 session.

State Sen. Greg Adams, the speaker of the Legislature, rose at the beginning of the session on Tuesday to urge senators to work together, after an acrimonious session Monday.

“We have to demonstrate respect and do our very best to maintain the credibility of this body,” Adams said.

On Monday, tempers rose on the floor of the Legislature as the minutes ticked away on what was the last day to advance bills from first-round debate.

That prompted a scramble by lawmakers to get their proposals attached to other bills.

But standing in the way was Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha who attempted, for a third time, to resurrect his vetoed proposal to ban mountain lion hunting in Nebraska.

That effort failed once again, but in the process a bill that carried three measures to expand insurance coverage to sick Nebraskans was blocked from advancing, and may be dead for the year.

“I'm not going to get what I wanted, but a lot of you are not going to get anything,” said Chambers, as the minutes clicked off to midnight, when the legislative day ends and the Legislature adjourns.

THE BELLUM UNICAMERENSIS began after the legislature failed to override Gov. Dave Heineman's veto of Chambers' cougar-hunting prohibition bill. The senator thought he had the votes to make the prohibition state law despite the veto, but he ended up convinced that he'd been double-crossed by some colleagues:

Chambers said he thought he had enough votes to give Heineman another defeat Thursday, but he was derailed by some of his fellow senators.

Sen. Russ Karpisek of Wilber offered Chambers an apology on the floor, saying he had pledged to be the 29th or 30th vote. At the last second, however, Karpisek said, he “blew it.”

“I don’t like the bill,” he said, “but I did give my word, and I broke it.”

Chambers said others defected, but he named only Sen. Tom Carlson of Holdrege. Carlson, however, denied that he had ever told Chambers he planned to support the override.

Carlson, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee and a Republican candidate for governor, voted to send the bill to the floor and approved it on final reading. But Carlson said he then heard from constituents who opposed the repeal, so he told Chambers before the first override vote that he was switching sides.

Chamber said he replied, “You’re running for governor and you’re getting a lot of pressure, and you can’t withstand the pressure.”

Later Wednesday, Chambers asked Carlson if he would reconsider before the second override attempt the following day. Carlson said he would.

Chambers said he took that to mean Carlson would vote for the second override attempt. Carlson said he meant that he would rethink his vote — which he did, though in the end he remained opposed to the override.

Carlson said he did not appreciate having his character questioned by Chambers, whom Carlson said he sincerely respects for his intelligence and legislative experience.

“I’ve offended him and he’s offended me, and I’m sorry,” Carlson said.

NOT HALF as sorry as he -- and the rest of the unicameral -- would be.

You may not like Ernie Chambers' word, but he's a man of it. He does not suffer those who aren't men, or women, of theirs. (Actually, the senator doesn't suffer a lot of people, but that's not important now.)



YOU'D THINK Nebraska politicians would have learned that by now, more than 43 years after he became the first African-American elected to the Nebraska Legislature. And just like the hammer-wielding doofus who screwed with the smart phone didn't count on that lithium-ion battery blowing a gasket, the unicameral's bill-wielding doofuses who screwed with Ernie Chambers never count on the good senator blowing his.

Which is kind of like being shocked that August is hot.

This year, the short bus departs Lincoln on April 17. My guess is that Ernie will shove a potato up the exhaust pipe just before it pulls away from the capitol, much to the amusement of Nebraska's mountain-lion community.

Death's who's coming for breakfast

Five-year-old Payton Benson was eating breakfast Wednesday morning when a bullet with her name on it exploded through the wall of her north Omaha home and killed her dead.

The cussing ghetto toddler of Omaha viral-video fame fired the shot.

The gang bangers poisoning the young mind of the cussing Omaha toddler fired the shot.

The idiot teenage mother of the cussing Omaha toddler, who thinks "kids cuss" because, no doubt, that's as normal for a 2-year-old as breathing, fired the shot.

The deviant, criminally inclined and now-imprisoned mama of the idiot teenage mother of the cussing Omaha toddler fired the shot.

The no-count baby daddies so quick on the draw and even quicker to split when a hot mama turns into a baby mama fired the shot. Ditto for those young women so frustratingly committed to looking for love in all the wrong places.

The perpetually aggrieved talking heads who condemned the Omaha police union for highlighting the obvious -- whatever its motive at the time -- because to tell an inconvenient truth is somehow self-evidently racist . . . they pulled the trigger, too.

The law-and-order politicians content to "solve" the crime problem by cramming the state's prisons to bursting with the thug children of an underclass anticulture -- and doing it while ignoring grinding poverty, invincible hopelessness and that underclass anticulture thing. . . . 

Pulled the trigger.

No doubt they'll demand the death penalty for everybody except themselves. Because crime.

Because "justice."

ACTUALLY, little Payton Benson died because a bunch of American Frankenstein's monsters a block over -- no doubt once just like the cussing Omaha toddler, poisoned by the same culture of death that hates life and knows no hope -- were shooting it out in the middle of the street. Witnesses mentioned a handgun and a high-powered rifle.

A slug from one of those guns missed whomever its intended target was, flew down the block and down the block and down the block some more but still had enough juice to penetrate the walls of 3328 N. 45th St., and then the little body of a little girl who never saw death coming. Says the Omaha World-Herald:

The mother, Tabatha Manning, ran out screaming, a relative said.

Payton was Omaha's first homicide of the new year.

“Bullets know no boundaries, they know no target, they are going to land where they land,” [Police Chief Todd] Schmaderer said during a press conference Wednesday evening.

“Enough of the gang violence, and enough with the random shootings.”

Schmaderer and [Omaha Mayor Jean] Stothert promised to find the person who killed an innocent girl. Both leaders expressed their sympathy for Payton's family members.

“I promise this family and I promise this community that my homicide investigators, my gang investigators, will work around the clock, leaving no stone unturned to solve this homicide,” Schmaderer said.

Shell casings indicated that gunfire broke out at the intersection of 44th Avenue and Emmet Street, a block from Payton's house. Multiple people exchanged gunfire, Schmaderer said.

Police were looking for three black men who fled in a black Jeep Commander. Initial 911 reports described one as having a handgun, one armed with a high-powered rifle and the third wearing a bandanna.

Police found a Jeep matching that description at St. James Manor Apartments, 3102 N. 60th St., but they had not determined whether the vehicle was involved.

(snip)

The chief said he had a message for the assailants: “You know who you are, and law enforcement will find out who you are. It may not have been your bullet that struck this little girl. So do the right thing and do yourself a favor in the process. Come down and talk to law enforcement and tell us what you know.”

Massey Allen III, 33, who identified himself as a relative of Payton, said he was stopped at 45th Street and Bedford Avenue when he heard gunfire and ducked under his steering wheel.

Allen estimated that about 20 shots were fired. Several neighbors called 911, and officers patrolling the neighborhood heard the gunshots and responded, Schmaderer said. Payton was pronounced dead at Creighton University Medical Center.

Allen said Manning, 31, had recently moved to Omaha from Chicago. She wanted to earn a nursing degree, he said.

SEE WHAT trying to better yourself gets you in the 'hood? Your kid killed at the breakfast table by the unintended consequence of unintended consequences. That's the underclass anticulture for you. How very racist of me to mention that, despite it not being just a black thing.

Today, the police chief is outraged, the mayor is outraged and the whole city is outraged. We've been outraged before; we'll be outraged again. We Omahans -- we Americans -- are goddamned good at outrage, but not so much at actually doing something about that which outrages us again and again and again and again and again.

We're working on it, though. Results are preliminary, but we're pretty sure the solution has something to do with giving teachers concealed weapons, blaming big government (or institutionalized racism . . . one or the other), lowering taxes (or raising taxes on the rich), moving farther out in the suburbs, moving to a dee-luxe apartment in the downtown sky, cutting food stamps because . . . well, look at Those People . . . and going shopping.

The shopping part, we've got nailed.

Because Satan never sleeps

This is horrible.

This is sick.

This is so not safe for work.

This is so, so very wrong -- depraved. No, depraved doesn't quite cover it. There are no words strong enough to denounce what's been done here.

But it is what it is. The Omaha Police Officers Association has reposted a Facebook video from a local "thug" that basically shows how to raise your kid to be a gangsta. This is part of a grand racist plot by the Man to keep the people down and portray every black male as a public menace -- obviously!  

Somebody cap they ass!

RACISM. Hate. That must be it. What else could it be? Snark Upper Middle-Class White Hipsters Like Gawker said. And so did some African-American pundits and groups, finding that condemning some Omaha cops who illuminated the cultural cancer at the heart of the black underclass -- specifically, the criminal black underclass -- was a much better use of their time and energy than actually doing something about the cultural cancer at the heart of the black underclass.

This is because it would be hasty to assume that a diaper-clad toddler who is called a bitch, a "ho" and a pussy, is told "Fuck you!" and "Suck my dick!" then learns to parrot the same for the camera -- with an extra added middle-finger gesture thrown in -- will grow up to be highly dysfunctional, and probably criminally so. It's always hasty to assume the obvious.

Just because you're raised to be a foul-mouthed, moronic thug is no indicator that you might turn out to be a foul-mouthed, moronic thug. The "logical outcome" is a racist construct unjustly propagated by the Omaha Police Officers Association to keep the black man down.

Oh, no! We must not insist that two plus two equals four! For shame!


LISTEN, Omaha cops' hands aren't clean in the world of local race relations. That's been well documented over the years. Nevertheless, a battalion of Bull Connors could not oppress African-Americans as effectively as the toxic culture that's turned inner cities into war zones, too many men into monsters, too many fathers into vanishing acts and too many mothers into "baby mamas."

And the critical mass of deformed human beings produced by that culture already has cast aspersions upon every black male in America -- already has stereotyped a whole race long before the Omaha police union supposedly got around to it. Ignoring the asteroid that just wiped out the 'hood won't undo the smoking crater in the middle of town.

The black underclass won't magically turn into the black middle class if we just avert our gaze. You can't treat an illness if you cannot acknowledge its existence. You cannot address a problem which must not be named.

Sometimes, the obvious is what it is. And sometimes, that what we can't acknowledge is a problem may or may not ultimately be white people's historical fault is, at this point, rather beside the point.

Besides, toxic cultures aren't race-specific. If we ignore this "canary in the coal mine," we all will achieve the perfect equality that exists in oblivion. Soon.


UPDATE: Child Protective Services found the kid, found the human excrement "raising" him . . . and came down like a ton of bricks. They've taken the toddler and three other children into protective custody. 

Obviously, this is because Nebraskans are racist hicks unable to embrace the proper theology, geometry and ideology of their moral betters at Gawker Media.

Rammer jammer crazy hammer, psychotic break, Alabama!

The world would be a better place if we could take all the Alabama fans and lock them in a domed stadium with, say, all the Texas fans for a football game, then let Darwin take his course.

With emphasis on "lock them in." 

 
UPDATE: It's just as awesome with the raw sound! As one YouTube commenter said before going off the rails (Hey! It's the YouTube comments section!), "Gumps gonna be Gumps!"

Sequester, bane of man's inspiring

You can look at this video of a glorious flash mob by the The United States Air Force Band a couple of ways.

First, the pop-up Christmas concert at the National Air and Space Museum was a glorious thing -- an unexpected musical encounter with beauty and joy. If this version of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" doesn't move your heart, you may not have one.

Second, The USAF Band has been reduced to staging flash mobs. Thank your local member of Congress for that. It's too bad ol' Johann Sebastian never wrote a little something called the "Sequester Blues."

Ironically, it's those same trolls who befoul the U.S. Capitol who are most likely to see a performance of this scale by a military band. In the federal universe, Washington, D.C., is the center of gravity -- or, if you like, the black hole that sucks everything toward itself.

Still, even in Washington, a military orchestra has to resort to a flash mob. The sequester forbids the armed services from spending any of its own money on promotional or "community-outreach" events. This means that if you're a fan of service bands, you're seriously out of luck out here in the provinces.

Last year's Heartland of America Band concert

IN OMAHA, the annual holiday concert by the Air Force's Heartland of America Band, based at Offutt Air Force Base here, used to be a glorious thing. For us and our friends, it was a Christmas tradition. In recent years, budget cuts shrank . . . and shrank . . . and shrank the band. This year, the sequester killed the Christmas concert.

A 26-year tradition of downtown Omaha holiday concerts by the Air Force's Heartland of America Band will end this year, a victim of federal budget cuts.

The Omaha World-Herald had sponsored the popular series each year since 1987, giving away free tickets to readers who sent in coupons clipped from the newspaper.

But the rules of the budget sequestration forbid the service branches from spending any money on promotional or community outreach events. It's the same rule that has grounded the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds precision-flight teams and canceled a summer air show at Offutt Air Force Base.

“We're sad that this tradition is coming to an end. I think the Heartland of America Band is sad, too,” said Joel Long, The World-Herald's communications director. “But with the current state of the sequester and financial constraints, there was no other choice.”

In place of the downtown concerts — held since 2005 at the Holland Performing Arts Center — a much smaller band will play a series of community holiday concerts at local high schools, said Doug Roe, the band's director of operations. Suburban Newspapers Inc., a World-Herald subsidiary, will underwrite concerts Dec. 14 in Bellevue, Dec. 15 in Gretna, and Dec. 20 and 21 in Papillion. The Opinion-Tribune newspaper will sponsor a concert Dec. 8 in Glenwood, Iowa.

“These high school auditoriums aren't the Holland Performing Arts Center,” Roe said. “But through the medium of music, we're still going to entertain.”

Military bands in America date back to the colonial era, a time when commanders sometimes used music to guide troops in battle. Bands always have played at funerals, promotions, command changes and military balls.

In the modern era, their public concerts also are a public relations tool — and for many civilians, their only direct contact with the armed forces.

“For that hour and a half we're on stage, we ARE the Air Force, we ARE the military,” Roe said.

But budget cuts have battered military bands generally in recent years, and the Heartland of America Band in particular.

In 2011, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., persuaded her House colleagues to slash the Pentagon's music budget from $388 million to $200 million a year.

“Spending $388 million of the taxpayers' money on military music does not make our nation more secure,” McCollum said in a message posted last year on her House website. “It is excessive and a luxury the Pentagon can no longer afford.”

That prompted the Air Force to cut 103 band positions across the service, eliminating two of the 12 active-duty bands and sharply cutting two others, including the Heartland of America Band.

As recently as 2007, the Heartland Band featured 60 airmen. That was cut to 45 in an earlier round of budget cuts, and then to 16 in June. The eight-state region it used to cover — stretching from Montana to Iowa, and North Dakota to Kansas — was cut to a single state, Nebraska, plus a few nearby counties in Iowa.

WE INHABIT a nation whose leaders have plenty of money for financing foreign fights and entangling the American people in pointless wars of choice. We endure a government that can find a billion or three -- or 500 -- for Wall Street interests, yet the Heartland of America Band can't even field a decent flash mob anymore.

But because "government spends too much," we haven't a red cent for music. For joy. Or for lots of other things that build America and Americans up, as opposed to tearing some other country down.

I would imagine Bach -- not to mention Jesu, of joy of man's desiring fame -- might take a dim view of that, and of the barbarians we have become.

Because Obama

Or . . . Second City goes yard, clears the bases.

By the way, does Vladimir Putin get his Nobel Peace Prize now?

Culture vs. anticulture

This is culture.

It reflects what it means to be human, what it means to love.

It calls us to be fully ourselves -- or at least our best selves.

It touches the heart as it engages the mind.

For a moment, it's as if we can see the face of God . . .

and we are shattered, for who can withstand the divine?

This is who we are. Or should be.

This is anticulture.

It reflects the deviant and devolved of our society.
It is ugly. It is banal. It celebrates urges detached
from both love and reason. It is less than human . . .
and barely more than animal -- if that.

What this tells us about humanity, we don't want to hear.
Looking at Miley Cyrus throughout this silly dispatch
from Dante's Inferno, the word "estrus" comes to mind.
This child who (I presume) was born human . . . 
well, she's presenting like an orangutan.

This is who we are. But shouldn't be.
This will not end well, though end it will.

Kyrie eleison. (But not on Robin Thicke.)

Then again, maybe not

Yes, seeing is believing. Or is it?

We live in an age when making people believe what you want them to believe is easier than ever. You can even provide them with "proof" that what plainly isn't, in fact, is. Ergo, half the crap you see on Facebook -- or InfoWars.com.

Remember that when our betters in Washington decide, at their leisure, that now is the time to blow the bejeezus (bemohammed?) out of the mullahs in Iran or the Assad dictatorship in Syria in the name of Truth, Justice, the American Way and the War on Terror.

Remember Iraq. And remember that your friendly, neighborhood federal government has a lot more money and resources than a college-age filmmaker in Rochester, N.Y.

Seeing is believing

I never would have believed anyone could bring M.C. Escher's "Penrose Steps" from optical-illusion fancy into reality. But seeing is believing . . . and it's at the Rochester Institute of Technology!

I mean, wow!

'And may God's love be with you . . .'

Canadian astronauts rock! No, really.

The Canadian Space Agency collaborated on this high-flying remake of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" last month, but I only just now got around to watching the music video, which needed absolutely no special effects to take your breath away. And Chris Hadfield can hold his own as a musician.

Reliable sources tell me NASA wanted to beat Canada to the punch in extraterrestrial music videos, but the project was $6 billion over budget when the sequester hit, and the coup de grace for the space-station version of "God Bless the USA" was when Lee Greenwood balked, saying there wasn't "no way in hell" he was "gettin' in no damn pinko-commie spaceship."

After further consideration. . . .

Kanye West was right.

Watching Taylor Swift preen and oversing her way through Marianne Faithfull's masterpiece, "As Tears Go By," is too much to bear. She needs to go away. Now.

What's worse is that the shameless and decrepit Mick Jagger has so little respect for the song he and Keith Richards wrote that he co-leads the charge in its defilement. At least Richards' acoustic-guitar work is nice.

Still, it's increasingly clear this is a band that should have hung it up before it released the "Some Girls" album in 1978. The destruction of a great legacy began then, and it's now being capped off with the band's sad and shambles-worthy 50th-anniversary tour.

WATCHING the concert videos from this tour -- videos released by the Stones themselves -- is like going to the open-casket funeral of someone who died in some horrific, fiery accident . . . with the narcissistic, imbecilic Swift preening her way through the proceedings.

Only this grotesque spectacle is totally self-inflicted.

I would have preferred to remember the deceased the way they were, back when I was young and they were good. But now I can't. The mangled, charred corpse of the "World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" forever will be branded on my brain.

File this under "The Dangers of Planning Your Own Funeral."

Crap. Even getting myself Keith Richards wasted couldn't make me forget what can't be forgotten.

Thanks, guys.

I've seen this movie before

So this is what it looks like inside a tornado.

Yep. This looks right to me.

In 1971, when I was 10½ years old,  Hurricane Edith was headed toward Baton Rouge, so my folks decided to keep me home from school. Now Edith wasn't much of a hurricane, but it seemed as good an excuse as any to not bother schlepping your sorry butt to the bus stop and spending the day at school . . . during a hurricane.

To tell you the truth, what we got out of Edith in Louisiana's capital city was more akin to a tropical storm -- no wild tales to amaze your Yankee friends with. The morning of Sept. 16, 1971 was starting to look like a complete kid hurricane-adventure bust. Hell, my old man was even at work at the Enjay Chemical plant.

For a real storm, they batten down the hatches on those suckers. Now who was going to run the camp stove, huh? In the Gret Stet, a hurricane is no excuse not to cook.

So everything was looking OK, which meant, to a kid, that it wasn't OK at all. Thunderstorms . . . meh. The most exciting thing was the street was flooded, and the water came halfway to the house.

Then something happened.

MY MOM was on the phone with my grandma, I think, when the sky went as black as night. I'd never seen anything like that before.

"Mama! Look at how black the clouds are!" I recall saying, just before all hell broke loose. There was a roar like a crapload of freight trains or jet engines, take your pick. There was a swirling whitish, grayish cloud -- pea soup doing the St. Vitus Dance -- out of which leaves, shingles, pink Fiberglas insulation . . . you name it . . . would emerge, stick to the front jalousie windows for a second or two, then blow away.

I was looking out the windows the whole time, transfixed. My mother was crying hysterically to Jesus. There were no tornado sirens in Baton Rouge, and we had no warning until the tornado announced itself.

Apart from watching the maelstrom, I was trying to calm Mama down. The thought did briefly occur to me that we might die.

Then . . . quiet.

THEN THE RADIO, which was tuned to WLCS, erupted with "(Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!) BULLETIN! BULLETIN! BULLETIN! (Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!) BULLETIN! BULLETIN! BULLETIN! (Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!)" It was a "tornado alert."

Thanks for the heads-up, y'all.

Surveying outside the house, the hanging address placard had blown off its chains and was out in the yard. The façade of the house was tar papered with green leaves, and Fiberglas was all over the place.

The street and the front yard were bone dry. Later, we'd hear that some houses the next street over were missing their roofs. And a shopping center and some apartments less than a mile away were all torn up.

The State-Times that afternoon said a "small tornado or tornadoes skipped across the Sherwood Forest area." The official weather records put it down as an F-3 -- not exactly "small."

To me, the Tornado From Edith was a marker -- a dividing line. You had life before the thing, and then life after it.

In life after Edith, hurricanes weren't "fun" adventures. They were damn serious business, and those of us who'd been on the business end of one -- or the twisters they spawn -- stood ready to deck any idiot who thought they weren't.

I've seen things. Look at the video, and you'll see what I saw that day.