'Gate'-way to the East

Take a close look at these two images.

The one on the left is the Great Seal of China.
The one on the right is the Stargate located at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado.

Now, I dont know how much truth there is in this, but Daddy says that the Great Seal of China is like it is because there is another Stargate in China. He cant prove it since you never saw Daniel Jackson or anyone else gating over to China.

But the resemblance is too close to be mistaken.

The Great Seal IS a Stargate.

Daddy thinks it's in Beijing. So now he's looking into saving a few bucks by flying out to Colorado and then taking the Stargate to China. He figures he can cut at least 13 hours out of the trip! Also, they could take as much luggage as they need since the Stargate can handle it with no weight limitations.

The only problem with his plan is getting around in China. They're still going to have to fly.

An additional complication is if they cant reserve the Stargate in Colorado, then the only other Stargate is in Antarctica, and if you have to fly way down there, you might as well just stick to your original flight to Beijing.

So, anyway, that's what Daddy's working on trying to nail down now.

If we get any other details, I'll let you know, but just between me and you, I dont think Jack O'Neill's going to let Daddy use the Stargate for local travel. I bet there's some restriction on that, because when they were getting ready to go to Atlantis, John Sheppard had to fly Jack down there in a helicopter.

If they were allowed to use the Stargate, I'm sure they would have and saved all that evasive flying stuff John had to do to avoid that drone that Beckett sent after them.

Car Talk Weekend

We had a Car Talk weekend at our house.

Andy's car was leaking water.

Daddy asked Andy if there was any water in the radiator.
Andy said, "no".

Then he said,"Can I drive it?"
Daddy said, "no".

Andy was mad because he had to drive the van.

Saturday morning, Daddy and Andy started working on the car.
This is what they found.


These things are supposed to be one thing.

It was screwed into this hole, which was not possible to reach or see with the alternator and serpentine fire in the way. So they had to take those dudes off.


Daddy said it wasn't easy getting the thing out of the hole when it was two pieces!

Now that they had the problem thoroughly diagnosed, they had to go to the parts store and get a new thing.

When they got to the van, this is what they found.


Daddy said, "Oh, joy!" I didn't get it.

Daddy made Andy and Jonathan fix it...


So that's what we did.

Meanwhile, the girls and me got a haircut and style.


I'll show you mine later, since I didn't have it photo ready!

One Cat, One World

You may remember an old post about a New Wonkie in Town. What I have not reported yet is that this Wonkie took off for Splitsville, man. I mean she just up and walked away.



We were all a bit perplexed since she had it made here, but she aint the first Wonkie to decide to leave the Country Cat setting.

Well, we had pretty much given up on her coming back around when we got an e-mail.

The e-mail was from Wonkie! We were as shocked as you are right now!


It turns out that Wonkie decided to go on a little walkabout. While she's on this walkabout, she has started a blog to chronicle her travels. The first entry is a bit ametureish and jumps around a bit, but I think once she gets the hang of it, shes got the makings of a pretty good globe-trekker.


You can check her out at travelingdoug.blogspot.com

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Today I want to take up the question of Why the Chicken Crossed the Road. In an effort to determine why, I have asked numerous historical and noted scholars and public officials.

Here, then, are their answers....


Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Mohammed Aldouri (Iraqi ambassador): The chicken did not cross the road. This is a complete fabrication. We don't even have a chicken.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

George W. Bush: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or it is against us. There is no middle ground here.

Bill Clinton: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken, please?

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. A historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such a herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically dispositioned to cross roads.

Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Emerson: The chicken didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Louis Farrakhan: The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken "crossed" the black man in order to trample him and keep him down.

Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your chequebook.

Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Grandpa: In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken had crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Captain Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

John Lennon: Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Moses: And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the Chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Agent Mulder: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?

Ralph Nader: The chicken's habitat on the original side of the road had been polluted by unchecked industrialist greed. The chicken did not reach the unspoiled habitat on the other side of the road because it was crushed by the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Richard M. Nixon: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did NOT cross the road.

Plato: For the greater good.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

Colonel Sanders: I missed one?

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Jerry Seinfeld: Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to ask, "What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place, anyway? Where do they get these chickens?"

Dr. Seuss: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not been told!

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Oliver Stone: The question is not, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Rather, it is, "Who was crossing the road at the same time, whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Thoreau: To live deliberately and suck all the marrow out of life.

Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Voltaire: I may not agree with what the chicken did, but I will defend to the death its right to do it.

Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

And there you have it...

Have a GREAT weekend...

Maria Conchita Dorotia Arieta Rosita Jumanes

We have a very close friend who is the Mayor of Lando, South Carolina. His name is Mayor Stoner.

Mayor Stoner

He was over at our house for dinner last night, and he told us this joke...

There was this family who hired a Spanish house-keeper. She had worked for the family for many years, and was a competent and loyal employee.

One day, she abrubtly quit her job. The father of the household asked her to tell him why she was quitting.

She hesitated, and the simply said, "It not very comfortable to discuss, senor."

The father said, "Conchita. you've been a loyal and competent worker for our family for years. Please tell me what it is. Perhaps I can help. Do you need more money? A Raise?"

She said, "No. It is not the money. You pay me mucho well."

"Then what is it?", he pleaded. "You know you can trust me."

"Well, senor, It is...I...I in the family way." she stammered

The father looked shocked. "Conchita, that's wonderful! Congratulations! But you needn't quit. I'm certain we can arrange a way to work out your duties to accomodate you.", he said.

"Senor...It is not a joyful thing!", she exclaimed.

The he began to realise. "Conchita", he asked, "are you saying that it does not involve your husband?"

"Si", she replied.

"Oh my!", exclaimed the father, "then who? Dont tell me let me guess. Was it that no count brother-in-law of mine, Dirk? He's always chasing anything in a skirt."

"Si", replied Cochita, "and your son Wally."

"Wally???", exclaimed the father.

"Si, and his brother Theodore, too."

"What???!!!", shouted the father, "surely not Theodore."

"No, not Shirley. Theodore, and your wife, June, too.", she said dejectedly.

"Well, that's just too much to hear. I can hardly beleive it! Please tell me, Conchita, how could such a thing come about? I have to know."

"Senor", she answered, "yesterday I go to make up Dirk room, and he say, 'Conchita, you in the way!', so I leave. Then I go to Wally room and he say 'Conchita, you in the way!', so I leave. So then I go to Theodore room, and he say, 'Conchita, you in the way!', so I leave. Finally, I got to June room and she say, 'Conchita, you in the way!', so I leave. So you see, senor, I in the family way, so I must leave."

This is Conchita on the right, and her friend Wendy Wu.

The moral of this story is to make certain you know what the translation really means.
Later! Have a GREAT weekend!

April Fool's Day

Today is April Fool's Day!
If you're anything like me, you probably have wondered just who the April Fool's were/are?
I decided to find out the answer. I could find no definitive answer, however, this on seems the most plausible.

Way back when, the Vernal Equinox was celebrated starting on March 25, which is Lady Day, and New Years' Day in many European implementations of the Julian calendar, preceding by exactly nine months Christmas Day. The celebrations ended on April 2.

Communications were typically by word of mouth, and, therefore, news spread slowly throughout the world. When the observance of the new year was moved to January 1, many were slow to learn of it or were not so inclined to accept it. These people still clung to the beginning of the year in April. All the other folks in the know used to make sport of these folks right much and they thus became known as the April Fools!

The day eventually came to be one of playing pranks on friends and co-workers and sending them on Fool's Errands and such...Here are some of my favourite April Fool's Day pranks:

• In 1992 National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again."


• In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. Incidentally, Taco Bell also reported as fact that sales increased by $500,000 on April 1st and $600,000 on April 2nd over the prior week’s same day sales.


• In 1993 a German radio station announced that officials in Cologne had just passed an unusual new city regulation. Joggers going through the park would be required to pace themselves to go no faster than six mph. Any faster, it was felt, would unnecessarily disturb the squirrels who were in the middle of their mating season.


• In 1965 BBC TV featured an interview with a professor who had just invented a device called "smellovision." This miraculous technology allowed viewers to experience directly in their own home aromas produced in the television studio. The professor offered a demonstration by cutting some onions and brewing coffee. A number of viewers called in to confirm that they distinctly experienced these scents as if they were there in the studio with him. Since no aromas were being transmitted, whatever these viewers thought they smelled coming out of their TV sets must be chalked up to the power of suggestion.


• In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version.

Enjoy your Fool's Day!