Far South of I-10

I had to zip offshore yesterday at the last minute, changing my tranquil sunday at home to a mad dash to the dock, then a four hour crew boat ride to the rig. Not too bad of a ride, I only reached the nasty salivating feeling before we arrived at the rig, it sucks when the high point of the evening is not puking. I stayed out on the back deck most of the time since I won't get sick if I can see the horizon and not smell that boat smell of lysol/oldpuke/diesel fuel that inhabits the inside of the boat. It was a pretty clear night, and the only lights were the lights of rigs and production platform as we cruised past, so I had a clear view of the big dipper and the north star and I willed those two pointer stars to move faster around and speed up time. Apparently there is a meteor shower for this part of the month, because I saw one fall, but it didn't look real, more like a reflection off of metal into my eyes. The next meteorite was more emphatic, maybe even a fireball, b...

Transterrestrial Musings is normally the place that Instapundit links to for space policy, he's also got some pretty biting satire posted . September 8, 1940 "Under Chamberlain," said one Labour backbencher, "we had peace for our time." "Now," he went on, "under this new brutal and dictatorial Tory rule, Churchill, along with his poodle Franklin "Delanodamngood" Roosevelt, has brought this wretched war home to Whitehall itself, and ordinary Londoners." The bombing began around four o'clock yesterday afternoon, with squadrons of German bombers blackening the skies over London, dropping many thousands of pounds of bombs on the city for two hours. A couple hours later, a second wave of bombings commenced, with the bombers' navigators guided by the fires from the first attack, with no cessation until early this morning. The fires still burn, and the total casualties have yet to be properly assessed. Biting in t...

I just added Norm Geras' Normblog to the blogroll, he had an essay yesterday that was astoundingly good, that logically destroys anyone who says flying planes into buildings or bombing subways or iraqi children is the fault or moral responsibility of the US. ... It needs to be seen and said clear: there are, amongst us, apologists for what the killers do, and they make more difficult the long fight that is needed to defeat them. (To forestall any possible misunderstanding on this point: I do not say these people are not entitled to the views they express or to their expression of them. They are. Just as I am entitled to criticize their views for the wretched apologia they amount to.) ... The fact is that if causes and explanation are indeed a serious enterprise and not just a convenient partisan game, then it needs to be recognized that causality is one thing and moral responsibility another, and though the two are related, they aren't the same thing. Observe... Me, D...

Lileks has a great Bleat today discussing his dog's life, and how unconciously happy his family is right now, but he has a dark undertone in his column, of how a terrorist attack such as Beslan could undo everything and make us wish for the boring past. [Here is a picture of our dog taking a break after working for several hours taking calls and answering email.] Heather Nicole wrote a review and interpretation of John Irving's 'World According to Garp' the other day that reminded me of one the things I remember most strongly from that book. Something that has the same feeling as Lilek's column today was Garp's undertoad, how when life seems most mundane and normal, there is a looming presence below that can snatch away life and happiness in an instant. So, enjoy your mundane life today, kiss your wife, and enjoy watching your dog run with unbound happiness towards the next bush in your route around the block, as if it is a new adventure not the same bush the...

Mostly Cajun occasionally posts Boudreaux & Thibodeaux jokes, which are a strictly south louisiana type of humor, and they're really only funny if you tell the jokes with a cajun accent. Think Justin Wilson's accent, not Emeril Lagasse. It's amazing how many B&T jokes there are, I've sat around offshore and swapped jokes for hours while waiting on the rig to start drilling. Here's one of my favorites: Boudreaux is sittin' on his front porch one morning when Thibodeaux stops by in his boat and yells "hey Boudreaux, I got me som' dat duck tape and I'm goin' duck huntin', d'ya wanna go?" Boudreaux yells back "mais no, you ain't gonna catch no ducks wit no duck tape, you crazy." So Thibodeaux left, and stopped by later in the day with a boat full of ducks. The next day Thibodeaux stops by and yells, "Hey Boudreaux, I got me some Nutra-sweet, and I'm goin' nutria huntin', do ya wanna go?" ...

Over at It comes in Pints the author started a list of all the great things about England to try and show our support after the bombings last week, borrowing the lyrics of the Team America t heme song: Bangers! FUCK YEAH! Mash! FUCK YEAH! Goofy hats! FUCK YEAH! The Queen! FUCK YEAH! Boddingtons! FUCK YEAH! The MI-5! FUCK YEAH! Monty Python! FUCK YEAH! Blood pudding! ER...fuck yeah! Mad Cows! FUCK YEAH! Scotland! FUCK YEAH! The Royal Navy! FUCK YEAH! The Beatles! FUCK YEAH! By the time I got to the list, most of the english things I wanted to celebrate were already there. Here's what I added: john Smiths beer - Fuck Yeah!! the saying "fuck off" - Fuck yeah!! overpriced minicabs after 2 am - Fuck yeah!! Baked beans and eggs for breakfast - Fuck yeah!!

CNN just reported that some islamic website is saying the justification for the attacks are Allied troops presence in Iraq and Afganistan. Isn't that a bit circular? At least Bin Laden had a 'good' reason for 9/11, since our crusader brothers had occupied Spain in the 14th century, and our friends the infidel dog jews had occupied Isreal. This argument might be crazy as a raving lunatic barking at the moon, but at least it's not circular. These new guys 'Secret group ofAl queda jihad in Europe', (sounds like the rock group 'Presidents of the USA') have obviously been studying the argument techniques on the democratic underground website. Since they also said that this attack was planned for a long time, it obviously took them a long time to learn the debating techniques of the DU. Idiots. Pork eating sons of whores bastards. [my prayers, for what they are worth, go out to the people of London. When I stayed there in April my hotel was there in Ru...

at200504_model Originally uploaded by Joe Gremlin . It's already the busiest hurricane season on record, the earliest for 4 named storms. The storm that's in the gulf now won't be much, it's a typical early season gulf storm, but Dennis is going to be bad unless interference from hispaniola and cuba cut it down to size. This model shows it heading straight for New Orleans, but my Grandma always said that 'hurricanes don't hit New Orleans before September' , which might sound specious until you realize that one of the above models is based on historical paths. It's more likely that it will continue west once it enters the gulf and hit Texas. Good for New Orleans, bad for me because now I'm in Texas. Get ready for the real storm though, as pundits begin to squawk "Global Warming" like the seaguls in Finding Nemo ("mine, mine"). This can be readily disproven at junkscience.com , where they have good links to graphs put out by the ...

I traveled quite a bit last week. I went from Houston to dallas to midland to houston, then to New orleans. It's kind of neat to see the changes in climate and topography, as houston blurs slightly into dallas, then the world shifts to brown in midland, where everything is dry. Then back over to new orleans where all is green. Landing in new orleans is like landing in the tropics, like east venezuela, except the cars are newer. If you fly in over the swamps of St Charles Parish, on the north facing side of the aircraft all you can see is the lake and the interstate bridge. You might think "we're gonna crash in the swamp, arrrgghh", then suddenly you're down on the bumpy subsided runway. It's better if you come in over the river and land on the north -south runway. Lots of rusty tin roofs, and the dilapidated housing of south kenner makes it look very tropical. So once you step out of the air conditioned airport, the heat and humidity hit like a wall, and...