What's that you say, sonny?
From Augusta, GA, Brian Neill reports on Boom!:

No doubt you’ve experienced the reverberating thunder at a red light, a pounding sound with the ability to rattle nerves and compound the problems of the day.

Or, maybe you awoke last night to the throbbing, droning bass coming from your apartment complex parking lot.

What began as a fad has now become ingrained in our culture, with debatable societal impacts, depending on whom you ask.

They’re commonly referred to as "boom cars," automobiles stuffed with enough speakers and amplifiers as to be too much sound system for even a large home.

And the trend has left the confines of the teenage set, expanding to include people in their 30s, and possibly older.

People across the country engage in competitions to see whose vehicle sound system is the loudest and most clear. Some competitors have spent thousands of dollars on their car stereos just to be the loudest on the block.

I thought "boom cars" were why rocket propelled grenades were invented.

I want one!
The Washington Post amazes with A Mighty Wind Against Waste: 'Tornado in a Can' Puts Hope in the Henhouse:

CLINTON, N.C. -- Inside the corrugated tin shed that serves as the top-secret test site for Vortex Dehydration Technology's strange new invention, Frank Polifka cranks open a valve and unleashes the force of a tornado.

Compressed air rushes into an eight-foot-tall steel cone and whirls counterclockwise at tremendous speeds, producing winds capable of turning rock into dust. It also emits a knee-buckling shriek that prompts Polifka to clap his hands over his ears and sends others staggering away.

There's a parade of visitors coming from all over the country to see this machine, to witness for themselves whether it really does what they've heard it can do. They want to know whether it really offers a new technology for mining precious metals, pulverizing trash, grinding concrete into a powder that can be reconstituted with water.

But the keenest interest so far is from poultry people who are watching closely to see whether it can revolutionize the way billions of pounds of chicken byproducts -- the feet, feathers, heads and entrails that don't end up in the supermarket -- are processed.
...
Some day, this machine could make a fortune for Polifka and his partners. But at the moment, the machine is broken, or at least that's what it sounds like.

Engineers shut it down and quickly huddle, mulling over a complex mathematical solution they think might help them fix the noise.

But Polifka, a stocky man with a snow-white beard and twinkling eyes, just opens the machine, grabs a broom handle and pokes at a flap of metal inside the cone. The adjustment made, he shuts the machine and starts it again. The noise is gone. In its place is the powerful hum of air, contained in the six-foot-diameter funnel Polifka modeled after the tornadoes he watched while growing up.

The tornado in a can is back up and ready for business.

The only problem is that I don't have any chickens.

An inscribed first edition!
John McCaslin in the Washington Times reveals Al meets Chad:

We were just teenagers then," the Gores continue in their book, "and unlike most high school sweethearts these days, we somehow grew together instead of apart."

In fact, the "sweethearts" appeared together over the weekend at a local Olsson's Books and Records store to sign copies of their book.

"One man and his friend stopped to show us Al's and Tipper's signatures in his book," one gentleman on hand tells Inside the Beltway. "Al wrote, 'To Chad,' with both signatures underneath. We all immediately burst out into laughter and asked the gentleman if that was his real name. The answer was a resounding 'No.'"

Hmmm, I wonder if you toss 'em a few bucks, they'll reprise The Kiss.

Today's Hoot!
Courtesy of Napolean Cole in the Wall Street Journal, 'Kill Kurds, Not Mumia':

"Hey chicks? Do you dames know where I can find a pro-Saddam rally?"

They respond (no kidding): "Uh, I don't know. We just came from one. I think there's something at Garfield High School or something."

"Oh, OK." I hold up my fist again: "End women's suffrage!"

They respond with smiles: "Peace! See ya."

High as a kite off this stuff, I see if I can pull off one more on the way back to the office (I've now been gone for an hour).

I pull up alongside a lone 50-something protester walking with his sign folded so I can't see it.

"Hey, did I miss the protest?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where any other pro-Saddam things are going on?"

"No I don't. I'm not sure if I understand you. Do you mean pro-Saddam or antiwar?"

"Either. I mean, same crowd, right?"

"I suppose . . ." He thinks for a second. "I don't much care for your generation. You've got the message all wrong. This is all so stupid."

He could have blown his cover with "dames".

There's always a comedian!
From the Charlotte Observer's Letters to the Editor:

What Jesus drives: An eyewitness account

I know what Jesus drives -- a white 1993 Astro van. I know this because he painted my house last year along with Miguel, Juan and Ramon. They did a fine job.

Rich Nossel
Davidson

It's Shat!
For reasons that are hard to describe, I was looking up William Shatner on Google and uncovered a treasure trove at Ananova which included the following:

William Shatner denies breaking wind on Star Trek video

Former Star Trek captain groped by gorilla

No update on Shat chewing the scenery.

Beam Me Up Alert!
Reuters astounds with Lead-Encased Fried Chicken Menu Artist Wins Turner:

LONDON (Reuters) - Keith Tyson, who found fame with a Kentucky Fried Chicken menu encased in lead, on Sunday won the 2002 Turner Prize with his version of Rodin's "The Thinker."

Tyson confirmed the bookies' faith in making him hot favorite to take one of the world's most controversial arts awards, derided by critics as a farce and condemned by Britain's Culture Minister Kim Howells as "conceptual bullshit."

Tyson, whose first solo exhibition was in London in 1995, found fame by feeding data into a computer which then instructed him to paint 366 breadboards and cast a Kentucky Fried Chicken menu in lead.

For Sunday's 20,000 pound ($31,480) prize, he offered a giant black pillar packed with computers.

Tyson beat second favorite Catherine Yass with her vertiginous short films "Descent" and "Flight" as well as outsider Fiona Banner whose offering was the plot of porn movie "Arsewoman in Wonderland" written on a giant canvas.

The tabloids tore into her work, giving Banner the most hostile coverage since Tracey Emin made the Turner shortlist in 1999 with her soiled bed covered in condoms and champagne corks.

Emin's failure to win the prize still clearly rankles. She told the Guardian newspaper on Friday: "The Turner prize is so unfair.

"It was very stupid of me to accept the nomination because there was no chance I was going to win because none of them (the judges) really knew me," she said.

To know her is to love her, I'm sure.

Lucky we don't have many of these aesthetes around here. They seem plumb sensitive and might react poorly to a little criticism.

Ruh Oh!
(Via Free Republic) The Country Today alarms with Poachers beware: 'Bambi' is in on sting operation:

So you missed your deer. Don't let a tempting buck at the side of the road lure you into sneaking a parting shot from the window of your truck. That swishing tail might hide a stinger.

Brian Wolslegel, Mosinee, claims that his robotic deer are so lifelike, they draw in poachers, amorous mates and territorial bucks just as effectively as the real thing. The only problem is, there is always a game warden close by.

Since 1995, when Mr. Wolslegel started Custom Robotic Wildlife, he has shipped his battery-powered decoys to 48 states and all the provinces of Canada. Most of those are being used by game wardens to educate the public to endangered species and put the squeeze on unscrupulous hunters.
...
His critters have evolved to the wildlife version of RoboCop, with custom-designed gearboxes and remote controllers that will turn the head, stamp a foot or make a turkey look like it's fanning its tail and strutting. He is even working through a design that will allow a deer decoy to blow steam from its nostrils in cold weather.
...
In spite of its size, the company puts out about 300 decoys a year, marketing the product on the Internet and at wildlife management conventions around the country. The most popular product is whitetail deer, but he also creates robotic elk, moose, caribou, turkey, bear, lynx and fox.

"We do just about every animal there is," Mr. Wolslegel said.

Hunters are getting savvier about decoy wildlife, but that doesn't mean that they don't fool a lot of people a lot of the time. Wardens at Seeley Lake, Mont., had to stop a car full of visitors from throwing stones at a grizzly bear decoy. They were trying to get it to move.

There are also plenty of decoys that come back for repair after being shot repeatedly by the same hunter.

"There are a million stories out there," Mr. Wolslegel said. "People running them over with their cars when they get mad. People trying to get out and shoo the deer away so it won't run across the road."

It's an IQ test! And throwing stones at a grizzly bear also gets Darwin Award points.

If you're in the market for a robotic deer in your back yard, Mr. Wolslegel can arrange that as well.

"I might sell 50 deer at a convention to wardens, but at one show, I had three guys walk up to me who don't bow hunt and said it was the coolest thing they had ever seen, and bought them to put in their yards," he said.

"I sold one to a guy who was goofing around with his neighbor. He was going to take it out to the guy's tree stand with a marine battery, and it would be standing there when the sun came up in the morning."

Who says us country folks are unsophisticated?

Prince Al just can't keep his hands off the Chinese money
Drudge is on the case with Intrigue Surrounds Gore Trip to China:

Former vice-president Al Gore recently made a visit to China, where he is believed to have been paid to speak at a communist government-linked think-tank and attended a lunch hosted by former ENRON director Ronnie Chan Chi-chung.

Participants at the China Development Institute-sponsored forum in Shenzhen, at which Gore was a key speaker last month, were offered the chance to have their photo taken with Gore if they paid 50,000 yuan (HK$ 47,000) or 100,000 yuan for conference sponsorship packages, the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST reported.

Can you say "Buddhist Temple Cash"? I knew you could!

Quick, get them some radio beacons!
CBC News disgusts with Canadians go to Baghdad as 'human shields':

Opposition to a war on Iraq has a long way to go before it rivals the draft-card burnings and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, but a new anti-war movement is growing muscle. Some Canadians already have left for Iraq to serve as human shields against bomb attacks on Baghdad. More will follow before Christmas.

And they are inviting everyone to feel their muscles. Ooooo!

Irene Vandas and Jennifer Ziemann of Vancouver are heading to Iraq on Friday. Vandas, a 32-year-old registered nurse, and Ziemann, a 30-year-old home-care worker, will fly to Amsterdam, board a plane to Amman, Jordan, then drive into Iraq all the way to Baghdad where they will live with Iraqi civilians. There, they will join friends Linda Morgan and Irene MacInnes, two Canadians who travelled to Iraq in mid-November.

The four Canadians, sponsored by an anti-war organization called Voices in the Wilderness, have volunteered to be human shields in an effort to dissuade American-led forces from attacking Iraq. "I'm not too scared," Vandas told CBC News Online the day before she left. "I think it will be a powerful experience."

Especially if you try to shield a military target and catch a cruise missile in your nether regions. Of course, if they don't want to leave anything to chance, they could drop by one of the prisons and offer to replace one of the torture victims.

The last time human shields were in the news was during the 1999 war in Kosovo, when NATO accused Yugoslavia President President Slobodan Milosevic of using civilians as human shields at strategic targets, such as bridges and power plants.

And before that when Saddam Hussein scattered Western hostages around his military targets during the first Gulf War.

Vandas and Ziemann have agreed to stay in Baghdad until the end of December. They will work with two Canadian doctors, Amir Khadir and David Swann, both anti-war activists who have taken up residence in Iraq to protest against U.S. attacks. Vandas said another group of Canadians will go to Iraq later this month, joining some 30-40 young protesters from the U.S. and Britain.

Breaking news fer sure! Voices in the Wilderness is mostly adept at press releases and the CBC at publishing them.

Time for a video game - Drop One on the Wingnut.