Booyor's BLOGgh!

I support World Vision and believe in what they’re doing. Here’s an update about what happened in Pakistan:

World Vision today is mourning the brutal and senseless deaths of six members of our staff in the Mansehra district of Pakistan, following an unprovoked attack by gunmen.
We have confirmed that the gunmen entered our office compound, threw grenades, opened fire on staff inside the office, and left the compound after exploding a homemade bomb. The compound is located about 40 miles north of Mansehra town.
In addition to those killed, eight employees were hospitalized with injuries. Four of them were released from the hospital, while another four remain hospitalized in critical-but-stable condition.
No threatening letters were received prior to the attack. World Vision’s relief and development work in Pakistan is conducted by local citizens, and local leaders have strongly condemned the attack. World Vision sees the attack not only as an attack on its own local staff, but on the Pakistani people themselves.

They provide aid for poor kids and will still do it, although operations in Pakistan have been suspended.

It’s true that about 80% of all jobs aren’t advertised. Although most job hunters spend hours every day responding to online openings, let’s face it: it’s probably easier to break into the Pentagon than to be noticed via an online job application.

I’m helping the students research World War II and the Holocaust (as well as some of my own research for the new sermon series on Esther) and I always drift to modern day holocausts. Imagine my students’ surprise when I hung up modern day war criminal wanted posters around my classroom from Interpol. Sadly, more war criminals have been added, but as librarian I have a wider audience than my classroom.

Permit me to rant to my even wider audience about access of information. Why does the status of Jon and Kate’s relationship (you know, the 8 Kate) still rank higher for the news than the capture of the Taliban’s second-in-command?

Also, have you ever taken the time to read the crazy stuff coming out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth? Having hung out with snowboarders at NAU (and by “hanging out” I mean “documenting misdemeanors for Residence Life” – Mike has an even better tale), the comments from Shaun White’s coach don’t surprise me. If NBC has been covering snowboarding for longer than a week, they should know to what degree the trick should be stomped and what adverbs get attached to said stomping. Do people not give Ahmadinejad press time or do we just not care? We care more about a coach’s naughty words, not “I will wipe the entire people group out”.

Hopefully some junior highers will leave school this year with a wider worldview.

I don’t know if anyone else experienced this, but I think that the opening ceremonies’ ice zombies cast a field of sleep spells. I missed everything after that, except for brief moments when I woke up to get a CD from J to find a shaman walking through the Aurora Borealis and when I typed up some e-mails at midnight without my glasses on.

I must have been really tired, though, since I could have sworn I saw Nick Jonas and Snoop Dogg singing with Celine Dion.

Wait. That was real?

And I bet you’ll try to convince me that I saw a time-traveling Elvis confront Mike who thought he was Pablo Picasso.

That was real, too?

(Picasso at the Lapine Agile by THE Steve Martin is actually a fun show and yes, Mike, you did become a convincing Picasso.)

One thing that I did pay attention to last night was the montage leading up to the opening ceremonies. The landscape is spectacular and the tourism ads made me actually consider living in Vancouver (we all get one government-funded orca, right?). But the video bit about the six American diplomats being rescued by Canadians grabbed my attention.

Modern history is a blur in my memory. I can remember Tienenman and Kosovo, but the Iran hostage situation in 1979/1980 I don’t know much about. That was always the last chapter in our history textbook but we never got to it.

So, especially for you punk kids that follow me on Facebook, here’s the Canadian Caper.

53 Americans were held hostage on November 4, 1979 and on January 20, 1981 they were released (notice the proximity to Reagan being sworn in). It’s all right around when the Iranian Ayatollah came to power to replace the shah monarchy on February 11, 1979. The U.S. helped the shah get medical attention and as punishment, extremists captured the Americans. Things have calmed down in Iran, right?

The image I put at the top of this post is a sketch from Ken Taylor, Canadian ambassador to Iran. John Sheardown and Ken Taylor kept the six diplomats (all in the 25-34 years-old age bracket, scarily enough for my own personal relevance) in their personal residences until they could sneak them to Zurich on Canadian passports – Canadian passports that were forged, along with fake Iranian visas.

The Canadian government and the CIA worked together on a cover story. A movie called Argo was supposed to be made and there were even movie posters created and a fake PO Box in Los Angeles set up. Tony Mendez, CIA make-up specialist, worked with John Chambers (Star Trek and Planet of the Apes make-up guy) to change their appearances to look like a frumpy film crew. (Clayton, how does that make you feel?)

The Canadian embassy in Iran mysteriously shut down for the day. Ken and John also moved their families back to Canada. Ken, John, and their wives received the highest civilian honor from the Canadian government.

An award should also go to Jean Pelletier, the Canadian journalist who figured out what was going on before the plan was completed. He pressured the newspaper to not run the story until the six hostages were safe. The others still had a long time to wait, but I’m sure the family of the six were thankful.

The United States started saying “Thank You, Canada” on signs all over the place. Also, if you were Canadian you ate free for a while.

To be fair with me not knowing much about the Canadian Caper, many of the details were hidden until 1997.

Ken Taylor with Governor General Edward Shreyer

I understand the irony in that statement, but I also know that if my cousin or some of my friends are a part of the attack on Marjah, I’d want a Breacher clearing the landscape of IEDs. That’s been the big issue, right? We traditionally fought wars where a giant tech weapon could swoop in and minimize the number of casualties. But guerilla warfare, especially in urban areas, has always been the worst for our army. I wondered how our military would respond technologically.

Our military’s response was Iceman and Joker? Were Maverick and Goose busy?

I always envisioned a giant mech. We’re one step closer. A weapon that can “send a sheet fire into the air and shock waves rippling through the desert in all directions” sounds familiar.

I know that there’s supposedly some movie with some Semi-American Heroes (or was it Real American Semi-Heroes?) that attempts to explain Cobra Commander as the whiny boy-girl from 3rd Rock from the sun, but I think we’ve made the Bloggh’s stance pretty clear.

My money is on Richard Branson as the Supreme Overlord of the COBRA terrorist organization. Be watching him in the coming years – first he launched his own spacecraft, then he created a plane that could go underwater.

Within the next three years expect to see a HISS tank and/or Tomax/Xamot being announced as co-VPs of Virgin Megalomaniacal.

In a recent posting of The Bloggh, one of our contributors (namely, me) referred to Queen Elizabeth as the Queen Mum. This was a misnomer: the Queen Mum was a queen consort versus Queen Elizabeth is a queen regnant.

I’m glad we got that cleared up.

Queen Mum is a name for a widowed queen consort (a queen dowager). Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the current Queen Elizabeth’s mom) had an interesting rise to the throne. Her husband, Prince Albert, was not next in line – his older brother, Prince Edward, was. Edward abdicated and let Albert transform into George Super-Saiyan Level 6.

Seeing where the trend of votes are leaning, an “always prepared” Princess Elizabeth changing a tire makes a lot of sense:

Queen Mum is of the same long-livingness lineage as the current queen, so the qualitative assessments should not have too large of a margin of error.

All this talk of Elizabeths has good timing, I guess (Elizabeth being the name of John the Baptist’s mom). Today is Candlemas, a church holiday celebrating Luke 2:22-35. Simeon says, “I’ve been waiting for this. Now I can die a happy man. This kid is going to do awesome stuff.” (I paraphrase.)

I just thought that February 2 was Groundhog Day.

It’s the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club that announces Phil’s divinations. The Inner Circle? Because we don’t want the Outer Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club getting too uppity, right?
Every February 2 should have a subtitle of being Bill Murray Day.

Phil: There is no way that this winter is *ever* going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don’t see any other way out. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.

It’s starting. Being President is making Obama’s hair turn gray.

I have to admit that I kept refreshing my browser (all the good sites were blocked) during the iPadapalooza whereas I wasn’t as glued to the State of the Union. I think that may be because we all have a general sense of the state of the union versus anything from Steve Jobs always promises to be a turtlenecked spectacle.

I still think that Obama should have presented a keynote using the tablet and then ended with, “Oh? What’s this, you ask? Why it does…” and then list off the tech specs. I also think that, of the stuff the iPad has, it was a big oversight to leave off a microSD slot. Of course they want you to spend more money on the bigger hard drives, but that instant expandability needs to be built into most devices these days.

If you remember a post from a while back, we looked at how being President of the United States was proof that stress causes gray hairs. Expect to see Obama’s hair get even grayer in the coming years.

The Spheniscidae Commonwealth has finally had it with Australian dominion. This morning they effectively threw off the shackles of years of Melbournian Fascism with their frozen device.
Greenhouse Gas gave no comment. Expert analysts predict a Bloomin’ Onion counter-offensive.

For more questionable reporting, check out how some news sites are running the the headline ‘911 Called at the Tiger Woods Residence’ only to find out it’s his mother-in-law with stomach problems. William Randolph Hearst salutes you.

In a shocking news release yesterday, the EPA told reporters that greenhouse gases could kill human beings.

This is very unnerving, indeed, considering how greenhouse gases have only received praise from the media. This tarnishes the impeccable reputation previously sustained by greenhouse gases, putting them in the same league as kilohertz and Niehls Bohr for scary-sounding science vocabulary.

One neighbor was quoted as saying, “I don’t think any of us could see it coming. Greenhouse gases were always such good neighbors. They were quiet and kept to themselves. It’s a real shame, if you ask me.”

In other news, Richard Branson, winner of The Bloggh’s 2008 Beardiest Billionaire Award, finally made it possible for people with lots of money to escape the confines of Earth and rise above their tortured existence of having lots of money and getting what they want. I’m glad their dreams can finally be fulfilled.
In keeping with VSS Enterprise tradition, Branson gave a Shatner-esque double thumbs-up, called a spaceship sexy, and put a picture of a woman in tights on the hull.