Category: Curios & Humor

GET THE STORY.

From The Onion.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who pointed this out.)

When I travel, I sometimes encounter towns with the most wonderful names.

Two of these are Yeehaw Junction, Florida and Cut’N Shoot, Texas.

I first encountered Yeehaw Junction when I was on my way to the first Catholic Answers cruise, which was leaving from South Florida. I was tooling down the highway when I happened to find myself in Yeehaw Junction, which is this little . . . junction . . . near Orlando where they have some stores where they sell various and sundries, including postcards with the town name (and pictures of rambunctious cartoon mules on them).

Hope I get to go back there sometime and pick up some postcards!

I encountered Cut’N Shoot when I was on a road trip all over the Southwest last summer. Though I’ve spent a lot of time in Houston (where my mom’s people lived for so long and where all my aunts and uncles still live), but I normally come into the city from a north easterly direction, driving down from the family ranch in Deep East Texas. This summer, though, happenstance took me on a detour to enter Houston from a more northerly direction, and in the process I found myself in Cut’N Shoot.

Gotta love a town with a name like that!

Despite it being in Texas, though, the town’s name doesn’t have anything (directly) to do with knives or guns.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online:

It was apparently named after a 1912 community confrontation that almost led to violence. According to the different versions of the story, the dispute was either over the design of a new steeple for the town’s only church, the issue of who should be allowed to preach there, or conflicting land claims among church members. A small boy at the scene reportedly declared, "I’m going to cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!" The boy’s phrase apparently remained in residents’ minds and was eventually adopted as the town’s name.

So, in the best Hee-Haw tradition, let’s salute these two towns for their great countrified names!

ALL: Saaaaaaa-lute!!!

MORE ON YEEHAW JUNCTION.

MORE ON CUT N’ SHOOT.

Like entering the Nexus (y’know the big Holodeck flying through space?),

THIS IS AN EVENT THAT IT WOULD BE IMMORAL TO TRY TO RECREATE,

but which nevertheless would be wicked cool if it happened on its own.

Like entering the Nexus (y’know the big Holodeck flying through space?),

THIS IS AN EVENT THAT IT WOULD BE IMMORAL TO TRY TO RECREATE,

but which nevertheless would be wicked cool if it happened on its own.

Well, I may have won a 2005 blog award, but I didn’t get into the 3005 Legion of Superheroes.

THE AUSSIE BLOG CREDIBILITY HAS THE STORY:

(See, they have this rule that each member has to have a unique superpower and they thought mine was too close to Brainiac 5’s–sorry! couldn’t resist.)

A kindly reader (cowboy hat tip to him) sent me a link to the following cartoon.

First a little background, though: In Dungeons and Dragons and similar games, players are given a "saving throw"–a roll of the dice to determine whether they will fall victim to certain kinds of attacks (e.g., magical ones). A character who succeeds in this roll is said to have "saved."

Now with that background . . .

[SOURCE.]

‘Member how Thomas Sowell warned us a while back against thinking of the terrorists in Iraq as an enemy with unlimited resources?

Well, it seems this enemy is reaching its limits. Consider the following press roundup:

(CNN) — A photograph posted on an Islamist Web site appears to be that
of an action figure and not a U.S. soldier being held hostage [as CNN first reported].

Liam Cusack, the marketing coordinator for Dragon Models USA, said the
figure pictured on the Web site is believed to be "Special Ops Cody," a
military action figure the company manufactured in late 2003.

"It pretty much looks exactly like the same person," he said.

On the Islamist Web site, a group calling itself the Al Mujahedeen
Brigade, posted a photograph of a man it claimed was a captured U.S.
soldier named John Adam, and it threatened to behead him if Iraqi
prisoners are not released by U.S. forces.

Staff Sgt. Nick
Minecci of the U.S. military’s press office in Baghdad told The
Associated Press that "no units have reported anyone missing."

The
photograph showed the figure against a black flag with white lettering
reading, "God is great, there is no god but Allah." A U.S. military
assault rifle was pointed at its head. It appears that "rifle" was part
of the plastic weaponry that came with the action figure.

The photograph immediately raised questions.

CNN military analyst James Marks, a retired Army general, questioned its authenticity.

He
told CNN in a phone interview that the flak jacket in the picture had a
kind of trim along the edges that he’d never seen before, and that the
open-legged pants, as opposed to gathered hems, struck him as odd.

He also questioned what appeared to be camouflage paint on the face.

"We have not used camo paint with conventional forces serving in Iraq," Marks said.

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
In the days immediately following Iraq’s historic election, two
videotapes from "insurgent" groups were distributed to the news media.
One purported to show an American soldier being held hostage. The
second purported to show that a British C-130 transport aircraft, which
crashed on election day, had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

The "American soldier" was Cody, a G.I. Joe action figure. This is
obvious from the picture, but The Associated Press and CNN bit hard.

The cause of the C-130 crash is still being investigated. But experts
at Jane’s Defence Weekly have doubts about the claim of "insurgents."

"The missile footage has just been grafted onto the front," said editor
Peter Felstead. "And it looks like a surface-to-surface missile to me."

The terrorists had to do something to revive their plummeting prestige.
That they resorted to clumsy frauds is not a sign of strength.

"The captured toy story could be pretty significant," said the Web
logger John Hinderaker (Power Line). "The terrorists need, more than
anything else, to be seen as awesome, terrible figures. If they stop
inspiring fear, they are finished. So the one thing they cannot stand
is ridicule. … Their pathetic effort to pass a doll off as a captured
American soldier will [make] them laughingstocks throughout the Arab
world."

It’s also interesting that the terrorists turned to the news media to
recover lost momentum. Journalists who fell for these hoaxes may merely
be idiots, and their silence about the implications of the hoaxes may
simply be the by product of embarrassment. But the Web logger Shannon
Love (Chicago Boyz) wonders:

"Why were the major media so quick to disseminate pictures of an action
figure as a genuine hostage photo?" More to the point, why are major
media so quick to disseminate anything that a terrorist group, or
purported terrorist group, releases? … For the terrorist, it is like
being given millions of dollars in free advertising."

The major media have from the beginning exaggerated the strength and
popularity of those they mislabel "insurgents," to the disgust of
American soldiers.

(DAILY PLANET) Metropolis pundit Buzz Loudly said, "This is great! The terrorists have made a fatal move! The more people mock them over kidnapping a toy, the more they lose reputation! It’s patriotic to give the terrorists a vicious mocking!"

While much of the world scoffed at the terrorists’ attempts to cow America into submission by threatening a toy, Toy Americans were outraged.

"I can’t believe how callous the rest of my fellow Americans are toward this event," said G.I. JOE First Seargent Conrad S. Hauser (a.k.a. "Duke"). "I mean, if an American of any other extraction was being held hostage and threatened–with his own weapons, no less!–the public would be incensed. Yet because he is a Toy American, it’s as if nobody cares! What, just because you’re made of polyethyline, you don’t count?"

"This will not stand," Duke declared defiantly. "G.I. JOE is a team, and we operate with a strict no-toy-left-behind policy." He indicated that he would be leading the Wave 1 Valor vs. Venom 2-Pack Assortment on a special ops rescue mission to save Cody "at a time of our choosing."

Also rumored to be in on the mission was Johnny Longtorso (a.k.a. "The Man Who Comes In Pieces"), a Deep 13 action figure capable of being disassembled into his component parts and reassembled again without injury. "That ability could be crucial on a mission like this," said Chad Slabbody of Janes Defense Weekly. "It could enable Special Operative Longtorso to get into all kinds of places a regular action figure couldn’t go. The success of the mission might hinge on such abilities just as much as it might hinge on the famous G.I. JOE Kung Fu Grip."

After seeing their success in sowing division in American society by turning Toy Americans against regular Americans, the terrorists broadened the scope of thei toynapping operating, seizing a civilian Pee Wee Herman toy and HOLDING HIM FOR RANSOM ON E-BAY.

No rescue mission for the toy Pee Wee Herman is planned at this time.

Today is also another significant anniversary, this one involving not the intersection between religion and contemporary (textual) scholarship but the intersection between (then) science-fiction and contemporary history.

• The Nautilus is the name of the fictional submarine in Jules Verne’s 1870 science-fiction novel 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
• The Nautilus is the name of a real-life, nuclear-powered American submarine (USS Nautilus, SSN-571).

A league is 3 miles, so 20,000 leagues is 60,000 miles.

Now for the irony:

On 4 February 1957, Nautilus logged her 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

LEARN MORE.

READ THE NOVEL.

Suppose you’re a Texan.

(Natural modesty prevents you from bragging about this too much, a’corse.)

Now suppose that there’s a chupacabra eating your mulberries and killing your chickens, or suppose it’s eating your pears and trying to hide under your house.

What do you do?

SHOOT IT, OF COURSE!

(The thing is destroying livestock and might be rabid, for all you know.)

Well, that’s what two Texas ranchers may have done last year, one in July, in Elmendorf, Texas, and one in Pollok, which is right near my family ranch in Deep East Texas. (NOTE: Pollok is just to the left of Lufkin.)

HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE FIRST RANCHER.

HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE SECOND. (WARNING: More graphic images in this article.)

When you get a look at the Elmendorf creature, it’s clearly the same as the other creature. They look canine, but not like any usual kind of canine. Here’s a photo:

The thing in some ways looks kind of like a kangaroo (but isn’t). It’s ears are also long enough that some thought it was a calf when they saw them silhouetted in the dark. The things have next to no fur, BIG HONKING TEETH (not so visible in this photo), and aren’t like coyotes or regular dogs.

Perhaps these critters are the basis of the chupacabra legends. . . . (Or perhaps not.)

Suppose you’re a Texan.

(Natural modesty prevents you from bragging about this too much, a’corse.)

Now suppose that there’s a chupacabra eating your mulberries and killing your chickens, or suppose it’s eating your pears and trying to hide under your house.

What do you do?

SHOOT IT, OF COURSE!

(The thing is destroying livestock and might be rabid, for all you know.)

Well, that’s what two Texas ranchers may have done last year, one in July, in Elmendorf, Texas, and one in Pollok, which is right near my family ranch in Deep East Texas. (NOTE: Pollok is just to the left of Lufkin.)

HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE FIRST RANCHER.

HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE SECOND. (WARNING: More graphic images in this article.)

When you get a look at the Elmendorf creature, it’s clearly the same as the other creature. They look canine, but not like any usual kind of canine. Here’s a photo:

The thing in some ways looks kind of like a kangaroo (but isn’t). It’s ears are also long enough that some thought it was a calf when they saw them silhouetted in the dark. The things have next to no fur, BIG HONKING TEETH (not so visible in this photo), and aren’t like coyotes or regular dogs.

Perhaps these critters are the basis of the chupacabra legends. . . . (Or perhaps not.)