walls of the city

If you ever wanted to know why I will always regard anti-rights advocates like MikeB302000, Laci the Dog Bitch, Josh Sugarmann, Denis Hennigan, and others of their ilk with the highest [...]

Alright, Daylight Saving Time really needs to go away, if only because I am tired of spending that hour I gained/lost trying to find and correct all of the time-keeping devices in our home that did not update automatically. [...]

It is time for some more gratuitous CGI-porn.

Be sure to crank it up to full-HD. And then break out your copy of the original, put it up in a window next to the YouTube clip, [...]

You know you want the briefcase.

Alternative tagline: “The girl or the briefcase?” [...]

Just when you think you already did not have enough time in the day, it seems as though that day got a little shorter:

The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. [...]

Earlier this month, D.C. completely shut down, to the point where schools closed, businesses shuttered their doors, most politicians did not make it to their offices (something I do not view as “bad”, mind you), and snowplow [...]

[pedanticpetpeeve]

If you are faced with a situation offering two options other than the option of “nothing”, and neither of those options are pleasant, desirable, or anywhere close to what you wanted, that situation is not a “Hobson’s Choice”. [...]

Walter Frederick Morrison, the inventor of the ubiquitous Frisbee disc, died on Tuesday, his long and energetic life finally having caught up with him.

I think it is safe to say that one would be hard-pressed [...]

I do not typically include YouTube videos directly on this webpage, simply because I can still remember the days of having a connection too slow to load them, and having entire webpages hang (in fact, I remember those days [...]

As if there was any doubt, but Lucy Lawless (of Xena and Battlestar Galactica fame) definitely still has it (previous link is decidedly not safe for work).
The somewhat disturbing thought is that she [...]

It is only sad because you know it is [...]

If a somewhat random one…
At any rate, the investment cap for your IRAs this year, and last year, is $5000. If you are like me, and you were unware of this change (up from $4000 in 2008), [...]

I was almost too late for this one, but it appears as though Gander Mountain is having a “Military and Emergency Personnel” sale. If you are active duty or Reserves for any of the branches of the [...]

“Paranoid” is believing that everyone is out to get you. “Prepared” is knowing that some people are.

From Yours Truly, with a little inspirational assistance from [...]

If you are in the Knoxville region of Tennessee and looking to remodel/rebuild/build a house, I would strongly recommend that you swing by Stovers Liquidators, LLC at either their 4505 Ashville Highway location, or their 452 West [...]

I have to admit, we have some pretty cruddy neighbors around this part of the country… Welp, given that I have personally experienced hurricanes and wildfires, I guess an earthquake was only a matter of time.

Idiotic, inconsistent anti-violence tendencies aside, I think it is safe to say that David Tennant gave one of the best Doctor Who deaths in the history of the television show, and he should be honored that [...]

I have finally found a simple explanation, consisting of nothing more than two words, of why I hate theoretical mathematics:
Banach-Tarski.
You see, these two crackheads mathematicians, Stefan Banach and Alfred Tarski proposed, [...]

Alright, I am getting tired of those uppity Indianapolis webloggers upstaging us Knoxville types…
So, Knoxville-region blogmeet – where and when? Near a range and combined with a rangemeet would certainly be nice, but not [...]

Tennessee is apparently the fourth happiest state in the union.
Kalifornistan weighs in at 46. Florida at 3.
Having lived in all three of those states in the past five years, I cannot say as [...]

So I went to see Avatar today, despite the copious number of reports indicating that the sermonizing and proselytizing contained therein would far outweigh the potential benefit/entertainment of the copious [...]

On this date, 220 years ago, the Bill of Rights came into effect. As with September 17, every American should take a moment today to read through the document that was adopted all those years in the [...]

With Christmas fast approaching (or so the calendear tells me), I would like to take a moment to remind my readers that my book, Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Firefly , is [...]

For those of us who constantly (and rightly, in my mind) make noises about awareness of our surroundings, “condition white”, “condition yellow”, “condition ZOMGWTFBBQ”, and all the rest of those buzz-wordy phrases, this is an interesting awareness test.

Last week, I pointed out how awesome Papa John’s is on the corporate, nation-wide level.
This week, Rustmeister clues us in on how local stores are following their superiors’ examples:

According to [...]

Now that we have figured out how to properly augment frozen pizzas, as well as create our own from more-or-less scratch, Better Half and I buy take-out/delivery pizzas… well… never. However, Papa John’s just earned a metric [...]

To follow with a trend throughout the corner of the Cortex I frequently visit, today’s quote comes from Roberta X:

I’m not going to hold debates here. I don’t give a flying fuck what you think of [...]

As of five minutes ago, there were somewhere around 20 individuals waiting outside our local Applebee’s (with an indeterminate number inside).
Good to [...]

The day is rapdily drawing to a close, so if you have not already, please thank a veteran for their service. Numerous soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coasties sacrifice so much of their time, energy, and lives to protect [...]

It is a damned near-pathetic state of affairs when the families of our servicemen and women feel as though their military members would be safer in a war zone than at their own, American bases:

JOHN ROBERTS, [...]

So Better Half and I started watching the new series V a few nights back, and my only real gripe so far (aside from various engineering and physics qualms) was the acceptance rate. Yes, these aliens are human-looking. Yes, [...]

I am a little behind in publishing this news, and I apologize for that, but the unnamed-on-this-weblog individual who was convicted of kidnapping, robbing, raping, and murdering Channon Christian and of kidnapping, robbing, murdering, and facilitating the [...]

This is, quite possibly, the coolest chart [...]

I disagree with Clayton Cramer on a good many things (open carry of firearms and his perspectives on homosexuals, to start with), but his contributions to the pro-Second-Amendment side of the fence are without question. From his [...]

Ok, so which genius’ bright idea was it to only release Boondock Saints II in a grand total of 69 theaters in about five metropolitan areas?
Ever?
*sigh* I guess there should be a good [...]

I do not often put up interesting words, but I figure today’s is worth it – you know how in certain woods and gems, it appears as though there are many deep layers of material that cause the surface [...]

Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s new CD, Night Castle, officially rocks. If anything, their sound has hardened and sharpened (for lack of better words) over the years, unlike most groups, and I can only quantify that as A Very Good Thing [...]

In my daily stumbling and bumbling around the internet, I happened across this interesting take on the Captain Phillips situation, courtesy of Bilgeman in a comment at The Smallest Minority:

A little “inside [...]

Free food.
It may not be good food, but “free” is a goodness in and of [...]

For those of us in Eastern Tennessee, Western Virginia and North Carolina, and anywhere else that might be considered “nearby”, Pigeon Forge is holding their Grand Adventurecon on 24OCT and 25OCT. Current guests include John [...]

Just as I was talking about setting an example a few days back, the church down the road had this as their tagline today:

A good example has twice the value of good advice.

Coincidence is God’s [...]

The housing market sucks. Builders are having enough trouble selling the houses they have already built, so slabs, half-built homes, and empty lots are sitting there, accumulating dust. So what did one local builder do? Put his [...]