Dick Cheney Tells us What we Already Know

Dick Cheney recently made some interesting comments in a speech he gave. Mr. Vice President decided to inform us of something we already know: that West Virginians are inbred hicks. Soylent Ape gives us the details on this revelation:

Soylent Ape
It happened Sunday at the National Press Club on Monday, Jun 2, where Cheney was congratulating the winners of the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prizes for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. When responding to a reporter’s inquiry about his family tree, Cheney noted that he had relatives named “Cheney” in both his father’s and mother’s families.

To drive his pointless point home, Cheney made an attempt at “humor” (something a guy like Cheney shouldn’t be trying to do, anyway) which thoroughly pissed-many of the residents of a key state in the ‘08 Presidential race. The exact quote: “So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia!” Quickly, Cheney jovially qualified his statement, saying “You can say these things when you’re not running for re-election.”

Personally, as much as I hate that mother fucker (get it?), I found his comments to be hilarious and pretty much spot on. It really hit close to home, too, because I have “Leviathans” on both sides of my family tree and my family is from West Virginia. I know it’s that way with a lot of people around here, too. I was amused, not offended by Cheney’s comments. What offends me is Cheney and Bush’s war.

Not everyone here sees this the way I do, though. People are freaking out over the veep’s remarks, Robert C. Byrd being one prominent whiner. Somehow, though, niether the West Virginian objectors, nor any in the news media have managed to see the irony behind the outrage:

You see, when Jeff Foxworthy comes to town, people will flock by the thousands and pay significant sums of money to hear the same damn thing! That’s right, Today’s outrage was yesterday’s comedy! What does this tell us, that this outpouring of indignation is fake, or that the whiners are hypocrites with double standards?

This West Virginian doesn’t know, I’ll leave it up to you fellers to figure out. All I know is that my cousin just got back and she is lookin’ mighty fine right now. Now, if you’ll excuse me…

PS: To not let the veep off scott free, I would like to note that his remarks show a bit of elitism towards his own party base - conservative southern Christians. But the Bush administration’s contempt for its own supporters has been known for a while, so that’s nothing new.

I Just saw Some UFOs

I dunno, maybe this will ruin all vestiges of scientific credibility I’ve tried to create for myself, but I can’t help but post what just happened to me a little bit ago.

A couple of hours ago I got a call from an old high school buddy. We chatted it up for a while, and after I hung up, I stepped outside. It’s been fairly nice out, though a little windy. I start pacing around trying to rid myself of cabin fever, and reminiscing a bit about the good old days. There was a lot of cloud cover. Great sheets of cloud were being blown much faster than usual, rolling across the sky at a pretty quick pace. The moon wasn’t full, but it was on its way, and the night was well lit.

Gradually the clouds slow to a halt and there was a nearly perfectly circular gap in them that was kinda like a window looking directly at the moon. My mind was wandering, and I paced back and forth, ocasionally stopping to look at the bright moon and marvel at the Silvery Light reflecting off the clouds and the Grandness of the Scheme and The Works of His Hands and all that sappy rubbish.

After doing this for about ten minutes, I look at the moon again and just when I start to turn away, I notice not quite out of the corner of my eye a tiny pin-prick of red light sitting right below the center of the moon which as soon as I see it, zips in a perfectly straight line to the right and disappears behind the cloud cover.

Before I can get over what I just saw, which I immediately wondered if I was seeing a UFO or if my mind was playing tricks on me (though leaning towards the former). I’ve seen shooting stars, but they were always pale, ephemeral things that traveled in weak arcs. This light looked more “solid” and traveled in a perfectly straight line.

Suddenly, I see another identical tiny red light, this one at the moon’s upper left side. It also immediate zips in a straight line, although at about a 60 degree angle out to the upper left, and behind the cloud cover. Now I was really wondering what was going on. Again, I thought “UFO,” but felt stupid. Even though it didn’t look like a shooting star, I knew I was no astronomer and I could have been wrong. But I didn’t think I was.

At this point I’m really weirded out. I sort of deny what I had seen. I go back inside and ask dad to step out. When he comes I tell him to look at the moon. Together we stand there looking at the moon. He asks why I wanted him to look at the moon. I explain to him what happened. He tells me to go get some binoculars and look at the moon through those.

I run inside and come back out. I pull up a chair and sit there for about five minutes staring at the moon. I got a pretty good look at it, through the binoculars you can see the craters and everything, which surprised me. Dad gets bored and goes in. I sit there for about ten more minutes. Nothing.

I get up and start moving around. The nervous energy was driving me to pace about. About ten minutes later I look up again and I see a tiny spot of pale yellow light. “Ha!” I think, “Another UFO!” The light was really tiny and moving slowly towards my right. It pulsed regularly. I chastise myself for thinking it was a UFO.

After seeing the weird red lights by the moon, my imagination is running away from me and now every little plane or star is going to look like a UFO. I felt stupid. Then again, this light was kind of…odd. Something about it just seemed “un-airplane-like,” although at this point I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was.

I live not to far from an airport, so we get a lot of planes in and out of the area, but planes usually have red or green lights or something besides the blinking white strobe. This had no trace of any color besides pale yellow. And, the way this object “flashed,” I dunno it was just a bit different than the way I remembered planes flashing. It was almost like the timing was a bit less regular it just seemed more… organic. Later I decided that “pulsing” was a term more suited to the way the light changed brightness.

Still, it was silly to act like this was anything other than a normal everyday plane at high altitude. I thought my imagination was running away with me. I know I’ve said this before, but everytime I started to think I was seeing a UFO, I felt really stupid and embarrassed. After all it was moving at the right speed, certainly not making right angle turns or any of that UFO type stuff. I get a little bored with this airplane and as I turn away, just out of the corner of my eye, I notice it speeding up.

In just about a second, it ends up at about one and a half times to twice the speed that it was before. The object begins changing the “behavior” of its light. It now looked smaller, but no less bright. It’s color changes almost imperceptively towards the redder end of the spectrum. Previously it had been slowly pulsing, but this quickly became a rapid “flickering.”

Then, if all this wasn’t weird enough, it does something that really stuns me. It makes a sudden “U-turn,” and is now flying back up and over the path it had been going before. Once it gets about two thirds of the way back to where it was when I first noticed it, it stops. It paused briefly, and then stunned me even further by shooting off to the right and disappearing in a nearly straight but slightly parabolic path. The light left an extremely long, faint motion blur behind it.

Even though I had briefly considered that it may be a UFO, I didn’t expect it to really be one. I felt weird after seeing that, like sort of dazed. I then began searching for conventional explanations. It flew horizontally at a nearly straight line at high speed, so it had to be a satellite, right? I stood rooted at that one spot.

I still felt dazed, and tried to review the events in my mind. The rapid U-turn the light performed killed the satellite explanation. At this point I realized that I had literally gone into denial about what I had seen. Whatever this was, it wasn’t an airplane, satellite or shooting star. This dazed period lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed much longer.

Now the clouds were starting to roll in again and the object vanished. I went over to the right following the direction the light traveled, estimating where I would be able to see it again if the clouds cleared up. Then I waited. Suddenly it appeared again, when the clouds started thinning out. It made weird random motions like whirligig beetles on a pond. It was flying faster than I had ever seen an airplane of similar altitude fly, but not extremely fast like a meteor. It made swooping turns. Everytime it did this, just like before, it pulsed faster and looked a bit more reddish.

It vanished again as the clouds started rolling overhead again. Then appeared briefly. More clouds rolled in. I don’t know how many times I saw the object again, but it was a couple. Maybe four at the most. The clouds started rolling in even faster, until the entire sky was covered and the light was hidden from view.

I waited and the object didn’t appear. After I became confident I wouldn’t miss seeing the object again in the process, I went in to get my dad again, hoping it would appear for him and my story could be corroberated. We waited about 10 minutes. The clouds covered the sky completely and showed no signs of clearing up. Dad went back inside. I waited outside staying vigilant, watching the sky. About 45 minutes or so, later I gave up and went inside again.

I don’t know how long this experience lasted. The last time I had check a clock, it was not quite 9:30. It was 11:08 when I came in. The first thing I did after the incident was begin typing this. It took me about an hour, I think, before I actually posted it.

Update #1: I’ve added more detail to the description of my sighting of the red lights and why I felt they were not shooting stars.

Update #2: I’m removing foolish, inaccurate speculations about the yellow object’s elevation. The original text can be found below.

I live not to far from an airport, so we get a lot of planes in and out of the area, but they’re almost always recently taken off or soon to be landing which means that they’re almost always at low altitude. This sure wasn’t. If it was the size of a plane, then it had to be at a height that I don’t recall ever seeing any airplane at. And planes usually have red or green lights or something besides the blinking white one. This had no trace of any color besides light yellow. And, the way this object flashed, I dunno it was just a bit different than the way I remembered planes flashing. It was almost like the timing was a bit less regular it just seemed more… organic.

Southern Hospitality my A$$!

There are many stereotypes of southerners. Ask anyone that’s not from Appalachia what the people are like there, and you’ll probably get three responses: “Stupid, poor and incestuous.” All those things are true, at least where I live. The incest thing is the only exception. Or maybe the locals just keep that one hidden better.

 You see, West Virginia has the lowest percentage of college degrees amongst its populace in the entire United States! They’re not rich, either. West Virginians on average make around $11,000 less per year than the average American.

There is however, a single positive stereotype that gets associated with southerners. They call it “southern hospitality.” Southerners are supposed to be welcoming, friendly and generous. I’m here to inform you on this sad day that southern hospitality is a myth. Do you know what the real southern mind set is? It’s that of a low-life inner city thug.