Hang on tight...

...because the wind is ridiculous here!  This morning, we had 57 degrees and a tad humid- altogether not unpleasant, and actually got to go outside for break without a coat.  But by lunch, that was a BIG mistake, and I followed one lady back in after five minutes.  I get home to find some areas in our county are actually without power (although right now it is down to about 1,100).  Sure a change from yesterday:

Woody was screaming his head off and eating something off the top of this tree...

Last time I took you out here, everything was yellow and orange with un-fallen leaves.  What a difference a couple weeks of cold temps, wind, and snow make...

That big ol' hawk managed to find him a dipstick snake who thought a day and a half of 50s warranted coming out of hibernation early.

Meanwhile, in the same tree...

Different tree, different squirrel.

The saga of the KCAs goes on for another night... as you recall, I needed to win by 21 to have any chance... I am leading by 15 with Mark Ingram and Jimmy Graham of the Saints yet to play.  The other team  has dangerous Torrey Smith and skin-tag Chris Johnson yet to go.  That's a decent shot...


Also, at this point, I DO have a plan in place to replace Cashbox on my Time Machine posts.  They have un-suspended their account, but I'm thinking about a CB-less, BB-less way of doing things... and I may just give it a spin this Friday.  So if you see a Time Machine Volume IV in your after Thanksgiving read list, you'll know I have taken a leap into the unknown...


Meanwhile, here's some Martin World News items for your entertainment:

First, from al-Jazeera:

Feysal Mohamed Ahmed is a man living in fear. He is tasked with the unenviable job of collecting taxes in a city awash with small arms and where people aren't accustomed to paying government taxes.  Ahmed works for the local government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. He is one of six tax collectors in the district of Dharkanley.  Every morning before Ahmed leaves the house, he offers a silent prayer, then says goodbye to his two young sons.  Every prayer, every hug and each goodbye could be his last, and so Ahmed takes his time before he starts walking the short distance to work. For Ahmed, every passer-by on his journey is a potential hitman ready to take him out."Many of my colleagues have been killed. Others escaped with injuries and cannot work anymore," said the clean-shaved, baby-faced 23-year-old. 

He has been collecting municipal taxes for the past two years. In the last three months, four tax collectors have been killed in Mogadishu. Since 2012, at least 25 have been murdered - that's 19 percent of the city's 130 tax-collecting staff.


Not funny, except in the abstract- how many times have you (pre-PC people) seen this happen on cartoons, only to see our world become a cartoon in real life?  On the bright side Somalian terror groups and pirates no longer have to put "most dangerous job in the nation" on their CareerBuilder ads.

Next, from Digital Journal:

A U.S. physicist claims evidence that an ancient Mars civilization was wiped out by nuclear bomb-armed aliens. He warns that evidence of a past nuclear attack on Mars raises concerns about a similar attack on Earth.


Dr John Brandenburg, a plasma physicist, obtained his PhD from the University of California, Davis. He is an expert in propulsion technologies and a former consultant on Space Missile Defense and Directed Energy Weapons. He currently conducts research work at Orbital Technologies in Madison Wisconsin.

The paper, reportedly due to be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, claims evidence for two massive nuclear explosions on Mars at two sites on the planet. Mars once had two civilizations, the Cydonians and the Utopians, wiped out by nuclear bombs detonated by technological aliens.
The site named Cydonia is the location of the formation on the surface of planet spotted by orbital crafts which looked like a human "face on Mars" but which, after closer examination, has been dismissed as incidental formations of dust dunes.
The purported evidence for nuclear explosions includes the red color of the surface of Mars which, according to Brandenburg, could be explained either by a naturally caused nuclear reaction or a nuclear device explosion which scattered radio-isotopes in the Martian environment.

Dr. Brandenburg... not surprisingly, a frequent guest on Coast To Coast AM with George Noorey...

Next up, and slightly closer to home, from Newser:

 Bad news for Prince Philip: one of his favorite cooks has been fired. The sacking of Adam Steele, 28, came after his arrest for allegedly head-butting a Buckingham Palace colleague during a gathering in the staff's living area, the Daily Mail reports. "No one knows what exactly was said to Adam, but it was something like, 'You've had enough; it's time to stop drinking,'" a source tells the paper. "Whatever it was, the next thing the other man has blood over his face and a cut eyebrow." Steele spent the night in a police cell and was fired after an internal palace investigation, the Mail notes.


Closer still, in the merry state of Massachusetts:

Massachusetts State Police say a man stripped inside a women's bathroom at Boston's Logan Airport, climbed into a drop ceiling, crashed through it and landed on the floor, then assaulted an elderly man while he was still naked and bleeding.

Police say Cameron Shenk, 26, of Boston, will be arraigned Monday on charges of attempted murder, mayhem, assault and battery on a person over 60, assault and battery on a police officer, lewd and lascivious conduct and malicious destruction to property in connection with Saturday's alleged attack.

According to authorities, Shenk went into a restroom stall in the airport's Terminal C, before the security checkpoint. Once there, he took off his clothes and climbed in to the drop ceiling. Shortly before noon, investigators say, he fell out of the ceiling to the bathroom floor, startling a woman who was in the facility.

State police spokesman David Procopio says that Shenk then attacked an 84-year-old man, biting his ear and attempting to choke him with his own cane. 


So I was going to put up one of the readily available pics of the half dressed and half witted Mr. Shenk, but I saw this during the search... and while I don't truly understand it, I thought I'd share...

And finally, what would MWN be with out a little sex?  Well, it MIGHT be like...

TUSZYN, Poland, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Winnie-the-Pooh is being run out of town, and it's not for taking all the honey.

The cartoon bear's image was banned from a playground in the small Polish city of Tuszyn because members of the town council believe him to be a hermaphrodite.

The issue came up when it was proposed that Pooh be the patron of the playground. But the more conservative members of the council took issue with the fact he was only half-dressed.

"It doesn't wear underpants because it doesn't have a sex. It's a hermaphrodite," said one Councillor.

"Well, If that means, 'He loves honey'..."

And just to prove that Russia isn't the only nation to comb the lunatic asylums to get their quota of female politicians:

They had an explanation for why poor Pooh is of "dubious sexuality" and it's through no fault of his own but rather due to the cruelty of his author, A.A. Milne.

"This is very disturbing but can you imagine! The author was over 60 and cut his [Pooh's] testicles off with a razor blade because he had a problem with his identity," said Councillor Hanna Jachimska.

Where Ms. Jachimska came up with that unconfirmed factoid about Milne is unknown, but one local speculated for Vanity Fair:

The town members of Tuszyn are unimpressed with their leaders. In an interview with Polish news program TTV, one local resident compared Pooh’s admitted “low intellect” to that of the town councillors, saying: “Winnie the Pooh was a bear with low intellect, and unfortunately, this is also evident in those who are concerned with this topic”.