And Now For Something Completely Different

The Bestofme Symphony™©® resides here this week, at The Smallest Minority. It's a bit of a change of pace for me, but as I've contributed to it several times, it seemed only fair to host it once. The Bestofme Symphony is made up of posts at least two months old that the authors were particularly pleased with, or some reader was and recommends that we all take a look at. In internet time that makes these posts antiques, but collectables.

Our first entry in this week's iteration is My Invasi...Err...Trip to Canada by The Lefty Destroyer from March 14. Described as "Aboot Invading Canadia, eh?" our fearless author reports on the land that is like America, only unarmed and with socialized medicine.

I think he's angling for Frank J.'s job, myself.

Entry #2 comes from The Smarter Cop, vintage March 29 (apparently a rare vintage). Entitled 20 MORE Questions I'd Like To Ask John F*** Kerry, Pietro gives the Presidential hopeful the other barrel from his 20 gauge. I'd like the answer to some of those, myself.

Our third entry comes from Mr. Cruse of The Owner's Manual. A brief piece from last April, Land of La Mancha? shows us a proposed $12 billion superscraper for the Moscow skyline, and draws a parallel of interest for the reader. Actually, it looks kinda cool, but I think that until we get a handle on those wacky muslims willing to fly airliners into tall structures, the insurance bill might be a bit high.

Fourth up, Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium decries the sad editorial state of the once-righty UK newspaper The Spectator in another April entry, The Speccie in decline. Give it a read, eh wot?

Number five this week, one more April entry, comes from Practical Penumbra, with the tremendously enjoyable Pythonesque title Oh, Denis, there's some lovely filth down here! While this entry has nothing to do with Monty Python in actuality, it is set in a movie theater, and it does sound as though someone could use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. On the customers.

Entry six comes to us from The Cycling Dude, who, unsurprisingly sends us an entry on (wait for it...) Cycling! But in this case political cycling! He gives us his April 5 entry, Congressional Bicycle Caucus: An Introduction. As he says, "How many ordinary bicyclists are even aware that there is such a thing as the Congressional Bicycle Caucus among the members of the United States House of Representatives?" (Damned special interest groups. They're in the pocket of the bicycle manufacturers, you know. Only interested in selling more bicycles. They just want to see more kids killed and injured in bicycle accidents... Ok, I'll stop now.)

Our seventh entry comes from link whore Symphony Founder Jim Peacock of Snooze Button Dreams. His January 13 post I Can Read Your Mind is one of those "How the Hell Does THAT Work?" mindbender things. Try it out.

Entry #8 comes to us again from April. The Watcher of Weasles gives us A Recipe for Disaster. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train, too.

Our ninth entry comes to us from Interested Participant from (guess when?) April. Apparently Acidman read this one and it inspired his last trip. It seems that Key West has been taking suggestions from San Francisco on how to attract vagrants, er, bums, um... the employment-challenged. *Ahem* The Homeless. In Key West - A New Image he explains how in a matter of weeks after implementing new plans to "help" the unfortunate, they got themselves a LOT of unfortunates. Who'dathunkit? Give it a read and see, once again, how the concept of "cause and effect" seems to escape people who win public office. Sounds like a dream vacation to me. (The beach bum part, not the public official part.)

I have no personal entry in this week's Symphony. I do, however, have a fairly long list on the left column of my blog of posts I think were good or important that you can peruse. I will ask you to read something, though. In honor of today's (June 21) attempt by the team at Scaled Composites to meet the challenge of the X-Prize in their scheduled launch of Space Ship One to 100km altitude, please read (or if you already have, re-read) Bill Whittle's essay Courage. It takes courage to do this stuff, and America is the land built on courage and the willingness to face risks in order to win in the end. We may stumble, and we may fall, but we always get back up. Nobody does it better. We will carry on the dream. We ARE carrying on the dream.

Upcoming sites for The Bestofme Symphony:

Jun 28 - Xset
July 05 - Wetwired
July 12 - The Owner's Manual
July 19 - Sneakeasy's Joint
July 26 - Various Orthodoxies
Aug 02 - (Your blog here) Go ahead. Volunteer. I did. NOW Jim's bribing people to host. Me, I did it for free. (grumblegrumblegripebitchmoan...)