We got back from the Bahamas last night. I may have more later, but here are a few quick observations:

1. Yes, they really do talk like that. No, they’re not kidding.
2. Don’t drink the water.
3. Don’t even think of drinking the coffee.
4. Everyone drives on the wrong side of the road, but the driver does not sit on the wrong side of the car.
5. The beaches are lovely for small children, but will likely disappoint avid surfers.
6. Cable Beach is on the north coast, meaning that the sun and the water are in opposite directions. This is good if you consider controlled skin damage, a.k.a. tanning, to be a bug. It’s bad if you consider it a feature.
7. Atlantis, where we visited for an hour or so, is a class act.
8. The Radisson, where we stayed, is not.
9. Stuart Cove’s is awesome. Worth booking in advance if you want to do the fancy stuff.
10. Bahamian Christmas carols are wrong. They’re just wrong.

Thanks to Cardinal Martini for holding down the fort. Be sure to visit his blog soon.

UPDATE: If you’re jealous, don’t be.  You too can spend a couple of days there, for considerably less than it cost us.  The only down side to this offer is that instead of getting to fly with a near-bankrupt dinosaur airline that squeezes you into a tin can like a sardine, requires you to pay for the most basic snacks, and bombards you with obnoxious propaganda about the evils of free enterprise, you’ll have to settle for a newer, profitable airline with more legroom, free snacks and your own mini-TV.

Here are just some of California’s new laws taking effect tomorrow (followed by my witty ripostes).

• Performing body piercing on a minor can be punishable by a $250 fine, unless the minor’s parent gives approval.

What about minors’ rights to privacy?! Luckily performing an invasive, dangerous medical procedure that involves killing a fetus inside a minor requires no such parental approval.

• Law enforcement officers can impound vehicles of drunken driving suspects if the person has a blood-alcohol level of .10 percent or higher and has one or more previous convictions within the past seven years.

I think if said DUIer has had previous convictions within the past seven years, the cop should be allowed shoot him on the spot.

• Pharmacists are barred from refusing to fill a prescription on moral, ethical or religious grounds, unless they have previously notified their employer of their objection and the employer can reasonably accommodate it.

I think two things about this; one, if a person thinks he will be unable to fill prescriptions because of his moral objections to doing so, then I think he should choose, without government coercion, a profession other than Pharmacy; two, should the government really be meddling in this? Or is this more the proper role of the market to sort out? Pharmacy A hires people who refuse to fill certain prescriptions, so people who want those prescrips go to Pharmacy B.

• Some entertainment venues will be required to announce the availability of emergency exits at the start of performances.

If you can’t find emergency exits on your own, tough luck. It’s called survival of the fittest.

• Homeowners associations must use secret ballots for elections in common-interest developments.

Does passing this law really fall within the proper scope of government action?

• Lenders who offer cash advances to consumers whose inheritance is tied up in probate will have to disclose all fees and get court approval for the transactions.

Again, should government pass this type of law? If you are stupid enough to take a cash advance when your means of repaying it are tied up in probate, tough luck. It’s called survival of the awarest.

• Extends the ban on the sale of soda on public school campuses to high schools. Previously, the law only applied to middle and elementary schools. The law also sets nutrition standards for food served and sold in K-12 public schools.

More asinine nannying. Scapegoating soft-drink companies for childhood obesity is wrong and dumb.

And finally:

• High-risk sex offenders cannot live within a half mile of public or private K-12 schools. Previously, the boundary was one-quarter mile from K-8 schools.

This law is moronic; these types of offenders shouldn’t be allowed to live amongst us at all, regardless of their proximity to schools. Instead, they should be locked up for life, and/or executed. Generally speaking, in California a “high-risk” sex offender is a person convicted of multiple violent crimes, at least one of which was a violent sex crime.

Merry New Year!

For those of you interested in such things, I have posted my thoughts on “Munich” over at my homeblog, Cardinal Martini.

Excerpt:

“Munich” could have been a serious study of the most important political and moral issues of our time, but rather than actually confronting the subject-matter head-on, and thus making some kind of timeless point about humanity… Spielberg instead has opted for creating a forgettable and meaningless melodrama focused on one single, shallow character’s struggles with himself.

That criticism notwithstanding, “Munich” was both more watchable than I’d expected, and a far more pernicious piece of political propaganda than I’d expected. It’s this second point upon which I’d like to expound; Spielberg has crafted this movie in such a way that his Leftist political message against killing our enemies doesn’t become apparent until well past the halfway mark. The audience are frogs slowly boiling in his pot.

The rest is here.

If you care about America, or capitalism, or American Capitalism, or even just plain old truth and justice, go and read this post at Cardinal Martini. A bunch of jerks are trying to destroy Coca-Cola.

Last night, the girlfriend and I went to see “The Family Stone”. (I agreed to see it, despite having read Stephen Hunter’s evisceration of it in the Post, because I always do whatever my girlfriend tells me to — and because one of the “Stones”, Rachel McAdams, is really hot. [But not as good looking as you, honey.]) Sneaky marketing employed by the movie corporations had led us to believe that this was a “comedy”. So, in the least, I figured I’d get a good chuckle out of it. I did not. In fact, this movie was far worse than I could have possibly imagined.

The first hour was horrid. It wasn’t funny, and I hated all the characters. The setting resembled my own personal vision of Hell; imagine a fine house decorated in a respectable WASP-type fashion that is infested with two aging Bobo hipsters and a horde of their irritating hippie offspring; and they are all a**holes. The Diane Keaton character — the most loathsome of the lot — seemed to be battling a terminal disease; the prospect of witnessing this character’s death was almost tempting enough for us to remain in the theater until the credits. But, alas dear readers, we only stayed for the first hour.

(And then we sneaked into “Munich” (which I had previously vowed not to watch) because I figured Hollywood owed us after we forked over our dough for this “Stone” fiasco. Later today I may tell you what I think of “Munich” after I sort out all the things I disliked about it. [And if you are an agent of Universal Pictures, Dreamworks SKG, or AMC Theaters, I was joking about that “sneaked into” thing — naturally we paid full price to see your piece of structurally, intellectually, and morally confused garbage.])

Even electricity, no doubt in concert with the ACLU, is trying to stomp out Christmas. Here’s a report of a burned-down Christmas Tree at a moderately known California attraction:

The fire at Disney’s Grand California Hotel in the 1600 block of South Disneyland Drive was reported at about 3 a.m., according to Anaheim Fire Department spokeswoman Maria Sabol.

She called the fire “electrical in nature,” saying it started after employees changed some lightbulbs on the tree and turned the lights back on.

The blaze was contained by the emergency sprinkler system in the lobby, Sabol said, and 18 firefighters were able to put it out quickly when they arrived.

Clearly, sprinkler water is on John Gibson’s side of the fight over Christmas. But the real question is, did the hotel’s guests enjoy the sound emitted by the fire alarms?

Guests said the alarm was deafening.

“The noise was from hell,” said guest Lee Krize. “And we all get up. I look at the people out the window, and I can see flames in the lobby. We all get dressed, trying to get a head count because there are 11 of us all together, including a 3-month-old baby.”

“You know how it is: You’re sleeping and you hear that beeping,” said guest Joseph LaFrance. “It kind of wakes you up. But you get through it. And it’s better to save lives than to be stuck in a building like this.”

Better to wake up and leave the building than to stay in bed and die. I hear ya, man.

In an earlier post, I advanced the idea that killing bears that have been stealing people’s grapes in Northern California, and then eating those bears “while sipping a nice red wine” (implicitly made from the very same grapes) is just a part of life. Clever, no? In the comments section to the post, “No Blood for Wine!” a gentleman named Leland suggested we boycott bear-unfriendly wineries, and was also apparently hungry so he asked what we thought he should prepare for supper:

Should we trap and kill bald eagles that eat grapes, too? Killing then eating bears “while sipping a nice red wine” is not just a part of life. At least not mine.

First of all, Leland, while it is a little unorthodox I don’t mind if you sip white wine with your bear meat. No need to get snippy. As to your other point, I’ve never eaten eagle, Leland, but I’m sure it tastes just fine. After all, bear is not for everyone! (Plus, with eagle meat comes feathers which you can make into a cool headdress as a sort of bonus.)

Questions for you people out there in Blogland:

• Do you prefer eagle meat or bear meat?
• And, do you think it is okay for Leland to drink white wine with dark meat, or should he stick with the red?

Please discuss in the comments section.

ALSO: Hate-mail from members of the animal-lobby should be directed to my email address, which can be found in the lower part of the left-hand column on my home blog, Cardinal Martini.

In 1889, a Paiute Indian named Jack Wilson decided he was the Messiah and created a new movement called the Ghost Dance Religion. It was based on hating the White Man.** Several of the early converts were from the Sioux Nation. While Sitting Bull, leader of the Sioux, was not one of the Ghost Dancers, he nevertheless tolerated their wacky religion.

This turn of events made the US government nervous, and so some federal agents tried to bring in Sitting Bull on December 15, 1890; a gun battle ensued, and Sitting Bull was killed. The new leader of the Sioux and his followers met up with the 7th Cavalry in Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Apparently, both sides were trying to make peace, and so the Sioux all but surrendered to the Army.

On the morning of Dec. 29, 1890, while the US Army was attempting to disarm the Sioux, a gun evidently went off, chaos ensued, 153 Indians and 25 Cavalrymen were killed. And so it has been called the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Insane Progressives — but I repeat myself — however, apparently can’t view historical events such as this merely as what happened before, and see America for what she is today. Instead, these Progs have to continually dredge up whatever past so-called injustices they can find and beat everyone about the head with them. Mark Anthony Rolo, writing in the Anniston (Alabama) Star, is one such lunatic lefty:

For American Indians, however, that snowy South Dakota morning proved to be one of the most significant days in their history. The deadly events at Wounded Knee brought to an end what was once known as the Indian Wars Period, in which Indian tribes resisted efforts by the U.S. military to force their people into prison-like land parcels in order to clear the way for white settlers.

Today, the massacre at Wounded Knee is mythologized and memorialized as just one of a number of tragic, ugly stories of how this country was formed. But for generations of American Indians, Wounded Knee has meant more than mere history. The massacre has passed down scars of suspicion and badges of bitterness toward the white man.

Question: Why are Progressives so obsessed with race?

Cross-posted at Cardinal Martini (my home blog)

This post has been linked at Diggers Realm’s “Around the Blogosphere #31”.

** In the comments, Clark Smith makes me think I should clarify something. In its original conception, the Ghost Dance Religion may have focused on the glory of Indian culture, rather than solely on “hating the white man”. (Although I have my doubts that it was truly about “pining for their own culture as preceded the arrival of the white man” considering the Ghost Dance doctrine contains a lot of Christian symbolism and themes — most notably that there is only one true God.) So, perhaps I was unfair in suggesting Jack Wilson himself created it merely with the intention of formalizing a hatred of the white man. Nevertheless, it is clear to me based upon what I know of the pertinent events that the Sioux who joined the Religion, and eventually were “massacred” by the Army, did so because they hated whites and believed the Religion accurately predicted a coming destruction of the whites.

From the ABC:

A kangaroo that escaped from a private enclosure almost three months ago is still on the hop somewhere in south-western France.

Bernadetter Darchen, a retired zoologist who owns the animal, says two of the marsupials broke through a hole in their enclosure in Coux-et-Bigaroque in the Dordogne region.

Daily Pundits San Francisco Real-Estate Blog notes that Al Gore is moving to the City. Here’s some real-estate guy’s press release on the subject:

“Ever since people learned that Al and Tipper Gore were moving into the St. Regis, I’ve had three times as many inquiries about the place,” says Damion Matthews, a realtor specializing in San Francisco’s luxury condo market.

“There’s something about living near a person so powerful and important that really excites folks,” he says.

Maybe there is something about living near powerful and important folks, but what does that have to do with Al Gore?