Instead of military aircraft in this week’s fly-by, we’re featuring my friend and dive buddy, Mike, and his Socata TB20 Trinidad. (Wife Michele refers to it as “his beloved”.)

I’ve traveled with Mike and Michele to many of the most exotic dive destinations in the world and, besides a love of world class underwater adventure, we share an affinity for general aviation. Michele shares this photo and cockpit video of Mike and the TB20 in flight.

Suggestion: If you have the bandwidth, move your cursor to the triangle at bottom right and select HQ (high quality) viewing.

From Jamie at Perr-Bear…

Click through all Twelve Days and compare the costs in 2008 vs 2007. It’s entertaining with some great photos!

As promised, here are the winners in our 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Hand Turkey Drawing Contest. Extra points were awarded for little kids’ entries, but there were a few “big kids” who received Honorable Mentions as well. Thanks to everyone that participated! Winners receive a coveted 1-year free subscription to Inessential Musings and the admiration of their parents and friends! Whoo Hoo!

Grand Prize goes to Janet (4) for this wonderful Thanksgiving scene:

First, Second and Third Places go to…

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It’s time for out 2nd Annual Hand Turkey Drawing Contest. I know, the 1st Annual got off to a late start, but we’re starting a little earlier this year. Draw a hand turkey, scan it and email it to me (see “Contact” in Navigation Bar at right) and I’ll post the “winners”. The usual valuable prizes will be awarded! Kids’ efforts get extra points and the deadline is midnight Thursday.

For those of you who’ve forgotten how to draw a hand turkey, here’s an animated GIF from my old website to help jog your memories:

We spent Sunday evening with good friends enjoying Sisko’s excellent chili, Michael’s choice cigars and some fine Napa Valley red wines. The “guy talk” eventually rolled around to how as kids we’d all made rubber band guns — pretty much a piece of wood with a handle and a wooden clothes pin attached to the back or top to hold a stretched rubber band — and how seldom we see kids making them today. It’s probably the fault of merchandising. The unfortunate result? Kids are no longer satisfied with “home made”, not when they can buy this…

…which, of course, leads to this when they need more firepower.

You know, technology is great, but I think our simple “single round” shooters were more fun, easier to make, cost less and, if a “part” broke, we just replaced the firing mechanism (clothes pin) or made a whole new gun! Kids today miss the joy of building something from nothing using only their imaginations, ingenuity and sense of discovery.

Thomas Hawk used the texts of John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s acceptance speeches to make wordles of each. McCain’s wordle is on top, Obama’s is on the bottom.

A “wordle” enables you to see how frequently words appear in a given text, or see the relationship between a column of words and a column of numbers. You can tweak your word “clouds” with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Though not intended to provide reliable analytic insight, many people have found unexpected uses for wordles, from presenting the “gist” of a text to displaying personal identity.

What do McCain’s and Obama’s wordles tell us? I dunno, but wordle users are bound to find something meaningful buried within them.

Make your own.

Wifey sometimes clips articles for me and recently left this one on my desk. I finally read it and have to share it with those of you that might have missed it in your local papers. It’s sweet. So sweet, it just may give you a cavity or two…

Back in 1996, during a middle school field trip to Washington, D.C., Matt Whitmer and Leigh Lacy snuck away for a brief moment in the National Archives building while their 8th grade classmates clustered around the Bill of Rights. They grabbed hands and searched for a little privacy.

They found a nook near the original Declaration of Independence and there, on marble floors, they kissed — ever so quickly — before rejoining the group. But, of course, the puppy love didn’t last; they were fickle and, being in middle school, not quite ready to commit to a lifetime together.

But they both ended up at Miami University of Ohio and, as freshmen, flirted over texts and eventually began dating for real. After college, they moved to Atlanta together where Whitmer got a job with an ad agency and Lacy started teaching 7th grade math at Snellville Middle School.

Recently, they returned to the site of that middle school field trip – the National Archives. This time, at the Declaration of Independence, Whitmer got down on one knee. …

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This is kind of fun and will give you something to do over the long weekend. Upload an image (faces work best) and the application on this site converts it to ASCII letters or squares, b&w or color. Here’s one of Dawn…

It’s science but, given a level table and steady hands, you just might use it to win a few beers at the local pub…

Thanks James!

With 1360 participants, Belgium broke the official Mentos Fountain World Record on April 23th…

“Ahhhh… Was it good for you?”

“Shut up!”

Pulpbard is an open project on wikispaces I know at least a couple of you won’t be able to resist. Of course, if you haven’t seen the film classic Pulp Fiction, none of what follows will make any sense to you…

“Welcome to the Pulp Shakespeare Project, devoted to the reconstruction of William Shakespeare’s play A Slurry Tale, which curiously resembles Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. There is no way to stop this from happening, so this wiki exists to ensure that it is done well, or as well as it can be.”

Forsooth, two memorable scenes originating, as near as I can tell, on Kevin Pease’s LiveJournal, written as the Bard himself might have written them (were he the screenwriter which, of course, he wasn’t, but I’m just sayin’…):

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

Vincent:  And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
Julius:     Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
Vincent:  But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
                 Are strange to ours, with their own history:
                 Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
Julius:     What say they then, pray?
Vincent:  Hachis Parmentier.
Julius:     Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
Vincent:  Cream is but cream, only they say la crème.
Julius:     What do they name black pudding?
Vincent:  I know not;
                 I visited no inn where’t could be bought.

ACT 1 SCENE 8.2. Your pardon; did I break thy concentration?

Reserve A Spot in Heaven claims to be “the only licensed and registered distributor of reservations in Heaven.” Thus far the site offers two novelty packages: The “Essential Travel Kit” for $12.79, which includes “everything needed to transport one individual to Heaven,” and an “All Access Travel Kit” for $24.95 that comes with an additional VIP Pass that “will grant you access to VIP exclusive areas including the Land of Milk and Honey where all the elite get together and kick it.” More

Sound familiar? Here’s a miracle cure for procrastination! Simply print out this token and keep it in your pocket. You’ll be able to take care of all those things you’ve been putting off because you’ve finally got a Round Tuit!

Having trouble rounding out your list of New Year resolutions? Perhaps this resolution generator created by Jim Hoffman will help. Simply select whether you want to start or stop something, click “What’s my New Year’s Resolution?” and there you have it.

Hmmm… Looks like Jim’s generator gave me a toughie… Wait… Maybe not…

It also gave me “Stop dancing on tables right now.” Now, that’s going to be a challenge!

…several times, in fact. I wasn’t going to say anything about the experience, but I have to tell someone so I can get on with my life!

First it was my cousin, Mike. Then Frank. Teddy hit me the same day. And then Kerri and Gary! And Candy and her friend. Even my brudda-from-anudda-mudda, Michael, and his missus, Sisko, elfed both Dawn and me!

I’m sure Office Max is getting a nice ride from the viral advertising. Pretty clever campaign.

Click on any elf and watch our “elfing” by Michael and Sisko. They even elfed themselves! That’s Dawn and me in the #2 and #4 slots.