MOTUS A.D.: Mad Cow Alert in Omaha: MOO

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Mad Cow Alert in Omaha: MOO

First, let me thank Portia Elizabeth for remembering Hub’s Anniversary yesterday! He’s still out there, keeping an eye on you.

The “Eye of Sauron” created by dust rings around the star Fomalhaut; captured by Hub

Our actual birthday (as Portia pointed out, Hub and I are fraternal twins) is April 1st (April Fools Day, butt that’s just a coincidence) so we had 23 days of childhood to bond as sibs before Hub was launched to keep an eye on the universe and I was sent to the Smithsonian (because I was a girl - an early volley in the Republican War on Women).

Butt as is our habit, we always celebrate (telepathically) on his launch date. Yesterday was no exception: I told him what was going on around here, he pretended he didn’t already know. (Hub’s spent his years in isolation perfecting that whole Einstein time/space continuum thingy; so he knows how to see forward, backward and inward) And he once again encouraged me to remain hopeful, with a small “h”. I take that as a good sign.

Perhaps you remember my post from last year, when Hub’s anniversary fell on Easter, A Joyous Message of HOPE:

And oh the places Hub’s been; the sights he’s seen! Twenty-one years bearing witness to the magnitude and magnificence of God’s universe has imbued him with wisdom beyond his years, and abilities beyond our earthbound souls. Unlike us, he is not constrained by linear continuums of time and four dimensions of space; therefore he can see our future from his berth. He dare not speak it, and I dare not ask.

Hub’s transmissions are always the highlight of my year. You probably remember the rest of them too: Solar Tsunami Tonight (which coincided with Lady M’s trip to Spain: awesome aurora footage!), Does This Black Hole Make My Butt Look Small? (Hub’s Christmas/New Year/Holiday card from 2010, 2010: A Space Odyssey, and this one from the way back machine of 2009: Nice Pictures, Bro, when he sent his now famous Butterfly nebula shot.

Before moving on to more mundane issues, I just want to repost Hub’s musical transmission from 2010. It will help you put everything in perspective:

Now then, as you already know both BO and MO spent yesterday wooing the youth vote as they are the last best HOPE for victory, not having experienced the economic realities of HOPE and CHANGE yet (student loans don’t count, because they also haven’t figured out that their conflict resolution jobs aren’t going to cover the monthly repayments).

For her appearances MO once again wore recycled; this time her Balenciaga Good and Plenty dress from 2009,

MO, talking to “the girls” in Omaha

This frock was one of the originals in the Balenciaga candy collection, seen below: Skittles with built in sparkly boob belt on the right, and the 2009 showing of the Good ‘N Plenty frock (which now seems vaguely ironic), left.

Launching a country-wide campaign yesterday, Lady M appeared alongside the Oracle of Omaha, touting the implementation of the Buffet rule - which could make those steaks that Omaha is so famous for a lot less affordable for a lot more people. Later, in Iowa where they grow the corn that those Nebraska cows eat, she told a group of supporters:

"In the end when you're making those impossible choices, it all boils down to who you are and what your stand for. And we all know who my husband is."

Do we even have a speech editor anymore?

Beware the cowboy wearing a black hat

Oh, and that reminds me, bad news for the day: Mad Cow Disease discovered in a California cow at the rendering plant.

Butt don’t worry, I’ve got good news too! The War on Terror: it’s OVER! So there’s another promise kept.

Now can we get rid of the TSA?

Hey I’ve got a good idea! Instead of just laying off all those TSA agents that we won’t need to screen for terrorists anymore,

Isabella: 4 years old. Fit’s gun-toting terrorist profile

we can reassign them to take the place of the 50,000 cattle guards in Colorado that Big Guy fired. Butt do we really want to get started on cow jokes?

Stop me if I’ve already told you this one…

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in

a remote Pasco pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg,Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right.. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're an aide in the Obama Administration", says Bud.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars' worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. ...

“Now give me back my dog.”