All I Wanted Was Some Yogurt!!!

Would somebody tell me, please, I beg, what the hell happenned to the state of YOGURT while my back was turned? I went to get myself a couple cups today for upcoming breakfasts, and I was freakin’ LOST.

It’s been a few years since I bought yogurt on a regular basis, and I’ve always been pretty simple & basic in what I like. I want an 8-ounce cup of fruit-on-the-bottom, preferably blueberry, peach, or raspberry, maybe even pineapple or just plain old vanilla now & again. That’s not too much to ask, or so I thought.

Somewhere along the way, yogurt cups shrank in size as the price went up. They used to be four for a buck….Now, some of the ones I saw today were 89 cents apiece, and that was cheap in some cases. Most every cup I saw was now a shrunken 6 ounces or a shriveled and paltry 4 ounces. That’s what, two spoonfuls? What the hell kind of snack is that, let alone a serious breakfast?

It’s nigh on impossible to find fruit on the bottom anymore. Everything is swirled and blended and chunk-free. I want chunks. I want real fruit. I wanna mix it up at my own discretion.

The other impossibility is in finding something that isn’t “Lite”. Screw Lite. That’s devilry and pure crap, because it means artificial sweeteners like Aspartame and Splenda, both of which taste like pure, 100% unadulterated ass. A little sugar and real fruit makes all the difference.

All the labels are full of pretty, polysyllabic healthy-sounding words like probiotic, imunitas, Activ, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus reuteri, DHA, Omega-3, bifidas, and other such gobbledygook. I just want an 8-ounce cup of stir-me-up-and-eat-me-real-fruit-non-lite-full-sugar-and-carbs non pro-anything yogurt. Please.

I don’t want to be assaulted with reminders of how healthy it is, because I already know that it’s good for me. Even when it has the sugar and lacks all that 12-letter mumbojumbo biology-class crappage, it’s STILL good for you. I don’t need blended, whipped, Swiss-Style, Mousse, Lite, etc all in a wee plastic shotglass. I’m about to just go get one of those monster 2-pound buckets of plain yogurt and spoon in a jar of Polaner All-Fruit raspberry jam……

Concert Review: Shiny Toy Guns at the Windjammer

I had a religious experience Tuesday night. I entered the venue a casual fan and exited a full-fledged convert to the church of Shiny Toy Guns.

The band was founded in 2002 by Jeremy Dawson (bass and synths) and Chad Petree (vocals/guitar), with Carah Faye (vocals/synths/bass) and Mikey Martin (drums) joining in 2004. The band quickly gained popularity locally and through their MySpace site. In early 2005, they independently released their first album We Are Pilots. They began to tour extensively, and in June 2006 they signed to Universal Records. The re-released a finalized copy of We Are Pilots in late fall 2006. And as their website states, they’ve been “on tour forever”.

Allow me to preface a bit by saying it was Karma that intervened on my behalf and allowed me to even see the show in the first place. Bands that I like don’t exactly play Charleston on a weekly basis. Seldom do they venture closer than Atlanta or Orlando, and if they do it’s usually Charlotte. I had originally wanted to go see Shiny Toy Guns at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, playing with Blue October and Yellowcard last Friday night. However, I work late on Friday nights, and being a responsible adult human with a mortgage and car payment is a bitch. Needless to say, seeing the show was out of the question. By sheer blind luck I caught the tail end of a radio ad for Shiny Toy Guns playing at the Windjammer on Isle of Palms and immediately made a mental note to look it up. Sure enough, it was on Tuesday, my day off, and it was gonna be a FREE show. Whoo hoo! I was to be rewarded for my suffering after all.

Oddly enough, in my seven years of living here in the Lowcountry, I’d never been inside the Windjammer before. Upon entering I was quite surprised at how compact it is, which meant that barring any sudden surge of bodies, we’d be a mere couple feet from the band. BONUS!

After about 60 seconds in the place I took a better look at the guy standing in front of me at the bar & recognized the tattoo on his forearm. Lo & behold, it was none other than Chad. Very cool. He was kind enough to take a picture with me (which I accidentally deleted, like a total dumbass) and we chatted for a couple minutes. He was very personable and genuine, and radiated ZERO pompousness or swelled-head attitude. Here I was just casually chatting with a guy that I listen to on the radio and see on TV, like two regular Joes. Both Jeremy and Mikey were also wandering the venue, checking equiptment and saying hi to people. I didn't see Carah before the show except for the occasional glimpse from the upstairs waiting area, but during the show she interacted with all of us n the front row. I’ve caught more loftiness from certain local minor-league sports figures that I’ve encountered than all four of these genuine rock stars combined. It was damned refreshing.

The show itself was pure energy, despite Chad’s bronchitis and a tour schedule that saw the band go from Myrtle Beach to Seattle to Virginia to Charleston in a span from Friday night to Tuesday. The acoustics at the ‘Jammer made it a little hard at times to pick out all the words, and admittedly I only knew a few of the songs at first, but every song sounded great. Dancefloor anthem “Le Disko”, currently heard in the new Motorola RAZR commercial, was a little less electronic and a little thrashier live, with Carah’s half-growled, half-purred vocals carrying raw power that the crowd fed off of. It’s impossible to stand still at a Shiny Toy Guns show.

A song I’d never heard before, the gorgeous track “Rocketship”, is getting constant play on my MP3 player now, and the show closer was an incredible performance of the current single “You Are The One”, which has been the song on my MySpace page for about the last month or so. But out of a sense of sentimentality, I think the highlight of the set list was a special treat for me, a killer cover of “Stripped”, originally done by my all-time favorite band, Depeche Mode. Shinys, you did the Mode proud. It was amazing.

All too soon it was over, and the band was gracious enough to hang out afterwards to take pictures and sign autographs; again, very cool of them to do so. If not for the hour and a half drive home and having to work the next day, we would have stayed awhile and gotten more pictures. Instead, it was out into the falling drizzle with my faith renewed in the fact that there are still good bands out there left for me to discover, and with the knowledge that with their tour schedule, there’s a good chance that I’ll get to see Shiny Toy Guns again soon.

What Am I Listening To?

I don’t listen to a lot of regular radio anymore. My local alternative station abruptly shit the bed and changed formats to pre-programmed lite schlock-rock, and if you read my blogs regularly you know my disdain for Top-40 radio on the whole. At home, I listen to a lot of the Sirius channels, but mostly the New Wave channel and they don’t really play anything newer than 1990. I catch some new stuff via recommendations from friends, and from catching the occasional song on VH-1 or IMF. So…..what exactly am I listening to these days?

•Shiny Toy Guns: two songs, “You Are The One” and “Le Disko”. Part synth-pop, part rock, all cool. STG are playing a show at the Windjammer Tuesday night and all signs point to a FREE show for the over-21 crowd.

•Erasure: “Light at the End of the World”--The full cd is yet another incredible release from Erasure. I dare you to sit still during “Sucker For Love”.

•Erasure: “Golden Heart” (GRN’s Golden Glow Mix)—This was a fan club-only free download for one of the album tracks to the above cd. Yayyy for free downloads!

•Dave Gahan: “Kingdom”. The first single off his upcoming cd “Hourglass”. A really solid song from the Depeche Mode front man. The chorus soars above a deep murky wall of sound.

•Just Jack: “Snowflakes”—Very clever song from earlier this year, a stream of consciousness rap set over The Cure’s classic song “Lullabye”. Something tells me the guy takes his name from the in-joke on Will & Grace.

•B21: “Darshan”—I first heard this song a couple years ago on the soundtrack to “Bend It Like Beckham”. It’s a wicked dance groove set to a Bhangra beat and sung in Hindi. I have no idea what the song’s about but it sounds great.

•Brandi Carlile: “The Story”—Thanks to VH-1 for helping me discover this song, a delicious blend of Sarah McLachlan’s frailty and Melissa Etheridge’s power.

•The Last Town Chorus: “Modern Love”-This song was featured on an episode of Gray’s Anatomy last year. It’s a cover of David Bowie’s song, but slowed down into a somber ballad punctuated by pedal-steel guitars.

•Kate Havnevik: “Grace Master”—Another song from Gray’s Anatomy.

•Greeeen: “Hajikero Hajikero”—I caught this song by total accident on IMF. It’s in Japanese so I again have zero clue what the song is about. It sounds like a poppy blend of rock and rap and the video is super cute. Catchier than the flu in January.

•Kelly Osbourne: “One Word”— Before you start throwing rocks at me, listen to the song. It really amazed me at how good it is. Very old-school 1985 New Wave gloominess, unless you’re listening to the Chris Cox Remix, in which case it’s an ethereal dose of bum-wigglery. It’s over a year old now actually…I just refuse to put it out of my MP3 playlists.


If you’re bored senseless and looking for something to listen to, go check these songs out on iTunes or YouTube and see if you like them. Maybe you too will discover something new & interesting.

Before She Commits Felonious Vandalism....

While everyone is complaining that Britney and Lindsay and Paris and Nicole are supposedly bad role models for our young female populace, another more insidious threat looms under the guise of a squeaky clean image. Carrie Underwood, the winner of Season Five of American Idol, winner of umpteen Grammy/ACA/CMA Awards, etc… is corrupting our youth. Who would suspect that an American Idol would be teaching our daughters to commit felonies? This criminal must be stopped!!!

Wait. What exactly are you babbling about, Steve?

I give you the song “Before He Cheats”, a crossover hit on both the pop and country charts. Carrie sings about a boyfriend who is out with another woman, a woman that she clearly looks down upon for her inability to shoot pool or drink whiskey, and she vents her rage by committing destruction to private property.

The chorus says it all:

I dug my keys into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel-drive;
Carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all for tires,
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats…

Rather than confront her significant other in a rational manner and voice her displeasure at being stepped out upon, Miss Underwood instead brandishes a baseball bat and a knife and vandalizes someone else’s property.

According to Kelly Blue Book’s website (www.kbb.com) a 2007 Dodge Ram SLT 1500 4WD, fully loaded with a 5.7 liter Hemi, has an MSRP of approximately $39, 230.00.

After having a key dug into the sides, a trip to Maaco for their Ambassador Paint Service will run approximately $1500.00 for the prep, painting, and clearcoating.

After having a name carved into the leather seats, they’ll of course need replacing. KBB listed leather seats on the Ram 1500 as being $910.00, so having them installed at the dealership, plus markup, will run an even grand.

Both headlights need to be replaced, at approximately $150.00 each.

And those slashed tires, well-- those Michelin LTX M/S - P275/60TR20 tires run you $252.96 each at Sears, or $1,011.84.

So, doing the math, that comes out to approximately $3811.84 before tax. Call the sales tax perhaps 12% and that’s $457.42. We’re in the neighborhood of $4269.26 now, fully depreciating the truck’s value by a full 11%.

Tell me that this isn’t worth a few nights in the slammer?

28 Days Later

Back on Friday, August 24 I received the disturbing news that some scumbag had managed to get hold of my Visa debit card number and had used it to make some fraudulent charges that caused my account to be overdrawn for a day or two. Needless to say, I was bent. Beyond bent; I was livid.

I spent the better part of 30 minutes on the phone with a fraud manager at Wachovia, and this individual was quite helpful at the time. They cancelled my card and said they’d issue me a new one, and that I’d get it in 3-5 days. They also said they’d reimburse my account for any & all charges and that I should have the money back in my account by 0900 Saturday morning. Okay, cool… I may have to go without my bank card for a couple days but at least I’ll have my scratch back.

Sure enough, the money was there at 0900 Saturday morning as promised. And right after that is when the wheels fell off the train. After a week of waiting, Crys called Wachovia wondering where the card was. They said it would be 7-10 business days, not 3-5 days as I was originally told. Okayyyyyy…….factoring in the weekends and the Labor Day bank holiday, I was looking at two weeks without a card. Daily checking of a very empty mailbox ensues.

She called again, and they didn’t want to give any information because it was for my card, not hers. WTF? It’s a joint account. So she called again the next day, and this day's guy seemed all happy & jolly and said that we should have received the card since it had already been mailed out. He said he’d cancel that card and overnight us a new one……

Now, this is Thursday night when he says this, so the card would be overnighted on Friday. The day before the Scottish Games. Nobody’s gonna be home on Saturday, we say, so can you have it sent for Monday delivery? Suuuurrrrre…no problem, says he.

Monday rolls around. UPS hasn’t shown up by 5PM. A call to UPS finds no such package for delivery to mine address. So sad. Yet another call to Wachovia with much anger and ill will follows. This last guy was appalled that we’d been waiting over 3 weeks for a replacement card, and also wonders why no one along the way has suggested I go to my local branch and get a temporary ATM card. Well, well, well…what’s this? News to us, sayeth I. Helpful Dude says that the previous guy never overnighted my card, and instead put it in the regular snail mail.

Whoa. Hold up. All engines stop. It…was…MAILED? So, that’s like, what, another 5-7 days? Shit! Helpful Guy was terribly sorry, old chap, and was hopeful that it would arrive by the end of the week.

It did. It arrived Friday the 21st, at Late O’clock in the afternoon, while I was at work. By the time I get home and call to activate the card, it will be the 22d, which means it’s been 4 weeks. Yes, 28 days from when I called to cancel my tainted card and order a new one to the time when I’ll be able to access my money when I want to without writing a check or using cash. How’s that for a scary story?

Sure Signs You're Getting Old

This goes sorta hand in hand, tongue in cheek with the blog I posted yesterday...that one was serious, and this one, well, is typical me.





Sure signs you’re getting old:

•Looking “emo” makes no sense. Nor does wearing baggy clothes with your ass hanging out.
•Your clothes actually fit, and can segue from the workplace to a casual get together.
•When you see kids twirling glow sticks at a dance club, you want to shove those glow sticks up their asses. And the pacifiers. And the lollipops.
•You check out a hottie’s ass and then feel gross when you realize she could be your daughter.
•You check out a hottie’s ass and feel gross when you realize she’s your friend’s daughter…and that she hangs out with YOUR daughter.
•When and if you do go to a dance club, instead of going at 11PM and staying till 5AM, you go at 9PM and want to bail around 1AM
•Instead of just drinking all your money away & eating Ramen Noodles, you weigh the cost of a few drinks to how much grocery money you’re wasting, and you sure as hell can’t take grocery money out of the mortgage payment to cover it.
•Instead of feeling the aftereffects of the night’s festivities the next afternoon when you regain consciousness, such as sore legs or a headache, you’re hurting by midnight.
•You overanalyze the concept of Red Bull and Vodka as inane, mixing a depressant and a stimulant and therefore canceling each other out.
•You understand that Jaegermeister was conceived as an aid to ease your stomach after a big meal and not as an all-purpose ingredient in getting trashed.
•You finally have enough money to buy a sweet convertible sports car….and then realize that you’re now that sad, balding, chubby dork trying to look cool with the expensive four-wheeled penis extender that you made fun off in high school.
•You listen to talk radio in the car as you commute instead of blaring 140 BPM techno through the subwoofers.
•You own a mini-van complete with stickers proclaiming your kid to be a mediocre underachiever at JP Dillweed Middle School…and like it.
•You remember the phone as being a big chunky thing that was either black, puke yellow, tan, or avocado green and had a rotary dial, and are blown away that you can now talk on a Star Trek earpiece that’s hooked to the Dingleberry pocket calculator in your pants.
•You remember when you had to physically CHANGE the TV channels instead of programming a DVR.
•You remember MTV playing videos.
•You remember Britney Spears in pigtails, dressed like a hooker & lip-syncing her first single, instead of in a wig, dressed like a hooker and lip-syncing her new single.
•The only time you get to hear your favorite songs anymore on the radio are when some rap star samples them to repetitively mumble incoherently over.
•The only way to find a t-shirt for your favorite bands is to make one yourself or shop at vintage thrift shops.
•You remember a time when you couldn’t get a CBGB shirt at Target and had to actually GO there. Or…..you remember CBGB’s being relevant at all.

Everybody's Free....to Get Old

This has been a very, very surreal summer for me. It’s been a summer of bittersweet emotions and nostalgic walks down memory lane. It’s been a summer of quiet introspection at times, and the occasional self-imposed question of “what if?” now & again. You see, I graduated high school 20 years ago this past June 10th, and it’s now been 20 years since that special summer of 1987, my last summer as a kid and my first summer as an adult, making stupid kid mistakes and learning adult lessons in the process.

I’m 38 now, and wondering where the hell the past 20 years actually WENT. I really don’t look 38, unless you look really close at the silver hairs gathering at my temples and the crow’s feet around my eyes. Most days I don’t really feel 38, except at the end of a 14-16 hour day at work or when I first wake up a little stiff from the aforementioned days. And most anyone who knows me swears I don’t act like I’m 38. There’s still a healthy bit of that 18-year old kid left in me, I guess.

Along the way, I’ve lived, loved, lost, learned, and laughed. Lots.

Am I where I thought I’d be now 20 years ago? Not hardly. But who at 18 can really predict and forecast with absolute accuracy where they’ll be in 20 years? I deviated from my so-called Master Plan probably about 30 minutes after I made it. Most of you did, too, I bet.

I did achieve some of my goals, though some took longer than others. I became a soldier, fulfilling a childhood dream of being in the military, but I never did get to fly a bad-ass jet fighter at twice the speed of sound. I made it to Germany like I wanted to, and was a part of history as the Berlin Wall came down around me. I made a couple trips to Italy and got to see some amazing things there. I left the military somewhat disillusioned after only 4 years, but I don’t regret a single moment of it.

I thought I’d be married with kids and entrenched in a successful career by the time I was 25. I was wrong.

I eventually got married…twice. The first was pretty much an unmitigated disaster and I take my fair share of the blame for it. Mistakes were made. The second time around has been a lot more fun, though, and I’d like to think I’m doing it right this time. I’m certainly a lot happier.

I never did get bitten by the baby bug like I thought I would, so I have no biological children, but I do have a seven year old stepson that I think I’ve made a pretty good impact on. He loves hockey and thinks wearing a kilt is cool. He already liked dinosaurs before I came along so I can’t take credit for that one, despite my own childhood obsession with paleontology. If I can just get him to listen to Depeche Mode, I’ll have fully corrupted the boy.

As a teenager I wanted an earring but my folks would have none of that. I finally did that at almost 23 years of age, and 16 years later I’m lucky if I wear it twice a month. I toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo when I was a young adult, especially in the Army, but could never decide on it and never really expected myself to ever go through with it. Two year ago I finally got my first, and two weeks ago I just got my third and am designing my fourth. I seem to have gotten over my indecision pretty well.

After writing for the school paper, I always expected to have written a couple of best-selling novels by now, spending my royalty checks basking in the sun on a white-sand beach and sucking down fruity drinks with fruity umbrellas in them, wearing fruity shorts and fruity shirts. Instead, I write an obscure fruity blog while basking in the cool glow of my laptop screen.

I guess I expected to have a full head of hair and a 30-inch waist forever, too. Not bloody likely. I guess I kinda miss my “lines”….my storyline, my waistline, and my hairline.

I don’t look at the past 20 years as wasted; far from it. I look at them as spent. Some of my time was spent wisely and some….well, not so much. I still have time left to do the things I want to do, like fling myself out of a moving aircraft or stand on the walls of a castle in the Scottish Highlands, but I just have fewer years left in which to do them.
At 18, there was less urgency I guess, figuring I had forever, or at least a good 50-60 years with which to pursue my dreams. Now, at 38, I do feel a slight almost-panic at knowing I only have maybe 30-40 years left to work with before the Big Dirt Nap.

I still listen to a lot of the same bands that I did at 18. I’m fortunate in that most of them are still producing music today. I’ve also picked up TONS of new music along the way, too. My tastes have stayed somewhat the same, but expanded a lot as well. I used to wanna be a famous entertainer, but I obviously never became a rock star or Hollywood A-Lister either. Oops.

And friends……you gotta have friends. I’m very lucky to still be as close as ever with some of my oldest friends, the ones who stood by me through all the times good & bad. John and Chris, I salute you for being two of the best friends a guy could ever ask for. I’m grateful to still be friends with some of my old Army buddies, like Rick, Ray, Mike, Steve, and DJ. And I’ve become better friends within the past year with some of my old classmates from school , friends that I may never have been close to while we were in school, but I’m grateful to be better friends with now. Michelle, Anne, Courtney, and Lea Ann: thanks a million.

To still be friends with people for 20 years is a blessing indeed. I’ve lost many along the way, but gained so many more during that same time. So to my friends, I say thank you for putting up with me.

And to my wife: the best is yet to come. Two years down; forever to go.

In closing, I want to share with you this brilliantly poignant video clip that was recently sent to me by my friend Ray Gellenbeck. An enterprising young director named Ryan Ferreira made, as his first project, a short film set to the music/narrative of “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen” from Baz Luhrmann. Please go give it a view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY_GyyvsHbM

I guarantee after you watch it, you’ll take a trip through the years yourself.

The Sun and The Rainfall

Seeing that this summer marked 20 years since I graduated, a lot of my thoughts as of late have been reminiscings of that summer of 1987 when I graduated from Robert W. Traip Academy in Kittery, Maine.

Summers here in South Carolina are hot and muggy, oppressively so. That wasn’t the case in coastal southern Maine in the summer of 1987. The days could be hot, but hot for Maine was 90 with a relatively low humidity tempered by the cool ocean-fed breezes. The evenings, by South Carolina standards, were coolish at times, down to the mid 60’s.

The other day while driving home after midnight after a mind-numbing work shift, the night air held that same cool, calm feel to it that I remembered. It felt great, almost decadent, after such a blazing summer. And there, on a dark, two-lane rural road, with a 70-degree breeze on my arm out the window, I lost 20 years.

In my mind I was no longer driving on Highway 17A, but riding in the backseat of a pale blue Datsun B210 with a red and yellow “MEAT IS MURDER” bumper sticker on it from the band The Smiths. It was Selina Standish’s car, and she had invited me along to go joyriding across the river in New Hampshire with her brother Gil, his buddy Jon Saddler, and her friend Annette Sheldon, whom I started dating a short time later after we realized we each had a crush on the other. At the tender age of 18, and barely that by just a couple months, I was the oldest one in the car. It was late by my standards, close to 1AM, and there was an almost full moon out that night casting a purple sheen against the few white puffy clouds visible in a fairly clear sky full of stars.

We were listening, as per the usual, to the college radio station out of the University of New Hampshire, WUNH 91.3, since we considered ourselves far too cool and hip to listen to mere commercial radio. The station was about to sign off for the night and as the final song of the night the DJ played “The Sun and The Rainfall” by Depeche Mode. In mid-1987 the song was fully 5 years old and not very well-known in the USA, but as Depeche Mode was my favorite band, I knew the song backwards and front. It’s a quiet song, atmospheric really, and it was absolutely the most perfect choice for a quiet night along a deserted country lane. Selina turned it up at my request, and for the next five minutes and four seconds we all just sat silently and listened to the soothing melody mixing with the wind coming through the windows. All was well in the world. There were no worries, no fears, no crushing responsibilities or debts. We were all young, invincible, and would someday conquer the word.

As the song faded out and the station went silent I kept my head against Annette’s shoulder and knew that this was one of those moments that I’d always remember, and that it would be a memory that I’d look back on years down the road. Sure enough, I did. And twenty years later, with the group of us between 35 and 38 now, all grown up with families of our own and lives scattered across the country, I wonder if any of my fellow passengers remember that night at all, or if they even would recognize the song if they heard it again. Wherever you guys are, I wish you all the best, and I hope from time to time that you remember, too.

NOTE: The picture up top is by photographer Brian Griffin, and it was used as the cover for the album that “The Sun and the Rainfall” is on, “A Broken Frame”. It was named one of Life Magazines' 'Worlds Greatest Pictures 1980 - 1990' and was the cover picture for that issue of the magazine. There was never an official video for the song, since it was never a single release, but there’s a fan-made clip on YouTube that features more pictures based on the album jacket and some live footage of the band performing the song at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1982. Hopefully you’ll find the song as captivating as I do, 25 years after it was recorded.

And like I said before, Russia's not our friend either

Did I not say a month or so ago that Russia’s government is NOT our friend?
(http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2007/07/trust-me-comrades.html)

Maybe I’m just having 1987 flashbacks to the Cold War while reminiscing about my high school days 20 years ago, but I could swear that the news has been full of incidents of the Russian Air Force sending out probing flights of ancient Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bombers to the edges of the sovereign airspace of Iceland, within cruise missile striking distance of the US, and towards the US base on Guam, and alongside Tu-22M Backfire and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers in groups of up to eleven planes around Norwegian airspace. One of the Norwegian flights turned south towards Scotland, trailed by Norwegian F-16’s and were intercepted by British Tornado fighters in British airspace before returning to their bases.

It’s been years since the Kremlin has sent nuclear-capable bombers on such overflights, and it smacks of the sort of Cold War saber-rattling made famous by the former Soviet Union. Granted, the Bear is a decrepit old 1950’s airframe, and the Backfire dates back to the early 70’s, but the Blackjack is pretty modern, based upon our B-1B Lancer and only about 20 years old.

Speaking after Russian and Chinese forces completed major war games exercises for the first time on Russian turf, Vladimir Putin said a halt in long-range bombers' flights after the Soviet collapse had affected Russia's security as other nations had continued such missions — an oblique reference to the United States. About the flights, our best-buddy Putin stated, "I have made a decision to resume regular flights of Russian strategic aviation. We proceed from the assumption that our partners will view the resumption of flights of Russia's strategic aviation with understanding… Starting in 1992, the Russian Federation unilaterally suspended strategic aviation flights to remote areas. Regrettably, other nations haven't followed our example. That has created certain problems for Russia's security…Starting today such tours of duty would be conducted regularly and on the strategic scale. Our pilots have been grounded for too long; they are happy to start a new life." I bet. Flying an 18-hour mission over water is always more fun than being an unpaid guy on the ground making vodka from de-icing solution.

The announcement comes amid a growing chill in the U.S.-Russian relations, strained over Washington's criticism of Russia's democracy record, Moscow's strong criticism of U.S. missile defense plans in Poland and the Czech Republic, and differences over crises such as the Iraq war. Plus, rising oil prices have given Putin some extra cash with which to flex his muscles again. Russia recently planted a titanium reproduction of its flag at the North Pole and claimed the North Pole as Russian soil, test-fired a new ballistic missile supposedly capable of thwarting Washington's fledgling missile shield, and has blocked moves at the U.N. aimed at granting Kosovo formal independence from Russia's ally, Serbia.

And just this morning I read a report on the Russian military testing a new thermobaric bomb based upon the American MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the Mother Of All Bombs.) They are calling theirs the Dad of all Bombs, and tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability, according to Colonel-General Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, speaking on Russian Channel One television. Thermobaric weapons explode in an intense fireball combined with a devastating blast, producing a terrifying nuclear bomb-like mushroom cloud and sending a massive shock wave created by the air burst and high temperature. Channel One said that while the Russian bomb contains 7.8 tons of high explosives compared to more than 8 tons of explosives in the U.S. bomb, it's four times more powerful because it uses a new, highly efficient type of explosives that the report didn't identify. While the U.S. bomb is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, the Russian one is equivalent to 44 tons of regular explosives. The Russian weapon's blast radius is 990 feet, twice as big as that of the U.S. design, the report said.

Feel that cool breeze coming in from the Cold War memory banks? And don't forget that they were recently testing out a new ballistic missile system that supposedly renders our proposed Euro-based missile shield obsolete before we can even build it.

Once again, kids…the Mojo Man is on top of things. Now you know, and as GI Joe said, knowing is half the battle……

Like I said, China is NOT our friend

Did I not tell you guys a couple weeks ago that China is NOT our friend?
(http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/choke-on-me-elmo.html)

Just this past week it was revealed that China was caught trying to hack into Pentagon and other military computers, and that it’s been going on for quite some time. A report on the front page of the Financial Times claimed that in June hackers from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were caught trying to break into the network of the office of none other than Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. That’s pretty ballsy.

In a 2005 article in Time Magazine, it was reported that sometime on November 1st, 2004, hackers sat down at computers in Guangdong Province, China and set off once again on their daily hunt for U.S. secrets. Since 2003 the group had been conducting wide-ranging assaults on U.S. government targets to steal sensitive information, part of a massive cyber-espionage ring that U.S. investigators have codenamed Titan Rain. On this particular night, the hackers' quarry was military data, and they were armed with a scanner program that searched vast military networks for single computers with vulnerabilities that the attackers could exploit later.

They hit hundreds of computers that night and morning alone, and a brief list of scanned systems gives an indication of the breadth of the attacks. At 10:23 PM (PST), they found vulnerabilities at the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. At 1:19 am PST, they found the same hole in computers at the military's Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia. At 3:25 am, they hit the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego. At 4:46 am PST, they struck the Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama. As with prior attacks, the targeted networks were unclassified systems; the military's classified networks are not connected directly to the Internet. But even unclassified systems store sensitive information and provide logistics support throughout the armed forces. Government analysts say the attacks are ongoing, and increasing in frequency. But whether the Titan Rain hackers were gathering industrial information or simply testing their ability to infiltrate a rival nation's military systems, the U.S. government is taking the threat very seriously.

The hackers, are thought to have stolen U.S. military secrets, including aviation specifications and flight-planning software. Allegedly, the hackers struck Redstone Arsenal, the Alabama home to the Army Aviation and Missile Command, and grabbed specs for the aviation mission-planning system for Army helicopters, as well as Falconview 3.2, the flight-planning software used by the Army and Air Force.

We’re not alone either. It’s also been reported recently that Chinese cyber-attacks have hit the British Foreign Office and other key departments. While Britain has kept quiet about the attacks, Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, is reported to have raised the issue of similar Chinese attacks on her government's computers during a visit to Beijing.

Is this part of China's efforts at building up its "asymmetric warfare" capabilities? The principle behind this kind of warfare is to not confront opponents head-on in a conventional battle. China may be calculating that it would not fare very well against Western countries in a straight confrontation given its current military capabilities. Instead, determining the vulnerabilities of these countries' information infrastructure and undermining them in times of conflict may be a more cost-effective way to attack should things go sour in the future, using a tactic now being referred to as “pressure point warfare”, or the attacking of specific computer network nodes, the cross point of lines in a network, to paralyze the adversary. Their methods are likely to include attempts to overload US computer systems with meaningless data and spam, tampering with websites, and e-mailing computer viruses to American government employees.

Yes, indeed. Toxic poisons and lead paint and tainted pet food…..and hacking into your MySpace. Thanks a lot, President Nixon, for setting the stage for President Clinton to sell the White House to Beijing. At least we got some freakin’ panda bears for rent in the deal.