Thanks for asking. It was awesome.

Don't believe me? Well you be the judge. Go here and click on the file called "Ogre-battle."

Yeahp, that's me in the kilt. How f'n' jealous are you? "Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

I rolled a critical hit on my roll for kicking ass.

Thanks to JimmyP. for being a mensch and capturing my glorious victory on video. That's going right in the lifetime highlights reel, along with my third-place finish in the Future Rocketeers of America "Blast-Off."

Update: You might think I made a mistake when I peg the guy in the peaked hat with my first lightning bolt. Not so. He was a thief and he was always stealing my material components, and yeah, after a while that gets kind of annoying.

Don't cross Malkovar the Mage-- ever.

Another Update: But my weekend wasn't all kicking ass and casting Magic Missile spells, of course. I also trained a monkey in karate (and yes, I pronounce that kara-tay).

Check out the chimp karate videos. Good stuff.

Via Garfield Ridge (scroll down to Planet of the Apes post).

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (13)
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Sometimes Power Line just has too much good stuff. This is one of those days.

Great takedown of Michael "Bin Ladin is Admirable" Scheur. Bonus points for both taking him down, then using his words to take down Richard Clarke:

Scheuer thinks Clarke is a risk-averse poseur who didn't do enough to fight bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. ... Scheuer said that on 10 separate occasions his unit, codename "Alec," provided key policymakers with information that could've lead to the killing or capture of Osama bin Laden. "In each of those 10 instances," Scheuer said, "the senior policymaker in charge, whether it was Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, or George Tenet," resisted taking action, afraid it would result in collateral damage or a backlash on the Arab street.

A little snipe at the increasinlgy whiny and hysterical Andrew "No Offense Taken" Sullivan. Sullivan does little except parrot the liberal conventional wisdom these days-- and currently he's flogging the liberal whining about Bush appointing cronies and yes-men to cabinet posts.

Brit Hume actually laughed at Juan Williams, quite derisively, this Sunday, as Williams struggled to make a similar point. When exactly did it come to pass, Hume wondered, that the State Department and CIA were made the fourth and fifth co-equal branches of government, with an adversarial and independent relationship to the executive akin to the role played by Congress? Hume reminded Williams of the civics class basics of the executive branch-- everyone works for the President, and they're supposed to carry out his policies. He is, in case Sullivan and Williams have forgotten, the chief foreign policy organ and the Commander in Chief of the US. When you elect a President, you elect his foreign policy, subject only to the advice and consent of the Senate.

Not the consent of the State Department or CIA, notice.

Finally, they score the hat-trick by digesting liberal media coverage of Bush's rescue of his Secret Service agent. Apparently Bush "smirked" shortly thereafter, and a Chilean journalist thinks he behaved (wait for it...) like a "cowboy."

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)
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A reader asked me about the contact info for those adorable penguin cards. On the theory that if one person asks, a dozen are interested, I'll note that his website is at Jamie Riger Productions.

Too cute.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (4)
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I wonder when this good fellow became a prisoner-- when he was pretending to be dead or when he was actively firing on our troops?:

The US military says Marines in Fallujah have shot and killed an insurgent who engaged them as he was faking being dead, a week after footage of a marine killing an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi caused a stir in the region.

"Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent who while faking dead opened fire on the marines who were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets," a military statement said.

Sorta ends the investigation right there, I think.

Via The Corner.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Add Comment
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Dave from Garfield Ridge goes all Scrappleface on us.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (1)
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"The bite radius is too small," swears marine biologist Hooper.

It's a big shark, though. You need to watch the video (at right) to get a sense of this monster's size.

Posted by: Ace at 01:02 AM | Comments (3)
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Yeahhhp, there's a reason the GOP wasn't trusted to run the country for whole swaths of the twentieth century.

Every now and again a Republican does something so transcendentally stupid that you actual admire the sheer imbecility of the retardation.

Did either of these two morons notice that their own constituents kinda hate the IRS, and are suspicious of government power generally? I don't think most of these dimwits are deep philosophers; but when they don't even seem to have the most basic instincts regarding their own political survival, I begin to worry.

The late great Michael Kelly lamented that every time the Republicans seem to actually be on the verge of political popularity-- even dominance -- they regress, for some reason, to doing the sort of stupid shit they're always being accused of secretly wanting to do.

It kinda makes it hard to rebut that suspicion, guys, when you, you know, actually go ahead and do the stupid shit that you secretly want to do.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 AM | Comments (9)
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The man suspected of the stabbing -- a rapper named "Young Buck" -- is being supported by Partners in the Struggle, an organization which claims to be, and I quote:

an anti-violence community group

Fire a couple of shots into a playground and they'll throw you a parade. It's sort of a public service, as Woody Allen said in a slightly different context.

Posted by: Ace at 07:27 PM | Comments (2)
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Betsys Page (who I really should be linking to) has the real scoop:

Bush's operatives did precisely what they told me seven months ago they would do in these communities: they tapped into a volunteer network using local party organizations, union rolls, gun clubs and churches. They backed it up with a blizzard of targeted appeals; according to the preliminary results of a survey done by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, one representative home in Portage County, just outside Cleveland, received 11 pieces of mail from the Republican National Committee.

This effort wasn't visible to Democrats because it was taking place on an entirely new terrain, in counties that Democrats had some vague notion of, but which they never expected could generate so many votes. The 10 Ohio counties with the highest turnout percentages, many of them small and growing, all went for Bush, and none of them had a turnout rate of less than 75 percent.

For Democrats, this new phenomenon on Election Day felt like some kind of horror movie, with conservative voters rising up out of the hills and condo communities in numbers the Kerry forces never knew existed. ''They just came in droves,'' Jennifer Palmieri told me two days after the election. ''We didn't know they had that room to grow. It's like, 'Crunch all you want -- we'll make more.' They just make more Republicans.''

There's more, of course.

Including this link to PoliPundit-- guess which way those provisional ballots in Ohio are running?

Posted by: Ace at 07:17 PM | Comments (2)
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Bill from INDC has a good and thoughtful post on the question.

His position is implicitly one that scolds me, as I made the factually-challenged jump to decide no charges should be brought against the Marine, pre-investigation. Still, it's a good post and a point well-taken.

A military man emails to say he's not necessarily on the side of the Marine. I've wondered about that, to tell you the truth-- are military folks generally supportive of the Marine, or do they want him to be tried (if the facts warrant) because it's vital to them that they serve in organizations acting with perfect honor and scruples in all situations? Does the code of martial honor require tough sentences for soldiers acting on the wrong side of the gray line in difficult situations?

If most say the latter, then perhaps we civilians ought not rush to defend, erroneously thinking that's the best way to support the troops.

I've mostly heard military folks arguing in the defense, but obviously that's pretty anecdotal and not anything like a scientific survey.

I'm not saying that whatever the military wants they should necessarily get, mind you. I'm just saying that the first impulse -- to defend a soldier or Marine -- may not be the response most military men actually prefer. We civilians may be assuming that soldiers and Marines want us to defend this guy from the get-go, whereas they might -- might; I don't know -- actually prefer a strict interpretation of the rules of war and possibly harsh sentence if the facts so warrant.

Update: Bill's also got a Time piece on the Battle of Fallujah and USAToday photo-essay that are definitely worth checking out.

Posted by: Ace at 04:34 PM | Comments (16)
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