So I posted this link, in my not-really-a-review of Return of the King, which takes you to a freakin' hilarious flash animation of what I can only call Gollum Gangsta Rap.

Problem is, my enjoyment was clouded by not being able to understand all the lyrics. So, after a bit of judicious websleuthing, I was able to contact the guy that wrote, produced, and performed it, Ned Evett.

Ned seems like a nice guy by the way. In the course of our brief talk, he told me a few interesting things - first, the work has been out on the web for about a year, and is somehow just now taking off.

And taking off it is - the servers are dropping cubic gigs a day, serving it it up over 100K times just this last week.

Best of all, he's near completion of a sequel. You heard it here first. :-)

Without further ado, the lyrics, for your sing-along pleasure.... Gollum is Smegol King I is regal Basshead for the precious Smeagol fly like an eagle

The Towerz are the Playaz The Towerz are the Playaz all

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Recently, I posted about Hillary's latest trip to Afghanistan, in an entry titled Snackin' On Cold Shoulder.

Well, the plot thickens. I went out to run some errands this afternoon, and stopped to eat in one of the local seafood joints - had some boiled shrimp, a dozen oysters and a coupla beers.

Sitting next to me was a young clean-cut guy talking to his buddy. I couldn't help but overhear the conversation. As it happens, he was an Air Force C-130 crew chief, an E-4. He'd just gotten back from Afghanistan, Kandahar to be exact.

So, I struck up a conversation with him, and conducted a low-level interrogation. :-)

"Still suck over there?"

"Oh yeah, that's one fucked-up country. You never hear shit about it since Iraq, but there's a bomb or two going off almost every day."

Don't recall the rest of the conversation well enough to quote it, but he was of the opinion that it'd be a long damn time before anything like a democracy could work there, as most of the people can't read and write, don't know why we came over there to occupy the country, and don't have the faintest idea what a political party or a platform of ideas is - to them, it boils down to would you rather have your tribal chief be in charge, so your dad and uncles and stuff can get the best jobs, or let the other tribe's chief have the job, with all the pork and largesse flowing to his family and cronies?

Makes me think maybe they do have the democratic process distilled down to its finest essence, so far as it operates without the rule of law, a judiciary, and all the other checks and balances we use over here in the Republic, but that's a 'hol 'nother essay.

Finally, I got this tidbit from him - when Hillary was over there, she was shuttled around the region in a BlackHawk helicopter, which was known by the troops concerned with her transport and security as, get this...

"Broomstick One"

(snort)

Funny thing, though, is this - had that chopper come under some sort of attack, those very same troops that used that term would, I've no doubt in my mind, fought like lions to defend it, and therein lies a tale about what makes America great.

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