SOME FUN; we all need it. “Groom your dog, get a peace prize; do the laundry, that’s a peace prize, make a sandwich, it’s a peace prize, she’s eating the sandwich; peace prize, mow the lawn, now that’s a peace prize; I’m in the hot tub; it’s a peace prize, you get a peace prize; everybody gets a peace prize. …”

Via Michelle Malkin:

Update: My husband vacuum-cleaned the house. I say, peace in the home is a peace prize.

Is the following item a metaphor for the American state of mind or what?

Grown-ups, who happen to be parents too, had been building a balloon-like experimental aircraft at their home on Fossil Ridge Road in Fort Collins. “The family has described the structure as a dome-shaped ‘homemade flying saucer.’ These kooks kinda believed they had secured the helium-filled contraption to the ground. Kinda, because their 6-year-old boy proved them wrong, when he climbed into the loosely tethered thing and is now afloat in the sky over eastern Colorado.

“We’re trying to determine the best course of action,” said Larimer County Sheriff’s Office Spokeswoman Kathy Davis. “This is a first and we’ll do what we need to do.”

I’d say!

A “silly people in serious times” is how Pat Buchanan characterized the contemporary America’s mindset.

Update I: The balloon has deflated and landed. No child was found therein. That’s not exactly surprising given the heights the thing scaled. The nation is searching, chicken-little style, for the poor boy, son to Richard Henne … a known storm chaser, who might have done some extracurricular chasing too: Henne made an appearance on the television program WifeSwap.

Mom’s name is “Mayumi.” It is not clear if Henne was on the tawdry reality show to “trade.” The media is characterizing the family’s “belief system” as a love of science. The Age of the Idiot…

Poor little “Falcon” (boy’s name).

Update II: On listening to the adjectival approval heaped on this family and its lifestyle—quirky, interesting, spontaneous, adventurous, science and mysticism lovers—it occurred to me that the parents of a Christian home schooler gone amiss in an air borne contraption would be met with an entirely different reaction. To wit: What were these atavistic homeschoolers doing to their child? Deluding him about the presence of G-d and the ability to reach Him with a man-made device? Why was he off school? Should social services be called? Improvise…

Update III: An entire news cycle was devoted to following the imaginary “Falcon,” as he flew through the air. Falcon was eventually located at home hiding in the extra-terrestrial transportation box engineered by his brilliant father, who was described by some members of the media as a mad genius. Publicity stunt? Journalistic ineptness? A pulse of the people’s tastes and proclivities?

Update IV: If you read the storyline, as I tracked it above, you’ll glean that from the get-go, the news media hawked the Falcon-In-The-Sky story as though it were fact. All failed the most basic journalistic test. A lede written by an old-school journalist would have specified the What, Where, Who, Why and How of the story, and then left it.

It is, moreover, amazing that the authorities and the media began from the premise that Falcon was levitating 10,000 feet above them, rather than hiding somewhere on terra firma. This is an example of the contagion that is mass stupidity.

Update IV (Oct. 16): FARCE CONTINUED. It transpires that the “Silly Sex” had a lot to do with how this story was accepted on the face of it. With the same confidence with which allegations of date rape are accepted from women, the police Spokes Skirt had reported that there was no doubt that “Falcon” was flying high. News media then ran with this factoid without checking it. Apparently, said a male police spokesman, the family (amateur actors and all-round grafters) behaved in a believable manner.

This hearkens back to that famous American naiveté—a chronic incuriosity and lack of inquisitiveness. The absence of a learning curve probably comports with this eternal wide-eyed wonderment.

Falcon, the child, is exhibiting what, I would wager, are the symptoms of severe stress: vomiting during the press and TV performances his grease ball of a father has put him through.

Is the following item a metaphor for the American state of mind or what?

Grown-ups, who happen to be parents too, had been building a balloon-like experimental aircraft at their home on Fossil Ridge Road in Fort Collins. “The family has described the structure as a dome-shaped ‘homemade flying saucer.’ These kooks kinda believed they had secured the helium-filled contraption to the ground. Kinda, because their 6-year-old boy proved them wrong, when he climbed into the loosely tethered thing and is now afloat in the sky over eastern Colorado.

“We’re trying to determine the best course of action,” said Larimer County Sheriff’s Office Spokeswoman Kathy Davis. “This is a first and we’ll do what we need to do.”

I’d say!

A “silly people in serious times” is how Pat Buchanan characterized the contemporary America’s mindset.

Update I: The balloon has deflated and landed. No child was found therein. That’s not exactly surprising given the heights the thing scaled. The nation is searching, chicken-little style, for the poor boy, son to Richard Henne … a known storm chaser, who might have done some extracurricular chasing too: Henne made an appearance on the television program WifeSwap.

Mom’s name is “Mayumi.” It is not clear if Henne was on the tawdry reality show to “trade.” The media is characterizing the family’s “belief system” as a love of science. The Age of the Idiot…

Poor little “Falcon” (boy’s name).

Update II: On listening to the adjectival approval heaped on this family and its lifestyle—quirky, interesting, spontaneous, adventurous, science and mysticism lovers—it occurred to me that the parents of a Christian home schooler gone amiss in an air borne contraption would be met with an entirely different reaction. To wit: What were these atavistic homeschoolers doing to their child? Deluding him about the presence of G-d and the ability to reach Him with a man-made device? Why was he off school? Should social services be called? Improvise…

Update III: An entire news cycle was devoted to following the imaginary “Falcon,” as he flew through the air. Falcon was eventually located at home hiding in the extra-terrestrial transportation box engineered by his brilliant father, who was described by some members of the media as a mad genius. Publicity stunt? Journalistic ineptness? A pulse of the people’s tastes and proclivities?

Update IV: If you read the storyline, as I tracked it above, you’ll glean that from the get-go, the news media hawked the Falcon-In-The-Sky story as though it were fact. All failed the most basic journalistic test. A lede written by an old-school journalist would have specified the What, Where, Who, Why and How of the story, and then left it.

It is, moreover, amazing that the authorities and the media began from the premise that Falcon was levitating 10,000 feet above them, rather than hiding somewhere on terra firma. This is an example of the contagion that is mass stupidity.

Update IV (Oct. 16): FARCE CONTINUED. It transpires that the “Silly Sex” had a lot to do with how this story was accepted on the face of it. With the same confidence with which allegations of date rape are accepted from women, the police Spokes Skirt had reported that there was no doubt that “Falcon” was flying high. News media then ran with this factoid without checking it. Apparently, said a male police spokesman, the family (amateur actors and all-round grafters) behaved in a believable manner.

This hearkens back to that famous American naiveté—a chronic incuriosity and lack of inquisitiveness. The absence of a learning curve probably comports with this eternal wide-eyed wonderment.

Falcon, the child, is exhibiting what, I would wager, are the symptoms of severe stress: vomiting during the press and TV performances his grease ball of a father has put him through.

Joy! We awoke to some comedic relief this morning: President Obama joined Yasser Arafat and Al Gore in the pantheon of Nobel Peace-Prize recipients. Arafat got the coveted award for his pioneering work on the imploding homicidal human; Gore for inventing Climagedon. (No, the Internet was invented by the US Defense Department. Really.)

I nominate another worthy homie, my little leprechaun of a parrot, T. Cup. I so named him becasue he too is a homie, born into an era when teaching homie heritage and pride are essential. (Hatch date: April 15, 2009.)

Although T. Cup is a hand-raised American Poicephalus, his ancestors hail from Senegal (there might even be some oppression involved there; I’ll leave it up to readers to apprise me of the “history from below”). T. Cup, my little homie, is a small “concentrated parrot”—that is with the huge parrot Ego.

Most important: T. Cup’s little dexterous and dainty claws have never drawn blood (Some Other Homie We Know has blood on his hands—and keep boys dying in backward places where no respectable parrot would hang out).

T. Cup’s ambition: to quell the gang wars in LA, when he is big, that is.

Update I: Well, T. Cup deserves the Nobel Prize for his noble aspirations (and for his humble homie beginnings). Was that not the reason Obama was given a prize? For what he may do in the future for world peace. Not on any objective evidence can it be claimed that he has done anything for world peace so far.

Obama is on the verge of making the Afghanistan war even more intractable. In Iraq nothing much has changed since Bush left office. I am unaware of anything but presidential good intentions with respect to nuclear disarmament.

And frankly Obama ought to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks; there are more deserving people than me.” But he greedily grabbed the undeserved honor. Is bling for the mantle place so hard to resist?

In a way, this undeserved recognition might just stop the World’s Prince of Peace from escalating wars, which he is in the process of doing. On the other hand, if the schedule of incentives and disincentives during a person’s life has taught him that whatever he chooses to do will not affect his Golden-Boy status—then the margin for a learning curve is rather small.

The unwarranted award is also, apparently, for walking humbly with Muslims and calling Islam a peaceful religion. Hey, Bush did that well before Barack, before it became fashionable. Not fair.

Update II: Michelle Malkin rounds up the responses. Right or Left; they are all incredulous.

Update III (Oct. 10): THIN GRUEL. What the Norwegian Nobel Committee said: Obama made “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”; he changed “the international climate” and made a noise about “his cherished goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.”

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee added.

Where does one begin? A new Dark Ages has decended. The culture reflects and exalts emotional extremes, lack of inhibitions, exhibitionism and assorted grotesquerie: From “Gay” pride to transexualism to fetishisms to Obamaism (a kind of Onanism).

The periods during which Jews would become light in the head and take off after false messiahs were considered dark times in the nation’s history. Now darkness has descended on the world. Mass contagion is everywhere.

Update IV (Oct. 10): Via George Stephanopoulos (“Courtesy of conservative activist Keith Appell):

Barack Obama’s Teleprompter: Big Guy says Bill Clinton called and was gracious in defeat; offered to fly Kanye West over 4 the Nobel awards ceremony.

Erick Erickson: Obama is becoming Jimmy Carter faster than Jimmy Carter became Jimmy Carter.

Ana Marie Cox: Apparently Nobel prizes now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush.

Headline over AP analysis by White House correspondent Jennifer Loven: He Won, But For What?

Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review: I want to buy the world a coke.

Ezra Klein: Obama also awarded Nobel prize in chemistry. “He’s just got great chemistry,” says Nobel Committee.

Adam Bromberg, CRC: Nobel Prize Committee must be staffed by out of work comedy writers.

Kristina Hernandez, CRC: It was the Beer Summit that put Obama over the edge.