Noah Stone, the Blog.

Photo by Clutterbuck.
Dog: Bella Lakai

My dog book is a hit with young and old.*

*Young not pictured.

Nacho appeared on a blog today.

Nacho also has his own website.

Today was the winter solstice and a beautiful day at the beach.

Click here to play.

My dog is the Space Dog.


These are from a prehistoric cave in Malibu. The original inhabitants were called the Bu and they hunted seagulls with Vizslas. They also rode giant horses that required obscene amounts of hay call SUH (sport utility horses). They couldn't park them anywhere.

NTSB: Plane at Midway Needed More Runway.... Uh... duh.

The Vatican says torture is unacceptable for extracting information that might thwart a terrorist attack. Hmmm. But it's still okay to use the rack on heretics, right?

Here's a description of some good, old fashioned Vatican torture:

Some victims were horsewhipped. A sharp iron fork was used to mangle breasts. Red hot pincers were used to tear off flesh. Red hot irons were inserted up vaginas and rectums. A device named the turcas was used to tear out fingernails.

After the nails were ripped out needles were shoved into the quicks. Boots called bootikens were used to lacerate flesh and crush bone. Thumbscrews were used to crush the fingers and toes. Acid was poured on victims and hands were immersed into pots of boiling oil and water.

Eyes were gouged out by irons. Alcohol was poured on the head of the poor victim and set alight. Water was poured down the victims throat with a notted cloth. The cloth was then jerked out tearing up the victims bowels.

A surprisingly calm and cogent argument for the existence of God.

This explains everything.

My brother named me after Noah, the Boa Constrictor from Richard Scarry's out of print, Busy Busy World. Here is his story:

I bought a copy of Steve Martin's Cruel Shoes, his 1977 collection of essays and short stories, on ebay for $3. When I was a kid, nothing in the world was funnier.



I'm beginning to understand what's wrong with my brain. Here's a selection:

Shuckin' the Jive

The crazy bastards were going down to the pool hall to play a little pinball when their car exploded blowing everyone to smithereens. Some of Tubby's flesh flew off to the side of the road, and in time nourished a sunflower growing there. Soon the sunflower was eaten by a horse and the horse was eaten by some hobos out for wild time. Then one of the hobos met an eastward wandering Canadian guru. But before anything significant could happen the hobo died, being attacked by a dog heart in a scientist's laboratory. The death was listed as a heart attack. Then slavery was abolished.

Conclusion: Grandpa died and was resurrected after three days, but no one called him the Son of God; they just said, "Hey, that's Gramps!"

Antoine, who sold his first novel told me about the sudden demise of Clark Foam, the company that provides the cores for almost all surfboards. It turns out that the process of making the foam requires toxic chemicals that can not meet pollution standards. The immediate dearth of foam has lit a fire under surfboard manufacturers to find new materials and has punctuated the equilibria of the craft. Antoine implied that there was a correlation to oil supplies and new, clean technology. Unfortunately, running out of oil won't jumpstart the alternative fuel market because we aren't going to just run out. There isn't going to be a day where you go to Chevron and they say, "sorry folks, Chevron is closed for the remainder of humanity."

The reality is oil production is a bell curve. The concept is called Peak Oil. Experts say we reached the peak in 2000 and, therefore, production will be decreasing from here on out. Unfortunately, China and the developing world's thirst for oil is growing, world population will double and demand will continue to increase over the next 15 years. We do not have to run out of oil to have a major global crisis, the price just has to go up, which it most certainly will. And this isn't just about filling your car up with gas; everything in the grocery store, everything on the shelves is there because of oil and everything will cost a lot more when oil does.

The other day the price of oil went up $.60 a barrel and, as a result, Walmart's stock went down 2%. Our entire economy is tied to the price of oil.

Just as with global warming, there are nay-sayers. There are those who disagree with the science or, at least, don't believe we've hit the peak yet. According to the Georgia Institute of Technology, the damage has been done with global warming. Even if we stop polluting now, climate change will persist for a century. How far down the backside of the oil supply bell curve do we have to slide before we make a real commitment to alternative technologies? We need to be honest about what the backside of the bell curve is going to look like. Yes, it will mean $5 a gallon fuel prices for Americans, but it will also mean more war, more starvation and more suffering. Millions of people are going to die and perhaps billions will live in unimaginable squaller as a result of the greed of corporate America and our willful indifference.

I recommend reading Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash. It's a doomsday view of the world, so take it for what it is.

And see Syriana.

Sorry this post wasn't funny.

Buddy is 100% again, although he does have a little bald spot on his chest. Thank you everyone for your kind words.

My friend, Antoine Wilson finally sold his first novel, The Interloper. And not a moment too soon, either. I was beginning to worry about him. All the warning signs were there: He wasn't shaving regularly, his wetsuit was starting to hang on him like an old suit, he bought a Volvo and he was driving it around Brentwood looking like a white OJ Simpson...

Check out his blog and keep an eye out for his book in 2007. I read the first draft and loved it. It's fun for the whole family, especially families with violent histories.

If you missed FRONTLINE's documentary on Hurricane Katrina, "The Storm," I highly recommend watching it online. At least watch the segment on FEMA's rocky history. FEMA was created by Jimmy Carter in 1979. After a decade of no major natural disasters in the U.S., FEMA became a very low priority under Reagan and Bush, Sr. In fact, it became "a parking lot for political appointees." George H. W. Bush appointed Wallace Stickney, a man with no prior emergency management experience to head FEMA. Stickney got the job because he was John Sununu's next door neighbor. Then, in 1992, a category 5 hurricane hit Florida and FEMA fumbled the ball. It took five days for FEMA and the National Guard to arrive on the scene. Every excuse we heard from the Bush Administration after Katrina the previous Bush Administration invented. Bush pushed Stickney to the side and replaced him with Andrew Card, the secretary of Transportation. Card blamed local officials for not asking for help. And then there is the clip of clips, George H. W. Bush saying to the press, "I'm not going to participate in the Blame Game." Amazing!


"I'm not going to participate in the Blame Game." - George H.W. Bush

In 1994, Clinton expelled FEMA of its political appointees and staffed it with experienced state emergency management personnel. He tapped Arkansas's Emergency Management Director, James Lee Witt to head FEMA, the first director in FEMA's history with emergency management experience. Witt transformed the organization and developed a comprehensive plan to work with local communities called Project Impact that not only saved lives, but saved money. In fact, George W. Bush praised Witt and Project Impact during his 2000 campaign for President. As Governor, he worked with Witt and FEMA and saw first hand how well the organization worked. But, as President, Bush returned to the Reagan/Bush tradition of dumping buddies in FEMA. Even so, most of the Clinton-era FEMA was still functioning on 9/11 and FEMA's response was exemplary. After 9/11, Bush demoted FEMA to a subsection of Homeland Security, cut its funding and appointed an Arabian horse judge its Director. The rest is history repeating itself...