Happy 72nd Birthday, Barry Corbin!

…and thanks, once again, for portraying my favorite fictional astronaut, Maurice J. Minnifield, among many other tough boss-type roles including General Beringer in WarGames (appearing with a concerned look between 00:04 and 00:06, following my favorite line in the film). Have a great birthday!

Cool Anniversary Card

Happy Birthday, Wife!

Close, but no cigar!

My Reddit Cakeday

So yeah, I’m celebrating my Reddit Cakeday today. Here’s what I’m posting for my karma whoring.

Navy Seals Kick-Ass Day

In recognition of the ‘Seals killing of bin Laden a year ago today, here is the trailer for the 1990 movie masterpiece of dumb action, Navy Seals.

Today is also, “I forgot how cool Michael Biehn was. What ever happened to that guy?” -day.

RIP Davy Jones

This one really hurt, because I loved them during their comeback years in the mid 1980’s. The full story is here.

Happy 57th Birthday Jackie Chan

Here’s an homage gif someone made.

Happy 8th Birthday Mythbusters!

Mythbusters was first aired on January 23, 2003.

Wouldn’t You Like To Be A Pepper Too? 125 years.

One hundred twenty-five years ago today (according to the US Patent Office), Dr. Pepper was first served in Waco, Texas. Here’s a wonderfully cheezy commercial with an awesome cameo at the end.

Happy Birthday Bro!

He gets the reference, that’s all that matters. CRANK THE BASS!

Happy 235th Birthday US Marine Corps!

RIP Tom Bosley

I like to think happy thoughts of the guy, so I’ll leave 3 clips from his lesser-known works. The middle video might seem out-of-place, but it always makes me laugh, and is a positive memory of the guy. RIP Mr. Bosley. A story on his death and life is here at NPR.org.

– Singing on the Broadway version of Beauty & The Beast 

– Working out 

– David the Gnome dies, becomes a tree 

40th Anniversary of the Death of Jimi Hendrix

On September 18, 1970, guitarist Jimi Hendrix died after taking a large dose of his girlfriend’s sleeping pills, unclear as to what the proper dosage was supposed to have been. In tribute, here is a short video of Little Richard describing how Jimi Hendrix was such a talented musician, even when they met. (via BoingBoing.net)

The 65th Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima

50th Anniversary of the San Diego Chargers’ First Game

Technically it’s tomorrow, but there’s another anniversary that I have planned. Here is the Chargers’ really dated theme song.

1500!

This is my 1500th blog post! I don’t know what to say!

…no, really. I don’t know what to say. So I’ll put a funny video with a cat named Dakota and a dog named…something.

33 Years of Star Wars

Episode 4 was released 33 years ago today on May 25, 1977. If they used paper money a long time ago in another galaxy, this is what it could look like…except I imagine Grand Moff Tarkin or the Emperor as being the figureheads, but whatever.

Happy 27th’s Birthday Return of the Jedi!

Tomorrow is Episode 6’s birthday…this is a different way of celebrating.

Early Morning, April 4

It was actually late afternoon, but incredibly sad nonetheless.

Happy Birthday, Jason

My good old friend Jason Heath is celebrating his birthday today. Here he is in action at doublebassblog.org.

Happy Birthday, Mike Rowe!

Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs turns 48 today. He continues to be my favorite television personality, someone who is immensely talented in many fields other than hosting a show where he’s made to work hard but also look a bit foolish from time to time on a weekly basis. I have so much respect for the guy, because he’s shown the world all of these professions that we would otherwise have no idea existed.

Anyhow, here’s a Question/Answer session he did a while back for Reddit. Enjoy, and thanks for being so down to Earth, Mike.

334th Anniversary of the Western Discovery of Dinosaurs

Okay, I don’t have the exact date, but sometime in 1676 the Megalosaurus was discovered near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England. It took until sometime after 1815 for Rev. William Buckland to realize that large bones being discovered were not of the mythical giants described in the Old Testament Bible, but were from a large lizard, later known to be dinosaurs. Although what that specifically has to do with a dinosaur eating a Jesus-fish, I haven’t a clue. But it’s a funny picture none-the-less.

Not Safe For Work: Number One on the U.S. Charts, December 17, 1975

(The video is briefly NSFW due to a spray-painted disco chick.)

Happy Birthday to Me. I’m now 34 years old, and to show just how old I am, here’s some disco for your viewing / listening pleasure. This hit number 1 on the charts in 1975.

…I had this song playing in the background as I typed this…and it’s stuck in my head. Fly, Robin, Fly! Up up to the sky, yeah yeah!

And here’s something random:

Happy Birthday, Bro

This was #1 on the charts on the date of my brother’s birth: November 14, 1973. This is a good, funky tune, unlike the crap-tacular disco number from my date of birth. Happy Birthday bro, have fun today.

Happy 4th Birthday, Double Bass Blog!

The best I can tell, Double Bass Blog was born in November 2005 via creator Jason Heath. This is one of my favorite videosfrom the site, in which Jason explains the double bass to a bunch of Music Camp attendees in terms that even I can understand.

Happy Birthday DBB!

In Memory: Mrs. Chippy

Mrs. Chippy is one of the hundreds of casualties on Antarctic expeditions. <strike>She</strike> He was shot by the crew of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 94 years ago today. Shackleton recorded in that day’s log:

This afternoon Sallie’s three youngest pups, Sue’s Sirius, and Mrs. Chippy, the carpenter’s cat, have to be shot. We could not undertake the maintenance of weaklings under the new conditions. Macklin, Crean, and the carpenter seemed to feel the loss of their friends rather badly.

For the full story (and to understand why it was felt necessary to shoot the cat and other animals), look here: <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Chippy”>Mrs. Chippy at Wikipedia</a>.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Check out my very good friend at Kanteker’s Blog.

Fark You! Happy Birthday Fark!

Approximately 12 years ago, Fark.com was registered by Drew Curtis. It took over a year for the birth of the current version of Fark to emerge, and the rest is history. Be sure to check out the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fark”>Wikipedia entry for Fark</a> while you celebrate Fark’s Birthday (observed).

Happy Birthday, Sis!

Hey, Happy Birthday Angie!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Lying Lion

Happy 4th Birthday, Miss Cellania!

And many more.

Happy Birthday, Sarah (and 1000th post)

Weird coincidence…my wife turns 32, and my blog hits 1000 posts (which may not have posted yet, but it’s 1000, trust me). Very cool! Happy Day!

Happy 83rd Birthday, Norma Jean

Yep, she would be 83 years old today. I just gotta love the classics. Here’s her bio at Wikipedia.org.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Kraznoy!

After many false starts (notably the “Best Of Omaha” blog), Kraznoy.com was born three years ago today. Then, and now, it’s pretty much been a repository of the junk I pick up online, and the occasional weekly rant about life, cars, and whatnot.

In the three years I’ve been posting on here, I’ve gotten married, nearly completed my post-military committment, wrecked a car, and moved from Omaha, Nebraska to Leesburg, Virginia, and bought my first house in the process (just before the housing bubble burst). It’s been a fun, crazy few years, but hopefully it will calm down a little in the next three.

Going back to Kraznoy, I once explained (in a rather meandering fashion) why I named this blog “Kraznoy”. The original post is Here, but I thought it might be nice to tell you, in a more concise and cogent fashion, why this is Kraznoy, and not something else like DakotaSouth.com.

This blog was born under the name “Best of Omaha”. It was meant to be a weak slam against the city of Omaha, Nebraska, where I had lived for a few years. I figured my blog kind of sucked (which, at the time, it really, really did, as opposed to being “okay” now…), and no matter how bad my blog sucked, it was still better than Omaha.

I never really ‘got’ Omaha. It’s a nice city, with a relatively low crime rate in most areas, with an adequate arts and theatre scene, one of the best zoos in the country, and a brand new sports & concert venue, the Qwest Center. From the start though, I didn’t really want to be there. I was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in next-door-to-Omaha Bellevue, Nebraska.

When I was in the Air Force Technical School near Biloxi, Mississippi, I was given the opportunity of making a wish list of bases in which I was to live and work from the get-go. I made my list, with only a couple overseas choices…and Offutt was not even on my list. Since one of the reasons why I joined the Air Force was to see another place, getting stationed somewhere less than 200 miles from where I was once living (the closest possible base to my hometown, no less) was not my cup of tea. However, the Air Force, in its infinte wisdom, decided otherwise. Long-story-long, in some kind of limp-retaliation against my situation, I started dumping on Omaha.

In the course of my stay in eastern Nebraska, my future wife Sarah moved down from Sioux Falls in order to hopefully advance in her retail career faster, and to be closer to me. My being in Omaha was a blessing in this case. However, I believe, deep down, that if we were really meant to be it wouldn’t have mattered where I was living.

In 2006, I left the Air Force, but stayed in the Omaha area by choice. I had a decent job, as did my wife, and we just didn’t want to move right away. Since I was now in Omaha by choice, I figured it was time to quit dumping on the city, and to change the name of my blog.

The problem was, what to change it to? I had various ideas over the course of a few months, and during this time I chose the temporary name of Kraznoy.

Kraznoy comes from Krasnoyarsk, the third largest city in Russian Siberia, with nearly one million residents. The city also appears in one of my favorite games (and time vampires), Civilization. In the game (the original MS-DOS version still being my favorite) you play one of the great civilizations in history, from the Babylonians to the Americans. In a sort of blend between Risk and Sim City, you build cities and armies out from a central point, and at times, skirmish with your neighbors.

I would normally play a nice-guy version of the game, trying to build where other nations had not, instead of simply conquering cities in blind conquest. However, the Russians were big bullies. No matter how nice I was, or how much larger my civilization was than theirs, the Russians would always attack at my weak points, forcing a confrontation and a total war, eliminating either them or me.

Because I didn’t normally like to play the game for the purpose of complete elimination of my enemies, I would normally play as the Russians. That way I could grow peacefully among my largely benign neighbors.

In the course of the game, you start off with recognizable city names like Moscow, Leningrad (or St. Petersburg), but eventually you’d get less familiar names, like Krasnoyarsk. I loved the hard “K” sound from the start and the end. It was just fun to say (and probably butcher in the pronunciation). Eventually I would use the city’s name in place of swearing. In fact, when I broke my toe, I yelled out “Kraz-noy-ARSK!!!!” instead of sending a torrent of bad words into the atmosphere like a dark cloud.

When it came to naming this blog, I figured my fake swear would be as good a placeholder as anything, until I could find a more suitable name for this blog. After several months of contemplating (and since “DakotaSouth.com” was already taken and turned into an adult website), I decided to simply keep the name, registering Kraznoy.com. I also changed the “S” to a “Z” to ensure the pronunciation remained correct.

So, that’s it, the history of Kraznoy! I’m glad you visited, and hope to see you again sometime. I’ll probably give you another nugget in another year. Until then, happy trails.

– Aaron Burman

Flight 1529 Tapes and Footage

My general rule in whether to post something on Kraznoy or not is whether it effects me emotionally on some level, and whether I might want to go back and look at the posts in a year. The stories about US Airways Flight 1529 affect me very deeply, and I think I will want to review the information related to this in 10 years.

Almost 20 years ago, there was a notable crash of a United Airlines DC-10 in Sioux City, Iowa. The DC-10 in that crash had a passenger and crew complement of nearly twice as many as on US Airways Flight 1549. The cause for the crash of the United plane, flight 232, was related to hydrolics in the 17-year old plane, and not birdstrike. However, the fact that both pilots and crews acted heroically to save these flights just hits me deeply.

To say that I don’t like to fly is an understatement. I literally assume that there is a chance that everytime that I fly I will not make it to the destination. I don’t let this stop me, mostly because the thought of public or private shame due to this fear has, so far, kept me from screaming out at the top of my lungs, at the time of final boarding, “LET’S TAKE GREYHOUND! AND LEAVE THE DRIVING TO THEM!”

Also, I realize that flying is a lot safer than driving. (Especially in Nebraska, where the turning signal is, by law, disengaged when the Nebraska plates are secured to a vehicle. No, really. Look it up.) However, when a car crashes, there’s a high chance that the crumple-zones, the seatbelts, the rollbars, the airbags, and everything else is going to save you. When a plane crashes, it’s almost never going to end well.

(Random thought: think of how music would be different if Buddy Holly hadn’t chartered that damn plane, or if the pilot or his boss had The Weather Channel 50 years ago last Tuesday.)

I have never refused to fly…I just always briefly weigh out my life, check to make sure that my successes outweigh my failures (even if it’s just a 51:49 ratio), and go with the show. I’m not looking forward to dying, but I feel that, since death is inevitable, you might as well expect that it might just happen to you, and probably when you don’t expect it to.

I don’t usually get this introspective when I’m just trying to post a video or two, but I figured an explanation was necessary. The videos from Flight 1529 can be found on any news outlet’s website, on YouTube’s front page, and on a million blogs more popular than Kraznoy. However, that “will I find this interesting in a year” rule springs up. Since I’m still interested in the United crash 20 years ago, I think this post fits that rule.

The first videos are from US Airways Flight 1529. The last videos are of the documentary on United Flight 232. If you haven’t heard of the 1989 crash, I won’t give away the ending. However, they do speak with the pilot and many who were on-board.

This is in-flight audio from US Airways Flight 1529.

Birthday Occlusion

First off, occlusion. See, I was wracking my brain for a word that meant “state of mysterious disillusionment”. Occlusion was the first word that came to mind. However, the definition according to Dictionary.com is 1. the act or state of occluding or the state of being occluded. 2. Dentistry. the fitting together of the teeth of the lower jaw with the corresponding teeth of the upper jaw when the jaws are closed.

…and so on. See, I should have used “Bewilderment”, since it’s phonetically sound. Birthday Bewilderment.

Anyhow, it’s my birthday tomorrow. I don’t have any idea what to do. My wife, working as a Retail Manager, ALWAYS has to work on my birthday. It’s just the way of life, and the curse of having been born just before Christmas. So, I’m on my own. Do I hike? Do I get drunk and play video games all day? Do I go to a movie? (Are they open during the day or just after 5pm?)

As far as my ideas go…it’s supposed to rain here (45 degrees), so hiking (or geocaching) is probably out. I don’t drink much, and especially not in the middle of the day, so the drunk part of gaming is probably out. I could hit a movie, but until they bring Dark Knight back to the theatres, there’s not much to see…maybe Day the Earth Stood Still (is that out yet?).

So…either gaming or movie. How dull. Any ideas, world? I realize this would set a precedent — comments on Kraznoy, but go nuts. If I don’t hear from you…I guess it’s gaming if I feel lazy, movie if I feel motivated.

By the way, I’m starting to read my first book in almost 2 months. Discworld by Larry Niven. Any good?