I’m skimming the news about the tornadoes and I run across this sentence:
President Bush, who said he called the governors of the affected states to offer support, plans to come to Tennessee on Friday. “Prayers can help and so can the government,” Bush said.
Prayers can help? Help what? Help who? They did a splendid job of keeping the winds out of the area yesterday, because that statement surely means that the people in the nearby towns that didn’t get destroyed must have prayed harder than the people who died…right? That’s what the Idiot in Chief was saying, wasn’t it? Or do I just not (being a Jew and therefore bound for Hell) understand how that Christian prayer thing works.
And if his idea of the government helping is New Orleans two years later? Then count me out. For the love of all that is sacred and holy (in Bush’s case, that would be oil, money and power) what is he going to do? Send in the trailers and tents that are affectionately known as “Hurricane Magnets” in my part of the woods and “Tornado Magnets” elsewhere?
Is he going to send in the prayer squad or is he going to actually send in food and generators?
I just really need to stop reading the papers.
Yeah, I know I’ve talked trash about my brother, Biggus Dickus, before but he is my brother. And Friday he will turn 60. So, in honor of that momentous occasion, I give you:
moar funny pictures
Yesterday I joined Blog 365, and we’ll see how that goes, me blogging daily. At the moment, it’s kind of easy, because my boss is on an extended road trip for most of the month, which means that I have the time to blog. The problem with daily blogging is that I’m not all that terribly interesting all the time. Well, I am, it’s just not always interesting outside of my head.
Last night I went back to my Alma Mater to a seminar on social networking on the web. The turnout was very small, mostly other professors and alumni, and very few undergrads. There was a sort of elfish-looking junior Ted Kaciznsky with one of those Dr. Koop beards (so very, very unattractive in any century) and a beach towel across his shoulders for warmth. I guess because when you go to the University of Miami you pack beach towels and not a sweater, dog forbid.
It was sort of embarrassing, but I seemed to ask more questions and be more attentive than anyone else in the room. And I am neither a business student nor a scientist. I also had a better, albeit intuitive grasp of some of the implications of social networking on line. Maybe because I’ve been blogging since 2002, and a member of various groups on-line since almost the day I got a dial-up account.
In any event, the subject was fascinating, but not so fascinating as to take over my dreams. No. In my dreams, Johnny Depp, his girlfriend and children became my neighbors and kept hanging out at my house. They came over for dinner (I didn’t remember inviting them, nor was I ready) and he was wearing a bowling shirt in grey, black and pink with martini glasses printed on it. Then he took us over to his house and I walked around checking out his art collection. I had just come to the conclusion that he would be the perfect patron for the RLA, when I woke up. Without getting a commitment from Johnny.
I only mention this because my usual celebrity dream friends are the Bob, the Bruce and Tom. Tom Petty. Who is back on tour with the Heartbreakers, and I have tickets to see them. First time since the 80s, when I used to see him in tiny clubs. This should be fun, non?
It was a nice weekend at the Casita de Zapatos. We went to visit my mother on Saturday, and she was as awake and alert as I’ve seen her in months. She held my hand, and told me I was a good one, and then she delivered these two gems: “There is another life elsewhere.” Oooh-kay. And “If you want that (she gestures blindly at something somewhere over our heads), I’ll lift you up on a windmill.” And allrighty, then.
There is a new resident at my mother’s place, and she is mean. Really, really mean. She uses the N word to demean the help, and tells everyone to get the hell out of her home or her country, depending on how evil she’s feeling. A couple of weeks ago, she was really making the RLA and I feel sad and uncomfortable, when she turned to us as though we were her cronies, and asked us who all these other people were. Without batting an eyelash, the RLA and I said, what other people. It’s just the three of us here. We don’t see any other people. Then the RLA said that we were angels. God sent us to tell her not to be so mean. The nurses tell us that she’s been a lot less ugly to them since then.
Yesterday, I went to one of the last u-pic fields with Star, and picked a bushel or so of little green tomatoes. Yesh! It is little green tomato time again, and I have 18 quarts of little green tomatoes pickling away on my kitchen counter. I also have blackened, grimy nails and cuticles on my right hand which no amount of scrubbing has done anything to ameliorate.
Last night, we headed off to hang with MJ, RJ and The Other Couple (and other of The Other Couple’s friends) to watch the Super Bowl. What a game! What a great time! What good food! What a play! When Eli Manning ducked the sack (and how did he DO that?) and still managed to hurl one miles down the field only to have his receiver catch the ball on his HELMET!!!! (and how did he do THAT???) What a game. It really was super. And the best thing? (other than the baby who underestimated the creepy factor of the clown) was that the Miami Dolphins got to hold on to their record for one more season. And the next best thing? Eli Manning beat Tom Brady.
I just saw this:
The Beatles are about to become radio stars in a whole new way.
NASA on Monday will broadcast the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe” across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star.
The story is full of embedded lyrics and the author obviously had a good time writing it.
What sticks with me though, is this: it is the 50th anniversary of NASA. I grew up just down the coast from Cape Canaveral, and the space industry has been a part of my whole life. My beloved cousin Milton worked on the Gemini project doing something with the space suits. From the very beginning, when a rocket launched, my whole elementary school would be trotted out to the playground, lined up and faced north, and with the little black and white portable tv in the classroom giving us the play by play, we would watch the vapor trail, and the bright flash of the booster separating from the body of the rocket. Then back we’d go into the school, to follow the rest of the story.
Perhaps those memories are why some of the short stories by Ray Bradbury resonated so deeply with me. In books like The Illustrated Man, there seemed to always be folks sitting on their porches on a clear summer night, watching the space ships take off from beyond the corn fields. Those stories seemed to be so close, just another year or two away from what was real in my life already.
When we drove to Newport for the summer, we would stop at a picnic area in Titusville, just across the St. John’s River from the Cape. We could see the rockets on their pads, and the giant buildings where the rockets were built. They were so big, we were told, that clouds formed in the upper reaches. I knew how to spell the word “gantry” and what it meant.
Why wouldn’t there be rockets beyond the orange groves and fireflies in the trees?