Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Jimmy Carter

Former President Carter’s Remarks to the Democratic National Convention (washingtonpost.com): ” After 9/11, America stood proud — wounded, but determined and united. A cowardly attack on innocent civilians brought us an unprecedented level of cooperation and understanding around the world. But in just 34 months, we have watched with deep concern as all this good will has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations. “

If only Jimmy Carter’s presidency hadn’t been tainted by events over which he had no control… If only people had listened, really listened, when he tried to get this country on track for developing alternative energy sources. If only… We certainly wouldn’t be in the shape we’re in now– fighting a war which, despite the pronouncements of the spin-meisters, pretty much everyone with more than two neurons to rub together realizes is about oil. Of course it’s about oil! If it were about human rights, we’d be spending our tax dollars cleaning up the outrageous conditions–stuff that’s worse than anything Saddam ever did–that exist in some other countries. If it were about “weapons of mass destruction”, we’d be invading North Korea. (And what a crazy move that would be.)

Jimmy Carter was always too good for the presidency. His honesty made him vulnerable to the attacks of less honest, less honorable people. Goodness does not always win the day, unfortunately.

Christopher Walken singing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”

Yesterday afternoon I had this idea in my head that just wouldn’t go away for the longest time: Christopher Walken singing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”.

…hopping down the bunny trail
hippity-hoppity
Easter’s on it’s way…

Have you ever noticed how much those computerized voices that give the weather report on the weather band radio sound like Christopher Walken–the way they put the emphasis on odd syllables within a sentence?

Saddam’s other army of alien/scorpion hybrids

Salon.com Books | Dark victory: “…there were reports Saddam had contacted aliens and managed to combine alien DNA with scorpion DNA and breed giant scorpions that were guarding his palaces.”

This actually comes from a Salon interview with writer, Jim Knipfel. I haven’t read any of his books, though they sound interesting. This bit about the alien/scorpion hybrids is just a throw-away mention in the interview but it fit in so well with yesterday’s mutant lizard thing that I felt compelled to include it here.

If nothing else, read the Salon interview and then consider getting one of Mr. Knipfel’s books.

Saddam’s army of giant mutant lizards!

Salon.com Comics | This Modern World

snicker!

(Another Salon item. Well worth watching the ad to see this one!)

Sex With Minors

Salon.com Life | “Isn’t she a little young?”: “A new public service ad campaign in Virginia uses billboards and bar coasters to remind men that sex with a minor is against the law. But will it work?”

Okay…maybe I’m naively optimistic about the general intelligence level of Virginians, but…is there anybody who is capable of reading these billboards and bar coasters who really doesn’t know that screwing children is illegal? (Not to mention immoral!) I mean…come on!

Okay, so the article quotes an official as saying, “We agreed that people who are going after children 12 and under are not going to be fazed by a billboard campaign”. Later, the article quotes another official: “”Statutory rape is a significant public health problem nationwide,” says Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “A large percentage of births from young women can be from older men.”"

Hm. Okay…I hadn’t thought about it but I suppose that’s quite possible. It’s interesting, though, that Mr. Benjamin says, “births (…)can [emphasis added] be from older men.” Apparently, they don’t really know. I suppose most of these underage pregnant female aren’t telling (or don’t know) who the father of the child is.

I wonder whether these ads will really make a difference, though. Do men who screw around with teenagers really take seriously the possibility of jail time–much less the immorality of the relationship? (Isn’t any ‘relationship’ where one party takes advantage of the other party’s emotional immaturity immoral?)

The Salon article continues: “One of the goals of the campaign is to urge men to start talking to each other about the reality of statutory rape — to remind each other that dating underage girls is against the law. “If he hears it from enough of his friends, hopefully he’ll change his behavior,” Odor says. Billboards and bar props seemed like the best way to reach groups of men when they might be meeting up with friends or going out for the night.”

Sounds like maybe it’s a reasonable approach after all.

(Oh…if you’re not already a member of Salon Premium, you’ll need to watch a short ‘commercial’ before you can read the entire article on their web site.)

The Cats and The Dog

We have four cats: Mickey and Marjie, who are from the same litter; Lucy, the cutest of the group; and George, The Beast Of Terror. Mickey and Marjie were adopted from a cat rescue outfit where they’d been kept in a cage since they were young kittens. Apparently as a consequence, neither of them ever learned to jump up onto countertops. The whole idea of jumping that high is just unimaginable for them. A lot of people would be thrilled to have cats who won’t/can’t jump up on the kitchen counters but to us it just seems weird. Lucy, who is now about 14 years old, came to me as part of a litter needing a home when I lived in Minneapolis. I adopted her and her brother, Roy. Roy died a few years ago from cancer. Lucy remains healthy, though, and we hope she sticks with us for many more years. She’s very small for an adult cat and she likes to curl up in a little ball on my lap. George showed up in our back yard one day. My mother was still alive then and, at the time, I was thinking of getting her a cat to have as a pet. (It seemed like a good idea at the time. The truth is, she never liked cats all that well.) At any rate, here was this cat in the back yard so I figured I go check him out. I sat on the deck stairs and waggled my fingers at him and called him over. Sure enough, over he came. I was surprised to find that he had been let outside to roam even though he was declawed. I was appalled to later discover that he is deaf! Can you imagine leaving a deaf declawed cat outside to fend for himself?! He’d clearly been out for a while, too. His paws were rough and dirty and his fur–which turned out to be almost entirely white–was dirty. Poor little guy. Well…he wound up living with my mother for a few weeks but when she was hospitalized for a long time I decided to just bring George home to live with us. George is a great cat. Really he is. He just hates all other animals and tries to kill them if given the opportunity. So…George lives upstairs in the master bedroom “suite” and he seems to do just fine.

The dog is Ashley. She’s an elderly miniature dachshund who was adopted by my mother about 3 or 4 years ago. Ashley had belonged to an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease. The man’s son told me that his father had reached a point where he no longer recognized Ashley as his own dog. He’d say, “I don’t know whose dog this is.” He wouldn’t feed her. So…Ashley wound up being boarded at our vet’s office with a sign up saying they were looking for a new home for her. My mother really needed a pet and Ashley turned out to be the perfect match for her. The last couple of years of my mother’s life she had this sweet little dog to keep her company and to keep her motivated. We always figured Ashley would wind up as our dog and, as it turned out, once my mother started spending more time in the hospital than out, Ashley came to live with us full-time. She is a good little dog. Even if she does sometimes bark too much.

Corn Days

The Rake – Hardcore Corn: “For me, it was Corn Days in Long Lake, where our corner was prime squatting for the parade, my sister was a Corn Princess, and for two days you could eat all the corn you could handle for $1.50. “

I don’t think I ever knew Stephanie March, the author of this piece, though I might be wrong about that. I’ve forgotten so many people over the years. I am also from Long Lake in Minnesota, though. Long Lake is part of Orono, you see. While, I didn’t actually live in Long Lake, it was the closest thing to a town that was near by. Actually, I grew up in a house that is situated pretty much halfway between Long Lake and Crystal Bay–both part of what was then the Village of Orono. My mailing address was Wayzata, though. It was all very confusing. It still is.

I may have forgotten Stephanie (or not), but I haven’t forgotten Corn Days. I was there when it was first starting out as a church-related festival. It’s apparently still put on by the local Catholic church–St. George’s.

I don’t remember the corn being all that delicious. I think a lot of times they just used field corn–the kind you feed to livestock–instead of actual sweet corn. The idea being, I suppose, that if you slather enough butter and salt on it, pretty much anything will taste good. It doesn’t hurt if you’ve also already made a few trips to “Das Biergarten” before digging into the corn.

I wonder if they still have the Polka Mass during Corn Days weekend. I never went–wasn’t Catholic at the time–but I always wanted to. Just the idea of it…a Polka Mass…intrigues.

For the most part, my Corn Days activity was limited to Biergarten, eating corn, and maybe dancing like an Egyptian at the big street dance they usually had on Saturday night. One year though I got to be in the parade! Oooooo! My then husband, Chad, was trying to start up a solar panel business (he was, alas, way ahead of his time) and we kitted out his truck with solar panels and solar-related decorations and such. We dressed up an acquaintance’s cute little kid and called her the “sun princess” and rode in the parade. This was more than 20 years ago but, amazingly, every now and then when I’m back in Long Lake I’ll run into someone who mentions it. Hm.

Roomba! Roomba! Cha-cha-cha!

Dirty Dancing (washingtonpost.com): ” This year’s version of the Roomba is the slightly tweaked second generation of a product line that debuted in 2002 and has sold, according to iRobot, more than half a million units.”

And I am the proud owner of one of those half million units! I have owned a Roomba since…last Christmas, I think it was, that my husband gave me one. Ours is one of the earlier models that doesn’t automatically go “home” to its recharging station when it’s done cleaning. Also, ours was produced before they worked out that people don’t want to have to get a screw driver in order to take the thing apart to clean it.

I have to admit: I sorta want one of these new and improved Roombas! I do use the one I have–but probably not as often as I would if it were easier to charge and easier to clean. So…

The Roomba does clean pretty well. And it does, in fact, save me some time. I very often will be cooking in the kitchen while Roomba is vacuuming in the living room.

The dog is terrified of Roomba. Most of our cats are curious about it but not particularly afraid. The best animal-reaction came from our cat, George, who is an unusually aggressive beast. George is accustomed to having people and other animals back away from him. It was most amusing watching his reaction when Roomba not only didn’t back away–it sometimes went right towards him! You could almost hear him thinking, “What the fu….?!?!”

The National Threat Posed by Arab Musicians

Salon.com Technology | The hysterical skies: “The hysterical skies
She survived a flight with 14 harmless Syrian musicians — then spread 3,000 bigoted and paranoid words across the Internet. As a pilot and an American, I’m appalled.”

Read this and the Women’s Wall Street article that inspired it. For sure, the presence of Arab musicians can be alarming. The instruments they play make that weird twangy noise. I’d be scared, too! And an Arab man with a McDonald’s bag! That’s probably the most alarming part of this story. You think McDonalds is halal? I doubt it!

Seriously, I think part of what caused this poor woman’s terror is unfamiliarity with some of the basic culteral differences between Arab people and Americans.

Beyond all that. What’s with “Women’s Wall Street” anyway?? What, women need different financial advice from what men get? Or is it the same financial advice but with pictures of bunnies and kittens and ads for makeup?

Preparing for The Big One

WHAT TO DO WITH LESS THAN 3 DAYS TO A NUCLEAR DISASTER!: “This instructional guide is for American families preparing for imminent nuclear attack, with widespread radioactive fallout, from atomic bomb(s)…”

This is an interesting site…but I wouldn’t count on it as the definitive guide for how to survive a nuclear strike. For example, I don’t think the author give enough attention to properly ventilating a shelter. It would certainly be a bummer to survive the initial blast and the fall-out from a nuclear attack only to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

If you get a chance, take a look at this guy’s entire site. His thing is selling iodine products and such but he’s got all kinds of other articles covering such topics– from how to build a bomb shelter to how to survive a biological/chemical weapon attack.

Of course, none of us want these kinds of things to happen but…it’s good to have some idea of what you ought to do just in case something does happen, right?

It’s not like I have pleasant daydreams about a great majority of the human race suddenly being wiped out. Huh-uh. Not me.