Good morning Boys and Girls!

A couple of interesting things...

Last night I made my way to the Dania Beach Library to write a post. It's just off Route One and South of Ft. Lauderdale proper by about ten minutes during non-rush hour periods or about forty-five minutes during rush hour... It was rush hour of course.

Closed at 6:00. Grrr.

Directly next door is the Dania Jai-Alai, what? -stadium? enclosure? hippodrome? Well, it's the place that people go to watch and bet on Jai-Alai.

Six p.m.. No real plans. Tired of traffic and I was always curious about the place even when I lived down here. Decided to check it out.

Buck fifty covered getting in, a program and parking. I was parked across the street, but... what the hell. After last night's escapade with the internet cafe/gambling hall, I decided to go for it.

Walked in to betting windows and what looked like an off-track betting place. It was. You can gamble your brains off on horse racing from all over the world. Zowie. I took an escalator up.

A room full of poker players. Looked just like any of those shows you can't help but stumble across when you're flipping through cable or satellite channels.

Where is the friggin' Jai-Alai? I wondered, but asked more politely. "Excuse me sir," I started.

"Over through there." -a guy points with his chart or program or whatever, not even really looking up to answer my question.

"Thanks," I said and made my way through double doors into a place set up like a huge theater, the "stage" being the Dania Jai-Alai court.

Amazing. Cool to watch and listen to. For those of you who've never seen it, imagine a racquetball court missing one of the side walls. Now imagine it's five times longer and twice as high...

Oh... and imagine you're playing with a golf-ball.

The doohickeys they use to catch and throw the ball are very much like those plastic banana-shaped scoopy things kids play with to throw wiffle balls, except these are attached to fingered gloves and are strapped onto the players' hands, and allow them to throw the exceptionally hard little ball at the speed of a good professional tennis-player's first serve.

The rules are similar to racquetball except that rather than hitting the ball, the players must catch and re-throw it in a single fluid motion.

By the forth game I jumped into the fray and bet two dollars. I won back two dollars and sixty cents.

I was hooked. By the time I left after the tenth game - which are played in rotation between eight two-man teams or individuals depending on the particular game, winning the point allows you (or your team, in doubles matches) to continue on while the team losing the point goes back into rotation - I'd made seven two dollar bets and collected a total of twelve dollars even.

Down $3.50 for the night including admission. Not too bad.

Wait. I had a coke too. Down $5.00.

My super-secret betting strategy? Bet team two to "show," - which means "to come third or better."

Why team two?

I like the number two.

Woke up this morning hearing the "click" of the ball in my head, blasting off the end wall and thinking my Dad would have absolutely loved to see this game at least once in his life.  He was a avid and capable racquetball player and, when he was younger, a fair handball player as well. I have a feeling the sport must be dying, at least around here, because, except for me and a guy who heckled the players mercilessly, there were probably less than a hundred spectators in the place, which looked to hold at least a few thousand people.

Maybe the pseudo internet cafes, the simulcasting, the casinos and the cruise ships have drained all the available gamblers from Jai-Alai - a shame as it seems to me it would be fun to watch whether you gamble on it or not.

Wonder where I'll end up tonight. Oh wait. Dinner plans tonight. And I'd better get my butt to work!

Be good to everyone!

Good evening Boys and Girls!

Tonight finds me at the Tamarac, Florida Branch of the Broward County Florida Library System. I didn't think I'd end up here tonight a little while ago.

You see, I found an internet cafe about an hour and a half ago and I was excited about it. I love internet cafes when I can find them, and upon walking into this one, about a mile from here on University near Commercial, I was dumbfounded to find well over a hundred nicely set up terminals, each set in identical very attractive workstations. The place looked really great. On first glance, I'd guess that there were about thirty people scattered about throughout the facility and what with all the plants and great looking lighting, I thought I'd found my traveler's Nirvana.

After a few seconds of taking in the place as a whole, I noticed that the folks using the computers all seemed to be playing digital versions of slot machines, with various recognizable casino type screens moving at casino speed under the mouse control of the various... well, players, is what it looked like.

I hunted down an employee to ask about using a computer. She said yes, I could use any unoccupied computer. Would I please give her my drivers license and she'd sign me on. The price was twenty cents per minute, the same rate I'd paid at various truck stops along the way, which though ridiculous, was no more so than anywhere else I'd paid for internet time.

I turned over my license and she signed me on. Within five minutes I knew it wasn't gong to be worth it for me as the connection seemed very slow and froze far to often for me to pay the sort of money they were charging.

 I checked my email and the comments here as quickly as I could and signed out. After telling her I wasn't all that satisfied, the lady apologized and discounted my three dollars to two, and I threw the extra buck into her tip jar. Yes. She had a tip jar. As I was walking out I decided to ask her about all the gambling games being played by every other living soul in the place.

"Oh yes. It's free to play. You just purchase one of our phone cards, sign on using it and it either debits or adds to your running total as you win or lose. You can also add to it's value buy purchasing more minutes. Lots of people play here. After nine tonight, the place will be  jammed till we close at three!"

"Is it legal?" I asked.

"Sure! See you're just playing for phone minutes."

"But can the player redeem the phone cards for cash if they're ahead?"

"Oh, of course! We don't even charge any surcharge on the winnings. You can either use your card to make long distance calls at 5 cents a minute or redeem any amount of the balance for cash if you want to."

"So... It's just a technicality. People are gambling for money, but since there's the extra layer of the phone cards  between the gambling and the paying-off, you skirt the state. Do I have that right?" I smiled.

She winked. "Exactly."

Zowie.

I am just not clever enough. I used to think I was a fairly clever person. I mean something like this would never even have occured to me even if I did want to run a gambling joint.

Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson would have LOVED this one, don't you think?

Be good to everyone.

Love him or hate him, this is about as well stated as it could be:

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

Friends,

Tomorrow marks the day that we will have been in Iraq longer than we were in all of World War II.

That's right. We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, and the entire Japanese empire in LESS time than it's taken the world's only superpower to secure the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad.

And we haven't even done THAT. After 1,347 days, in the same time it took us to took us to sweep across North Africa, storm the beaches of Italy, conquer the South Pacific, and liberate all of Western Europe, we cannot, after over 3 and 1/2 years, even take over a single highway and protect ourselves from a homemade device of two tin cans placed in a pothole. No wonder the cab fare from the airport into Baghdad is now running around $35,000 for the 25-minute ride. And that doesn't even include a friggin' helmet.

Is this utter failure the fault of our troops? Hardly. That's because no amount of troops or choppers or democracy shot out of the barrel of a gun is ever going to "win" the war in Iraq. It is a lost war, lost because it never had a right to be won, lost because it was started by men who have never been to war, men who hide behind others sent to fight and die.

Let's listen to what the Iraqi people are saying, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland:

** 71% of all Iraqis now want the U.S. out of Iraq.

** 61% of all Iraqis SUPPORT insurgent attacks on U.S. troops.

Yes, the vast majority of Iraqi citizens believe that our soldiers should be killed and maimed! So what the hell are we still doing there? Talk about not getting the hint.

There are many ways to liberate a country. Usually the residents of that country rise up and liberate themselves. That's how we did it. You can also do it through nonviolent, mass civil disobedience. That's how India did it. You can get the world to boycott a regime until they are so ostracized they capitulate. That's how South Africa did it. Or you can just wait them out and, sooner or later, the king's legions simply leave (sometimes just because they're too cold). That's how Canada did it.

The one way that DOESN'T work is to invade a country and tell the people, "We are here to liberate you!" -- when they have done NOTHING to liberate themselves. Where were all the suicide bombers when Saddam was oppressing them? Where were the insurgents planting bombs along the roadside as the evildoer Saddam's convoy passed them by? I guess ol' Saddam was a cruel despot -- but not cruel enough for thousands to risk their necks. "Oh no, Mike, they couldn't do that! Saddam would have had them killed!" Really? You don't think King George had any of the colonial insurgents killed? You don't think Patrick Henry or Tom Paine were afraid? That didn't stop them. When tens of thousands aren't willing to shed their own blood to remove a dictator, that should be the first clue that they aren't going to be willing participants when you decide you're going to do the liberating for them.

A country can HELP another people overthrow a tyrant (that's what the French did for us in our revolution), but after you help them, you leave. Immediately. The French didn't stay and tell us how to set up our government. They didn't say, "we're not leaving because we want your natural resources." They left us to our own devices and it took us six years before we had an election. And then we had a bloody civil war. That's what happens, and history is full of these examples. The French didn't say, "Oh, we better stay in America, otherwise they're going to kill each other over that slavery issue!"

The only way a war of liberation has a chance of succeeding is if the oppressed people being liberated have their own citizens behind them -- and a group of Washingtons, Jeffersons, Franklins, Ghandis and Mandellas leading them. Where are these beacons of liberty in Iraq? This is a joke and it's been a joke since the beginning. Yes, the joke's been on us, but with 655,000 Iraqis now dead as a result of our invasion (source: Johns Hopkins University), I guess the cruel joke is on them. At least they've been liberated, permanently.

So I don't want to hear another word about sending more troops (wake up, America, John McCain is bonkers), or "redeploying" them, or waiting four months to begin the "phase-out." There is only one solution and it is this: Leave. Now. Start tonight. Get out of there as fast as we can. As much as people of good heart and conscience don't want to believe this, as much as it kills us to accept defeat, there is nothing we can do to undo the damage we have done. What's happened has happened. If you were to drive drunk down the road and you killed a child, there would be nothing you could do to bring that child back to life. If you invade and destroy a country, plunging it into a civil war, there isn't much you can do 'til the smoke settles and blood is mopped up. Then maybe you can atone for the atrocity you have committed and help the living come back to a better life.

The Soviet Union got out of Afghanistan in 36 weeks. They did so and suffered hardly any losses as they left. They realized the mistake they had made and removed their troops. A civil war ensued. The bad guys won. Later, we overthrew the bad guys and everybody lived happily ever after. See! It all works out in the end!

The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats. Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness. Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month. We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans. The opening page of my website has a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, each made up by a collage of photos of the American soldiers who have died in Bush's War. But it is now about to become the Bush/Democratic Party War unless swift action is taken.

This is what we demand:

1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW. Quit looking for a way to win. We can't win. We've lost. Sometimes you lose. This is one of those times. Be brave and admit it.

2. Apologize to our soldiers and make amends. Tell them we are sorry they were used to fight a war that had NOTHING to do with our national security. We must commit to taking care of them so that they suffer as little as possible. The mentally and physically maimed must get the best care and significant financial compensation. The families of the deceased deserve the biggest apology and they must be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

3. We must atone for the atrocity we have perpetuated on the people of Iraq. There are few evils worse than waging a war based on a lie, invading another country because you want what they have buried under the ground. Now many more will die. Their blood is on our hands, regardless for whom we voted. If you pay taxes, you have contributed to the three billion dollars a week now being spent to drive Iraq into the hellhole it's become. When the civil war is over, we will have to help rebuild Iraq. We can receive no redemption until we have atoned.

In closing, there is one final thing I know. We Americans are better than what has been done in our name. A majority of us were upset and angry after 9/11 and we lost our minds. We didn't think straight and we never looked at a map. Because we are kept stupid through our pathetic education system and our lazy media, we knew nothing of history. We didn't know that WE were the ones funding and arming Saddam for many years, including those when he massacred the Kurds. He was our guy. We didn't know what a Sunni or a Shiite was, never even heard the words. Eighty percent of our young adults (according to National Geographic) were not able to find Iraq on the map. Our leaders played off our stupidity, manipulated us with lies, and scared us to death.

But at our core we are a good people. We may be slow learners, but that "Mission Accomplished" banner struck us as odd, and soon we began to ask some questions. Then we began to get smart. By this past November 7th, we got mad and tried to right our wrongs. The majority now know the truth. The majority now feel a deep sadness and guilt and a hope that somehow we can make make it all right again.

Unfortunately, we can't. So we will accept the consequences of our actions and do our best to be there should the Iraqi people ever dare to seek our help in the future. We ask for their forgiveness.

We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

Gooood morning Boys and Girls.

Okay, akelso has gently scolded me about going on too long about this turning 50 thing I've bored you all to death with the last month, and I know she's right. I really haven't been bothered by it in the least anyway, and was really trying to use it as a comic jumping off point, so I'll stop starting now. I promise.

Have had a wonderful time visiting friends along the way down here and have learned one thing specifically I feel I ought to pass on to the tBlog community as a whole as a public service. Far be it from me to gossip or say mean untrue things about people but I'm afraid this is too important to just let it pass.

First, yes, PastorDave IS a real preacher complete with a beautiful church, a wonderful bearing, and an office he claims is messy but looks comfortable and professional to me, and he's really fun to talk to and get to know. These things are all well and good and are, I swear, true. But there IS a darker side to PastorDave, one he'd probably love to hide from you, his readers, but it's a sordid characteristic I feel compelled to share.

The man is a pool shark.

Oh sure. He let me win a couple of the five games, even "accidentally" sinking the eight ball in the first game to give me a false sense of confidence. In one of the games he somehow set up the table in such a manner that allowed me to go on a four or five ball run, further building me up, pushing me higher and higher up the ladder to ensure an even louder and more destructive crash when, in game five, he decided he'd done just about all the pussyfooting around he needed to do in order to send me spiraling down to splatter, a greasy spot on the felt and slate, just another victim of "Preacher Boy Dave"; the first half of his pool hall moniker. "The Baptist Bomber" being the second, both of which are engraved lovingly into the granite plaque under the specially built mahogany and glass case the pool hall had made to hold his one-piece solid-gold cue.

I suppose I should have been warned when everyone became silent as he led me into the place and he fished the elaborate diamond-cut titanium key out of his pocket to get the ostentatious thing out as we began. His explanation of the cue?

"Oh, no biggie, my kids gave it to me for Father's Day a couple of years back and it won't fit into my Chevette."

Another lie. It's a Chevrolet Aveo, and I think it might have fit just fine.

Humiliated from my thrashing, I tried to remain cordial. His gentle voice never wavered as he bid me farewell and we both said we looked forward to seeing each other again. Little does he know that I'm working up a plan to humble him big-time the next go-round.

I'm thinking ping-pong.

Or... Bowling.

No. Wait. I've got it!

You are dead meat Bomber.

Putt-putt!

Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls...

Okay, first,  swear to God, sat here just now and as I started this post, (which I write in my email program and then send to myself to avoid losing them to the cyber-ether) I typed my own email address in the slot, then, in the subject line, I started to type my "file system" name for the post (simply JR and then the date) except? I could NOT remember what the date was.

Stared at the screen for thirty seconds before opening my cell phone to check...

Now for this to actually have any meaning, first you'd have to realize that today I turn fifty. I KNOW today's my birthday - which is sort of what I'd planned on writing about this morning, a sort of "Famous People I've outlived," thing... ha ha ha... anyway, as I said, I KNOW it's my birthday, and I know the date of my birthday, but for some reason as I started the post, I simply couldn't put the two together.

Oy.

I'm at the G.G. Fisher Library in Athens, Tennessee this morning and a nice guy named Michael who wears a "Trumpeter for God" jacket and t-shirt, complete with embroidered trumpets on them, waited with me outside for the place to open and then walked me through their procedures for borrowing a computer.

I haven't asked Michael about the meaning of his logos, as I'm a little worried about the degree to which he might start explaining, this based solely on my recent, if limited, prior experiences with his explanations from the last few minutes.

Actually he sits to my right using computer #1 while I must be satisfied with computer #2. God only knows how the people to my left must feel suffering with puters #3-10.

I shall not scoff at them though mightily tempted am I.

It's a nice little town, though I found myself annoyed that they expected me to put my own cream and sugar in my coffee at McDonald's this morning. Hey, don't give me any crap about it, (bawdy) one is allowed to get a little cranky on ones fiftieth birthday.

Do you have any idea how unlikely it is that I'll ever play in the major leagues now? Or that I'll ever be an astronaut? Why, the chances of my even climbing Mt Everest and living to tell about it have just been reduced to zip. Geez.

Still? I feel good.

And I'm thankful.

And, by God, today I simply insist!
Be very very good to everyone.

Goooood morning Boys and Girls.

My list of tasks to be performed yesterday has been completed, thank you very much. There are a few more things to do today, and I will be working some, but I'm guessing I'll hit the road around six tonight, either stopping in Detroit for the night or moving on toward the evil Sate of Ohio, where all college football players use steroids, eat cute little puppy-dogs, and hate their mothers.

Here in Michigan it's cold this morning, frost on the wild grass on the hill out back and a silvery sheen to the lawn. It's supposed to warm up over the next couple of days, probably the last gasp (grasp?) before winter starts grabbing hold for good. I'd imagine when I've returned in a couple of weeks it will be a hell of a lot colder than it is now, and I'll be wondering why I didn't wait to go till January or February when getting away from the winter might be a wonderful thought.

Hmmm.

I could go again! No. That would be wrong. Horrible idea. Just... Just...

Hmmm.

As Carl Sandburg might have said - if he'd had a mind to:

As go the geese, the wren , the sparrow, so now I go too
Southward toward warm lands, to find peace - to be renewed
And so, if as I journey, and adventures I do find
I pray my Jeep does make it, and won't leave me in a bind
For though I'm quite prepared, to pay for lodgings, food and gas
A blown motor or transmission, would surely kick my ass.


Be good to everyone.

It is 5:15 p.m. and I'm on my way.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

In order to accomplish any task successfully, I must think through whatever I'm about to do for at least a few seconds and consciously ask myself a few questions which I try to answer, even if I'm not sure the answers I give myself are entirely correct. It's the asking of the questions of myself that's really important, since I couldn't have asked them if I wasn't thinking about the task at hand.

By going through this process I believe I avoid many of the pitfalls that might otherwise appear, and, in fact, in many cases did appear before I started using this, well "technique" probably isn't the right word, but it'll have to do.

Oh, and I know this sounds obvious as hell to most of you, but it wasn't - not to me.

I learned it from a plumber I hired about ten years ago to help me put in a new bathroom and kitchen and rework the rest of the piping in our old single story ranch that was, at the time, on its way to becoming a two story colonial.

He didn't know he was teaching me, though I became aware of it soon after I heard him muttering to himself as he walked through the gutted-to-the-studs rooms of our first floor and writing notes to himself with a magic marker on a scrap of two-by-four, always speaking aloud the words and figures as he jotted them down.

"False floor - between - upper and lower... Ten inches.... (his tape measure zipped shut and he snapped it back on his belt)

Objective?... Connect old stack to... Twenty-one feet between kitchen sink and bath... Old Stack is cast iron... Get Fernco 4 1/2 inch fitting....

Schedule rough plumbing inspection for early next week... Thursday? Afternoon is possible, but busy in a.m...

Does this city's code call for two step or three step inspection on new additions?... See if trap can be lowered to keep it below....." And on and on.

At first I just watched and listened. I honestly thought he might have a bit of a problem. A few years earlier I'd hired an electrician, the father of one of my kid's schoolmates, who upon returning from Viet Nam a decade and a half before, had begun ending every single sentence he uttered with the strangest little chuckle. It was truly annoying. I found out later that he suffered from a form of Turret's Syndrome and it had cost him more than one job over the years, but he was a sweet guy and a crackerjack electrician.

Then there was the deaf mechanic who'd worked on my car from time to time...

So by the time I hired Paul the plumber, I'd been exposed to tradesmen with... with what? -slight oddities?

So I asked Paul about the simultaneous talking and writing down everything...

"You gotta!" He said. "There is soooo much to remember about any given job, you have to make it part of you for the whole time you're working on it or sure as hell, you'll forget the one thing you didn't even realize was important! For me, I think it through, I talk about it to myself, I write it down... Hell, by the time I start work, I know exactly what to expect and any problems I run into along the way will usually be something I thought might happen anyway. Hell, I LOOK for problems ahead of time. And usually I'll find a few. But by going about it the way I do, now they're not problems anymore. They're just part of the job... Like, look here..." and he pointed to something or other and explained how, having looked at it ahead of time he'd be able to avoid having the doohicky conflict with the thingamajig.

...And he's right. It seems simple but I was always a full speed ahead guy to that point in my life, and I'd made many an error simply because of my not thinking things through carefully. -Not anticipating even those things that just a modicum of thought and research might, ahead of time, been exposed as roadblocks of some sort.

Hell, back then? I was presidential material!

Now, the next step for me, as I enter decade six of my life, is to learn to pay better attention to those things I HAVE learned ahead of time.

Sometimes I think that if I live to be a hundred and twenty? I'll start getting it right.

One hundred and thirty?


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Monsters run through my head some nights.
Last night it was a little one.
Green, but far more goblin-ish than Godzilla.
He called to me asking me to follow him into a room.
He said there was an amusing site to see.
I followed.
He, It? -pointed to a table in the corner lit by an unseen source.
On the table sat a vial and a framed portrait.

I didn't recognize the face portrayed there, but the vial I'd seen before.
It was the glass jar my grandfather carried containing his pills.
He's been gone for fifteen years or more. I picked it up.
One small pill. A water glass materialized.
I shook the tablet through the small opening and swallowed it.
The water was cold but had the soft metallic twang of well water.
It was the water from the well at my grandparents' cottage.
I picked up the portrait and stared into the eyes of the woman there.
Dark eyes, knowing smile. She blinked.

I turned but the little green thing was gone.
The door stood open and taking the picture with me, I left the room.
I entered the bedroom of my late childhood.
The walls were the bright green my folks had allowed me to paint it.
The bedspread and curtains were black vinyl alligator skin.

I walked into my sister's bedroom.
Her walls were elaborately painted with a scene from the Jungle Book.
My Dad and I had worked on it for weeks.
My sister sat on her bed.
"Who is this?" I asked her, showing her the portrait.
She glanced at it.
"You know who that is." She said, annoyed.
"I can't remember."
"Ask him." She said, pointing behind me.
I turned. The little green thing was standing there smiling.

He reached up and grabbed my hand.
He lead me back into my own bedroom.
"Look in your top drawer." he ordered, though I can't recall his voice.
I opened it. The collection book from my newspaper route was there.
A note taped to the front page. "Collect from the Weavers on Friday."

I woke up.

I'd gone to collect from the Weavers...
She came to the door, drunk.
A robe, open. I remember my heart racing - I was twelve.
She was beautiful.
She knew the wonderful shock she produced in me.
She left the door to get the money.
Returning with her purse, her robe was even open even more.
She tipped me 45 cents.

Hadn't thought about the incident in years.
The little green man laughed and laughed.
Monsters run through my head some nights.
Last night it was a little one.



Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Got me a MOdem. (Thank you Yahoo DSL for your quasi-prompt service, even if your hardware seems to suck...)

6:00 a.m. exactly as I start this. It feels damn cold this morning, though maybe it was just the stark contrast with how warm I was sleeping, since for the first time this year I added a second blanket for much of the night.

Anyone else ever leave a foot or part of a leg out from under the covers as a temperature regulator? I don't remember exactly when I started doing this, although it may have started early in my married days and probably had to do with the fact my ex generally tended to like one more blanket than I did. I do know that a foot out from under the covers is just the ticket from time to time to allow my body temperature to come down a degree or two without compromising the integrity of the blanket arrangement as a whole.

It was this very device that allowed me to add that second blanket last night. I did notice, however, that at some point I must have pulled the errant foot back into the fold because upon waking this morning, I was bundled like a newborn and toasty as can be, making the cold, when I briefly stepped outside, truly stinging.

Let's see. Thermal undies will be added to the normal bullet-proof super-hero costume under my nondescript jeans and sweatshirt or sweater today. I'm sure I have some gloves around here somewhere. Damn. I KNOW it's cold out when I start thinking about gloves or - God forbid - a hat.

One nice aspect of making the all important decision to admit I was beyond "going" bald a year or so ago, allowing barbers to buzz my head in about a minute using the number 2 setting with the shears; this occurring the day one particularly pretty "hair stylist" suggested a comb over, something I've always SWORN I'd avoid; is that "hat hair" is no longer a concern. I can't do anything to make what little hair I have left look any better or worse that it does every day except let it get too long, at which point I start to look like an evil Bozo the Clown. Why for yours truly, thankfully, even bed-head is a thing of the past.

Shampoo is probably superfluous for me. Bar soap would probably work just fine. I have done away with using shaving cream in favor of simply shaving in the shower with soap - another thing I should have started doing years ago but didn't. But so far, the shampoo remains.

I think this may be the first in an unintended series of posts leading up to next Wednesday at which point I'll transform into an official "older person" before your very eyes.

Why is it that, physically anyway, I feel exactly the same as I did when I was eighteen?

Be good to everyone, won't you?

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Cloudy and rainy day here in the right half of the center of the country. We've been experiencing a sun deficiency the last few days and I'd really like to see it for a few hours soon.

I'm hoping to see a package with a new modem in it on the porch when I get home today, though it probably won't be here till at least tomorrow.

Got a call from Jesus last night but it wasn't very exciting. He gave me the phone number for the folks he'll be staying with in Dayton starting Friday so he doesn't have to worry about charging his cell while he's there. I'm to pick him up sometime Wednesday and he'll travel with me the rest of the way down to Florida.

We'll be stopping along the way to see some friends, some of whom he knows well, and a couple he hasn't met, plus we're stopping to see a friend of his I haven't met yet, but he says I'll get a kick out of the guy because, and this is according to him now, not something I know for a fact, but evidently, we have a few things in common. Good enough, I suppose, but I think I'LL judge whether I think we have any similarities once I've met the man.

I'm whipped. On days it's cold and windy but not SO cold and windy, and or wet, that I'm not absolutely forced inside and decide I'll try to work outdoors, I seem to tire very quickly in the mid afternoon. The trade off is that I've usually accomplished more by 3:00 than I would have working indoors till six - or at least that's what I tell myself. Maybe I'm fooling myself and rationalizing knocking off early to come here and write this, but... I'm entitled!

Aren't I?

I are.

Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Ah yes, the rush to get to the library at exactly 9:30 a.m. to make sure I got one of the computers, which as of today have a 60 minute time limit on them as opposed to the 90 minute sessions we've been allowed since I started using the Kent County Library system - something I do weekly for my beloved audio books and, as has been fairly common the last couple of months when, (as Andrea pointed out in the comments from Saturday's post,) I'm "in a pinch" to use a computer with Internet service if my own's down for whatever the reason-o-the-day happens to be.

I'm a big library booster. What does that mean? I don't know. I LIKE libraries. Whenever I go on trips I tend to stop at the libraries in the towns I visit. There's something wonderful about the whole idea of information being gathered, housed, lent and retrieved that makes me smile. And for the most part - for free! It just seems like such a strange concept to have evolved to the degree it has in this country and around the free world. I mean, where's the profit in it?

Oh I know, the profit is, if anything, societal in nature in that perhaps we all gain a little when any one or more of us gets a little bit smarter, ya know, when our collective goo get's a little less viscous. Or, is it that, at least during the time we spend reading, even if it's just for entertainment, we're probably unwittlingly following the Hippocratic oath to some degree or another. After all, while it's true that what we've read has surely affected our actions in life, and will most likely continue to do so, it's also true that while involved with doing the actual eyes-to-page exercise, it's damn unlikely that we, he, she, or they are doing anyone any harm - assuming the engineer isn't busy with War and Peace instead of keeping his eyes on the track as the train barrels into the station.

See? Three paragraphs including a couple of ridiculously long run-on sentences to get around to telling you all that I'm about halfway through War and Peace right now, and though I'm assuming I'll get through it in the next couple of days, I keep hoping Tolstoy will change styles for a page or two. This I can tell you, I could have edited it down by 75% and you wouldn't have lost a damn thing, story wise, and to be frank, unless it's all in the translation, the writing isn't very good especially when you (I) compare him to some of the other great Russians of the time.

I will now do my Tolstoy impression starting with the ONE sentence I would have written to describe the action taking place, and then as Tolstoy might have using a few extra words:

"He walked into the room and turned on the light."

Now Tolstoy.

'He used his left hand to scratch his head as he walked down the hallway, his right ever so busily fumbling for the keys in his right-hand pants-pocket which he found just as he approached the door and, by touch alone, discerned which of them, on the large ring, ought fit the door if properly inserted, which he now did with self assurance. Now he turned the head of the key, again using the right hand, since, though the itch on the left side of his head had abated slightly, it was still needed to balance himself against the wall momentarilly his fatigue was so pronounced. Ready now, the click of the releasing lock having just been felt, in one smooth motion he simultainiously swung open the door - though perhaps a little too quickly as it banged against the inside wall as it met its solidness - and reached far inside the room at his chest level, to feel for and flip the light switch, which though he hadn't seen it in years, for some reason upon which he was unable to put his finger, he vaguely remembered being green...'

I keep thinking... okay, damn it... move ON!

Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Left Detroit at about 11:00 p.m. last night after working over there and then shopping for and buying a new digital camera for work.

Made it about a third of the way before my eyes started closing of their own accord a quarter-second at a time. Decided I'd better rest a while. I think an awful traffic jam and a good-sized storm just wore me out. Just a few minutes... Just a few... J...

My quickie cat-nap lasted four hours. I got home this morning at 5:30 exactly. I know this because my cell phone alarm started doing the strange chirp thing the minute I walked into the house.

I was tired but I thought I'd see if I'd received any email or comments from yesterday's stupid post.

But... What the f...

Fried modem. Completely fried. Do not pass go, do not connect to any one of the hundreds of Internets.

Grrr. They're sending out a new one... again, and I'm back using the friggin' library this morning!

If you only knew how much real work I needed to get done today that requires the web that I really can't do here, you'd feel sooooo sorry for me.

(Group "Awwww, poor surrogate," please?)

How the hell did we ever get along without it?

Think about it. I would never have gotten to know ANY of you folks, and that would be a genuine void in my life that I wouldn't have even realized was there!

Thank you Al Gore!

(That was for you Dave, otto, thouloo, Lori, ruined... Let's see - who else will that comment absolutely, positively annoy? I'm drawin' a blank...)

Be good to everyone

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Just saw a Murphy's Law on 69's blog that gave me pause, reminded me of what I used to think of, growing up in the U.S. anyway, as a tangible difference between this country and others. Remember how we were taught that the U.S. would never attack a country unless that nation had declared war on us or had directly attacked us? Remember how we were taught about Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor being one of the most despicable acts in the history of warfare? -especially because we'd been in negotiations with the Japanese Ambassador even the day before the attacks?

I know this is old news except to people who've been able to justify the war because of the 9-11 attacks which supposedly either (a,) changed the landscape, or (b.) was itself an attack on the American homeland by the minions of Saddam - both utter horsepucky on which no other president of the twentieth century, including their beloved Ronald Reagan, would have had enough of a toddlers mentality to base what we've done over the past three and a half years.

Through the adjustable, easily focused lens of retrospect's camera, the bulk of Americans now have started to see things better. There's even a panoramic view feature being used by many and they're absorbing a lot more of the picture.

In fact, except for those who started drinking the administration's offered secret-recipe kool-aid right from the start and even now continue to swallow, who complain that it's the sun behind the subject precluding a good photograph rather than the magic drink causing their eye's extreme sensitivity and dilation, almost everyone is starting to take better snapshots.

But Old Murphy has it right this time, and what's going on now in Iraq, even as we supposedly start to, finally, officially reassess our folly, proves it as easily as 1,2,3.

"There is no right way to do the wrong thing."

Too true.

Jesus called yesterday, and I'd planned on posting a transcript of our conversation, but it'll have to wait till tomorrow, since, with the decision on Saddam, the problems there, and what may happen as a result of the sentencing have been foremost on my mind this morning.

They still use the noose over there I see. To me, it seems silly to kill him especially since it won't do anything but cause more conflict between the Sunnis and Shiites that keeping him imprisoned might not. But, since the guy is a mass-murderer and it's the law of their land - and more importantly, none of our business anyway - I'd guess that after the appeal process has run it's course, Saddam will most likely swing.

Personally, I'm opposed to the death penalty, but if there is a time for it, surely it's appropriate when high government officials use their power to do ill against their own people.


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

It's getting close to the time for me to close this sucker down.

I'll keep it going through the end of the year, but that'll be it.

It'll have been over 650 posts by then and I'll have turned fifty; good enough I'd guess.

What I've learned:

1. There are lot's of nice people on tBlog and I'm thankful I've made some friends here - y'all know who ya are.

2. Any argument made that simply can't be refuted logically by those who disagree with you may indeed be ignored, but won't be acknowledged, or God forbid, accepted, unless and until - as it happens with an insecure boss - it becomes their idea.

This second point may sound like sour-grapes. It's anything but. To be truly persuasive, the goal should be to help people realize things on their own. This is something at which I'm truly deficient, in fact I suck at it, still.

The other evening I was watching "Book TV" again on C-Span and caught just a few minutes of Salman Rushdie talking about his new book. Come to think of it, I don't even know the name of the book! -but he was making a point, THE point, I think, with regards to groups of people needing to point out and blame other groups for the internal problems they're having. Islamic fundamentalists like to point toward the West and blame it, or us, I suppose, for what they see as the decline of Islam society - this while it's the fastest growing religion in the world, not exactly a thrilling prospect to those of us living in the West who fear the extremist fringe portion of these converts, a sub-group that seems to be growing even faster.

Meanwhile, many of our people myopically point to 9-11 as the START of hostilities while refusing to see we've been adding fuel to their fire for decades - centuries, really, from the crusades where our slaughter of their people makes 9-11 look like a day's work, right through our present policies of treating middle-eastern natural resources as our own, even going so far as to deem THEIR oil essential to OUR national security, in the process helping to make the rich and powerful of the area even more so, helping drive the wedge between their classes deeper, widening the chasm.

Our memory is selective and short while theirs seems to be just as selective but far more long-term.

In our own country, we're less than two decent-lengthed lifetimes removed from slavery being an accepted practice and not much farther removed from paying extremely healthy bounties on the scalps of our own native citizens - and we have the haughty temerity to insist on forcing our still evolving style of governing ourselves on societies that have existed for centuries without our help, primitive and oppressive as theirs may seem to us, or as, in fact, they may be.

We have become, in short, a nation of foolish, arrogant, self-righteous people, even if we mean well. Recognizing this is, and changing it, is the most important thing we can do as we move forward. Gaining humility and learning to turn the other cheek as a nation is the only thing we will EVER be able to do to make the world a better place while simultaneously saving ourselves.

Unfortunately, at least for now, I don't see it happening, though I'd LOVE to be wrong.

I find this has become more of a personal journal of late, which I never intended, and I'm sort of disappointed in myself that I've allowed it to go that route, but hey, it's certainly far easier than deliberately trying to write something impersonal that still might, even accidentally, be found as meaningful to someone.

So, fifty-five or sixty more entries.

It's been fun.

And now? The worst news of the day? I just saw on the crawl at the bottom of the screen that Bob Barker is retiring from "The Price is Right" next June. He's 83! Wow. He sure has made that two-bit flash-in-the-pan Monte Hall look like the piker he is, huh?

Are your cats and dogs spayed or neutered?

Good. Just making sure.


Be good to everyone.