Don't Cry For Me, Blogentina

Ain't we just funny, with that really cute title at the top. That was inspired by a guy I found in the blogosfeer who said his favorite book was Finnegan's Wake, so I though a strange Jim Joyce-type phrase might be in order as an eye catcher. I looked into Finnegan's Wake one time and put it away. Somebody somewhere understands it, but I could not. Neither could Joyce's wife.

Finally we are getting some rain today, but as usual with the local weather I am complaining about it. Whatever the climate is I seem to get gripey about it; 2 cold, 2 windy, 2 cloudy, 2 icy, 2 dry, 2 hot (when it finally does get warm). Some people ain't happy with nuthin.

The big news story around here will probably be the college kid who spent 3 days living in a west-side of Des Moines Wal Mart (See Drudge for the story). I was in that Wal Saturday night and may have seen him, but there were so many people in the store crashing carts into each other and letting their kids run wild, that I just got some socks and a coffee pot and some body wash and got out of the place as soon as I could.. The story mentions that some birds flew into the produce area and were eating grapes out of a box. That should shoot the Walton family into space if they read Drudge or the Des Moines Register.

Moussaoui got up in court today and announced that he and Reid the shoe bomber were planning to crash a plane into the White House. The discussion on afternoon Fox News is about Mousaoui is a lier and or just crazy, and you can't believe a word he says.

Not fun being an Iraqi right now. Forty people killed in one car bombing, and a pile of headless bodies found in one room around Sadr City. And more GIs dead. Saturday night all the talk shows on cable took up most of prime time with new news about Natalie and whether Sloot killed her or she died from a drug overdose.

No one on cable has yet noted that the preacher murder took place in Selmer, Tennessee--which is where Buford Pusser kept law and order with his club years ago. Way back in the 1920s there was a once-famous case in Connecticut where a preacher and his girl-friend were found murdered, and the wife was put on trial. The once-famous "pig woman trial." The wife was found innocent, and no one still knows who did the murders.

NewsMax has the transcript of a Sunday night radio brawl on WABC between Alec Baldwin and Sean Hannity. Sean called the station and accused AB of supporting terrorists, and AB, before he walked off the show, was calling SH of being a former "construction worker hack..and Long Island house builder." So much for Alec Baldwin's view of blue collar workers. The yelling also got into Baldwin's weight and Kim Bassinger.

A golden day yesterday for C-Span 1 and 2 devotees. A panel on Vietnam with Dan Rather and others telling stories about how the news back then was reported. Then Chief Justice Roberts was on giving an interesting speech. Then David Horowitz taking on a bunch of college lefties, and then Wesley Clarke talking about Patton, and Tony Blair having a wild Question Time.

Fox is covering a situation in LA involving a bunch of ant-immigration bill school kids blocking a downtown freeway in the afternoon rush hour.

More later. You all take care for now. Di di mau!

A Blog of Ramblingness

This blog may be dated for Fri. 3-24, but I did not get it finished, and wiped away what I had in my draft, and so this is actually being typed on Saturday night.

A Saturday of doing errands around the DM metroplex and buying and charging, and listening to some of the Met opera of Luisa Miller (La Cieca and his band of opera queens did not like the cast). Then took a nap and piddled around on Sat. night, and read and listened to talk shows on the tube and radio.

Buck Owens passed away. He is now with most of the Hee Haw gang--Grandpa Jones, Minnie Pearle, Archie Campbell, Lulu, and Junior Samples.

A Drudge segment the other day was about a honcho of Castro who is now in exile in Miami, and is a local TV star, giving out amazing stories about the Brothers C. Fidel burns his used underwear in case someone tries to smear poison in his drawers, and Fidel and Raul have a large stash of cash squirrelled away.

The Iraq war goes on, and the newest news topic is that the Russians gave Saddam our invasion plans before we went in. And Iran is supposedly in a hurry to get its nuke made and ready. There was a report a while back that they will have the thing ready on April 8.

Some doofus shot up a house full of people partying in Seattle--offing seven people, and then himself.

I have some strong opinions about the anti-immigration reform protests taking place around the US, but I am trying to be tolerant. And that is all I am going to say in this blog being sent into cyberspace.

For the historical record; gas prices in Des Moines are now up to $2.45, and canned soup and frozen entree prices are going up and up.

I am going to terminate this blog entry now, and take a nap. Hopefully I will have a better one on Sunday night, with much more depth and more infobits about the state of the earthly body politik. I need to read some more news websites, and actually read a real newspaper. So, fans and devotees, Di di mau!

Night After the Non-Blizzard

The horrible blizzard we were supposed to get got here last night and was an inch of wet slushy snow and hard winds, but it all stopped about ten a.m this morning and the sun came forth and the slush melted on the streets and the snow evaportated and that was our first day of spring blizzard, at least in the center of the midwest.

Ran around this afternoon and this evening and did not catch a lot of the news, exept that W and Helen Thomas had a heated discussion at his press conference. The big news that the basketball coach from Northern Iowa is going to take over at Iowa State took up more local news time than the blizzard.

I rented a dvd of March of the Penguins this afternoon and hope to slide it into the slot after I get done watching Fellini Satyricon, which is a really weird movie--supposed to be a satire on ancient Rome and the decadence of the modern world in the 1960s, I think. I got 45 minutes of it watched in one sitting, and wonder how anyone in '69 sat through 2 hours of it at one stretch. The last really strange art movie I got through was The Tin Drum several years ago. Maybe I am not as attuned to European art movies as I thought I would be. I did like Danton, one of the great political movies. A French-Polish colaboration, the movie is about the French Rev. leader Danton, who I guess would rather make a speech than run the Revolution. He ends up on the guillotine in a harrowing depiction of what it was like to get your head chopped off. A movie which should be seen by all gabby politicians. And Depardieu does a great job as Danton.

Went to my vets club meeting tonight, and a guy in our group who is in the Nat Guard and is in his late 50s is due to be sent to Iraq for 18 months in June.

That is about all for tonight. Lots of stuff going on on earth, but Drudge does better at selecting important news than I can summarize in a blog. I should get a little sleep, so I need to make my nest and turn around three times before I nestle down in my nest--just like a doggie does. You all take care. Maybe a deeper blog next time I face the keyboard. Di di mau!

A Sunday Night in March in the 21st Century

Bits and pieces about a disorganized weekend. Broke a piece of a tooth, and the dentist is not in till Tuesday. I fasted yesterday and a lot of today to protect Tommy Tooth (I needed to not eat to use up some lard on my handles.) Last night watched the Iowa basketball championships on tv; very actually exciting basketball; the kids played amazing ball. This morning I watched Chris Wallace and his gang on Fox, and it looked like Britt Hume and Juan Williams and Bill Crystal were going to get up and slug one another before the show was over; very intense argument over the war.

After the talking heads were done I slid in a vhs I rented of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway. Really bad movie, but one you keep watching to see what is going to happen next. Supposed to be a satire I guess on the Theatre in the 1920s, or a satire on sacrificing Art for Money, or a satire on Woody's problems in getting movies made, or some other message Woody wants to send. Real mess of a plot, and John Cusack is totally lost at sea in this one. Bullets was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but I do not think I will watch it again for quite a while. So, this afternoon I rented Fellini Satyricon and Spanking the Monkey. Will see what I think of these two opuses (or opii). Tried to find a tape of a quirky movie called Manny and Lo, but a couple of video stores I frequent did not have it. I was going to spend the winter catching up on viewing a lot of movies I had not seen, but now it is coming spring, and I am just getting back into the movie groove, right at the time when soon being outside is what needs to be done. And, another session of watching the news will be necessary, when the paving-over of Iran starts happening. Cheerful, ain't this? And I seem to be using the dative case a lot.

I usually like Cusack as an screen actor, even if he sometimes seems to get by on his quirky mannerisms, but in Bullets he or Woody seems hopeless trying to convey the role of an idealistic playwright getting his play put on. (This is not good prose, but it is now 1 a.m and I am groggy.)

Some time on Monday we are suposed to get a late March snowstorm, but it has not arrived yet.

Found some interesting websites recently: www.mysteriouspeople has a story about Candy Jones, a famous 1950s supermodel with a split personality who was supposedly drugged by the CIA into being a spy. And www.prairieghosts has stuff on D. D. Home, a 19th century medium who supposdly could fly through the air. And the same site has a section on a famous medium named Margery who held seances in the nude and has a feud with Houdini, who tried to prove she was a phony.

After all this I am going to repair to my divan and try to sleep for a while. I hope this blog has been at least minimally interesting to my countless fans and devotees. Di di mau!

A Friday Night in March in the 21st Century

Six weeks have passed since Phil and General Lee came out and saw their shadows or didn't, so winter should be over, but it is still cold, and we badly need moisture to fall from the sky onto our very dry soil. Probably the rain will come in April. A choice between needed rain, and warm weather and shorts and sandals.

Marilyn Monroe would have been 80 years old on upcoming June 1 (born in 1926).

I found at a thrift store a used vhs tape of TV highlites of Ernie Kovacs shows. The guy was a pioneer genius at creating visual TV comedy. A shame that TV Guide regularly ignores him at a TV pioneer and networks like TVland never find the space to fit tapes of his old shows into their schedule. (Come on, TV--give us Percy Dovetonsils, and the Nairobi Trio!)

Big sports debacle in Iowa today. The Hawkeyes screwed up in March Madness and lost their lead in a game with Northwest State, and were humiliated, and the basketball coach and his whole staff at Iowa State were fired.

There may be a nasty scandal due to break at the Metropolitan Opera, dealing with the pedophilia of a famous conductor and a big Met payoff of the Law to keep the matter covered up, ongoing for a number of years. Anyway, this is a hot topic on a prominent opera-gossip website (La Cieca).

The upcoming hot story out of California may be Maria's grab for power behind Arnold's throne. She is already being compared to Evita Peron, (and a similar situation in Arkansas a couple of decades ago.)

After all of these bits, I have ignored Me, but there is not much to tell all my fans and devotees, because I have not done anything personal that is FoxNewsworthy since Monday. So, this will be all for right now till the next I blog. I need to get an oil change tomorrow--which may or may not be newsworthy, and the dirty underwear needs a washing. Take care, and we will return soon. Hand tough, Steve and Beve. Di di mau!

Going Gazhi

Hannity and Colmes and their guests tonight on Fox had a brawl about the Taliban guy attending Yale-why he is in the US anyway and whether he can be trusted not to do something insidious while he is here, and whether seeing American life might make him learn to love Americans and their values.

Some of the old writers from the British Raj era (Halliburton, Roy Andrews, Lowell Thomas) wrote about something colonial honchos had to fear from their Gunga Din-type "boys," called "going gazhi" (sic), a thing where your loyal native Boy might fall under the spell of a mullah and suddenly kill the Infidel at night or when the Brit was peeing facing Mecca or any other offensive thing to set Gunga off in a holy rage. You never could tell what might Gunga snap. A liberal Democrat dude on H&C's panel was convinced that Mr. Taliban would be so mellowed by his time in America and Yale that he would never do anything terrorist again. It did not work that way with Atta and his crew, or in liberal London, Madrid, and Amsterdam.

After a somewhat low-key winter March has turned nasty--a wave of tornadoes in the midwest and tonight a seven-inch blizzard in S. Dakota. Two twisters in a row hit Springfield Illinois yesterday and ripped up the city. No word yet on how Abe Lincoln's house fared. The U. of Kansas got torn up pretty bad.

This is going to be a short blog tonight. I wanted to write something about "going gazhi" and record the record-setting March tornado outbreak, and in a little while I should hit the Sack. I feel like I have all the mucus monsters in my head doing the conga, so I ought to try to get them out of me. They have been partying inside me all winter. No Letterman tonight and I have missed watching the roller derby women reality show. Is the series about the tattoo parlor in Vegas still on the air? Miami Inked is still on, I know. OK, Di di mau!

Counterextrablogerationalistismite

Hello, friends and fans of this blog. Hello Beve and Steve.

I accidently lied in my last blog due to misinformation; Brokenback Mountain did not come out on DVD last Tuesday. Our local newspaper apparently made an error of massive proportions by saying that it would.

This is being written at 1 a.m. on Sunday, which has been a warm shorts and sandals day and has turned cold at sundown, and we are due to have sleet today and warmth Monday. Enough to confuse the pitiful mind.

The news of the world I should report is all in Drudge, which has an interesting article from the NYT on Saadam's war plans before we invaded. He had fooled everyone, including his generals, when he told them he did Not have any wsds, and he was more worried about what the Shiites were up to than what we were planning. I found it interesting that the NYT kept calling him Mr. Hussein throughout the article.

Milosevic has died under maybe mysterious circumstances in his prison cell. (Shades of Goering.)

Anna Moffo has also passed from the earth. She was a good opera singer who actually looked good. There are some catty remarks about her in La Cieca's opera website, and a number of emails saying nice things about her.

WalMart keeps getting itself hated as the days go by. An article in the WSJ the other day reports on Big W's plans to set up its own banking system in its big box stores, and the banking establishment is fearful that the setup will drain all the money in the US out of traditional banks.

North Korea fired 2 missles into the Pacific a couple of days ago, but this made little news in the MSM.

There is a Palestinian website for kids at www.al-Fateh.net, which is in Arabic, but has some colorful graphics, and is dedicated to encouraging Pal. kids to become suicide bombers.

This is going to be all for right now. I need to pass into the kingdom of slumber for a few hours. More next time, when I return to communicate with my many fans and devotees. Di di mau!

Oscar Night '06 blog

I am not watching the Oscars tonight! I have not seen any of the movies up for any award, I cannot stand the Rivers women, and Mizrahi, so there! I usually try to see the bit where they show pictures of the movie people who have died the past year, but this time I will miss it too. A few years ago during the dead actor segment they showed a picture of John Derek; total silence from the audience. I guess he was that unpopular and/or despised.

OBL's number #2 has a new video out ranting about the West and Jews and Bush and the Mohammed cartoons et al. From a little bit I read once of one of the main surrahs in the Koran Muslims are supposed to make some effort to convert infidels they come in contact with, and if the infidels do not become converts to the True Faith they can be killed, because they rejected the Word. A lot of Islamic nastiness toward unbelievers was also once a part of Christianity during the pre-death- of- Hitler millennia. OK, you can have at me on that statement, but that is something I hold to.

I got around to watching Groundhog Day on DVD Saturday night. Bill Murray was great in it, but the movie was a little too cute and clever for its own good, especially the happy ending. American Spectator a few months ago had an article on how Grounhog Day is a favorite movie of intellectuals, who like to analyze its inner philosophical meanings.

If Bush had ordered everyone in New Orleans to get out of town before Katrina hit, and all those cars and buses had got hit by the winds while on the roads would he have been blamed for all the deaths. When everyone was ordered out of Houston many of the cars ran out of gas and one side of the freeways was not used for at least a day. What would the New Orleans evacuation have been like if a lot of people tried to use the Lake Ponch. bridge going east, or headed south into Plaqueman parish, which got smashed badly?

I have lots of things I would like to ponder upon (split infinitives all over the place tonight), but I need to do more research into the news. So, this will be all for right now. I will try to blog more for my many fans and devotees in the future. S0, Di di mau! for now.

( Here is a later posting; Crash has won the Best Picture Oscar Award, whupping Brokendown Mountain! Not to worry though; BMt. is due out on DVD this Tuesday. A film of the way people behave in the checkout line at WalMart with their copies of the thing might be interesting to view, as a study of human behavior. Allan Funt, where are you when we need you?)

(To bring us back to Reality--NewsMax has a piece reporting that Iranian leaders are saying that they plan to unveil their nuke on April 8!)