Midweek Thoughts

Well, PBS spent 90 minutes Monday giving us Joseph Goebbels. No strange PBS political views of JG, but nothing but a lot of interesting old film of him, and the voice of Kenneth Branaugh reading excerpts from Geobbels' diaries. Actually not much point as to what the whole show was supposed to be about. Some screen crawls telling the viewer to go to some PBS websites to read what some historians think of Goebbels. Avoid academic historians like the bird flu plague. For all the money PBS gets, they bought a film as unreliable as any thing on the History Channel or any thing on BookTV.

There is a scandal going on in Iowa right now which has become the state entertainment of the summer. Somewhat complicated, but it involves the honchos of a state job-finding agency, who were getting huge salaries. It involves a lady with a GED degree, who took her salary to buy a house boat and entertain her fellow board member boyfriend, and there is a long-time city politico who lots of people have grudges against, and a board member who spent some time in prison for child molestation, and some county officials who were involved in the scandal somehow, and the whole matter gets stranger and stranger as the days go by. The Public can find at least one or more pieces of this matter to be Shocked about, even if you do not understand all of it. Like Watergate, honest people keep being found who got corrupted by something in the scandal.

It is hot and humid in the heartland this afternoon after rain and a lightening storm last night. I wanted a hot summer after a cold spring, and it seems to be getting here, so I am complaining
about how Hot it is. Some people will whine about anything.

Bob Dylan, Tommy Chong, and Priscilla Pressley all have birthdays, in different ages in their 60s.

Around this time of May in 1969 I travelled home on leave from Ft. Lee, going from Petersburg Va. to Omaha on the Northfolk and Western Railroad. Had never been on a trainride before. Meaningless fact to most readers, but the train was one of the last passenger trains in business before Amtrack came in. Very interesting ride with some interesting people I met, but was very slow. Wonder if the old steam trains felt as slow to the people who rode them.

(May 25) Tried to watch American Idol last night but could not get through it to the end. None of the singers who could sing at all did anything to me and I will probably barely follow their stints as celebrities instead of singers. Could make long lists of singers who crashed and burned quickly in opera, country, and pop music who were good but not good enough to sustain a career. Sad, but it happens.

Don't have a lot more to send into siberspace tonight. Lots of world news to absorb, and not much memorable at work today to record for human history. Yes, I know: one should always be alive and alert and ready to grasp the universal uniqueness of every little event that occurs in one's life, but I am not Proust yet, though someday I may try to record the ultimate meanings of pumping gas and buying some bread and soup, and driving in Des Moines in the afternoon traffic. Till then, this will be all for right now. Di di mau!

Friday and Monday Together

Heat has finally arrived; the winds have died down a little, and we may actually be getting an authentic summer. And then we will sit in front of our ice boxes and moan that It Is So Hot!

The season ends of 70s Show and the OC were both not what TV Guide had hyped them up as. 70s spent too much of its last show trying to be funny about Hyde's pot smoking, and OC ended with Marisa getting killed in Ryan's car. I was not moved by either show. Maybe it was because my back is hurting this week. I finally went to bed.

Much going on in the world, but check out Drudge to see what is happening. In August the Dixie Chicks are coming to Des Moines for a concert. There will probably be right and left clashes outside the auditorium, along with demonstrations. Note on May 22: the Chicks are on the cover of Time, and Nat Maines has announced she had retracted some of the nice things she said about W in the near past. The concert should be an exciting event in Iowa.

Now on Monday May 22. The records of at least 26 million veterans have been stolen from the house of a VA employee who took them home with him. Barbaro is on his feet and horny for mares after breaking his leg in the Preakness Saturday. Madonna opened her world tour in LA with a show which featured her on a cross. Nagin got reelected mayor of New Orleans. Another kid in Aruba has been picked up for whatever he knew or did involving Natalie H. A horse farm in Michigan is being dug up in case the bones of Jimmy Hoffa are buried there. The upcoming hurricane season may be another wicked one. The Metropolitan Opera gala for the retirement of Joe Volpe got awful reviews and comments from a website of gay opera fans.

PBS tonight is doing a show on Joseph Goerbbels tonight. Should be interesting to see how PBS portrays Dr. G. considering the strange political leanings of PBS. And King of Queens is supposed to be very good tonight. A lot of network shows I just have never gotten interested in (including Lost, 24, American Idol, and most of the murder-autopsy shows). It's just the way my brain is wired, I guess. Probably nothing wrong with all those shows, but I just can't cram all of them into my activity routine.

This is going to be all for right now. I did not get Friday's blog finished, so this is a combo of Friday and Monday. I keep promising all my fans that I will sometime create the perfect blog, but I am still working on that project. You all take care. Di di mau!

Wednesday and Whatever

At sometime in human history the heartland is going to have a pure summer season, with heat and clear skies and no March-type winds and everyone will not be going around with winter colds. The barn swallows have come back to Iowa from wherever they go south in the fall, and like last year are probably wondering what the hail they flew up to cold and rainy Iowa. The skeeter population should be huge this summer so the barnies will at least have good eating for a few months.

Remember--it is spelled Wednes-day, not Wens-day or Wedens-day.

The stock market took a 200-point dive today. Billionaire Beatle Paul and his wife are splitting up. Is it possible that Jane Asher is waiting in the mist to catch Paul on the third bounce? The guys who played Tom Corbett and Clarabelle the Clown on tv in the '50s both have died. European critics have been trashing The Da Vinci Code, and Ian McCellan trashed the Bible. Opie and Forrest G. will probably still make a pile of treasure from the flick. It cost 1oo million to film! Not as much as Paul is worth, but still a lot.

This should be a night to do something besides watching normal TV fare. I am thinking about pulling out a VHS of In the Mood or something else I have had the tape of for years but just kept on the shelf. So many old movies--so little time.

This seems to be a short blog, but I think this will be all for right now. Millions and millions of blogs and bloggers, besides my little blog of genius. The whole world is online.

Oh yes; some guy on my local newscast is infoing us that you can get better gas milage if you drive with the car windows closed; open windows cause a wind drag that burns extra gas. Will have to try doing that. And now the local weatherman is saying that it will be in 80s next week.

Di di mau!

Monday Night and Whatever

Dud title for this blog entry, but that is my personal attitude tonight. Have the blaws, which segues into whining and opoormeism, which wastes precious minutes of the span of my life, but at this second that is what I have within my mental system. So, let us go onward to get rid of it and gain some positive Dale Carnegie attitude toward earthly life and the reality of the Universe.

This time in May should be warm and summery, but it has been raining all weekend and is windy at 9 p.m and is about 50 degrees instead of the 85 degrees I want. We are at least not going through the rain and flooding they are having in Massachusetts, but we had that kind of stuff in '93. And Bill Clinton came to Des Moines and felt our pain, and shelled out a lot of disaster relief money.

In the lastest issue of Campaigns and Elections magazine a lady who worked for Hillary said that one thing the masses do not know about the Clintons is how down to earth and humble they both are, and how kind Hillary is to the people on her staff. Words cannot express my feelings about reading this.

I went through my profile a while ago to see if anyone on earth has some of my interests. It is amazing how many people list Joe Dirt as one of their favorite movies, and how many people listed sleeping as one of their favorite activities. I should not be snippy about such things; I spent a lot of this weekend sleeping like a puppy. Made a bed, turned around three times, and went to sleep. I was tired and it was rainy for 3 days. So, missed a lot of TV (no loss), and took some care of my health by being passed out.

Am not going to rehash online my view of W's immigration speech; I will read some editorials and listen to the heads on Fox to get my official personal opinion. Saw on Drudge that CNN f--ed up by showing 16 seconds of W rehearsing his speech before getting on the air.

This is going to be all for right now. I need to do some housework before crashing into my bed. You all take care. Di di mau!

Moan and Groan on a Windy Friday

Not a climatically cheerful week this past week. Rain and drizzle and cold temps for midMay, and this afternoon it is very windy. Sometime true summer will get here. If Gore thinks that the planet is getting warmer he should be in Iowa right now.

Have not sent a blog into cyberspace for several days. What is on the news you have probably heard somewhere else besides here. According to the WashPost and Drudge there is a thing boiling about the one juror in the Mousaoui trial who held out 1-11 for not calling for the death penalty for M, and the juror will not be allowed to reveal why he almost hung the jury. I have visions of CNN trying to find the lone juror to get him on with L. King (an awful thought).

The big news in Iowa is that the 90-year-old Maytag plant in Newton is going to be closed by Whirlpool in July, tossing out 1,800 workers. It is a magagment vs. union blame game right now. I thing the company just had way too many people hired, to make too many washing machines the market could not get sold. OK, that is My current view of the situation.

Discovered while browsing the web last night that on May 2, one of my heroes, Louis Rukeyser had died. I watch Wall Street Week regularly for years and years, and got to think of Louis and Mary Ferrel and Marty and Lazlo and all of Lou's panelists as Friday night friends, even if I did not always understand what they were talking about. Now I have Cavuto and his gang to give me money news, and they are good, but do a lot more yelling than Lou and company. We will miss Mr. Rukeyser.

Read in a business magazine the other day that every second of the day someone new creates their own blog. Maybe that is why no one reads mine; We all have our own blogs.

So much news and so little time to absorb it all. I should feel shame in not following everything in the world that becomes a public issue, but I have fallen into that habit. There is a lot going on in Iraq I am not following the deepest details of (split infinitive), but I am contending that the news coming from the mideast is not much better than the news coverage from Vietnam 40 years ago, and they did not have all the technology to relay stuff instantly like we have now. And knowledge of what is going on in China (with the new cold war with them we are into) is pitiful. And what Putin is doing and life in current Russia is not covered at all by the MSM. Gripe, gripe, gripe.

I am way up on my tall horse, so I am going to go away for a while, till we blog again, so you take care, and I will be happier hopefully next time. Di di mau!

Blog while I am Cranky

Sitting up at 1 thirty in the morning after I took a long Friday night nap. I have not done a Friday night party after w0rk for a long time, after my party gang broke up and we all went our own ways, and with gas still high I am hogging my money these days. Des Moines got rid of many of its strip joints years ago and the drunk driver laws started to get enforced. And a lot of Baptists moved into the strip club area north of town and forced out most of the clubs, to have a clean climate for their kids. All that was probably needed, but it made the town a somewhat prissy place. About 30 years ago Des Moines was an uninhibited place, with massage parlors and grown-up bookstores and headshops all over the place. But the hippies got older and became yuppies, and we have a deluge of condos and coffee shops and boutiques, and wine and cheese emporiums. and someone is always trying to regulate something--for the safety of Our Children. The free spirits became regulators.

The CIA chief resigned today, supposedly because he could not get the outfit under control, and functioning effectively. We will probably find out what W and Goss said to one another in the Oval eventually.

Interesting column today in our local paper, copied from the Wash Post, by very liberal Richard Cohen, in which he takes the ax to the comics at the Press Club dinner who were up trashing W while W was sitting there taking it. Cohen actually said some nice things about W, and the Des Moines Register, which has gone way off the left edge, printed the column.

This will be all for right now. Not much of a blogging, because I am somewhat grouchy at this time. Will be happier sooner or later. Di di mau!

Wednesday Blog and Keep Your Chin Up

Mousaoui got sentenced to life in prison just a little while ago, and I am watching Cavuto on Fox relate and discuss the matter. The local newspaper the Des Moines Register ran an editorial today holding that we should keep talking to Iran about its nuke plans and not threaten them. Sounds good, but the same thing was said about how to deal with the German leader in the mid 1930s. But Dean Rusk was always using Munich as to why we should fight the North Vietnamese in the 1960s. Past events really do not go away. That is not really a brilliant new discovery I have made.

The jury's decision on Moussaoui seems to be very convoluted and controversial as to what they thought he was actually guilty of. This and the immigrant strike Monday will be talk fodder for quite a while. It is only Wed. and we have four more days in this week for something else to happen Big. At least several dozen Iraqis have been killed today in bombings and executions. As usual it all gets related in short news blips, and then the news goes on to something else.

Moussaoui will supposedly get life in total solitary confinement. Hopefully CNN or Norville will not try to send a camera crew to the prison to get an exclusive interview with M., like the networks used to do with Manson over the years. Sirhan has pretty much been kept off TV over the years, and I do not know if he is in solitary or what his prison life is like.

I found a copy yesterday at a thrift store of Dennis Mack Smith's biography of Mussolini, about whose life I know very little. Mack Smith does the bio around Musso as an individual and does not give the reader much info about Italy or European history. It is all Benito all the time, who Mack Smith sees as an Actor and not much of a thinker. And when the acting act ran down Benito crashed. Like the movie about Danton, with Depardieu. Interesting book I am planning to finish to give myself a little education. I am really not very smart or educated.

The soap opera Passions has put a story about a mermaid into the plot. Tabitha is behind the whole thing. The mermaid is a blond knockout in her gold bikini. Too bad the story is just a ripoff of Splash, but it is bound to shoot the ratings for Passion way way up. Now, if they could just get rid of Theresa, finally. And bring back cracked Connie.

Tiger Woods' father died today. Yesterday was the 60th birthday for Leslie Gore. No news on whether she cried at her birthday party.

So much has happened in the news today I need to stop and absorb it. So, fans, this is going to be all for right now. Di di mau!

Reaching for the inner meaning of Monday night

Tomorrow it is supposed to reach 80 degrees in central Iowa, which should be strange, because it has been cold and dreary and rainy all the past week and today. I promised my Ma I would not rant and rave about the immigrants, because I might say the wrong thing to someone, so I am going to keep my mouth shut about what I really thing, which is probably not the purpose of having a blog, but it may be necessary. How bout all them clauses and commas all in one sentence.
Finally watched The Ice Harvest yesterday. Pretty much of a thowaway movie, but I got hooked on watching it all the through to see how it ended. J Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton play two businessmen in Witchita who steal 2 million bucks on Christmas Eve. Snow and ice play a big part in the movie and most of the story takes place at night. Lots of suspense, but there are enough holes in the plot to drive a truck through. The lady lead in the movie is got up like Veronica Lake or Bacall. Cusack tries frantically to play the 40 year old guy he really is, but he still looks like Lloyd Dobler older and fatter. Cusack was better in Money for Nothing, which is also about a guy who steals a million bucks. Excessive violence and cussin' in this flick keep it unpleasant to want to see more than once.

The big thing in Des Moines today, beside the Latino strike, was the arrival in town of about 18,000 people to attend an all-day motivational seminar with Steve Forbes, George Foreman, Susie Orman, and Rudy Giulliani, and Zig Zieglar. Traffic was a horror all morning and afternoon rush hour times as everyone tried to get in and out of town on the local freeway, which is all torn up for rebuilding anyway.

You know, friends and fans, I am going to roll up this blog entry, because I am getting drowsy, and I am going to go to bed early, as soon as the Charlie Sheen show is over. You take care for now, and sometime I will create the Ultimate blog entry, which will be the Beethoven's Ninth of blogs. It will be achieved someday some time, so just wait. Di di Mau!