Monday Night Life and Thoughts

This day did not start out as a good session at work this morning. I felt lousy, probably due to the diabetes, and had a whine and grouch session that still embarasses me 20 hours later. I hate it when I act like that, at my age, and did a prayer period when I got home, to ask that I not do such stuff again. I probably should not put my private prayer news into cyberspace, but I am still ashamed of how I behaved.
Michael J. Fox was at the local very liberal college tonight, and gave a brief talk (5 minutes) on stem cell research, and a large crowd cheered him. I took an early evening nap and missed much of the early evening news, but what I got was more of the same events everywhere that happened yesterday. 25 Iraqi day job seekers were killed in one place in Bag., and the Pakistan air force bombed a madrass and killed either 80 Talibans or a lot of school boys. (Could have been the same.) The Pak military says they were out to kill Zawahari. No one is agreeing what the Truth was.
I woke up in time to finally watch an episode of Prison Break, and may get hooked on it on Monday nights.
Found an interesting site all about radio soap operas. Interesting section on the radio soap Portia Faces Life. Portia was a dynamo woman lawyer (an oddity 60 years ago). When the soap began to lose ratings in the early 50s and faced getting cancelled someone got the idea to get listeners by having Portia thrown in jail--and then the show was cancelled, and Portia never was let out of jail. And there was the over-35 Helen Trent who in c. 30 years on the air never got laid, even though a horde of men all tried to get her and jilted her, but good old Gil always sat at home and waited for Helen to return from her latest failed fling at romance.
After this rambling I am going to let my readers get some sleep, and I will try to get some also. It is supposed to be nice weather conditions on Tuesday, but the wind is howling around the corner of my domicile, so we are porbably in for another windy day. You all take care wherever you may be. Di di mau!

Just a Blog on a Sunday Morning in October

OK, that is a really blah title for a blog, but this is being created at 12:30 a.m. on a dark Sunday morning after I have been working at the job on Saturday night, and am home and do not feel yet like going to bed or turning on Fox News. The weather was great tonight--clear skies, a bright moon, and just warm enough to feel like October should feel, after the whole month being dreary. The stray black cat who hangs around the area of where I work was out tonight on a mouse hunt. Wind storms out east, and snow in the Rockies, and Santa Annas in California, and a nice day in the midwest. More of the same old same old in Korea and the Mideast; that is probably not really true--things keep moving toward some kind of resolution in both regions, but after a while it appears that the same stories keep coming out of the hot spots we have heard before. Maybe people had the same idea in the 1930s--ho hum, Hitler wants another territory. Things did move toward a big resolution in that ongoing situation.
Nebraska got beat today by OSU and tomorrow at noon the BEARS meet the 49ers. I should get out and around town tomorrow afternoon and buy a new cheap watch at Wlmrt to replace the cheap one I have that I cannot change the time back an hour on, and I need to get an oil change, and defrost the frig. This is not a very readable or interesting blog entry, is it. Well, that is what the weekend is this weekend. I do not have a great website I have found today, or read any deep books, or seen any really great movies. Avoid a movie called Into the Blue (with Paul Walker and Jessica Alba) if you want a gripping profound story line. But it does have very pretty scenery of the Bahamas and beautiful blue water and actors with great bodies in scimpy swim wear.
Dear readers, I am going to bed in a little while, and I hope to eventually have a really great blog entry for you. World events currently seem much more important than my own private life, and I suppose everything will break out into Clauswitzian violence. Try to find something cheerful in your lives to hold on to. So, Di di mau!

Idontneednogoofytitle

From what I have heard, most people go out Somewhere on Friday night to have a good time at the end of the week. Well, I went to bed on this Friday night just as soon as it got dark, and I slept several hours and missed Linus and the Great Punkin, and I did not wake up till the local news was about over, and at the end of the bcast the sports honcho mentioned that the Cardinals had won the Series. No great excitement and no scenes of happy people, just a mention. Maybe that shows how much baseball has dropped down from being the national game--no one is really excited. Apperently the Cards did not do their routine of falling apart sometime in the Series, like they have done before, and they got their act together this year and held together.
W was in town yesterday in the middle of the rain and gave a speech for a local congressional candidate, and the tickets to get in to see him for a hundred bucks. We were so busy at work that the arrival in town of the Prez was not something we had the time to stop and be breathless about.
And I went to bed early last night and missed Earl, and did not get a chance to dig into the news of the day, except for some news about the fires in California and the loss of several firefighters. Once in a while we need to get reminded that not everyone in the US works in a cubicle, looking at a screen. I would like to have a dream job of getting paid to spend all day looking at websites, but no one has invented that job for me where I toil. I spend a lot of time standing up working over a tabletop. Maybe it is good for my legs to stand up all day.
I do have a cold from being out in the rain yesterday, and I am up now on early Saturday morning, and checking for some news, and there is an issue going on about Jim Webb's porno novel, and the flap over whether Michael Fox turned his Parkinson's symptoms (I almost typed "his jerks") into a show for Couric, and whether Rush is being a jerk about whether Fox went off his medication to make a show, is taking up a lot of time in the media. Get this awful campaign season over with. And another issue is whether it was racist in a campaign ad to have a white bimbo talk about Harold Ford going to a Playboy party.
After all this recording of a smidgen of the current events I am going to sign off for now. I have a hectic weekend to get through, and there are several million websites I have not looked at yet, and I might just take another nap. So, all of you fans and devotees of my blog sit tight and I will be back next time. Stay dry and cool. Di di mau!

Hoowa, Another Blog

This may not be a very long blog, due to that I am burned out on politics and have little to grouse about tonight--not that I could not, but it has been a busy day, and what our Leaders have been doing has been done without any of them calling me today and wanting my opinion. Not W, not Nejad, not Kim Il, not anyone at all. The political ads are still coming thick and fast on TV, and now we are getting ads for and against candidates for the state leg., and assorted local and county officials, besides the ones running for governor and Congress. Maybe one reason no Leader called me is that I unplugged my phone today, to escape a deluge of pollsters and political telemarketers who have been driving me googy ("they're coming to take me away, haha").
My fans and devotees may notice that I have put some of my favorite websites in my links section. I have got to be careful or I may end up with everything in my Favorites collection in my blog links. I have a vast group of sites I have bookmarked, but these are just a smidgen of the ones I like to check out ever so often or daily. Drudge for breaking news, and Ecola for online newspapers. I have Jazeera in the News section, but need to check it out more than I do, as well as a bunch of news and opinion blogs (Hugh Hewitt et al). It is a miracle of new century technology that all this stuff can be accessed on a pooter, instead of one having to wait for network TV to tell one what is happening on earth. I am a true devotee of the Web.
Right now Dirty Jobs is on TV while I am typing, and I should see what Mike is doing this episode. (He is helping a guy clean a huge church organ, instead of scooping hog shit or road kill.)
Fox News this morning had a segment about the Iranian Special Forces, which Nejad was once a honcho in (an outfit kinda like the Waffen SS, or the Russian Spetznaz), and they at least look fierce while marching. Probably we will have to meet them in combat in the upcoming future.
This is going to be all for right now. It is bedtime--so you all take care till we meet again. Di di mau!

Cold Monday Night

It is cold tonight and supposed to get into the 20s, and I hope my heating system does not freeze. I have probably done too much whining all ready about the droopy October we have been having so far, but I am at the age where I hate winter and cold temps, even though I know this is just Nature doing her usual stuff yearly.
Have been busy all day and night and have not had much chance to learn what has been happening in the world, so I have a certain ignorance tonight. There is a story about CNN having a video from Iraqi rebels showing them ambusing an American patrol, but I do not have all the details of the matter. Mike Wallace years ago did say that as a reporter it would have been his duty to go on patrol with a hypothetical insurgent group to watch them ambush an American patrol, so this CNN matter would be right up his alley.
I need to go to bed, but I have gotten just recently totally hooked on looking at web newssites to see what is online. I do need to actually shut this machine down and escape from its clutches, but their is always some new site to look at. I found just recently an online edition of an ancient Greek book by Diogenes Laertius called Lives of the Philosophers--about the only accounts we have of the lives of Plato and his cohorts. Did you know that Thales died when he fell off a cliff while star gazing, and one thinker(Periander) threw his wife down the stairs and killed her, and made all the women in Corinth burn their clothes, and the guy who took over Plato's Academy(Speusippus) had lice and was a money grubber, and killed himself after Diogenes the Cynic insulted him one day. And Hericlitus died after he covered himself with cow shit to rid himself of dropsy. Lots more interesting stuff in the book to look up.
I do not know if any of this ancient stuff will help me understand Kim Jong or Nejad, but it is interesting anyway. And now the immigrants in France are rioting, and the Moslems in Britain are raging because the govt wants Moslem women to get out of their veils. One day last summer some neareastern guy and his wife came into a Des Moines Walmart and the woman was in a print burkha with only her eyes exposed. No one in the Sunday crowd made an issue I know of over the twosome, but it was of those things where you wanted to tell the man that since he was in Iowa of all places he should learn to get with the local mores, and get his wife out of her sack. OK, I have made my unPC views known on such matters. Let's go on to something else.
The something else is that I am about to wind up this disorganized blog page, and must now leave my fans and devotees for the night and try to get some sleep. I know that many people have much longer and more detailed blog entries than I do, especially when they are writing about politics, but I just do not have that much this evening. I guess the big news issue of the day was the sudden mania with Obama, who may be running for president, since yesterday, and according to one of Clinton's ex-honchos(Mike Curry), is the new JFK, who can channel all the idealism the masses got from Jack 45+ years ago. Oh.
Di di mau!

Not Grouchy & Whiney but Cold

Here is a blog, on a Saturday night, after the day has been a mess of rain, high winds, gloom, and Cold. So much for the beauties of October in 06. Iowa, Iowa State, and Nebraska all got whupped this afternoon. I have not yet checked to see how Kalamazoo did against Wisconsin Lutheran. Kim Jong Il supposedly told the Chinese he was "sorry' for setting off a nuke. Close to a hundred US troops have been killed in Iraq in October. Nejad is back ranting about wiping out Israel and anyone else supporting the country. He is a progressive fellow, aint he? There is lots more world news to relate, but I will have to do more web searching to get it in my diary.
There is an interesting column in the blog The Agitator about who has been Outing who on Capitol Hill, and which congresspeople have Gay aides (bad pun, I know). Back in the 1980s the Des Moines Register got on a vendetta against the bumbo county attorney we had, and after a long campaign in print to get the guy out of office, the paper outed him one day. It was fairly common gossip that he was gay, but he resigned very soon after the story broke. So much for the liberals in Des Moines being Accepting of the gay lifestyle.
The media ads around here for and against local candidates have gotten vicious beyond sense in the last week. Does our current congressman want children to watch porno videos, and can one candidate for governor opine on world affairs since he avoided military service, and who is the bigger porkbarreler(sic). An insult to intelligent voters, but professional campaign agencies seem to think this stuff is effective.
I am going to close this blog effort for right now, before I get higher and higher on my horse. The news of the world is getting heavy on my mind, and I have discovered that I do not remember or even absorb as much of it as I should. Arnaud of the Washington Times thinks that some time soon we will be at War with both Iran and North Korea.
( Great News--Kalamazoo College crowned its Homecoming by whupping Wisconsin Lutheran 31-19! Way to go, Hornets!)
Di di mau!

Toozdi Night at Home

What is the current News about?--earthquakes in the Pacific, Madonna's adopted(?) baby from Malawi, Wesley Snipes on the lam for tax evasion, HRC wearing a diamond-studded cross, Evel Knievel's 68th birthday, at least one of the check-out line tabloids claiming the Bush marriage is collapsing, The Bears pulling off a big win by coming from 0-20 to 24-23 and beating the Cardinals in the last five minutes of the Monday night game!, North Korea declaring war on anybody messing with it and its nukes. Lots more heavy stuff you can find on the major news websites.
Cold and foggy and windy and damp day around the heartland region. This has become an ugly October instead of a pretty fall season with colored leaves and warmish temps. And I am not feeling well health-wise this week, with diabetic droops. Whine and whine.
While shopping this afternoon I noted that Big K and Wally have raised the price of t-shirts and underpants; a sign of inflation or a jump in shipping costs getting them here from China? Wally has big plans to open megastores around China.
I bought a half-price book of English poetry the other day, for my cultural education, and found a couple of poems by a 19th century dude I had never heard of named Coventry Patmore. He wrote a couple of poems that are grabbers when you read them; one is about his feelings when his sick wife died while having tea with him, and The Toys is about him trying to raise his little son without a mother--and having to hit the kid when he was disobedient. Very unusual topics for poems in an age when pseudo-medieval stuff was the main subject. (Patmore died in 1896).
This is going to be all for right now. I have some pre-bedtime things to do. You all take care and we will blog again. Di di mau.

Crabby & Fussy on a Dreary Sunday Night

My blog titles are really great draws for readers, aint they? This has actually been a dreary day--overcast and windy and drizzly. The local weatherman on TV says we will get rain all week.
Some doofus in eastern Iowa shot all five members of his family over the weekend, but he was picked up in Quincy Illinois this morning. The Des Moines Marathon was held today and screwed up traffic all over the north half of town all morning and half the afternoon. I spent a lot of the day at home. I should be inspired by the idea of a mob of runners fit enough to do the big run, but my leg and back have been sore all weekend and so I have been snitty at anyone doing anything. Whine and whine. Clinton was quietly slipped into town last night to speak at the big Democrat banquet held at the local auditorium. I do not like the guy at all, so I was not thirsting for him to be just a few blocks from my hootch, and the Fox News shows all this morning were full of Dems, including Kerry, griping that W should have had more talks with Dear Leader Kim. They never explained what you talk about to convince KJIl not to build a nuke. I have a thought that no pundits or American "leaders" have much idea of Korean history or culture. Maybe a reading of how the Panmunjom talks were done in '53 would be helpful for how to talk to Koreans.
Back to work in the morning, as usual. I would like to retire, but need to keep cash coming in to live on, so I do not end up living in a tent on the riverbank. Lots of things I would like to do if I could retire, but need money for even these dream projects.
Including the family shot in Bonaparte, ten people were murdered in Iowa this weekend, most in little farm towns. One guy in Des Moines was stabbed to death.
With all this happy stuff on this blog tonight, I am going to depart now. You all find some happiness, and I will try to find some too. Di di mau!

Grouchy and Whiny Part Two--Frigid in October

Cold in the midwest again today--due to the North Pole winds blowing across the plains. And when the sun goes does the temp is due to get down to freezing. (I went to bed before I finished this posting and so what follows is being typed on Friday night instead of Thursday night.)
It is now a dark and windchilly Friday the 13th p.m. I took a nap after work this afternoon and woke up in time for the No Spin Zone, and have been trying to master the new google beta system I hooked into. I do not like Beta at all. It has been decided by Experts that what NoKo exploded the other day was Nuclear, but how big is still being decided. Liberals across Iowa yesterday must have wet their pants badly when they read the editorial in the DM Register opining that the US has the duty to blow NoKo and Iran off the planet if they try anything violent with their nukes. A shock of an editorial, because the Gannett DM Register is the most peace-loving and military-force loathing rag imaginable. I have been avoiding CNN and Hannity and Colmes due to CNN and Allen Colmes' views of the world. Yes, I am a Pajamas Hawk. LBJ was always speeching about getting Ong Ho Chi Minh to a table and talking out a peace settlement for south Asia ("Come, let us reason together"). It never worked because Ho and Giap were willing to keep feeding their own kids into the fire till they got SVN conquered, some way some time. And they did it.
Please, let it warm up this weekend. I am not ready yet for winter to arrive in the middle of October. Russians and Laps love cold weather, but I am not of their cultures. I can handle the temperatures and even the snow if I have to, but Des Moines has a goofy more cars than streets street system that makes for bad driving in bad weather. Whine and whine!
A family in south Florida were executed yesterday, and their bodies left along the roadside, and whoever did it probably drove off in their car. That is the news I got on that tragedy, so far.
A bunch of cops in Texas had to shoot a stray Emu that was roaming around loose.
O'Reilley had a guy on tonight who went to the Mexican border south of Brownsville to see if he could sneak across the border; he rode an elephant across the Rio and had a loud mariachi band with him playing loudly, and no border guards showed up to check what was going on.
This is going to be all for right now. Di di mau!

Grouchy and Whiny

It has finally become cold and rainy and gloomy in the midwest and the streets are slick--a preview probably of the next several months, and I have a cold already and went to bed early in the afternoon and slept through all the news shows, so I actually do not know the details of what happened today in the world. I guess we have not yet blasted NK off the earth. I went through a few news blogs and sites this evening to see what the opining on things were. There seems to be an idea that NK is about to collapse as a society and we should wait for the starving people to rise up and kill KJIl and his generals and become a free people in one swoop, and then the world will be a little safer place. Would be nice if that happened in the next few weeks, but it will probably not happen.
I did wake up long enough to finally watch Help Me Help You with Ted Danson--funny show, but is basically Becker as a shrink. I should rent a Dr. Katz dvd some time. And I did watch tonight's Boston Legal. I am beginning to like that show. Kirk, Murphy Brown, Odo, Henry Gibson, and Betty White, and James Spader--what a cast in one show.
The old longhorn steer used as a mascot for the Texas Longhorns died yesterday. What can I say?
Nothing more to convey to you all at this time; I hope to have some more drudgetype news bits culled from the web the next time I blog. I need to look up some football scores from some teams I am interested in, but it will take a little time to search the web to find all the stuff I want for my newsposts. Keep waiting--and I will have some great stuff for you soon. So Di di mau!

Post Big Blast Columbus Day Blog

OK, fans and devotees, we will get to the North Korean nuke blast in a little bit. The temp in the heartland has started to move toward coldness today. We are supposed to get to temps in the 20s in a few days. I am not at all ready for that, even though I have been collecting flannel Earl shirts and coats and blankets for a month or so. And I am in long pants. Please do not let shorts weather go away just yet. Whine and whine.
I have an idea to start making this blog a micro drudge report, with bits of news from all over picked out from news web sites, but it may take time to get infobits collected. So far, I have the following bits: R. W. Apple, of the New York Times, died at age 71 on Oct. 4: 29 US troops were killed in Iraq in the first week of October: Kalamazoo College Hornets beat Tri State Thunder 33-30 Saturday: Beverly Hills Normans beat the Palos Verdes Sea Kings 26-7. I wanted to list the last game played by Hollywood High-but their website is way off schedule. There is a mess concerning Paul Vance, who composed Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Polka Dot Bikini in 1960. He was supposed to have died a few weeks ago, but it appears that another guy with the same name was the one who died, but both guys claimed to have written the song.
The news came out late last night that NK had finally set off its nuke. So far no one has done anything about it except talk and opine. A lady from Newsweek was on Fox this morning and blamed W for the whole mess--because he did not talk enough to Kim and show him some respect. On Drudge there is a story that there is some question as to whether the blast was actually nuclear, or just a huge load of dynamite. Rush this afternoon broke the rules of PCness and was calling Kim a dog eater.
I am currently watching the Couric show and she is not actually doing a bad job as an anchor.
Old Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes last night mentioned that he did not a great knowledge of geography, by saying that he did not know where Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka were. Odd for him to say such stuff because he has been in the news business since WW2 and has been all over the world reporting for several decades.
I am going to wind up this thing right now. There will be lots more on Nkorea as the days go by, or it will fizzle out as an issue. You all take care. Di di mau!

Big Bears Win Sunday Night Blog

OK dear fans and devotees; here is a blog finally, after skipping almost a week. The Amish schoolhouse massacre, the Foley mess, the North Korean nuke matter, Castro's cancer, and floods in Virginia are some of the events of the last week. And there was a flurry about a story that Laden may have died. And Anna Nicole's baby and who's the daddy of the little angel should or should not be included. Especially since one of the guys involved is named Howard K. Stern. And Fox News is hyping itself this week on its 10th anniversary. The grocery store tabloids are telling stories that there is something suspicious about the death of the Crock Hunter. My back and tailbone have been hurting all this week and I have been tired from work and gone to bed early all week. Some time I will get some time to look at the huge bunch of news websites I have bookmarked, but there are so many websites to look at I feel crushed by all the stuff. Don't know if someone has an article online on getting Crushed by the Web. So much stuff online to read that I feel like I have dropped the habit of actually reading an actual book or a real newspaper. And I have gotten out of the habit of watching tapes of movies. Davis and Stanwyck and Fonda (Henry) and Lombard may be wondering if I am going to get back to watching their films. Things may get warm in Des Moines in the cold of next Feb.--when Jane Fonda comes to town to give a speech to the regional liberal women. The D. Chicks finally cancelled their concert here in August, when ticket sales tanked. Toby Keith is due in town on Nov. 11, to sing the Dave song (I'm Not As Good As I Once Was) and his other hits. I have found a bunch of bloggers who specialize in Iowa politics; I wish I could follow the political events in my own state closer, but just do not have the time to devote my whole life to the stuff.
This is going to be all for right now. Hopefully I will have something more Deep to write next time. Di di mau!

Is There Any Goodness in the World?

A nice warm, but humid, day in October, and the beauties of Autumn are around us, but I have a gloomy title for my blog, since I am having a blues session after some creep killed a bunch of Amish kids in their school in Pennsylvania, just a few days after some other creep did the same thing at a school in Colorado. So far no one has made political hay out of this. And the news has come back to Iowa that a couple of guys from the great state were killed in a roadside ambush in Iraq a few days ago. Woodward's latest book seems to be destroying what is left of the Bush administration, and suddenly we are in the midst of a pervert scandal in Congress. Even the Washington Times wants Hastert to quit the speakership, for sitting on whatever info he had on Foley for a year. And the WSJ is advocating the same thing. The tapes of OBL with Atta and friends from 2000 seem to reveal that they were making plans for 9-11 regardless of whoever might become President of the US in the upcoming election.
I bought an on-sale DVD of The Court Jester at B&N this afternoon and brought it home and watched it. The Jester is not quite as good as I thought it was when I saw it several years ago. Just a little too full of itself. I am not a hardcore Danny Kay devotee. The guy was multitalented, but a little too obvious about it on screen. None of this may make any sense to my readers. I should see if very many more of his movies are on tape or disk, so I can see more of him.
The Bears Won Big last night, and I am watching the Packers and Eagles go at it on ESPN. The game is finally beginning to get hot in the third quarter.
After a day off from work today it is back to the routine tomorrow, so some sleep should be tackled in a while, after this game is over. After the harvest of death in the US and in the Dar al Islam in the past few days I should say my nightly prayer for Peace, but an amount of realistic sadness may be in order. So--Di di Mau!

Hot October Sunday

Very warm October Sunday in Des Moines--85 degrees. A little more time for shorts and sandals before seasonal reality gets here, and the pounds of winter clothes have to go onto the body for several months. The city seems to be getting a horde of groundhogs into town; I saw several of the cute big things yesterday. Tony Stewart won the race today by driving ahead of everyone else on no gas. Dale Jarrett actually came in in the top five-he aint done nothin for a long time--way to go DJ.
The news today has been all about Woodward's book trashing Rummy, and about the tapes showing OBL and Atta and friends at a Quaeda meeting in 2000. Some blogsites are now claiming that the Dems knew about Foley being a sicko a year ago, and one of Soros' groups leaked the news about Foley, and that the transcripts show Foley's messages to the kid were sick but not actually sexual. Go to Right Wing Nut House and American Thinker to get an explanation of what is going on. And Fatah and Hamas are having a civil war in Ramallah.
Am going to watch at least a portion of the Bears-Seahawks game, which just started. Go Bears!
Is this all that has happened in the last couple of days? Well, a plane crashed in the Amazon jungle and killed 155 people, and a bunch of people were killed in Canada when an overpass collapsed on their cars. There was a brief mention in the Wall Street Journal the other day that Tokyo Rose has died in Manila at age 90. Should look up the story on her on the web in a little while. Not much more to report in this fairly short blog; the news in the world has been very heavy this weekend and I am trying to absorb it all, even if I am lacking in total profoundity about it all. Sorry about that. So, Di di mau for right now. More later.