Nada or Just a Small Segment

Nothing exciting happened in my life today, so this will probably be a experiment in writing about Nothing. Perhaps I will end up doing a James Joyce mental streaming segment in which whatever is in my mind will emerge in print. We will see. I did finally watch The Big Bang Theory on CBS. Funny, but not a show that will be remembered in the History of Creative Television. The actors are working their nuts off bring their nerd characters to life, but it is a throw-away show. The big news in the heartland is that Oprah is coming to Des Moines on Dec. 8 to campaign for Obama. It will probably be the high point of the local political season. Maybe she will get a motorcade through downtown. The local Walmart today had a widescreen tube showing Shrek 3 in HD; Very bright sharp picture quality, but the local cable company will probably raise rates next winter when we have to go to HD. I could use the extra bucks monthly put into my nestegg instead of having super sharp picture. We will have to see what happens. I found a copy of Charles Peters' book on the 1940 campaign between FDR and Wilkie. Interesting account of a topic I knew very little about. An interesting angle of the history is that Wilkie was an alchoholic. That leads to some interesting speculation on what would have happened to the course of WW2 if he had beaten Roosevelt in '40, with a booze problem. I know--Churchill had the same problem as Wilkie. Last night I wrote some stuff about the goofy video I bought called Sonny Boy. I should mention that the bad people in the movie cut out Sonny's tongue. Now I wil reveal that a good doctor gave Sonny a monkey's tongue, and he was able to talk then. I did rent the other night a video of 7 Brides for 7 Brothers--which I have never seen, except in little clips of the dancing. I was very disappointed in 7... Yes, it had Howard Keel and Jane Powell--but the music was not really very good, the Michael Kidd dancing segments were not all that impressive, and the ending was not done very well. I just have never been as impressed with most of the MGM musicals I have watched over the years that film buffs think are great cinema art. My critical opinion! This is going to be all for right now. This is not going to be looked upon as one of the great bloggings of all time, but eventually I will create a total masterpiece. Till then, you take care. Di di mau!

Sunday Night Victory

The Bears pulled off a 3 point win over the Broncos in a Sudden death overtime game this evening. Great game that had me on the edge of the chair all the last half. Hester and Rex the Great did it. So, now it is time to calm down and wait for next week. Life does go on. Fires have broken out in the Malibu area again and are burning more houses. Drudge has a bit that the London Times is claiming that Hilary and the woman working as her assistant are lovers. Victory, tragedy, and trash are all the stuff in the news. And there is supposed to be an Israeli-Palistinian peace conference in Annapolis, with a lot of Mid East diplomats coming to the thing. The score of the Bears-Broncos game was 37-33. I found a tape at a thrift store of a goofy movie called Sonny Boy--about a kid who was raised by a trash couple to be a criminal (they cut out his tongue) but he is redeemed by the love of a girl. The main reason to watch this thing is to see David Carradine play a transvestite, whose death scene is actually very moving. Sonny Boy is actually listed by a number of bloggers as one of their favorite movies. I am typing this entry with no paragraph breaks. I did have a good Thanksgiving with my family Thursday, which was the day of the first snow in the heartland. Not a major snow, but at least five people in Iowa were killed in car wrecks on the slick roads. I am going to wind up this blogging, and let my fans and devotees get back to what you are doing. It will be time for bed in a little while. So, you all take care. Di di mau!

Thanksgiving

Here we are blogging again after almost 3 weeks, and it is now almost 2 a.m on November 22. At about 9 a.m on Nov. 21 the first snow of the season hit the heartland, and it is nasty outside. Not really cold, but icy and windy. So, we have normal winter season weather upon us. Yes, years ago in the winter we went out in it to get to school and to do chores and needed farm work and unless there was a blizzard that can still be remembered 50 years later(and there are a few of them) you did what you had to do whether it was awful cold and snowy or not. The animals had to be cared for. But in an urban setting bad weather means traffic misadventures--so I look forward to a warm globe in a few months.
This thanksgiving day is also Kennedy Murder Day. Nov 22 '63. And it was 44 years ago.
I will try to think now of some things I am Thankful for. I am thankful that my Ma is in fairly good body and mental health in her late 80s. I am thankful that my 2 nephews are getting along good in east Africa working in relief projects. I am thankful that I am still functioning after my diabetic heart attack 5 years ago. I am thankful that a couple of guys I know returned home uninjured from their tours in Iraq. I am thankful that the internet was created, because the thing gives me access to news and info that I would never be able to get otherwise. Sometime I hope to do a whold blog essay on websites I have found that I find interesting. And there are actually some very interesting videos on youtube--especially foreign singers, history-related videos, and other such clips. I will not let anyone disparage the Web, even though it seems to be popular to do so in some 'educated" circles.
I am going to let all you devoted fans of my blog go back to bed now. I am up after a long nap earlier in the evening. You all have a good holiday, and I will return soon. Di di mau!

Return to True Time

Daylight savings time ended just a little while ago, and we are now back on "God's Time." I have not done much productive for the world all of this day. I slept a lot today to try to get rid of the cold and sore back I have had for much of the week, and woke up and functioned for a while in the afternoon, and watched Fox News, which was generally divided between Mushareff declaring martial law in Pakistan and the search for the woman in Chicago whose husband may have killed at least one other of his three previous wives. And Hurricane Noel is causing havoc along the coast of Massachusetts. And I have been reading some interesting political thought blogs, especially one from the Hoover Institute of August '02 on Al Qaeda as a political fantasy. And I found a blog called The Jacksonian Party, which has a long essay trashing Woodrow Wilson and all he stood for. An ususual way to spend a Saturday night, but I kinda enjoy it. Ozzy Osbourne was in town last night for a concert, but I have not yet read the local paper's review of what he did. Nothing on local tv news about him biting a bat, like he did 20+ years ago here, so he must have come and gone from town with no incident. There was really very little local news that was covered tonight, so it must have been a no-news Saturday, except that Iowa and Iowa State both finally won their games. I need to get into the Cornhusker website to see how bad Gobigred got pounded. I think this is going to be all for right now. Next time I may have something really deep and profound to report, but this a.m I ain't got nothin' much. So, you take care for now. Di di mau!

Boom and Burn in the Heartland

An industrial solvents plant on the north side of Des Moines blew up this afternoon. Everyone in the plant got out safely, but the plant burned all afternoon and is still burning at 10 p.m.. Burning barrels of solvent were shot into the air all afternoon 200 feet up, looking like scuds flying in the Gulf War. The scene will be a local legend for a long time. And this evening a guy who worked in the plant contends that 200 barrels of solvent were supposed to be stored in the plant--but at least a thousand were actually inside. So there will be regulatory issues as the whole story is uncovered. I missed all this this afternoon, because I came home from work this afternoon and went to bed and found out about all the excitement when I got up and turned on the local 6 p.m news.
That is the big event around here. Also, the Bears, and Nebraska got beat this weekend, and Kalamazoo College lost their Homecoming game last week to Wisconsin Lutheran, but the Maryville Spoofhounds and the Northwest Missouri State Bearcats won their games. The Red Sox won the World Series. And seven college kids were killed in a fire in a beach house they were sleeping in in South Carolina. And a guy was electrocuted Sunday night in Des Moines while trying to steal copper wire from a live power line.
This is going to be all for right now. My own life this weekend has had little drama in it--sleeping, going to the grocery store and the second hand store, and watching TV, and exploring the internet, and fighting the local traffic. Sometime I should compose a blog entry for posterity on interesting websites I have found. So, you all take care, and I will return with more stuff in the near future. Di di mau!

PreDawn Blog Attack

Ha ha--clever title for this entry. It came from my memory bank of memories of predawn mortar attacks in the Mekong delta way back when. Am up at 5 a.m. after a Friday night sleep session(no partying on Friday night) due to a bad sinus plugup I have had all week. Have spent much of this week with lowlevel flu or whatever it is, and the sky has been dark and gloomy every day, and real winter will arrive some time in the near future, and with all the goofy weather the US has been having we may get a long cold icy and snowy season. That Is Nature, but every fall I get more and more in favor of long warm summers. Wow, this is a cheerful entry. Where is the happiness? I guess I will have to find it or create it.
Have been looking at webnews about the San Diego fire storms of the past week, and found out that at least 270 acres of Ft. Pendleton burned. I was in the San Diego area for a visit in 1975, mostly going up and down the freeways, so what I saw of the area way back then was seen from inside a car, but what the people are going through in the region is much bigger than our disaster in the heartland--the '93 floods. Even if the people involved are very rich and their houses were very expensive, let us forgo any of that sanculotte gunk about how they deserve what they got. I've read a few comments in blog postings saying that--but idiots are a given in the world.
Also, I am spending way too much time in front of the screen, finding interesting websites of a serious information nature. Have been bookmarking local TV station sites, military sites, and US govt sites. I'm still a little rankled at a newspaper article I read relating that some college professors surveyed said that real intellectuals do not look at the internet because it is just a toy for the masses (singling out Republicans, Christians, and teenagers). I am more and more glad that I got far away from the college world decades ago.
After this griping and moaning I have been doing so far, I am going to close for right now. I need to wash my body for my Saturday morning search for something Happy out there in the world, and I will probably look for a few more websites. So, this will be It for now. Di di mau.

Blog in the Dark of an Autumn Night

Here we are at 1 a.m on an October Saturday morn after a long sleep on Friday night to try to get rid of a bout of flu or whatever I have had for several days. Sinus plugup, sore back and butt, and general weariness that has made me very sleepy. Yes, while others party on Friday night I have gotten into a habit of going to bed early and catching up on sleep after having to make my body clock adjust to getting up at 2 a.m all week. I suppose that at least 50 percent of Americans are up working at nighttime hours, so there should be no Poorme on my part, but I am beginning to appreciate the routine of sleeping at night as Nature intended. But then when I have time at night to sleep I spend too much time in front of the laptop, exploring websites.
It has been cold and cloudy and rainy in the heartland all week. I assume that winter and snow and sleet and ice will arrive in a few weeks. But the Groundhog will come out on Feb. 2 and then spring will be just around the corner.
I am beginning to get as overwhelmed by the number of websites online I want to explore as I get overwhelmed by the number of books available at the local bookstore that all probably have info I can use, but my budget keeps me from dropping 30+ bucks for a single book, so I guess my quest for knowledge will have to be centered on websites, which is acceptable, despite the hatred of the internet by intellectuals and college creatures.
Joey Bishop, Teresa Brewer, and Deborah Kerr have all died in the last couple of days. Kerr especially got lousy coverage on celeb TV. She was a great actress and beautiful, and her movie career was first class, but no one in the showbiz (Norville et al) TV world seemed to know much about her life and career. As usual Brit S. got all the news coverage, along with Degeneres and her dog troubles. RIP Deborah--we loved you.
There is an interesting story in the Drugereport via Breitbart that the Chinese are planning to send 14 men into space to the space station. There is a rule that any legal group in China has to include three Communists. And a Chinese official has a comment on what a spiritual mystic experience Chinese Communism is. It sounds like something said by Madame Mao. It would be an interesting topic for a polysci class to study; Communism as a spiritual experience.
I am going to close this blog for right now. The fingers are not working well, and I need to go back to bed, or get into some more news sites. Hopefully I will have something incredible to offer next time we meet. I hope I do not feel so sagbag and am healthy and chipper next time. Di di mau!

Blog on a Dark October Saturday Night

A gloomy wet night in the season before winter gets here. Exciting Nascar race tonight. The news can be found in Drudge and numerous other news websites. Jane Wyman and Alice Ghostly both passed away in the last month. There is an interesting article in MSN about how babyboomer-aged people do not read the internet (the article centered on a bunch of college-types at the U of Iowa). Well, I peruse the internet with great devotion.
A friend died the other day and I went to his funeral this afternoon. He planned his funeral which was a rocknroll-Packers-Masonic ceremony. As seems to happen in life we had drifted away from one another for several years, and had not gotten together for a long time. Now he is gone and I wish we could have gotten together before he died of cancer, and all I have now are the memories of good times we had when we were buddies. Chuck, I will miss you and we had some good wild times.
There is some stuff online about a bio due out soon about Charles Schultz, detailing what a miserable human being he really was. And I am part way through a big bio by Hamby relating what a lier and incompetent Harry Truman was. And I found a new book at Borders' contending that no one who has ever written Anything about World War 2 knew what they were talking about. So much for the fun of reading.
But I did find out that the crumbling old hotel in my hometown was once a hideout for Jesse James and there was a secret passage behind the wall in the room he always stayed in that he could use to get out of the hotel. Ma said that Grandpa had heard the stories about the room and the passage, but I had never heard of it. Now I know some town lore.
The Nascar drivers have been wrecking all night at Lowes'.
This has not been a Fun week, so I this is not a happy blogging tonight. So, you take care, and I will try to have some more stuff the next time I hit the keys. Di di mau!

Blogging during Prison Break

Great October night--not too hot and not too cool, after record-setting hot temperatures all over the country yesterday, and high humidity for the last several days. Last Monday there were a couple of nasty tornadoes that tore up a couple of farm towns east of Des Moines, and in DM that afternoon there was a really strange catagory 1 minitornado that smashed up some cars in the local airport parking ramp. One guy died in the heat in Chicago running the Chi Marathon and about 400 runners passed out. Saturday night a 20 year old town cop killed 6 teenagers in a house in north Wisconsin, and then he killed himself or was shot in a shootout. The news is still developing on this tragedy. TV Guide had a little obituary of Flower, the head Mama Meerkat, who was bitten by a snake. Denver Broncos got pounded awful yesterday by San Diego, and The BEARS pulled off a 27-20 win over the packers. Ha ha. There was a riot in Denver at a Columbus Day parade between a bunch of NatAms and ItalianAms. I found a Samoan news website which mentioned that at least 6 Samoan soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year (nothing in the MSM about things like this). Looking up UK news online I found that Mr. Speaker Weatherill of the House of Commons had died in the spring at age 86. He was the first Speaker we got to see on CSpan, wearing his wig. A couple of obits of his detailed how much trouble he had with PM Thatcher. A guy in Des Moines grew a 1600 lb squash-a world record. Much more world news and more prominent people have passed on recently, but I need to do more perusing of newssites to collect more news. And Pavarotti passed away in July, and left 3 different wills, which is giving Italian lawyers headaches. I am going to avoid trying to rehash the Spears and Lohan doings of the last month or so. I had a discussion with an amigo about whether celeb antics should get so much news coverage. Moi contends that this kind of stuff is the stuff of human behavior and can be studied to learn the ways of human beings. Oh, one more thing; the Weekly World News went out of business last month. Now we will have no more news about Bat Boy, and the world's fattest cat, and the 300 lb Japanese baby, and the space alien who has been hanging around DC for years. On the Young and the Restless Victor and Nikki are getting divorced again, and on General Hospital Lulu has moved in with Jason and Spinelli. Luke will probably hit the fan when he finds out. So far on Prison Break this p.m one guy has gotten his throat cut and one guy has been shot in the head.
This is going to be all for right now. I have to get ready for the dirty Charlie show on CBS. I am trying to get my living organized to get more blogging done more often, but in about an hour I have to get housework done and then go to bed. So, you all take care. Di di mau!

Very Early A.M. Return to Blogging

Wow! I have returned to blogging, after almost 3 months of depriving the planet of my wisdom. And after taking a long sleep on Friday night I am sitting at the laptop after getting up and going through a bunch of online newspapers , newsagency stuff, think tank reports, Fora speeches, and Youtube videos of pop music from around the world. A world tour online. I wish I could get the time and patience to do a regular online summary of all the newsbits from around the world coming across the web-ala Drudge-but I have somewhat poor eyesight due to the diabetes, and after an hour or so looking at a screen I get worn down. and have to shut the laptop off and go to bed. It is hard enough to keep track of local news daily. Nejad at Columbia and who said and did what during the current political campaigning is enough to overwhelm the little brain. I do not know how Drudge and Hewitt do it every day. I have gotten obsessed with all the stuff on Youtube, and have gotten away from reading much in the way of blogs, but hopefully can get some kind of organization worked out to keep a cyberspace education going--and I actually have gotten back into reading some Books I got at a bargain book store--bios of John Adams, Khrushchev, Harry Truman, and Stalin, and some histories of the Gulag. Now we should go to a new paragraph.
Found an interesting news bit on probably Hugh Hewitt that W is secretly feeding HRC info on what is going on with Iraq policy--since W thinks HRC will be the next president, so she should know what she will be in for when she takes over from him. Interesting.
Since I last blogged in July a bridge fell into the Mississippi in Minneapolis and killed at least 13 people. The Move-On-General Petraeus-Betrayus flap has taken place, Pavarotti, Bev Sills, Regine Crespin, and Jerry Hadley(who killed himself) have died, and I found out that last March Betty Hutton died. Michael Vick has been nailed for running a dog fighting setup, and OJ is back in trouble--but I will leave him to other reporters, and not try to rehash all the OJ news.
Interesting story in Des Moines last week; Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece was in town to speak at a local high school, but was cancelled by school honchos after some Liberal parents howled that the lady was non grata-- because she turns out to be a black female conservative Republican, and she is against abortion. So she gave her talk at a local Catholic high school. That situation has hapened before here--white yuppie liberals vs. black conservatives.
I am not going to comment on the current problems with my Chicago Bears.
I am going to close for now, and as I always say when I turn out to not blog for a month or more, I hope to get something going so that I can blog more frequently than I do anymore. This will be all for right now. Di di mau you all!

A Summer Night in July

Hello there, fans and devotees of this blog. We are here again blogging just for you or for me. This will probably be a really impressionistic (wow, what college lingo) rehash of current events in the past 2 weeks, because I have done little paper or internet news research, and have been relying on tv news for what has been going on. I need to start looking at a lot of the web newssites I have bookmarked, but have been busy at earning and spending my pay, and have been either working or sleeping. So, what has been burned into my brain about what is happening on earth is that the US is due to be attacked by Qaeda in a big nasty way, according to Chertoff, who said he had a "gut feeling" we were due to get attacked sometime soon. And the liberals jumped all over him for not producing paper facts to prove his gut feelings. And NewsMax is promoting a book by Paul Williams contending that Qaeda has a full arsenal of nukes ready to be set off, if they do not decompose in their metal shells from the radiation leaking out. The Pakistan army is supposedly trying to move into the wilderness to finally get Laden and Zawahiri, so we will see what happens. And a big earthquake has done a job on Japan. And McCain's campaign is about to crash, due to lack of money and interest by voters. Opera singers Bev Sills and Regine Crespin have both died, and opera tenor Jerry Hadley the other day shot himself and is now off life support. He lost his voice and career; what a sad mess he was in.
Recently rented a tape of The Jolson Story and a tape of Top Banana. Was not as bowled over by the "classic" Jolson Story as I had hoped to be. A very cleaned up version of Jolson's messy life, even if it did have some bite to it at the end. Top Banana was a filmed version of Phil Silvers' broadway play about a vaudeville comic doing an early 50s tv variety show(supposedly based on Milton Berle). Interesting to see Silvers do a full movie as the star, and a young Rose Marie had a small part in it, but more of a curiosity piece than a good movie.
Jolson is a big item on Youtube now. Supposedly he was an awful human being, but from the videos of him on U he was a great entertainer.
We are having a hot spell in the midwest in July, with temps in the 90s, but that is actually par for July. Farmwork weather--haying and chopping weeds time.
I do not know what I have accomplished with this blog entry, but I am going to send it out into cyberspace as it is. I have found a web list of all the people on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in the next blog I may discuss some of them I find it interesting that they are honored--some of the old silent movie stars no one remembers anymore, but are in the Wikipedia.
This will be all for right now, friends. Di di mau!

Fifth of July

It has been a month since the world has read a blog from me, and I know that you have all been waiting--so here is my latest blog entry. After a month of world news it sometimes becomes hard to remember what has happened since early in June. Pro wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and 7-year-old son and then hanged himself on his weight manchine, after he was supposedly hopped up on steroids. Like Elvis and Dr. Nick, Benoit's doctor confesses that he was giving the guy loads of steroids. The guy who is so far behaving pure and innocent is Vince McMahon, who in the 90s went to trial for giving Hogan and Macho and other rasslers buckets of steroids. I should stop this before I libel someone in cyberspace. Paris Hilton spent 23 days in jail in LA and is now out and back partying and posing. Continual rains on the plains have caused bad flooding in Texas and Kansas. Opera singers Beverley Sills and Regine Crespin have both died in the last week. And car bombers in England and Scotland tried to blow up London and the airport at Glasgow. Now it seems that the plot was devised by at least 45 Muslim doctors. The Clintons came to Des Moines this past Monday and were adored by about 5,000 of their devotees at the state fair grounds.
The 4th of July yesterday was a great summer day--sunny, hot enough to make one feel like it was a real summer day, and everyone seems to have had a good time being outside.
Many more events happened in the world besides the stuff I listed, and I suppose one could go to any of a multitude of news sites to read what all happened in the last month. The British terrorists, Paris Hilton, and Chris Benoit have received most of the news coverage, as well as the case of the pregnant lady in Canton,Ohio, who was found murdered allegedly by her town cop boyfriend. This story has a racial angle to it, due to her being White and him being Black.
I have discovered that Youtube has a big collection of videos of Mideast popular singers. Haifa, Tito the male belly dancer from Egypt, and tubby Wadi Al Safi are now in my brain. Lots of people would probably wonder why I am viewing this kind of stuff and listening to it, but I find it interesting.
Dear friends, this is going to be all for right now. I do not know if anyone on earth will find this blog interesting, but this is my record of what has been going on in my corner of reality. You all take care now, and I hope I can get my act together and blog more than once every 5 weeks. Di di mau!

Saturday and More Terror News

Nice warm day today, and the news of the day was the discovery of a plot by some Muslims to blow up JFK Airport by blowing up the fuel tanks around the place. The guy from Trinidad who was the ringleader is missing, but supposedly flew to Caracas and then to Iran. Nice route to take to show your innocence. The Liberals will probably claim the whole thing was a scare stunt thought up by Bush and/or Cheney to take away more of our liberties.
I don't know of much more to write about tonight after this news story. There was some stuff on Fox about Paris and Lohan, but I am trying to avoid the gruesome twosome as a major news event.
Watched some Youtube videos of Russian pop singers, and found a Loonytoon video of Bugs and Elmer in The Rabbit of Seville. Had never seen it before or even heard of it. Great opera satire with Mel Blanc at his best singing opera, but the cartoon was just a little bit less good than What's Opera Doc?
You know, I am going to wind up this posting for now. All my dear readers and devotees will understand. The terror plot was the major news of the day, and when I get more news of it and more news on other Satrday events I will present them to cyberspace and my fans. So, you all take care tonight. Di di mau!

Nice Thursday Afternoon

Three days of dreary rain have ended for at least one day, and the sun is out and the temperature is tolerable. When it rains heavily in this part of the midwest people get nervous that another 1993 is about to happen. If you do not know what that means, in the summer of '93 we had the worst floods in a century. It began raining in the fall of '92 and rained and rained and kept raining (with a wet winter) till July of 93, when the rivers finally overflowed and washed out the local water plant and we were without water for a month (among other water-related disasters).
Along with that cheerful info, there is news now that Qaeda is planning nuke attacks on NY, DC, Vegas, and four other metroplexes. I assume the Left will start claiming that this is Bush Scare Tactics and nothing is really going to happen. Well, in 01 no less than 19 guys were willing to become jetliner suicide "martyrs," even though a tenant of conspiracies is that no plot will work with that many people involved in it, because someone will snitch or screw something up. Atta and his bunch threw out all the rules and succeeded.
I have not checked with FoxNews yet to see what has happened in the world today. Just went to work and after shopping after work came home and actually have not turned the TV on yet. Looked into Utube and found some around the world music videos--Lebanese belly dancers, some Russians playing the balalaika, and some people playing Bach on accordians. I am truly hooked on YouTube.
This is going to be all for right now. Maybe I will add another posting later this evening. Di di mau!

A Saturday Night in May

Not a grabbing title for a blog entry, but so far this has been a cloudy and humid and drizzley and windy weekend, and I have a sore back and leg, and have spent most of the day in a sagbag droop. Old age, I suppose. A poor night for television. Several thousand people have gone to Winterset for the John Wayne centennial fest. AMC has shown today the Duke's strange movie Jet Pilot, in which Duke tries to make a capitalist out of Russian jet pilot Janet Leigh and she tries to make him into a Communist. Duke is an American Icon, even though he must have set a record for making bad movies and his personal life had lows as well as highs, but he was what he was. An article Friday in the Des Moines Register was the story of an ex Marine who followed Duke on a tour of Nam in '66, and out in the boonies a Cong in the bushes actually fired five rounds at Duke and his entourage, and the big guy stood there and kept signing autographs for grunts. So, the Duke at one time actually was fired at in a war zone. While reading the article to a kid I work with I had to explain to him what a Viet Cong was.
Dwayne Hickman turned 73 a couple of days ago. Dobie Gillis got Old. And Karen Valentine, one of my goddesses, turned 60, and the Osmond brothers are going to get together for a show sometime this summer.
I have not mentioned in previous postings that we lost Tom Poston a while back. His death does not seem to have gotten much news coverage, which is a shame, because he had a long career in TV, and any sitcom he appeared in was much better for him being in it. A very talented guy. Miss you, Tom!
I am thinking about breaking my ban on busting my budget by buying books(which have become very expensive) and getting Ronnie Reagan's diaries.
The Mideast mess keeps getting danker and danker, with the Lebanese army now fighting an AlQaeda force hooked with Hamas. And Drudge and other newssources claim to have info that some time this summer the Iranians are going to do Something we will end up fighting them over. I need to get away from youtube and get back to reading online news.
I am getting back into viewing movie videos, which I have not done for several months. Rented and watched The Queen, and The Benchwarmers!! I know that combo must leave my readers gasping, but since it is getting late at night I hope to review both flicks in my next posting. I hope my fans and devotees can stand the wait. My fingers are hitting every other key but the ones I am supposed to be hitting. So, you all take care and have a good Memorial Day. Di di mau!

Stormy Weather in the Spring Evening

Ok, Jordin won American Idol tonight, with 73 million people calling in to vote. I was not impressed with many of the singers, but hope Jordin can keep singing and can make a career of singing. So many singers crash and burn quickly. Paula Abdul broke her nose falling over her dog and was snippy to Simon.
The weather we have been having around the heartland seems to have made everyone grumpy. The last several days have been hazy and hot humid and windy and tonight we are getting noisy thunderbommers, but not much rain. We wanted the sagbag winter to go away, and now that it is gone, we are whining about the hot weather. But we are in shorts and sandals season, so what is there to moan about.
The body of one of the GIs kidnapped in Iraq has been found in the Euphrates river. And apparently Qaeda put out a video that got on ABC news showing the Capitol building being blown up(I missed seeing the bit and perused it on Drudge). The ABC news blog was so full of bizzare comments that one wonders if there is something in the US water system. And much of what was on the talk shows tonight was about a brawl Rosie and Hasselback had about whether US troops were "terrorists." And RO'D slammed Liz for being a Christian.
I found some interesting Utube clips of Stalin, and the big victory parade held in Red Square at the end of WW2 in '45, when the famous scenes of the Russians burning German battleflags was held, and Marshal Zhukov rode a white horse across the square on a red carpet. Very interesting stuff to get to watch. The comments by viewers were goofy stuff, with college kids(?) commenting on whether Hitler or Stalin was the greatest hero in history. And someone has put online a collection of North Korean marching music.
The latest storm session has just rolled in and it is raining noisily.
I am now going to send this rambling posting into cyberspace and then finish watching Raymond (Marie made a sculpture that looks like a female bodypart). So much news-so little time to absorb it all. You all take care. Di di mau!

Hot May Night

After the doldrums of winter of 07 it seems that summer is here finally, on Mama's Day. And now people are complaining about How Hot It Is! I like this kind of weather.
In my last blog, relating things that have happened in the last month or so, I did not mention the Virginia Tech massacre. My only contribution to accounts of that tragedy is that it has a number of angles similar to the U of Iowa massacre in 1991(which took place during an ice storm). An unbalanced graduate student from China(his academic status is murky) went crazy and killed most of the members of the astrophysics dept, and at least one secretary, and left a Filipino girl paralyzed. Everyone who know Gang Liu thought he was nuts and hated him, but he was allowed to get through the very advanced program till he did his crime. He killed himself.
Several American soldiers are supposedly being held prisoner by Alquaeda in Iraq after the Qs blew up a convoy which killed several soldiers. That's what I have heard so far about that situation.
The hurricane building up in the Atlantic has fizzled out.
Lord Chesterfield wrote an interesting letter to his son in June, 1751 in which he details the correct way to speak to a King. I haven't read whether W's protocol crew are familiar with Chesterfield's letters.
I have managed to get through the weekend without a lot of TV watching (including Fox News) so I have few comments on boobtube stuff, except that Mike Wallace made a doop of himself trying to interview Mitt Romney and probing the Romneys' sex life and Mormon convictions.
This post is starting to ramble, as it is now 2 a.m. and I have to go to work in a few hours. So, I am going to send this posting out in cyberspace as it is. You all take care, and I hope to have more postings as time passes by. Di di mau!

Oh dear, oh dear, I am blogging again at last

Over a month has passed since I have written anything, even though I wrote a posting a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason could not get it published (so much for 21st century technology). So, here is what seems to be becoming the blog of the month instead of the blog of the day or week. Do people still take the time to type blogs, or is Everything a video on Youtube now? No knocking of Utoob; I have found some fascinating videos on the thing, including some great historical videos that otherwise would have no place to ever be shown.
The news of the world has been coming so thick and fast lately that it is getting difficult to absorb it all. In the last couple of months we have had late winter blizzards, followed by heavy rains and floods in the Midwest, and grassfires are still raging in the Southeast, and now Catalina is on fire, and the F5 tornado that smashed a small town in Kansas has gotten a lot of attention, and there seems to be an early hurricane building up in the Atlantic off Florida.
American deaths in Iraq are getting heavier day by day, and a couple of 19-year-old soldiers from Iowa were killed, including a girl from Davenport.
The Mayday demonstrations by Mexican immigrants in California produced a police riot, a small version of the Chicago riots in '68.
A cruise ship off the coast of Greece sank, but 1500 passengers were saved--a reverse of the Titanic.
I suppose that a perusal of the Drudge archives will give one a much fuller account of notable world events of the last month--which I wish I could relate one after the other, but when it comes time to sit down at the keyboard my mind goes sadly blank.
Warm summer weather has finally come to the midwest, which we have been waiting for for several months, after a fairly unpleasant winter.
Paris Hilton is supposed to go to jail in LA for 45 days for driving drunk with a suspended license. She has been getting much more publicity than in a sane world she would have gotten, but Welcome to the ways of the earth. Forty years ago we lived through the years of way too much news about the Burton-Taylor couple, till they finally just wore out their welcome.
From what I can deduce, Jason is the real father of Liz's baby(Jason used a Quartermaine defective rubber), and Spinelli knows the secret, and Tracy keeps talking to Alan's ghost(who is hanging around the Q mansion, and Tony is plotting to kill Alcazar(who is wise to Skye being a snitch.) This is all on General Hospital, to which I becoming addicted within limits.
And Junior Dale Earnhardt has broken with the racecar empire ruled by his stepmother and he is going to be with another racing outfit next year, and he supposedly will have to give up his 8, which is going to drive Nascar googaw collectors crazy, but watercooler gossip has it that he may start using his Daddy's Number 3, which I oppose, because 3 is sacred to the Intimidator, and no one else should ever be allowed to use Big Dale's 3.
And the Queen and Philip came to the US to see the Kentucky Derby and visit Jamestown and the Bush's, and W made a booboo in his welcoming speech in which he made a tongue slip and inferred that the Queen was 200 years old and she gave him a dirty look.
Listen, friends; I am going to terminate this post, and I hope I can have more to write in a day or two. I know you want more, but Mama Rose said to leave'em wanting More, so I hope to get back on a regular posting schedule, so you all take care and be happy as you can. Di di mau!

More Whining on a Dreary Windy Night

Since last night the wind has been gusting through Des Moines and tonight it is supposed to get down to 20 degrees. A dark, cloudy, and loudly windy day making for dreariness and selfpity, even though this is normal Nature, and one has to live through it and hope the sun will come out and spring will eventually be back to its normal springness in a few days.
A kid up at Iowa State who has been missing since he left a drinking party early Saturday morning was found in the ISU campus lake this afternoon. He may have just fallen into the lake but someone tried to use his credit card at a local convenience store, so the mystery of what happened to him is getting deep.
I have been in a mad for the last several days--about the War, the weather, politics, and some stuff that happened in my life going back several decades and that I cannot do a thing about now, because some of the people I am mad at have been gone for several years. So, I have wasted several hours of my life full of useless regrets. So, I watched my utube video of Piaf singing No, I Regret Nothing, and that is a good antidote to the pouts. Poor Piaf standing there singing about her life while she was dying and looking awful. Someone once asked me what the difference was between Sinatra and Dean Martin as singers. Frank could throw his whole soul into In the Wee Small Hours, and Dean when he wanted to could sing a song beautifully but never opened his whole heart to the audience. Just one of my opinions.
This is going to be all for tonight. I have to take an evening nap, and probably will have more to regale you dear readers with tomorrow night, because my fingers are right now slipping all over the keys. Di di mau!

More Whining Moderately

This may be a short entry tonight, because I slept late this morning, and did not do much today after I got up except some shopping for necessaries and googaws in the afternoon, which included a video of Seven Samurai I found for 2 bucks at a thrift store. So, one great bargain got added to my movie collection. I have never seen 7 S all the way through, and now have a project at hand of adding to my cultural education by watching the thing. There was a segment on Fox News of Iranian students in Tehran standing outside the Brit Embassy chanting Death to USA and Britain. Looks like 79 all over again. Interesting that crowds can get together in Iran without fear of carbombs going off in their midst. It should happen to them sometime, since they are sponsoring much of the carnage in Iraq.
The sun came out this p.m. and the drizzle went away, but March winds are still blowing on April 1. I should turn on the radio and listen to Drudge for a while before bedtime, but I find his radio show somewhat dull. The website is better. Sorry, Matt; that is my humble opinion.
Friends, this is going to be all for right now. For whatever reason I cannot manage my fingers tonight in a typing session. So, you all take care. Di di mau!

Whining in the Rain

March '07 is ending with rain and wind and gloom in the central midwest. Sunshine and heat and flowers and summer fun are going to arrive some time, but not today. Not a day of utter misery, but dreary enough for one to want to stay in bed and unwind from a hectic week. So, that is about what I did today--rested and unlaxed much of the sunless day. (One guy in town was blown 40 feet across his yard by a wind gust.) Am currently watching an ESPN show on the career of Joe Louis. I did not know a whole lot about him, but am finding out a lot of things. In about an hour after the local news is over, I may go back to bed again. This does not seem like the kind of stuff to send into cyberspace for the whole wired world to read, but that is what the genuine me is currently about(I know--a sentence ended with a prepo.) And I am drinking some kind of Chinese tea with a rooty flavor (Rose Tuocha). It is an interesting type of tea. As of this moment no one knows how the Iranian-British hostage situation is going to develope. According to FoxNews there may not be a full-scale war out of the situation. There is some idea that there are enough fed-up Iranians to overthrow Nejad and create a peaceful Iran. There was that kind of fleeting hope in the 1930s concerning the Germans and Hitler, but things did not work out that way, and the Cubans did not toss out Castro in the early 60s, either.
I did try to listen this afternoon to the Met Opera performance of Egyptian Helene, a Richard Strauss oddity that it was hard to get into, as all the singers sang in German and I could not see what they were doing onstage. A convoluted Weimar-era musical experiment by Strauss. Deborah Voigt did try bravely to sing the lead role.
This is going to be all for right now, dear readers. I hope to have some world news upon which to report tomorrow, when I have checked on what has happened around the world. (The local news broadcast just said that at least 150 people were killed in a town in Iraq in one car-bomb blast.)
Di di mau, friends.

Friday Night and Spring Will Arrive

Having restarted blogging yesterday, after several months of not blogging, I am going to send another post into cyberspace, even though the past 24 hours have consisted of going to work early in the morning, coming back to my pad, watching General Hospital, taking a nap, watching Dirty Jobs, and then exploring Youtube (some interesting Carlos Gardel videos, and Men on Football from In Living Color) and waiting for the ten p.m. news. Found out this morning that a well-liked former boss at work we had has died in Arizona. He basically drank himself to death, and was something of a relic from hippy times, but he was a good boss and saved our jobs several years ago after he replaced another boss who drank himself to death and was a human mess. Goodbye Ed. We will miss you. On Dirty Jobs right now Mike Rowe is watching llamas screwing.
Poor Barbaro was put to sleep a couple of months ago, and there was brief mention of the passing of Yvonne DeCarlo, except that she was Lillie Munster and had a role in The Ten Commandments--nothing about her long career as a B-movie star. There was odd skimpy coverage about the death and career of James Brown. His death took on Frankie Lyman angles, when several women and kids claiming to be his heirs showed up. He was finally buried a couple weeks ago. The Anna Nicole Smith death has been covered beyond sense, even though her life was a sad mess and I can't think of any contribution she made to human advancement. Several guys claiming to be the daddy of her baby appeared, her awful mother showed up, and her long-lost father was found.
Hillary and Barak have both been in Iowa recently, being adored by their fans, and she is coming back to town Monday morning. So, that means he will also be back soon.
This is going to be all for tonight, because I am getting drowsy. Warm weather is gradually moving into the heartland, and I got the shorts out of the clothes bag, and have been wearing them, after they got whiny about being put away since last fall. So, the gang is happy now, waiting to be put on my body though the summer season. Good things come to pants who wait.
Di di mau!

Return to Blogging

Hello world, I know you all have been waiting for me to return to print blogging after at least five months. Life got busy and complicated and I just stopped blogging, and I got hooked up with Youtube and that has taken up my time on the laptop. I have been planning to give all my devoted fans a running account of daily events on the planet, but life got diverted to other things, and some stuff I hoped to record around the first of 07 got halted. James Brown died and Yvonne DeCarlo died, and Anna Nicole Brown died, and Darlene Conley (Sally Spectra) died, and the Bears were diverted from their deserved glory (the Shuffle is on Youtube), and Saddam got his necktie party, and the winter has been miserable and very expensive--with very expensive airline holdups and lots of ice related powerline collapses, and some awful midwinter tornadoes (eight kids killed in a high school in Enterprise, Alabama), and the War is dragging on into its 5th year. Hillary and Obama keep returning to Iowa (she is due back next week), and W and Congress are still at war with one another. I suppose that the details of all this and other recent events can be read in any recent news magazine. Anti-war demonstrations have started around the country, and we seem to be back in the mid-1960s again minus the hippies and the race riots, but they may return--but I hope not.
I have gotten hooked on utube videos, even though I probably cannot afford the bill for the hookup, but I am amazed at what is on video. Besides Boom goes the dynamite, and Numa Numa, and the kid who lipsyncs Al Jolson, and the cute kittens and the cute baby sloth, I have found loads of groovy opera videos and music(Woodrow Wilson's daughter's recording of the Star Spangled Banner), and the other night I found several TV kinoscopes of Patsy Cline singing, and even the movie short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. And loads of videos of foreign singers(including several Oom Kalthum videos). So, now the world world is online in video. There are still mass quantities of people blogging in print, so the human race is online to meet. If we could stop wanting to kill each other in person.
So, I am back blogging. I hope I can get into a routine of doing this on a more regular basis, and not let months go by without offering anything to the world. Hopefully my life will stay organized and stable, but as Mama said to Eunice, "Well, welcome to Earth, Eunice!"
For the historical record, My Name is Earl just came on the air(Earl and Randy rescue Catalina in Mexico). In the last blogging in Nov. I mentioned that Castro was at the door of death, but in late March he is still alive.
So, you all do your things, and keep waiting--for I will return with more blogs. Di di mau.