First Blog of 09

Hello. I said in the last blog that I would try to find a list of well-known people who had died in '8. Wikipedia has a huge list of late people, a lot of whom I did not know because they were involved in sports or science or politics in various countries, and there were listings of animals, such as the world's oldest polar bear or gorilla et al. A lot of people were famous at one time, but when they died this year the media was so into politics, and then the economic crash, that no one's life and death was of any meaning (it happens I guess). Solzhenitsyn died, and whatever he meant 30 or so years ago meant not much to the modern news business, and besides, he had shit on the West when he lived here in exile, so there may have been some sourness about him. He was one strange Russian. I suppose the lesson is--do not totally depend on the network newssources for your information. Here is my list of people I found that it was of interest that they had passed away. There are lots more I have not included. Betty Page, Sunny Von Bulow, Odetta, Paul Benedict, Nina Foch, Miriam Makeba, Michael Crichton, Yma Sumac, Studs Terkel. Tony Hillerman, Mr. Blackwell, Edie Adams, Jack Narz, Neal Hefti, Barefoot Sanders(Texas judge with links to LBJ), Bill Melendez, Don LaFontaine, Margaret Truman, Sir Edmund Hillary, Earl Butz, Maila Murin(was Vampira in Plan 9 from Outer Space), Robert Fagles(translated the Iliad and Odessey), Sir Arthur Clarke, Paul Scofield, Ivan Dixon, Joe Feeney, Harvey Korman, Sydney Pollack, Dick Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, Leyla Gencer, Eddie Arnold, Ted Key(drew Hazel), Will Elder(drew Little Annie Fannie), Leonard Pennario, Beverlee McKinsey, Dody Goodman, George Carlin, Cyd Charisse, Jim McKay, Bo Diddley, Mel Ferrerr, Yves Saint Laurent, Eula Beale, Norman Dello Joio, Estelle Getty, Tony Snow, Evelyn Keyes, Killer Kowalski, Jerry Reed, Larry Harmon(Bozo the Clown), and Jo Stafford. Terrible shame that Couric, Norville, and the other mainstream newsers never noted the passing of most of these folks. Yes, I know that many of these people were old and had finished with their talents, but here they are in my list. You all take care. Di di mau!

End of 08 and Good Riddance

It is New Years Eve, and I am watching the FoxNews crew in Times Square. And it is cold in the midwest. I suppose the biggest thing in my life that has happened this year is retirement, and it is taking some time to get used to the Old period of life, but we will roll with it. People on TV keep listing things that happened in 8( some of which I had put down the memory hole) that I should list for the historical record. The election campaign, the economic crash that has hit much of the world, the war in Gaza, the Olympics in China, the monster earthquake in China, the hurricane in Burma, the hurricanes that wrecked Galveston and the gulf coast, a bunch of tornadoes that hit lots of places in the US(and Parkersburg Iowa), the spring floods that destroyed Cedar Rapids and drowned Iowa City, the cholera epidemic in Zimabwe(little covered in the US), the drug gang wars in northern Mexico, Chavez bringing the Russian navy back into the west hemisphere, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the little girl in Florida who was maybe killed by her mother, O J getting sent to prison, the firing of John and Marlena from Days of Our Lives, the freaking out of Britney Spears and her comeback, and the deaths of: Heath Ledger, Bernie Mac, Paul Newman, Tim Russert. Eartha Kitt, and Charleton Heston. Now it is midnight in NYC and the Clintons pushed the button that dropped the big ball and then hugged and kissed one another. Many other well known people died this year, and I should look up an obituary list to find who I forgot, and make a list on my first 9 blog entry. My mama said that a guy she knew down home died the other day out in the lot while feeding his goats. This is going to be all for right now. Maybe the new year will be better than 8, but we will probably have to live with the messes that have taken place in the old year, but some cleansing of the soul after the several years of the worship of the golden calf(as FDR said) may be in order. Let us see what happens in the next 365 days. You take care. Di di mau!

Night after Christmas '08

Cold and icey on Christmas Day, but supposedly it is going to get up in the 50s Friday, after more ice snow. Will have to see how such weather comes about. Tragedy and sorrow on Dec 25 this year; Eartha Kitt and Harold Pinter both died, and some doofus in California dressed up as Santa and walked into his etranged wife's house, and killed her and her family and set the house on fire, and thankfully then shot himself. So far nine people are listed as dead in this mess. I just got done watching a tape of a 1947 western with Robt. Mitchum called Pursued. Complicated plot about a family feud and who in the past did bad to who among 2 families. Not totally successful story, and with a somewhat sour "happy" ending, but interesting. Deserves more than one viewing. Some good acting by Judith Anderson, who is always watchable. Not much world news was covered today on the news channels, except for lots of stuff about the people still stranded in airports. I have been in something of a depression and gloom cloud for the last few days, but keep hoping that it will end very very soon. And supposedly a lot of people in New England lost their power Again in another ice storm out there. Some dude in St. Peter's lunged at the Pope during Christmas mass last night. This is going to be all for right now. You take care. Di di mau!

Cold Christmas Eve

It is cold and icy tonight in the midwest. No traffic much on the streets past my hootch, No crows in the trees outside my window--which is one good thing . Tomorrow I am supposed to drive home to see the family. I hope the interstate is clean enough so I can drive on it. People are still stuck in airports all over the country and Amtrack is screwed up so that a lot of people cannot even get train rides. The news people never cover whatever the weather situation is for bus travel. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain and get icy again. The winter this year started early in Nov, and has not changed for 2 months. Maybe in early 09 we will start getting toward an early spring, but nature will have its way. With the bad weather, and the economic crash, and all the emotionalism of the election campaign, good riddance to 08. And on a personal note, my retirement happened. So far, I am still settling into the world of Not Working. I still miss my gang I was with for 35 years. A couple of days ago there was a major mess in Bethesda Maryland when a big water main broke on a major highway and a lot of cars got stranded in the water and had to be rescued by helicoptor. Mark Felt, who said he was Deep Throat and ratted on Nixon, died at 95 a few days ago. The war in Iraq seems to have fizzled out as a news issue and except for such oddities as an Iraqi reporter throwing his shoes at Bush is getting little coverage. And nothing much is being covered anymore about the terrorist raid in Bombay. The bribery scandal with Governor Blago is ongoing, and the car company bailout is the ongoing issue, and there is an upcoming mess with California going broke, and old man Maddof and his losing of 50 billion in his ponzi scheme is a continuing story. It is now Christmas day, and I am watching the ceremony from the Vatican. Hopefully Obama will have a successful beginning of his presidency. There is a news article in Drudge that military honchos are planning for a situation where troops have to called out to settle the riots that may break out if the US economy crashes so bad that the fabric of the country falls apart. You all take care. This will be all for right now. Di di mau!

Cold and Awful December Night

The main news as of now is the very cold and snowy weather stretching all across the US, from one side to the other. It snowed the other day in Vegas Baby, and an ice storm in Nuengland knocked out power to about a million people another storm is pounding the region right now, and a fifty truck and car pile up happened in Michigan, and Iowa is now getting minus 25 wind chills and mucho ice is all over the road system. Maybe it will get up to 30 degrees by Christmas, but the forecast keeps changing day by day. Some global warming expert the other day on Foxnews tried to explain that having very cold weather actually verified global warming, because very extreme weather really meant that the earth was getting warmer and warmer. Political news is all about Governor Blago announcing that he will not resign, and Obama trying to distance himself from Blago. And O picking an anti-Gay preacher to give the prayer at O's inauguration is stirring controversy. Foxnews made a big deal of getting a farewell interview with Cheney, with a bunch of digs at Biden. I watched it this evening, but did not hear much sensational. Should get a paper tomorrow to see if I missed anything Cheney said that was historically important. Mobs of people today at my local Walmart, so I went to a local Kmart, and it was crowded too. Watched a dvd last night of Talladega Nights, which was not actually very good. Ferrell tried hard to bring Ricky Bobby to life, but the movie was just not that great. Good movie to see once and then move on. In Venezuela Chavez is trying to close a huge shopping center in Caracas, because he does not the people to overdo Consumerism. This is going to be all for right now. You all stay warm, because this winter will be over in about 3 months, and then spring and heat will return, and it will again be shorts and sandals and tshirts time. But last spring we got floods and tornadoes. I also this weekend watched Sideways, which wowed the Oscars crowd, but it did not impress me. Two middle aged guys drinking wine and drooping in their midlife crises. The Patriots and Arz. Cardinals played their game this afternoon played their game in a snow storm. Always something to watch. Di di mau!

Blog in a Time of Chaos and Confusion

Van Johnson died the other day, and TV Guide noted that Paul Benedict(the very tall guy on the Jeffersons) had died, and both deaths were brushed off as hohums in the media. That happens, and the Big stuff of the week was economic news and political scandal, and the finding of the body of a little kid in Florida who may be the little girl who has been missing for several months. Congress did not give the car companies the billions they wanted to stay in business. The Governor of Illinois was busted for supposedly trying to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. And an old financier from NYC (he was once head of Nasdaq) was snitched on by his sons for running some kind of Ponzi scheme that lost at least fifty billion. On a news website some money expert said that common investers need not worry about getting affected by the fifty billion dollar loss because Madoff had only dealt with a small number of very rich people, and the only folks who would feel hurt by the scam were very rich people in Palm Beach. I have doubts about such Don't Worry About It statements. Maybe we were due for a cleansing from worshipping the Golden Calf which has been going on for a couple of decades, but the scourging will be painful for everybody. And that comment about the golden calf comes from a quote I read by FDR. I hope O does not get crushed by the financial crises and the foreign problems that wrecked the Carter regime. Oh, yes--an ice storm in New England has left about a million people without power. With most states broke or near it all that was needed was a giant weather disaster that will have to be paid for. I am going to close this blog entry now. Every thing I am writing about is some human misery. So, you all take care. Di di mau!

Sunday Night Awaiting the Storm

The title could refer to the coming economic crash(which is already here) but is about the upcoming blizzard the weather people say will be in the midwest early or late Monday. One weather guru the other day said that the snow will pile up all winter and will make for a long awful winter. I suppose that if that happens we will get floods like we got last spring. We will see what happens. A not cheerful weekend re world news, but most of what was on cable TV related to O's cabinet appointments. OK, OJ got sentenced to at least 9 years in prison, and got very weepy in the court room, and then Fred Goldman got in front of the cameras and gloated. Someone up in Ames Iowa killed a couple early Saturday morning. A guy under suspicion is being searched for after disappearing from the town, but so far the story is being kept vague by the police. Odetta died the other day, and yesterday Sunny von Bulow finally died after being in a coma for 28 years. It was revealed that Klaus is still Alive and living in London. The Bears beat the Jags real bad today, the Packers lost by three points to Houston, and Northwest Missouri State pounded Northern Alabama is their small college playoff. I am happy about all these scores. This is not a really deep historical events account tonight because I have felt like a dud for several days and cannot get my spirit up. And this is Pearle Harbor Day and is the 11th anniversary of my Dad's funeral. I think the economy and my financial future are getting me down. The last I heard there are still a bunch of people who got laid off from a window factory in Chicago still hold up inside the building demanding severance money from the company, and several yuppie left wingers are hanging around playing 60s and demonstrating with the workers. Fans, I am going to wind up this blogging, and need to grease me with Vicks and take a nap. Will return in the very near future. You take care. Di di mau!

Winter Is Here

Was gone from the keyboard for several days--gone home to the family for Thanksgiving, which we celebrated with what has become a tradition of having a dinner of buffalo, instead of turkey or hog. Daddy started it several years ago when buff eat came onto the market, and that has been our tradition ever since. The news the last several days has been all about the terrorists' attack on the hotels in Bombay(Mumbai). One couple from Wales who got caught in their hotel room at the Taj are now complaining that the bad guys were watching CNN which was giving the locations of where people were hiding in the Taj. More on the story as it develops. The Bears got whopped by the vikings this evening. I should be in bed in total grief, but I will try to bear up under my sorrow. The big regional news around here is the first winter storm which has rolled across the USA. It began to snow big wet flakes Friday morning and kept snowing for at least 26 hours(really). O'Hare airport is all off schedule, and Interstate 35 was very slick this afternoon, and the streets of Des Moines are very icy and the wind is blowing loudly. So, Winter has arrived, but according to forecasts the temp should get up to 50 degrees by the middle of the week. The news for the last several days has been mainly the Economy, India(and Pakistan), and the weather. And there has been lots of news on the chaos in shopping centers on Black Friday with mobs of people rioting for bargains. One security guy at a mall on Long Island was trampled to death by the mob when the doors opened. O may officially nominate HRC for SecState this week. Gas prices have fallen to $1.57. . This may be all for right now. I do not have much more to tell the world. You all take care, and I will have more the next time I blog. Di di mau!

45 Years Ago

Bad title, but this is the 45th anniverary of JFK's murder. That many years ago. I was in a typing class when the teacher told us the news that he had been wounded, and then the principal came in and said he had died. In the territory I lived in no one really liked Kennedy, or Bobby especially, but it was a shock that such an event had actually happened. And that afternoon we got our first snow of the season. I remember the sleet and the ice in the middle of all the trauma. And that is my memory of Where Were You When You Heard About It. It snowed in the midwest early this morning, but melted very fast. Just more wind and ice air tonight, and is supposed to get into the high 40s tomorrow. The Iowa Hawkeyes pounded Minnesota into the ground this afternoon 55-0 and won the bronze pig they always play Minn for. Last night I watched a video of Daddy Long Legs--a 1955 cinamascope musical with Astaire and Leslie Caron, which I had never seen before, and was not very good, despite it being a chance to see Fred and Leslie dance, which is always something to behold. And I am now watching a local station late night showing of an episode of Monk, who I have gotten hooked on watching. Not very good stories, but fun to watch Shaloob act. The stock market went up yesterday over 8,000, but layoffs are going on all over the country--including some big business outfits in Des Moines, and a number of people are being laid off by the city. The wife of the Governor was snitched on the other day by someone downtown who saw her smoking in the governor's official car. She has promised to never do it again. One of the problems with Iowa's antismoking law is that it encourages snitching to the Law. HRC is due to become Sec of State. This is going to be all for right now. I want to slide in a late Saturday night video of some movie I will pull off the shelf, and report on it next blogging. You all take care. Di di mau!

Cold Windy November Night

The title says it all. It is down to 11 degrees tonight and we are getting our usual evening howling winds. Sometime in the next several days the first snow is supposed to fall, but so far nothing has happened. For some lighter stuff, a flamingo the other day at the city zoo got enough growth in his clipped wings and flew away from the flamingo pen and landed at the nearby public golf course, where he walked around the links for a while till he was cornered and put back in his pen at the zoo. A lady driving north of Ames the other morning got distracted and drove her car into the back of a rendering company truck. She was not hurt but has inspired jokes about driving her car into a dead wagon truck or a guts truck. Anyway it was a very messy stinken situation. The stock market today fell to 7,555, the lowest average since March of 03. And national unemployment is at 6%. The 3 big auto corporations sent their head honchos to Congress the other day to ask for money to stay in operation, but today they were turned down till they came up with plans to reform their companies. The media spotlight has been on the fact that the big guys all flew to DC in their very expensive private jets. O is picking his cabinet, with HRC probably getting Sec of State. The others all are Clinton relics, who may be very smart but all are DC wheeler dealers, with things they have done that should be explained. The First Lady of Iowa, Mrs. Culver, Confessed today that she had broken the law by smoking a cig in a state limo. Someone had seen her doing it, and snitched to the state health gestapo. I think this is going to be all for right now. The carmakers' crisis is what has been all over the news the last few days, and the ongoing Wall Street crashing. There are a few financial "experts" who are showing up in public claiming than things are going to get much better by late '09. We will see. You all take care in this frigid climate. Di di mau!

Winter Sunday Night

Not very original title, but here we go. The Bears got shamed by the GBPs this afternoon 3-37. I should read the sports page tomorrow morning to see what happened, but the Bs will be back--we know that. Meanwhile life goes on. And I will not hide in bed in grief. Last night I put in a video of The Rainmaker--with Matt Damon and Danny DiVito and Mickey Rourke and a bunch of other actors--filmed in Memphis and slightly similar to The Verdict. A kid lawyer learns the nature of real life. I got half way through the thing and should finish it this evening or tomorrow. But I replaced it in the vcr with a really strange flick called Secretary, with Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a boss and his strange secretary with an S&M fixation, and he gets one too, I think. A 2 character movie I am not sure why was even filmed, but it is intriguing enough that I should watch it again to see what it is really about. It seems to have gotten good reviews, so maybe it is Very Deep. I decided to not sit in front of the TV today to see more talking heads being gloomy about the world economy. Yes, things are very bad, but drowning in the talking about it for hours at a time will fuck you up. The other news is the current fires sweeping across southern California in the Orange County area. Geraldo says right now that 50, 000 people are fleeing from the flames. A 500 unit trailer park burned, and yesterday the fire was into Yorba Linda(Nixon's hometown). Not sure yet about the fires getting into Anaheim. There was a thing on this afternoon about the Jonestown suicides. I had forgotten that this is the 30th anniversary of that horrible thing. And on the 22nd will be the 45th anniversary of JFK getting killed. That long ago! This is going to be all for right now. I just do not have any more to right about I have deep insight into. You take care. Di di mau!

Winter Weekend in the Dark

Here we are on a dark cold windy Saturday night in mid November. Nothing unusual--it is normal seasonal weather, but the gloom and the economic mess seem to be getting into peoples' heads--everyone seems to be very grouchy, including me. Fox News is doing a series on TV and The Presidency tonight, and is covering the Lewinsky scandal. Actually an interesting show; I had forgotten or not thought for a long time about some of what went on. Busch met with 20 world leaders to discuss the world money crisis, and O is picking his crew and staff. That is the bare summary of events in the last few days. I am trying to come down from the campaign, and have gone into world affairs shutdown, but will come out of it soon. I am not feeling overly healthy and Up right now, and have been having trouble relating to other human beings, but will get back to normal acceptable social behavior soon, I hope. I' better get better. No nervous collapse like I had about 30 years ago. Enough of that! I watched a tape last night of Kings Row, the movie where Ronnie gets his legs cut off and says "Where's the rest of me?" Interesting somewhat daring movie for 1942--a lot like Peyton Place--hidden evil secrets in a pious small town. Like PP KR has too many characters you cannot keep straight, but there is a great scene at the end where Bob Cummings has to tell off Ronnie for laying around letting Anne Sheridan baby him, and Ronnie sees the light and gets fired up to start living. Vintage Ronnie! This docu on Fox is now into Gore and Bush and the campaign of 2000, and it is very interesting, and fair. I hope it gets rerun again so I can tape it. One thing they have not shown is the Snickers commercial with the donkey and the elephant trying to outdo one another on who invented the internet and who still wears his dad's pants and who invented pants. A classic TV political ad, even if the real message was to get you to eat Snickers. This is going to be all for right now; it is getting late or early. You all take care. Di di mau!

Cold Cold Cold

Very dark and cold on this Sunday night. We have winter every year, so there should be no trauma or sadness about it, but I feel gloomy for some reason, and want to blame it on the season. Poor me. I am going to have to accept O as president, even if I am leary about him being our Leader. I am leary about his biography and a lot of the people he listens to, and a lot of his ideas--such as that the Constitution and the total of American history suck. The other day he made a comment about his bi-racialness and referred to himself as a Mutt. No one in the media made anything of this, but it bothered me. Going on to other things, I am half watching a video of Our Friends and Neighbors--a high rated movie which seems to be about a bunch of yuppies with relationship angst. They fuck and they talk and so far that is all they have done. Some time I will have to just sit and watch what it is that they are doing. Maybe there is something in this flick, but so far I have not seen much. I found a video at a thrift store of The Time Machine--from 1960 with Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux--that is a favorite with the geeks on Big Bang Theory. Maybe sometime I should actually read HG Wells' original story. A somewhat dated and clumsy movie, but in 1960 nuclear destruction of the world was a very topical situation--actually it still is. I hope O matures into a good president from a Chicago slacker hustler. This is going to be all for right now. You all take care. Di di mau!

After the Election

Obama won the election Tuesday, as if anyone needs to be told that. I have not actually heard any newspeople say what the results by number of the win were. O got over 300 electoral votes, so that put him over the top by 10:30 p.m, and Mc threw in the towel. I was not happy that big John lost, but am accepting the result. O got a briefing today from Intelligence honchos, and supposedly the transition procedures have started smoothly. Maybe O will grow up and grow into a President of the whole country, even though at least half the population seemingly hates him, and the other half think he is God who will give us(or them) Manna and Money. Hopefully he will get away from his stuff about how the Constitution sucks and the course of American history has sucked till the minute he Arrived. It is going to be a time of social turmoil for a while, I am afraid. What else has happened in the last 2 days? Winter is on the way across the midwest, and probably will get to Des Moines soon. Foxnews reported that Putin is trying to get Med out of power, so he can take over the top job again in Russia--no surprise there. Nejad is trying to make nicey to Obama. The stock market is back way Down, after the election. Gas prices today are at $1.80. Probably there will a shootup around Thanksgiving--a holiday gouging. We will see. Apparently Youtube's system crashed tonight--just when I was ready to find some videos of 0ld-time French singers--Frehel, Sablon et al. Katie Couric tonight was in a state of woe over a big dip in retail sales, and the troubles small stores and small businesses are having. And in town this morning a guy came into his living room and found a guy who had been robbing driveup banks all over town asleep on his couch. The robber was an older homeless guy who was always on camera wearing a yellow ball cap. So he has finally been caught. More on this will be on the ten p.m news in a while. One thing I need to get away from is getting up at 2 a.m to watch Red Eye on Fox. Silly but interesting program. Kind of a TV version of Bob and Tom. I like Greg Gutfeld, though. It was 40 Years Ago this week, in Nov. 68, that I began my Army era--leading to the Mekong delta. Was it really that long ago? Yes, it was. This will be all for right now. I have stated my murky views on the political and historical situation with Potuselect Obama. I do hope he works out as a president. Some of the blog coments I have read about him are vicious and hateful and the others are so up in heaven I don't know what the middle ground is among Americans. You all take care. Di di mau!

Hello, We Are Back in Blogland

Goofy title for an entry, but I had to take the laptop to puterworld to get cleaned out, and it took a while for the geeksquad to get to it, but we are back in action for my many devotees. So, this entry will be a summary of a bunch of notes I made over the last week or so. Last Saturday La Palin came to Des Moines and gave her standard speech before 10,000 people who cheered her wildly. A couple days later Fox put one of her speeches on TV and she had husband and the kids with her, and little Trig was wrapped in a baby Republican elephant wrapper. This past Friday BHO came to town for an outdoor rally downtown, which blocked the main streets through town for several hours. Several thou people including went to see him. We heard him because it was difficult to get to the park site where he was at. He needed to have been put on top of a high podium so everyone could look up to see him. The speech was his standard one about changing everything. The speech did not seem to really rouse the crowd, unless you are a devotee and dote on his every word. He has been making some comments I do not really like to hear--about the Republicans being Nazis, and the Constitution being a dog because the Founders did not include anything in it about Redistributing the Wealth. And there is a little too much in his speeches about Him Changing Everything. I hope he does not have or get a Great Leader complex. The polls supposedly have him ahead of McCain. I just do not like Obama. He will probably become President, but I am not one of his fans. The Phillies won the World Series against the Rays, but America did not seem interested this year. I did not watch Obama's half hour show about himself on TV. The strangest show on TV of all time was Dirty Jobs Monday night with Mike Rowe out in Colorado helping some people dock the tails and castrating some sheep. Rowe and the gang biting the balls off the lambs with their teeth was a very strange and memorable TV event. Winter is coming on and this is the season when I watch movie videos, and I have watched a bunch of them over the last week. Do not bother watching Sadler's movie about the Zohan--it stinks really bad. Leatherheads is Clooney's movie about pro football in the 20s, and it is not really good either. I rented The Sting the other day, because I have never seen it, and was not impressed with it. Maybe I should watch it again to see what wowed the audiences in 1974, but maybe I just do not get wild over Paul and Robert as a team. And Sting is very long. And I watched a Japanese movie--An Actor's Revenge, and an old Fassbinder movie--Ali-Fear Eats the Soul, about an old German lady and her Moroccan boyfriend. Interesting movie you want to keep watching to see what happens to them in 70s Munich. And I found a tape of the old 40s movie The Devil and Daniel Webster. Not really very good, or maybe just dated. Or maybe it just brings back bad memories of high school English classes. I am going to get some classic John Wayne movies to watch some time this winter, but more on that next time we blog. Oh, how can I forget to relate that I finally found at a thrift store a VHS of a flick I have been looked for for a long time--Three in the Attic--a minor 1968 cult classic from American International about a college dude who has 3 girls on his string, and they lock him in an attic and take turns screwing him into a vegetable, but the flick actually has a happy ending. And Yvette Mimieux is the main girl, and she was actually quite a looker. Where is she now? Well, this will be all for right now. You take care. Di di mau!

Rain on a Dark Night

OK, the whole world has been waiting for this blog entry. It has been 12 days since I have sent anything into cyberspace, and my devotees are drooling, so here we are again. I got busy with life activities, and world events have gotten so heavy I have been weak at sorting out what is happening. The world economic crisis is ongoing and the stock markets have taken some alltime dives, and outfits all over the US are throwing people off the payrolls, but fuel prices are going down into the 2.50 a gallon range, which is good, even though some "expert" today on NPR said that will be bad for the environment and people will begin driving more again than they were when gas was 4 bucks a gal. Screw NPR and All Things Considered. It appears that Obama has enough voters lined up to make him President, even though the more the guy talks the less I like him. That is my own opinion and I'm stickin to it. And Biden said the other day that he knows that sometime in Obama's first 6 months the Us will be attacked by somebody or some country that wants to test Ob's Resolve. Wish Biden would tell what he knows from secret sources. Only 10 days left till the election. Get the thing over with. The flap of today was that the Republicans have spent 150 thousand to style-up Palin's clothes and makeup to make her a stunner. She is supposed to be in Des Moines Saturday afternoon. I would like to see her downtown but may not get to. Will have to check tomorrow about getting a ticket to her show. I got a flu shot the other day and have been in a droop ever since till I get the immunity built up in me. A prelude to winter arrived in the midwest this afternoon and it has been raining dreary and the temp. has been dropping. Long pants in place of shorts are now in order and sweat shirts and flannel shirts are flying off the racks at thrift stores. So it seems that the national uniform of shorts and tshirts and sandals are to be put away or tossed out till next spring. It happens every year--the course of Nature on earth. Maybe next spring we will not have the tornado and flooding mess we had this year; can only wait and see what happens when next spring arrives. I have some opinions about the economic crisis that are not very nice and my attitudes about a lot of current happenings are very grouchy, so I will not inflict my readers with what I really think about a lot of things. My idealism I had back in the 60s seems to gone far far away. And I am getting more sour as I get older. That's just It, I guess. I think this is going to be all for right now, so you readers can get some sleep, as I need to too. You all take care. Di di mau!

More Crash News and other things

The financial crisis is now worldwide. In NYC the stock market closed today at c.8,400--down from c. 10,000 at the first of the week. Around here companies are already beginning to lay off people. A money expert was on the radio on KOA in Denver last week and he spent 2 hours predicting a total Depression coming, which could last till 2020. We will I suppose have to prioritize spending and necessities. In Des Moines yuppieness was getting out of hand anyway--too many people getting too rich too young too fast. I know that is a cruel attitude to have toward other people, because I could start feeling a retirement funds crunch myself. Watch who you accuse of w0rshiping the golden calf, because I have done a lot of it myself. A guy last night on the north side of town got an ear bitten off in a fight. And we have had really nice weather in this before-winter spell. I seem to be trying to function according to the lyrics of old songs from the early 30s. cuz we seem to be reliving the era just now. Not much money oh but Honey aint we got fun. I will not try to rehash the totality of the campaign and the Crash, which can be found on lots of news websites. Have been looking through youtube and found lots of music videos of all kinds of music and have been looking at Bollywood music and have discovered an Indian singer dancer named Helen, who is several really strange videos(dancing in a bottle et al) The whole of human endeavorness seems to be on the Web, and I should start putting myself on a schedule so that I do not spend all my waking hours sitting at the desk looking at the Web. But it is addictive. I guess I have not tonight sent anything into cyberspace of any importance to anyone else on earth, but this is My blog. Palin got her hands slapped by the Alaska legislature for firing her ex-brother in law, and Wm. Ayers has been made the big issue of the week. What did OBH know about him and did he approve of him being a violent bomber from the 60s? A number of TV news commentators do not seem to know what the Weathermen actually were. Since the Nam era was 40 years ago I guess a lot of people would not know the full details of everything from the period. Having been a little kid in the early 50s I do not know the full details of the McCarthy era, except that the older people I was around were suspicious of Communists and anything they thought might be Communism. This is going to be all for right now. If the Crash becomes Total very soon I will type something about it. So you take care. Di di mau!

The Crash Et Al

The House voted down the bailout bill today and the stock market crashed c. 770 points--the biggest or second biggest drop in its history. Wachovia Bank went under. Pelosi caused the bill to be voted down by giving a very partisan speech that made the GOPs mad, or the bill was full of pork barrell addedintos, or yaddayadda. Drudge and the WSJ sites and all the news and opinion sites have the accounts of what happened. W is going to give a speech tomorrow morning. And 33 people got killed in Bagdad by a car bomb, and it got reported on the back page of our local paper. Saturday in Des Moines a guy got killed and his son injured when the truck they were driving behind blew a back tire which flew into their pickup. Big Bang Theory was funny tonight, as was 2.5 Men. Sheen and Cryer and good actors, whether I like the premise of the show or not. Am currently watching a late night cage fighting match from Sioux City, which seems to be the state capitol of cage fighting. McCaine is in town for the night to meet with some local business leaders tomorrow. A local yuppie bookstore went broke today in the new east side of downtown yuppie block. It is the 3rd or 4th upscale store to close in the area in the last year. The owner was blaming the big stores(Borders and Daltons), but the main reason may be that books have reached 40 bucks for a hardcover, and even the upscale folks cannot afford the prices. I guess this will be all for right now. The nation's economy is the main news and more expert people on the web can explain it better than I can, even with my brilliant knowledge of world affairs. Interesting that I keep mentioning websites for the news instead of print news. Must be the 21st century way of getting information. Di di mau!

Sad Saturday Night

The national money crisis is still not settled, and the Debate last night with JMc and BHO was not earth shaking--I thought. B seems to have kept giving his standard speech, and on foreign affairs kept talking about using 21st century diplomacy and not 20th century diplomacy--whatever he meant by that. Fifty years ago the Kennedys were going to start doing New things in the world, and not that old Ike stuff, and JFK ended up laying the ground for Nam. I was not too impressed with either candidate. Just my own opinion. Teddy Kennedy had a seizure yesterday; I assume he will die in the near future. Paul Newman has died. He was around acting for almost 50 years, and has been in our lives. Not a good sentence, but he was around for a big chunk of my life--and made a large bunch of classic movies I should some time rent to watch. The more movies I think of he made the more I start remembering, even if I have only seen a few of them. I left a message on another website about Newman method acting like crazy in The Left Handed Gun, in which he chewed up the screen as Billy the Kid. And there is my favorite Cool Hand Luke, and also Slap Shot. I should get out my video of Hud, which I have trouble watching cuz I snivvle when the cowboys have to shoot the old man's pet longhorns. I was brought up with cattle. This is going to be all for right now. I will blog more next time. You take care. Di di mau!

More stuff while awaiting the Crash

W and the Wise Ones in DC had their big meeting today to deal with the national money mess--and nothing got done, except for W making a brilliant statement about the Economy, "That sucker's gonna do down!" Hannity and Colmes and Anne Coulter and some "experts" had a real yelling brawl on H and C's show tonight. And I am just a little teeny disappointed that I could get across town to see the band that appeared at a local kids' music joint; the band was led by Pete Best, the early Beatles drummer who was kicked out(John could not stand Pete's mother) and replaced by Ringo. Maybe the paper tomorrow will tell us how many 60something Beatles fans jammed into the room to mingle with the 20somethings to see the 5th Beatle. He did get interviewed on local TV news. In Omaha some guy dumped ten of his kids(from 1 to 17) at a local hospital to be sheltered and then disappeared(he had 2 other kids he did dump at another shelter.) That is what is making the regional news. North of here on the Interstate a truck plowed into some road crew guys working along the road and killed 2 of them and injured several more. The news is sketchy on this tragedy. So far in this early a.m. there is no word on whether the O and Mac debate at Old Miss will be held tomorrow night. Why it was scheduled on everybody's football Friday night eludes me, but no one called me about the scheduling. There is a docu on TV Guide channel right now about Ozzy Osbourne, but I have the tube on mute. This will be all for right now. You take care and I hope we have Money for a few more days. Di di mau!

Waiting for the Crash

Since the last entry the USA economy seems to be waiting for the Big Crash. The Wise Ones in DC seem to be unable to decide what to do, and are holding hearings and hearings, but the big bailout package is still being worked on. I know that news followers are understanding all this more than I am, and I am supposedly educated. I have been going through GoogleEarth to look at the overhead views of the big cities of the world, and it is amazing how large burgs like Mumbai and Tokyo are. I found the view of Soc Trang Vietnam, and the town looks like it did 40 years ago, and the airfield where we were stationed is still there. The runway is the same one but the hootches are gone, and I could not tell if some the old French colonial buildings in the area are still around. Some of the big cities on Google are of poor overhead viewing. Lagos must have been photographed at night, and some other cities were cloud-covered. Maybe that is the way the earth is. The views of Paris is somewhat blurred. What is going on in Des Moines is a wave of murders. In the politics news there is now a blog binge about Biden having said that FDR was elected president in 1929, and gave his fireside chats on TV. And there is a rumor that OB will dump Biden soon and pick HRC as his running mate. Nejad came to the UN today and talked crazy(I think) and W showed up and gave a speech no one paid much attention to on the News. This is going to be all for right now. We are supposed to get thunderstorms but so far just rolling thunder(tater wagons). Will return soon. Di di mau!

What About the Money?

Yesterday was a Black Tuesday. Lehman Bros. crashed, and then AIG began crashing, and I need to look up what is going to happen to Merrill Lynch, and the money pundits were talking about Morgan Stanley being in big trouble, and I need to look into my Money websites to see what is going on. Are we heading toward another 1929? Gas is going back up at Quick Trip, and I noticed some 4 dollar bread at Hy Vee. And the Russian stock market crashed and has been closed for 2 days. Much much more money news to try to get into my head, but this is just a very short summary. The latest giggle news from the campaign is that Sarah when governor of Alaska bought(why is bought spelled with a gh?) herself a tanning bed. And a guy in a political blog I read called her Saraccuda Mooselini. Kinda clever; I am not a total devotee of the lady for various reasons. Someone's pet tiger was spotted on Galveston roaming loose trying to get something to eat. Everything in the Houston area is a mess, or reported as such; no food, no electricity, no water. Back on the financial crisis; I assume that the big money guys in NYC who screwed up their companies are old enough now(of my age) to have been Masters of the Universe yuppie MBAs 30 years ago, and look at how they ran High Finance. Limbaugh and the pundits this afternoon are holding that so many companies are wanting govt. bailouts that we are seeing the coming of Socialist Finance--the govt. controlling the financial markets. That is probably poor wording of what I am trying to say. On another topic, I have found Google Earth, and am now on a kick of finding the satellite views of places all over the world that I assume I will never visit in reality. Some really great overhead views of some cities, and some that are not that clear to see, but an education in human living. A lot of cities seem to consist of a city center, a residential area of jammed together blocks of hovels, a lake for city water, and soccer fields. I will probably blog more on googleearth in upcoming blogs. A new hobby I need to not get so obsessed with that I cannot get out into the open and out of my room. This is going to be all for right now. You take care. Di di mau!

After Ike

Hurrucane Ike hit Galveston and Houston yesterday and did a Job on both places. Houston is without water and power and the glass windows were blown out of a lot of downtown skyscrapers and the bill for all the damage may be 18 billion bucks, and many pages could be devoted to the wreckage from the storm. Not much of a blog writeup on such a mind boggling disaster, but at least I have noted that it happened. The web is full of news on the event. And yesterday 2 trains crashed into one another headon in LA and at least 25 people on the commuter train were killed, and the news tonight is that the commuter train engineer was text messaging right before the crash. It has been steamy and cloudy in Des Moines all weekend and the whole population seems to be in a bad mood as of now. I rented an old movie I had never seen before that seemed as if it might have some insights into Palin. The flik was Kisses for My President. Fred MacMurray was the First Husband when his wife Polly Bergen become the 1st woman president. Really cheap black and white movie that seemed like a 1964 TV movie, but it actually had some stuff in it that was a little like what has actually happened in the last few decades. Fred almost has an affair with an old girlfriend, and at the end of the movie Polly gets preggers in her middle age and resigns the presidency. Shades of Palin, Nixon, and Clinton, in a movie released in 1964. Nejad from Iran is supposedly coming back to New York for another visit. Considering all the natural and mechanical disasters that have occurred this weekend this is a very short blog entry, but all the reportage can be found on a whole bunch of professional news sites. so, this is going to be all for right now. You take care. Di di mau!

Wet Thursday Night on 9-11

It is pouring down rain tonight in the central USA--maybe caused by Hurricane Ike, which wrecked Cuba and Haiti, and is moving toward the coast of Texas tonight. Ike will not go away. I have not typed anything for a while because the puter was not working right, but has gotten fixed. It is amazing that one can get addicted to having the internet and seem lost without the thing. I lived many many years without having this invention and now I feel lost if I cannot turn it on to get information. Intellectuals keep moaning that the whole culture lives on the net and no one reads regular books or papers anymore and everyone is getting such a short attention span that no one can do normal reading. I think I am in that group, but the internet is such an amazing creation that I keep finding new interesting things on the web. I am devoted to the web and thank the powers that be that it is available for us. Enough of that. The news is dominated by the election campaign, which should go into history as a really interesting piece of History. A black guy beats out a white woman who thought she would be Crowned as a candidate or a president, and the Repubs select an old white guy who almost blew his campaign a year ago and beats the front runners and then picks a strange woman governor of Alaska as his veep, and she gets all the attention and she is either hated or worshipped. I am not totally sold on Sarah Palin, even if she does shoot mooses like Teddy Roosevelt. In an upcoming blog entry I may cut loose and give my full opinion on the whole campaign. The hurricane season has been a wild one. H Gustav was predicted to be so bad that the whole gulf coast in the New Orleans area was evacuated, and then Gustav turned out to be a big wind and rain storm instead of a total Katrina type hurricane. I am now watching Cspan show the ceremony at the Pentagon for 9-11 and am starting to get weepy as I sometimes do when I get emotional about the whole event, so I should pull myself together. I worked years ago with a lady whose husband was killed at the Towers when the towers fell on the Marriott hotel between the towers. I hope the candidates say some time during the next few weeks that This Will Never Happen Again. This is going to be all for right now. You take care and now that the computer is working again I may have more to type next time. Di di mau!

Bad Attitude Friday Night

Anyone reading this evening's blog may wonder what my problem is--but I am in a bad mood tonight. Maybe it is due to the warm humid sticky weather we have been having, or the misery in the world the last week (but in 10,000 BC someone in a cave somewhere probably said "Everything has Sucked all week and I'm pissed.") Maybe the problem with the Georgia crisis is that western liberals and conservs can't decide what their official positions should be. Should we tell Putin that we will go to war if he does not pull his army out of Georgia, or should we sit on the side and say that the Russians are just doing what Bush did in Iraq? All these sides were discussed tonight on Hannity and Colmes. Hurricane Fay hit Florida the other day and turned into a massive rain storm all across the state. Pt. St. Lucia is under water with about 6, 000 houses under water. Sounds like the flood in June in Cedar Rapids. but that was from winter snow water coming down the Cedar River. A passenger plane crashed the other day at the Madrid Spain airport and killed 153 people--many of them kids, it turned out. Mussharaf was driven from power in Pakistan, and the country has had a wave of suicide bombings, as has been happening in Afghanistan recently. All today the cable news people have been waiting for Obama to name his VP choice. It may be Biden (a guy I despise, but no one called me asking my opinion.) The Olympics were a mess last night, when the US men and women relay teams both dropped the baton. The US men and women beach volleyball teams won their games, and I found out from the web that the American guy Emmons fell apart in the skeet shooting by screwing up his last shot, as he did four years ago. I have not checked out the weightlifting results, and need to. A professor at the U of Iowa who was accused of 4 charges of sex harrasment has vanished from his home and took a rifle with him and made out his will. It is assumed he killed himself, but his body has not been found. This is really a cheerful blog entry, aint it? And all this is just a small account of what has happened violent in the last several days. A couple of big financial outfits in Des Moines are laying off about 200 people, but Microsoft is going to build a huge server setup on the far west side of town. This is interesting because a year or so ago some local lawyers brought a big antitrust case against Micrsoft, which turned into a shakedown against the company. Getting back to what it is I am Mad about this evening; I am mad at lawyers, liberals, intellectuals, agnostics, Putin, yuppies, Obama. That is enough for right now I suppose. This is going to be all for right now. I will get Happy if I get some sleep tonight, so this will be all for right now. You take care. Di di mau!

Nice Wednesday Night at Home

Since I last blogged on Saturday the world has lost Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. And an electrical worker for Des Moines was electrocuted this afternoon working on a transformer. Phelps is piling up the gold medals at the Olympics. Mark Spitz is mad because Olympic officials have not invited him to go to Peking to congratulate Phelps for winning more medals than Mark did in '72. I will not go into the ongoing details about John Edwards and his bimbo and their maybe love child. The Russians have invaded Georgia the country--not the state. That is an ongoing world crisis no one seems to know how to handle. The Russians took over the city of Gori, which is an interesting thing, because it is Stalin's hometown. Across the street from my pad someone's car is honking like crazy in the parking lot. And the taters are rolling(it's thundering) and is raining like crazy outside. This afternoon some guy who was a Hillary supporter shot and killed the head of the Arkansas Democrat Party in Little Rock and the cops chased the killer for 30 miles before they shot him. Never a dull day on earth. These are just a few of the events which have taken place in the last few days. And I am slowly going through reading a paperback of Trilby I found. A amazingly bad example of the novelists' art or a minor masterpiece. But it is interesting. I know how the movie with J. Barrymore ends, but I think there more in the novel. Will keep going to the end. And then I might blog a book review. We will see. This will be all for now. You take care. Di di mau!

Wild Friday in the World

This has been an exciting day on the planet--not a happy day for a lot of people involved in various events--but jampacked with action. All morning the news was about the war or military action taken by the Russians and Georgians, who are fighting over South Ossettia. At least a thousand people may have been killed so far. And then there was a bus crash in Texas that killed a lot of Vietnamese people when a tire blew on the bus. And in the middle of the afternoon John Edwards confessed that he had a brief affair with a woman staffer a couple of years ago, so suddenly the pundits had to interpret the Meaning of It All. And I took an early evening nap, which meant that I slept through the giant todo of the opening ceremony at the Peking Olympics(I am still using the old name of the city--a relic from the era when I listened to Radio Peking). My opinion of Chinese Communism is not very high, so I slept through the show. The Iowa State Fair is going on now, and I should get across town to it tomorrow or Sunday. I want to see this year's Big Boar and Big Bull and Big Pumpkin. In two days a hundred thousand people have gotten in to the fairgrounds, so the place will be packed this weekend. And I am in a bad mood for no specific reason--it just showed up and I have chips on my shoulder about things that happened years ago and that I can do nothing about now. And last night I got into an arguement with some sarcastic SOB in the comment room of a website I frequent. Poor Me. Oh yes; oil prices are plummeting the last couple of days, so maybe cheap or cheaper gas will appear at the pumps. And somewhat cooler weather is moving into our section of the US. The elevators broke down this afternoon in the Empire State Building, stranding mobs of people in the vators or at the top of the building for about 2 hours. One crazy Friday all over the world in one place or the other. This is going to be all for right now. You take care and I will return. Di di mau!

Havin a Heat Wave

Very hot on this Sunday in the midwest, but not as hot as in Denver and Dallas, which both are at 103 and Dallas may have gotten up to 107. Well, I wanted hot weather when I was whining last winter about how cold and icy it was, and my wish came true. At least we are in an era of history now when it is acceptable to wear shorts and sandals in hot weather as the national uniform, so what am I plainin about? In Des Moines this year we have had a record of 9 murders, something of a local record. Four teenage kids were arrested the other day for killing a guy on the east side of town a couple Sundays ago while he was out on his bicycle. So far no motive has been given except that it may have been a thrill kill. And the news has been covering the story of the guy on a Greyhound bus in Canada who killed another guy on the bus and cut his head off and chewed on it while everyone tried to get off the bus. And in Iraq and Afghanistan there is a thing now for having woman suicide bombers blow up people, and there has been a wave of terror bombings in India, including in silicon city Bangalore. Showing us that age finally catches up with us all, I found a utube video of what disco diva Linda Clifford looks like now, after her days in the 70s when I was one of her dearest fans; she now looks like Divine in Hairspray--swelled up to 250 or more pounds and a wreck of a singing voice. Oh, Linda, what happened? I suppose it is of some newsworthyness that Solzhenitsyn has died at about 90 years old. A number of the TV and website newspeople reporting on him tonight showed that they had no idea what his significance was as a literary historical figure. He was a strange character--who defied the Soviet Union establishment and exposed the horrors of the Gulag system, but he was discovered to have despised the Western system of values, and had no love for the US which allowed to stay over here for several years. A Dostoevsky character, who fitted into no society. These are my personal views on him, and anyone is free to teach me the truth about him. I do remember when he was a Big figure during the 60s and 70s. From reading some blog entries online I have found out that Nancy Parsons died way back in January. The lady who played Miss Ballbricker should have an RIP mention in this blog. This is going to be all for right now; my fingers are getting sweaty and I am having trouble typing, and am not keeping my fingers on the home keys. So, you all take care. Di di mau!

Early Saturday A.M.

Not much of a title for this entry, but here it is. I am up at 2 a.m instead of being in bed because it is Fri-Sat and I am insomnic right now, so why not type an entry? Hot summer day Friday and the same in predicted for several more days. Listened to KOA a while ago and it got up to 103 in Denver and will stay that way in the Rockies probably till the Dems have their convention. The big media political flap now is a GOP TV ad slamming OB for his "messiah" complex and the ad ends with a brief clip of Charleton as Moses parting(with God's help) the Red Sea. The Ds are yelling Fowl about it. No one has any humor any more. And Pelosi adjouned the House at noon for summer recess and shut the lights off in the House chamber while the Republicans were still trying to get an oil drilling bill through. And a govt scientist who was about to be arrested for the anthrax spreading in 01 killed himself. And there have been 9 murders in Des Moines so far this year(a record). Four teenage kids were arrested yesterday for killing a guy last week while he was out riding his bicycle last Sunday morning. There is a new baby giraffe at out local zoo; he weighs 175 lbs after one week. Lots more news in the world, but it is all on Drudge or other news websites. That is the trouble with having Youtube; I spend more time watching videos than reading texts. I have really gotten hooked on finding videos of singers and bands from the 1920s-40s, especially from Europe. All those singers and bandleaders had to have had stories about what they went through willingly or not under Hitler and Stalin. Who collaberated with the regimes and who got tossed in a camp. Especialy the jazz band leaders and singers in '30s Russia. Lots of stuff to research if I can find sources and time to do it. I am going to let all you fans and devotees go to bed now; I should go myself. So take care. Di di mau!

Nature Rules Our Lives

Tornadoes and floods all around Des Moines since Sunday night. A trailer park got hit early Monday a.m. north of town, and all the local news shows showed a trailer house that had a board flung through the side of a trailer into a lady's bedroom just after she got out of the room. And a couple of lowlying river bottom areas that got flooded in the big June floods got flooded again and everyone in the area had to be taken out by rowboat again. And the main news of today is the 5.8 earthquake that hit California this morning. No one killed, but like in New Orleans during Katrina the cellphone towers went out for a while. Much talk on cable news about whether this is a prelude to the Big One that is predicted to hit Cal. sometime. Yesterday on NBC Brian Williams got an interview in Iran with Nejad, who was on good behavior and was loving peace and didn't want to nuke anyone and was being misunderstood. He was still being nice today, but like Khrushchev way back when will probably get back on his high horse tomorrow or very soon. It is getting late, so I am going to wind up this entry now, and hope that things are quiet and nice the next time I hit the keyboard. Wishful thinking probably. So, you all take care and we will return in the near future. Di di mau!

Don't Know Why Stormy Weather

Heavy rains, heavy winds, large hail, all coming through central Iowa today and all the past week. Regular daily routine has been humid every day and storms every night. And several murders all this past week in central Iowa. And there has been Obama's trip through Europe, and a lot of news concerning what has happened to the little girl in Florida, whose mother did not report her missing for 31 days. Greta and FoxNews has been hammering this story for several days. What I am doing right now is watching a movie video I got at a thrift store--DeMille's 1934 Cleopatra, with Colbert and Henry Wilcoxon. Interesting for its black and white visuals, but not a masterpiece. Interesting that Anne Baxter in Ten Commandments seems to channeled every acting trick Colbert did in Cleo, down to her throaty voice. Maybe because DeMille directed both of them. Gas prices have fallen about 20 cents in the last few days--now 3.65 per gal of ethanol from 3.98. Right now outside my window light lightning is flashing and tater wagon thunder rolling. So, more bad weather through the night till the sun comes up. And there was an effort this week and last week for US negotiaters to talk to Iranians about their nuke program, but apparently nothing got accomplished. For various reasons Obama did not meet a bunch of wounded American troops at a hospital in Germany, and he has a lot of US conservatives mad because he told the crowds in Berlin that he is a "citizen of the World." Drudge and Hewitt and all the news websites and blogs have the story on his euro trip. I should confess that it is easier to look at youtube videos than to wade through numerous print newssites, even that is what I should be doing. Right now I am going to sign off this blog till next time. Oh, yes, I found while looking at some utube videos from Porky's that Nancy Parsons. who played Miss Ballbricker, died of diabetes this past January. RIP Miss Parsons. All you readers and fans of this blog take care and we will return soon. Di di mau!

Night after the Sunday Night Storm

Last night while writing the blog entry it began to rain and the wind began to blow and I got the emergency kit ready and went to sleep, and when I woke up this morning found out that we had had a state-wide wind storm that did Lots of damage, especially in the metroplex, with the usual lot of trees knocked down and power out and street lights out. In western Iowa winds of 100mph were charted. And that is what the major news in our region today. Raymond is on TV right now, and Marie has ruined Deb's Tupperware party. Some good comic acting going on even though the plot of the show is dark and bitter. And at a thrift store I found a used video of Disney's Peter Pan, which I have never seen! Interesting rendition of PP, especially Hans Conried's Captain Hook, but I have never cared for Wendy. I guess blame it on J.M. Barrie. Maybe if I watch the flick again I will learn to like Walt's Pete Pan a little better. Interesting that Walt leaves it open ended as to whether the croc ever actually eats Hook. So, this is all I have for tonight. Hopefully we can have a few days without a storm of some kind. You take care. Di di mau1

Dreary Sunday Night

Here it is; a humid evening, and the regular evening rain storm of a sort has rolled in, with thunder and lightning poppings and moderate light rain. It seems to happen every night. The 10 p.m. weatherman said that on this date in 1934 the temp. got up to 118 in far southeast Iowa. Obama is on his mideast trip, but I have not followed the news for the last few days intensely. Friday the stock market was up and down all day, and the financial talking heads on Fox and CNBC were yelling and ranting but I had to shut the world crises down for a weekend and do personel things, so I guess my ignorance of the world for the last few days is a given. But right now on Cspan is a guy is talking about the panic of 1907, so I am back absorbing knowledge. I suppose that the main news event of the past week would be that Jesse Jackson used the nword, and the women on The View got into a brawl on who could use the nword, and that got more news coverage than a lot of loftier stuff, but the debate is all part of national cultural mores, so there is some importance to the debate. The new Batman movie is currently a phenomenon, packing in huge crowds, and making money like crazy. The Batman I saw and liked was the one with M Pfeifer and Danny DeVito, especially the last scene where the penguins drag the Penguin's body into the sewer. Right now a guy who runs a bookstore is talking about some of the good books out and coming out this summer. Since I now have some time to get some reading done I would like to start reading again, like I did 30 years ago, but I just do not have the money to buy books again in quantity like I used to do. This is going to be all for right now. You all take care. Di di mau!

Summer Monday Night

Not a very original title for this blog entry, but pure summer is finally here, and in the heartland we are up to 90 degrees and the skies are blue and the rivers are down to their normal levels and the floods are gone, but it is going to take a long time and mucho money to rebuild Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and the towns that got tornadoed, and that is just in Iowa. We are having now nice weather but the aftermath of the bad weather will be around for a long time, and Burma is back being off the news map after the big typhoon, and the Atlantic hurricane season may yet produce something nasty for someone. And Nejad may be planning another trip to NYC in a couple of weeks. A big bank in Calif. crashed the other day, and there is some doubt if the FDIC can pay off the losses of all the depositers. Heart doctor DeBakey died a couple days ago at age 99, and Tony Snow died Saturday. The Iranians fired off some missiles the other day, but there is some question about whether the tapes of the firings were phoney. Nine Americans were killed in Afghanistan the other day by talibans. Lots more world news to report, but the Brinkley divorce seems to have taken up a lot more time in mediaspace than it should have. And Brad and AJolie had twins. A building in Indianola collapsed Sunday morning, leaving some people in the upstairs apartments homeless, but a couple of women got their cats rescued from the rubble today. Nice big kitty cats. Ethanol gas in Des Moines is up to 3.98, the highest it has been yet--probably will be 4.00 very soon. There was a mob of people at the closest QT this afternoon filling up. If I fill up at 4 a.m. I will probably be paying the 4 bucks. A very funny 2.5 Men on CBS this evening, and 2 funny Big Bang episodes. This is going to be all for right now. You all stay cool in the summer heat, and we will return for more blogging. Di di mau!

the rain is over the rain is over

The title of this essay is taken from a song by Wm. Billings. Has anyone ever mentioned Wm. Billings in a blog? Probably somewhere at one time. I am right now reading some books on Hamilton, Madison, and Napoleon, so my brain is swimming in the late 1780s and 90s. What has been happening on earth in the last couple of weeks? Obama's plane did not crash the other day, Nadal beat Federer, C. Brinkley and ARod are involved in nasty divorce messes, and of all people ARod was humping Madonna! Estimates are that it is going to take a long time and muy mucho money to rebuild Cedar Rapids and Iowa City after the floods of 08. The Iowa smoking ban has been operating for a week, and since the law was passed with no enforcement provisions till a week before it became official the policy now is that you can call the nonsmoking bureau and complain about smokers. Sounds better than a smoking police, but the thing has a scent of Pavel Morozov about it. ( a communist kid in Russia in the 30s who ratted out his Dad for hording grain. Pavel was a commie youth hero.) It sounds like snitching is now acceptable in Iowa--all in the name of Health. Dodie Goodman died the other day at '92. Several obits on her could not remember what she had actually done. She was on the Jack Parr show years ago, and she played Mary Hartman's mother, and no one seems to have remembered that she played the goofy old lady in Splash who was confused after getting hit by lightning. She was a very good comedian and should have been remembered by the showbiz world. Rush Limbaugh is due to get about 400 million for staying on the air till 2016. The weather has turned summerish after the storms and floods of May and June, and we are now getting 90 degree temps. We wanted summer and we have it now, so there is much complaining about the Heat. Piss and Moan and Whine. I have been busy the last couple of weeks, and spent some time at home with the family. This is going to be all for this blog entry, but I hope to have some more very soon. Since news of the world is to be found on countless other website, I need to do some looking at said sites. The story of the people rescued in Colombia from years of being held by the Farc is getting interesting as what they actually went through begins to be revealed. You all take care, and I will return. Di di mau!

After the Deluge

The rains have stopped and summer heat and clear skies are here for a while. The water is now along Old Man River and is making things wretched around St. Louis. It will take a very long time to rebuild Cedar Rapids (93 thousand tons of stuff that has to be disposed of. Iowa City and the U. of Iowa also got flooded bad.
I forgot I think to mention that a while back that old Robert Mondavi the wine emperor has died, and George Carlin died at the beginning of this week. I was never a Carlin fan, but many many people loved him, and he was a cultural icon, so rest in peace, George. The clock seems to be ticking on whether the US or Israel does the bombing of Iran's nuke facilities. Something is building up toward a showdown with Nejad. Oil prices are still 4 bucks or more a gallon (ethanol is still about 3.90, but could go way up). I am hoping for a dry warm winter next season, so that people will not get crushed even more when heating oil prices are piled on car gas prices. I am going to wind up this blog entry for now. I am not going to get into the daily doings in the Campaign and I am having some family matters that do not need to be sent into cyberspace and retirement as a long-term lifestyle is beginning to weigh heavy, but I must role manly with these personal matters. You all take care, and we will blog again. Di di mau1

Tiny Little Bit of Betterness

Maybe the flooding in Des Moines is over for now. The bridges over the Des Moines River were opened to traffic the other night and the restaurant area south of downtown reopened (even 2 eateries were washed out). The minor league ballpark is back holding ICubs games, even though they played a game with no people allowed in the stands. But a whole area north of downtown is washed out. And the river is still very very high under the bridges. Cedar Rapids is a complete disaster area, and Iowa City is being flooded now. But this Sunday was a warm clear beautiful day--perfect summer Sunday. The winter, spring, and summer weather disasters are beginning to wear people down, but that is something we will have to live with. I do not have any world news to report because I was away from the TV much of the day. Will have to read Drudge soon, but was busy today. So, this may be a short blog entry. So, you take care, and I will have more in the near future. Di di mau1

Both Good and Bad News

First the bad news; Cedar Rapids is still under water, and Tim Russert died of a heart attack early this afternoon. The "good" news is that the rivers through Des Moines have supposedly crested, and the water is supposed to be slowly going down. The trouble is that after each flood people keep moving back into the river bottom areas. I know that is where their homes and businesses are, and unless you move into the high ground on the very far west side of the metroplex you can expect to have a flood every so many years, but the routine of sandbagging and rescuing gets very expensive for whoever is going to have to pay the bills for all of it. It has been a very nice day today weatherwise, in spite of what is going on waterwise. This is the first night for a while that we have not had a storm roll into the region at about 9 p.m. On the far southeast side of DM water got into the Great Ape Preserve and is having to be pumped out. According to the local news the apes are alright. City and state govt. offices have had to move out of their riverbank complexes, and the art of getting getting from here to there in town is fucked up because most of the bridges in town are under water. Some day we will laught at all this. Ha ha. No we won't. It really is not funny. So, after this brief resume of Des Moine Flooded I am going to go to bed, and hopefully will have more to report next blogging. This situation is not over yet. You take care. Di di mau!

Very Unhappy Stuff

Things are getting tragic out here in the heartland today. A big part of Iowa is under water (Des Moines, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Mason City, and other urban centers, and lots of farm land) or going to be. More rain is on the way. The governor said today that this is going to be worse than '93. And Wisconsin and Indiana are also flooding. And the worse thing that has happened was today's tornado that hit a boy scout camp in western Iowa and killed at least 4 kids and injured about 40. The news on what happened is still murky because official news is still being collected on this disaster as of midnight. I suppose all this water is going to run into the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and sock St. Louis and central Missouri just like in '93. Dejavu all over again, as Mork said. It is going to be very expensive. So far we have been through a long cold snowy winter and now a wet summer (wet is a mild term for what we have had, and I should include the tornadoes across the south and the terrible one we had in Iowa at Parkersburg.) Sticking out your chin and putting on a smiley face seems kinda silly with all the fucked up weather the US(and Burma)(and the Chinese earthquake) have had. And the shootup in oil prices is not helping anyone's disposition or finances. The Weather Channel is blaming all this weather mess on Global Warming, but that is their mantra. The trouble in Des Moines is that the original town was built on a river bottom flood plain, and after the flood of '93 everyone moved right back into the flood flats and added apartments and lofts and new office complexes where they probably should not have been built, but no one thought that there would be another "flood of the century" 15 years after the last one. That is my report on what is going on here. Brief, but it would take a volume to detail what a flood is like is this town, because you have to know the complete layout and topography of Des Moines to visualize it. Thunder is starting to roll right now, so I guess that means the predicted thunderstorm is coming in. Unlike '93 our waterworks is not flooded out yet, so unlike in '93 we should keep our water system functioning. City officials have promised that we will not lose our water. Wait and see. I am going to try to sleep through the storm tonight, because it is getting past midnight. More in the near future for you readers of this blog. I started a diary of the flood event in '93 but never got it completed. Maybe this time I can keep a running account of the flooding of '08, but everything I guess depends on what happens here day by day and night by night. You take care. Di di mau!

One Weekend in June

What has happened in the last few days? Big Brown flopped in the Belmont Stakes Saturday and came in last. Now there are questions about what was wrong with him--heat in New York, steroids or none in him, just a day when he was in a horse bad mood? It rained very hard in Des Moines and flooded the basement parking garage at a yuppie aparment complex and drowned at east 20 expensive cars. Poor yuppies. There were tornadoes around Omaha, and high 90s heat along the east coast. Jim McKay passed away. There is a jittery nervousness in the MidEast as to whether Iran or Israel will attack the other one first. There was an interesting short bit the other night on O'Reilley on Fox, with BO' trying to talk to Pat Buchanan about Pat's latest book, about whether the British provoked Hitler into starting WW2, by promising to go to war when Poland was attacked. The interview went nowhere, because BO' has no background in History and could not ask the right questions to Pat. It's more of the talking heads of cable and network news having no history background. Back to local flooding; the local creeks and rivers are very high, there is spotty flooding in low lying river bottom areas in town and another heavy rain will send back to '93 conditions. Too many people in town, after the 93 floods, moved right back into the flood plain areas, which is much of the city. Everybody in the metroplex here is in a grouchy mood, probably due to the weather we have been having since last winter. Gas prices are up over 4 bucks a gal. ethanol gas is just a little below 4.00 but by Monday a.m may be up. I have not checked the gitngo sign for a few hours. This may be it, for right now. I will return for more blogging in a day or so. You take care now. Di di mau!

Rage Rage O Summer Winds

The center of Iowa has been getting tornadoes and 3" rain storms all afternoon and into the night, and large hail. And the weather people are predicting that we will get thunderstorms every day for the next week. This is apparently going to be the Summer That Wasn't if we do not get some dryness. I do not know what is going to happen to the crops out in the fields. I am not going to go into the political events of the last few days, except to record that BO has clinched the nomination for the Dems, but HRC has not conceded yet, but the latest prediction is that she will drop out of the race this weekend. I may have more to record and opine upon in a later blog entry. In all the news from the last week or so no one remembered to let us know that Dick Martin passed away on 24 May. Rush Limbaugh told a bizzare little story today that his cat got into bed with him and chewed on his toes one night. A couple of days ago I found a video of Born Yesterday--Judy Holliday and Bill Holden. I had never seen the original BY and was curious to see it, but it was dated and too dark to be a Comedy. And I am just not a Judy Holliday devotee. But watching her play a "dumb blond" I detected a sadness in Judy that may not have been acting. Maybe the real Judy was what was we were seeing. I know this is a rambling blog entry, but it has been a long night of watching the regional weather forecasts. I spent some time tonight adding a bunch of political and news websites to my Favorites, and watched some utube videos of Piaf in concert and some other European singers from the 20s and 30s (Missinguett, M. Fogg, Eva Busch, et al). And I have piled on my desk books on James Madison, the flu epidemic of '18, and a history of the '18 Armistice. Maybe at least one person on earth who reads blogs will be interested in knowing what I am trying to educate myself by reading. I have read very few books over the last 20 years, when I dropped away from reading, but I am beginning to open a few books and begin my self-education again. This is going to be all for right now, so you all take care. Di di mau!

June Summer Evening in the Heartland

Warm summer evening in the Midwest. High humidity which is supposed to preclude the rainstorm we are supposed to get, which we do not need at all. Ames got flooded this weekend, but the place is built on a riverbottom and gets flooded at least every other year. The rivers going through Des Moines are very high and may get out if the next storm is heavy. I guess we have been through all this before. Nothing as bad as Burma or western China. What has happened on earth recently? The Mars explorer has a successful landing on the Martian north pole. The Democrats spent Saturday tring to decide what to do with the convention delegates from Michigan and Florida, and Hillary won the Puerto Rico primary. The people can have a primary but cannot vote in the November election. Very little news commentary or promises by the candidates on changing the political system of Puerto Rico. Tomorrow there are primaries in Montana and South Dakota, and then HRC is due to either drop out of the race or take her delegate situation to the August convention credentials committee. This morning W gave the Medal of Honor to the parents of a 19-year-old GI from Penn, who was killed by covering himself with a grenade in Baghdad, and saved 4 of his buddies in a Humv. Very moving and tearful ceremony. In the last several days the world lost Harvey Korman, Bo Diddley, and Yves St. Laurent. And a 60 year old guy in Ft. Dodge with a stock car pit crew got killed when a tire from a speeding stock car hit him in the chest. And there was a huge pallet warehouse fire at Pella, and Sunday Universal Studios got on fire in Los Angeles. In a few minutes my Monday night comedies will be on CBS; the geeks, Doogie, Charlie Sheen, and Dave Spade. I am going to be boycotting Bill O'Reiley on Fox, after he had an uncalled for meltdown last Thursday night. This is going to be all for right now. I will return in the near future. You all take care. Di di mau!

Bad Memorial Day weekend

Iowa finally this spring got its tornadoes yesterday p.m. after seeing the things wreck the South for the last several weeks. Two towns in northern Iowa, west of Waterloo, were blown away and wrecked totally (Parkersburg and New Hampton) with what may have been an F5er. Then another one smashed Hugo, Minnesota, a suburb north of St. Paul. Then about 6 p.m. a fast moving wind blast did a tree wrecking and power line knock down on the south side of Des Moines. And Liz Trotta yesterday morning on Fox News made a dumb comment about how Obama and Osama should both be assasinated. I always have liked Liz as a talking head. She has been a pundit for years, I think going back to when there was network radio news, but she did a tongue slip of fatal proportions yesterday. And I am having car engine problems that appeared yesterday--so May 25 O8 was not a good day for many many people. I will not try to review what the gruesome threesome did on the campaign trail yesterday. With the car problems I did not get to any Memorial Day services, but kept my own vigils for some fallen friends. The last surviving WWI veteran, Jack Buckle, was interviewed on Fox and CNN today. He is about 103 and seems to be alert and in good health. This is going to be all for right now. The tornadoes of yesterday are the main news in this part of the country, and I need to get the car looked at tomorrow. You all take care. Di di mau!

One Thursday Night in Human History

Obama was in town Tuesday evening, but I had to be out of town, and missed him. I have seen Reagan, Dukakis, Teddy Kennedy, Mondale, Gene McCarthy, Garth Brooks, and the immortal George Strait, and Morgana over the decades when they were in Des Moines, so I have seen a few Big people. And I must not forget seeing Herb Stemple, when he was here when the movie Quiz Show came out. What has happened today? My vacuum cleaner is defunct, I broke my toilet bowl lid, I dropped a coffee cup I picked up at a thrift store, and I recently spilled coffee all over my desk I am sitting at. And there were tornadoes in Colorado and Wyoming. And more fires in California. And gas prices went up overnight in Iowa to over 4 smackers a gal. I have a bunch of oil and energy websites bookmarked, and I need to start looking at them, and I have on youtube discovered a huge pile of videos of pop singers from the '30s from Europe: Eva Busch, Missinguett, Michislav Fogg, and a lot of others. Very interesting good quality music from an otherwise awful era. But you know what was going to happen in and after '39. And more and more opera singer videos are getting put on the Tube. Despite what intellectuals think of Youtube, I keep finding more and more stuff on it that I would never have heard or seen otherwise. And I have to mention the amazing Polish singer Violetta Vilas, who in the Iron Crtain 60s dressed like Charo, but was a very good pop singer. Vi V is now one of my secret pleasures, along with the great Lebanese singer Wadi Al Safi. One of my secrets is that I am not that interested in the new Indiana Jones movie. Like with James Bond and Star Wars I have just never gotten into Indi J.
This is going to be all for right now, after I have done all this opining. You all take care. Di di mau!

saturday Night Blog

Not a very interesting title for this blog entry, but I doubt that the billions of people on earth will go catatonic over it, or they might. This is the first day in 222 days in the midwest that the temperature has gotten into the high 80s. Nice warm summer weather, but for some reason it still feels like late March is still on us. Teddy Kennedy had "seizures" this morning and was rushed to the hospital. He has been the center of national news all day. I am just not a Kennedy family fan. At one time I thought I was a JFK fan, but I never warmed to Bobby. I know--Jack was the President during my high school years, so there is historical nostalgia of a sort about "Camelot", but I have developed a sourness about the era. And then Ted Sorenson comes on MSNBC with Russert this afternoon to wax nostalgic, and I think TS is an old smug flack anyway. I posted a message to a website somewhere once that the Camelot era was more of the Cleopatra era. Much of the JFK era was the time when that lousy Taylor-Burton was being filmed and there was an unbelievable amount of news coverage given to the whole matter. Like the JFK period, Cleo. was a flawed product. OK, have at me; but those are my views. I missed watching the Preakness this p.m, and did not get to see Big Brown win. Really wonderful horse. Obama is coming back to Des Moines Tuesday p.m. Last news about Teddy is that he is alert and did not have a stroke.
This is going to be all for right now. You all take care. Di di mau!

Yeehaw We Are Back Blogging

It does not seem like it has been January since the last entry, but it has been. I guess I got bogged down with the lousy winter we went through, some sickness, and getting ready for retirement--which was part of the first stage of closing down my work place. So, I got to retire instead of getting simply laid off. The FRB eliminated 19 peoples' jobs, and is supposed to dismiss the remaining crew by this time next spring. Maybe it was time to leave my Job, after 35 years, but it had become my life, so now I am trying to ease my way into the golden senior citizen years. I have managed to not go into old age depression and woe. There is a world to explore, and I hope to slowly find it. I have only been retired for 2 weeks, so I will get adjusted to it. Enough of that.
Hillary has been getting pounded in the primaries by "Bama, and the most interesting thing about this doopy election campaign I think is that she has become a dramatic lesson in riding high and then getting stabbed by her "friends" from the last couple of decades who have turned on her. There's a Shakespeare or Tolstoy essence to the human drama of this campaign, beyond the "scholarly" polisci angles. And the first pres campaign between a white woman and a mixed race man has all the ugliness that we thought was a thing of the past.
I suppose that you can look through the Drudge archives to get the historical rehash of what has happened in the world since January. The world's weather and plates are what is causing much of the human suffering right now. The typhoon in Burma and the monster earthquake in western Red China and the spate of tornadoes in the south and eastern USA are the big events that have fucked up thousands of peoples' lives. And the big rise in oil and gas prices in the USA are wiping out everybody's cash researves. I wanted to spend part of my postretirement summer travelling, even just around Iowa, but but with gas prices moving toward 4 bucks a gallon I may not be able to go too far. We will have to see what the summer brings forth.
Charleton Heston, Eddie Arnold, and Leyla Gencer have all passed away recently.
The sinter finally went away about a month ago, but the temp is still in the 70 degree range, and the chilly March-type winds will not go away in the heartland. Hopefully real summer will get here eventually. We need it for the crops and summer work.
It is now close to 2 a.m, so I will end this blog entry. Life's events kept me from blogging for too long, but I hope I can get this blog started again. Have found a bunch of videos on utube of 1930s European singers (Eva Busch, Missinguet, Nanka Ordonowa, Ruslanova, et al) I had never heard of, and I found some videos of Ina Rae Hutton and her all-girl band. I think they are interesting, whether loftier people do or do not. There goes the chip on my shoulder I get some times when social class grudges come up. Well, you all take care. Di di mau!

Even More Whining About the Weather et al

Here is some more whining about the dreary winter and the cold air and the icy slush on the streets and the crows that come into town every night and scream in the trees and shit all over everything. We have had worse winters, but like the one last season this one has gotten dreary and irritating after three months, and we have two more months to go before April gets here, and in place of nice spring we may have a long stretch of rain before wonderful warm summer, which may arrive in August. Whine, whine, whine! Everyone in my social universe has had colds and is as grouchy as I am. We are all poor souls. The quest for the presidency is going on and on. Right now everything is concerning hrh and bama yelling at each other about which one is more of a crook; he has dealings with a Chicago slum lord and she is on the board of Walmart and he is hooked up with a black militant preacher in Chi, and she has Bill hanging around and yelling at reporters. Some of the longtime feminists are mad at bama for trying to stall her from being a shoein as president. And Fred Thompson dropped out of the race. W and congress are working on a plan to rebate about 600 bucks to taxpayers to fire up the economy. In the 70s Ford gave us all a rebate. If I remember--the deal was to spend the rebate on stereos and housewares. Interesting that just a few years later stereos went away when cds came in. The political news recently has pushed Iraq and world news to the side. McCain is suddenly on a roll, and from reading some websites with comments sections Ron Paul has a small but vocal core of devotees. Movie actor Heath Ledger drugged himself to death a few days ago. I had heard of him but never paid any attention to his existence, but he seems to had had a lot of fans. In personal news I am reading a Kevin Phillips book on President McKinley, and Rousseau's Confessions, and am going to watch a dvd of Little Miss Sunshine sometime this weekend. It is now 2 a.m. and I am going to conclude this blog entry. All of you take care, and I may be back tomorrow night or Sunday for another session. It is time to go to some late in the darkness website searching. Stay warm, fans. Di di mau!

Is Spring Somewhere?

It was cold today and windy and the concrete has been slick, and I should examine world affairs that have occured since yesterday. All I have checked up on is that the P***ckers whipped the Seahawks by 20+points. More info will be coming forth at 10 p.m. On this dreary Saturday night I needed a movie tape to slip into the slot, and got out an old vhs of Gidget! Not a modern flick, but a good one for a night like this, bringing back memories of the local picture show 50 years ago. I think my family actually went to see Gidget one night c. 1960, and we enjoyed it. Sandra Dee looked good way back then, and she could act. A shame that she destroyed her life with firewater. Her father and mother were portrayed as goofs, and the music on the soundtrack was more '40s than rocknroll '50s, but it is an enjoyable flick on a dark winter night. I should watch a bunch more of "old" movies. When stumped with politics take a break and watch some movies. On Fox News this afternoon the reporters had a segment about a guy named Olmstead, who got killed in Iraq, but left a very powerful final blog entry to be posted after his death. I thought the commentator was going to cry as he read the post on air. Incidentally the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive will be at the end of this month, and this week is the 39th anniversary of my induction into the US Army at Ft. Lewis, an unpleasant period of life I survived with my body intact, but with some agent orange poison in me I did not find out about for many years. Enough of that for now. I lost two friends in 2007--one was fired from work, and one died of some kind of saliva gland cancer.
This is going to be all for right now. Di di mau!

Please, Spring, Come to Us Again

Cold and icy and windy tonight, after we got an afternoon slush storm yesterday and the slush froze and the streets slicked up. We are in the period of winter when the city is overwhelmed with crows who screech all night in the trees and on the roofs and shit all over the streets. After HRC came in second in the Iowa caucuses(they are being considered now as "primaries" by pundits) she went to NH and has been badmouthing Iowa and Iowans, and Bill and company seem to be playing the race card against Barak O. The Republican candidates were on Fox last night in a debate, which did get into issues about national security, but I was sleepy and did not soak in all the nuances of what they meant bey what they were saying. Need to get some newspapers and read what someone else said they said. McCain was the most impressive, but I need more studying of what I heard while half-dozing.
I found a vhs of North By Nortwest at a thriftstore and watched it this afternoon. It is supposed to be one of Alfred H's masterpieces, but I was a little disappointed in it. I have never seen the flick before. Cary Grant and James Mason were in top form and Eva Marie was good, but had no real sex appeal, and the big scenes at the end of everybody climbing around on Mt. Rushmore were a little phoney. But I did watch closely to see if just maybe Eva would fall off the cliff. The movie was just a little too clever for its own good. Maybe I should watch it again tomorrow night to see if it improves with a second viewing. Possibly I just do not dig Hitchcock as much as some cinema fans do. I do need to get back into watching movie tapes to catch up on some classics I have not seen in years or have not seen at all. Actually I suppose I do not Need to see a lot of movies, and should spent more free time reading current news off the net, and even do some book reading I have let slide for several years. I did find a book on sale of some essays by A. J. Liebling, who I had never read before. Very good writer,and some of his World War Two columns are very interesting, but he did spend too much time writing about French food, in my opinion. And he apparently ballooned up to 400 lbs, and then died. Maybe I just do not worship New Yorker Mag. writings. Maybe I will some time change my mind about everything I have opined on this evening. It has happened before.
I am going to end this blog entry now. Maybe tomorrow night I will have more interesting stuff going through my mind and will not be so critical of so much stuff. All you fans and devotees keep waiting and some time I will have a blog essay that will just blow us all away. Di di mau!

Blog Post-Caucuses

OK, the Tuesday night things are over, and Obama and Huckabee got more votes than the other candidates for President, and Biden and Dodd dropped out of the race, and Rudy didn't even show up in Iowa that day, and when the caucii were over the candidates and the media crews all headed to New Hampshire, and Iowa returned to normalcy and the cold spell we have been having. The caucii were chaotic, due to the fact that so many people showed up for their local meetings that many of the school rooms being used did not have room for all the people who showed up. In Des Moines there was so much traffic and closed streets in our downtown that it was difficult to get to the meeting hall and there was no parking. I should give the world my thoughts on why HRC came in second among the Democrats in an upcoming blog entry.
This is a quiet Saturday night. Here I am in my room catching up on some video watching. I just got done watching Darling, with Julie Christie. Interesting 40+ year-old black and white British movie. About half way through the thing it begins to hook the viewer on what will eventually happen to Christie's coniving character as she moves from man to man in her quest for stardom. A movie that needs to be seen more than once to catch the nuances of what is going on.
And now I am watching Lou Costello and Dorothy Provine in The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock. I saw this one at the hometown picture show in 1960, but did not remember much about what was in it till I found a tape of the thing at a local thrift store, and now after 48 years I am watching it again. It is kinda funny. Costello may have been dying when he made the movie, but he managed to do a movie without Abbott with him. Provine was also good. And Gayle Gordon steals the show.
Actually Costello was playing the kind of schnookie character Don Knotts would be playing in a few years.
This has been a bad weekend in the world weatherwise. Heavy rainstorm in Australia after their worst drought in history. Brush fires in Oklahoma after bad ice storms last month. A bad blizzard in north California and Nevada. And a dam broke in Nevada after supposedly a gopher dug holes in the dam. And heavy rains around Malibu have soaked the burned out area with mud slides.
OK, my own private view of what happened to Hillary in Iowa is that she spent so much time talking about the 35 years of experience she has to be president material that she began sounding like Dole, Humphrey, Clay, and Webster and other candidates who thought their long time in politics would make them statesmen but ended up just being old guys who had been clawing for power for too long, in the view of voters. HRC needs to read up on American history some more. Now that is my own opinion, and you are free to have yours.
This is going to be all for right now. I just put a video of Dumbo into the vcr for late night viewing. Take care, fans and devotees, and I will blog again. Di di mau!

Hopefully Happy New Year

It is very ice cold and windy in the midwest on the first day of 2008. Last week on Christmas day it was a day of icy snow all over the center of the US. This is winter and next month the groundhog will come out and then spring will be in the near offing. The sooner the better. The worst thing about the winter so far has been the expensive power outages around the heartland, and the number of people killed in car wrecks on icy roads.
This may a lengthy blog entry if I can stay with a rehash of the major events of 07 I would like to write. So, far 3,900 US troops have been killed in Iraq. La Bhutto was murdered in Pakistan last week. Right now there is tribal violence in Kenya, and an American diplomat was killed by someone in Khartoum. American Intelligence concluded that Iran stopped work on nuke weapons in '03, which led to lots of yelling that Bush Had Lied about the dangers from Iran. A little over a year ago in Iraq Saddam met his noose, which was barely mentioned by the News Media last week. In the spring a crazy Korean student at Virginia Tech killed 30+ students in a classroom massacre, and a crazy kid killed 8 people in a shopping mall in Omaha. (And a guy shot several people last summer at a mall in Kansas City.) And fires in LA destroyed hoards of very expensive houses in the Malibu area around Halloween. And great numbers of people was killed by the periodic typhoons that hit Bangladesh. This upcoming January 20 will mark the last year of W's presidency. And 13 people were killed in a bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Hugo Chavez called an election in Venezuela to give him unlimited power, but lost the referendum, but as of now is still president. Tony Blair turned his PMship over to Gordon Brown and last week became a Catholic. Next year in Feb we all have to go to HD TV. Seems like a secret plot to get everyone in the US to go onto cable, but it is supposed to be good for us.
I may have more stuff to blog about on politics after the caucuses Thurdsday night. I wish the candidates would all leave the state and not come back. I realize that one candidate I loath will get elected Prez in November and we will have to live with whoever he or She is, because that is how our system operates, but I do not care for any of them, but every four years I say that.
MSN listed 169 famous people who died in 07. I will have more to write about this next time when I reread the list, but only the WSJ the other day mentioned that one of the three surviving gentlemen who served in the AEF in WWI died a week or so ago.
This year is going the be the 40th anniversary of everything that happened in 1968--a year that had absolutely nothing good happen in it. From the Tet Offensive to Harper Valley PTA being a huge music hit. I wish the media would rehash 68 on a daily or weekly basis, so everyone could be reminded of all that happened that year, for historical reference.
I hope 08 is a lowkey year--it probably will not be, but it would be nice if it were. 07 was an ugly year, but my Mama is still in good health, and my family is getting along as well as can be hoped. The next 2 years are going to be eventful, because my place of work is going to be shutting down by the middle of 10. Either find another job or prepare for retirement. I need to get my life and my finances in order, because I have let my life get somewhat disorganized in the last few years after the diabetes attack. Be a man and act like one through the upcoming events in employment. I have closed the door on some consuming grudges that I have been holding about some stuff that happened in the late 1960s. Enough of that. This is going to be all for right now. I hope I have more to write about in my upcoming blog entries. Time for bed and back to work early in the morning. Take care, dear fans. Di di mau.