First Blog in the New Era

The New Era refers to the Obama Administration. The Inauguration was a mess. Roberts and O both messed up speaking the words to the presidential oath and had to do it again in the White House the next day. Commentators are still debating whether the speech O gave was Great or was convoluted and weak. Aretha Franklin sang My Country tis of Thee, and I think made a hash of it. And then some lady read a poem and bombed. She was no Robert Frost. Some guy who was drum major for a band in the parade winked at O on the reviewing stand, and he got fired from his position. Then the next day O signed an executive order to close Gitmo in several months, without any plans for where to put the prisoners. Congress is going to put the TV change over to digital off till June, which is going to cost local stations a lot of money to stay on analog for 6 more months. More and more people in the thousands are being laid off every day. The economy is in the hole, and I need to look up what is going on in England, which seems to be have troubles with its banking system. I need to look into the world's money mess and halt my searchings into YouTube for a while. Cold icy weather is still upon us in the midwest, and the east half of the country is getting a winter pounding today. Warmth will get here in a month or so(depending on what we get in March.) I am watching a cage fighting match right now while typing. Obama the other day told a bunch of GOP congressmen that they should stop listening to Limbaugh on the radio. John Updike died yesterday. I read part of Rabbit Run years ago, and was not overwhelmed by it, and that is all I have actually read by Updike. I knew who he was but never got around to reading him. I stopped reading for about 20 years and lost track of current literary matters. There is much more that has happened since the Inauguration, but it is in cyberspace or in print, so I should look at news of this week to see what I missed. This is going to be all for right now. You stay warm and I will return. Di di mau! Oh yes! How can I forget to mention that a woman in California had 8 babies yesterday! More on that as the news comes out.

blog entry

Real dull title for an entry, but here it is. I have been grouchy for a couple of days, probably due to the Cold, and spent a lot of time yesterday under the warm covers, with Vicks smeared on. Am better today, but the winter blues and a pity party have taken over. A guy in town yesterday died outside his house when he froze in his hoveround while trying to clean his sidewalk. Four kids were killed in a house fire in northern Iowa the other night. Ricardo Montelban and Andrew Wyeth have both passed away, beginning the list of who famous have died in 09. And the Big news is the Miracle on(or in) the Hudson; the airliner that made a landing in the Hudson River in the middle of Big Apple, but everyone(150 people) got out alive, after 2 bunches of geese got sucked into the jets and destroyed the engines. The hero of the whole thing was Sully the pilot, who has an amazing bio. And W gave his farewell adress to the nation last night, too. It was not very good and no one gave it a big news coverage because the plane crash was the news of the day. I am a W fan--that is my freedom to feel that way, so do not start sending me messages. I do hope that O does good and does not turn out to be just a hustler who talks better than he can deliver, once he gets into the Oval and has to actually be a managing President. We will see. I am reading a history book an George Marshall, and one onAlexander Hamilton, discovering how the first years of the US and the World War 2 era were managed. If the weather stays lousy I can stay inside this weekend and read and view some movies. More to report on in an upcoming blog. This will be all for right now. Stay Warm. Di di mau!

More Moaning about the Cold

The Cold is still with us, and has taken over as the Thing of Life in the midwest. It is 9 below at midnight and the wind and windchill makes one's body feel like it c. 30 below, which is the record setting temperature we had one day in 1996, a day when I had to get to work, but had the flu and my heating system in the apt went out and the car would not start. I remember that the boss was not happy when I had to describe all the reasons I could not get to work. Several houses have caught fire around Iowa yesterday and today, and at least 4 people got killed in the fires. Not a happy cheery wintertime this year. Valley Forge and the Wehrmacht in front of Moscow in 42 come to mind to compare to this winter. The Obamas are the News, and W is going to give his Farewell speech tomorrow night. I watched The Lady Eve tonight as the video of the night, and it was very funny, but should be watched more than once to get all that Sturges put in it. Henry and Barbara were at the top of their form. As of right now I have commenced watching Camille, to see what Garbo could do. I have not seen very many flicks of hers, and for my cultural education should rent some more of her stuff. And I have not seen much of Robt. Tayor's flicks either. In a while when Red Eye comes on I will have to switch over to it. Can't miss Gutfeld. Very many of the schools around Iowa are going to be closed tomorrow, due to the icy roads and the Cold. This winter will be over in a few weeks, I hope. This will be all for now. You stay warm. Di di mau!

More of What We Have Been Having

It is five a.m, and the temp is minus 4 and windchill is minus 26, and northpole wind is sucking around my building, and snow will either come back in this afternoon and more of it tomorrow. And Chicago and the east half of the US are getting it worse than we are. Traditionally we get a January Thaw with a few warm days but the thaw is not in the forecast from the Weather Channel. On Feb 2 the groundhog will come out to see his shadow, but so far I have not heard any forecasts of Feb and March. Hopefully next week those 5 million people who hope to pile into DC will not be stuck in an inauguration day blizzard, like in 85 or way back in JFK's inauguration in '61. We will just have to see what happens. The weather and the economy seem to dominate people's lives right now--with Gaza being down on the list of crises. It would be interesting if Adam Sandler could be asked on a talk show about whether he had changed his views, after he created Zohan, which was a movie about Israelis and Palists getting together in some kind of lovein. In about 1971 there was a cold spell of 70 degrees in South Nam that felt like an arctic blast in that area. No movie of the night report on, due to me going to bed early last night, after the comedies on CBS went way over the edge on their sex humor. I have a prudishness in me that seems old fahioned, but that is my rural heritage. This is going to be all for right now. You all stay warm. Di di mau!

More Prose

Cold icy weekend and more snow is supposed to be on the way when the rush hour starts Monday morning. I seem to be spending a lot of blog space b...ing about the winter weather. Winter comes every year, and this one is not as bad as some others in the past. The Gaza war is still going on, and the Palestinians say they have lost over 900 people since the thing started. Sunday night I watched a rented dvd of Kung Fu Panda, which is great visually, but the story is not quite very good--too much rip off of Karate Kid and other chopsockie movies. And now I am watching Walk Hard--a compendium of the bios of a whole bunch of pop singers since the 50s. Elvis, Johnny Cash, maybe some Hank Williams, Jerry Lee, et al. Like Kung Fu Panda it's a little too full of itself, but John Reilley does a great job acting Dewey Cox, and the satire in dead on much of the time. Some confusion in whether the flick is satirizing pop singer movie bios, or the world of pop music, but interesting effort. More and more people are getting tossed out of work in Iowa; I think the local newcast at 10p.m said that 75,000 people are now unemployed in Iowa, but I need to check to see if that amount is the right one. January 9 was Richard Nixon's birthday. He would have been 96. This is going to be all for right now. You all take care. Di di mau!

One More Saturday Snow Thing

The first week of '9 is over, and in Iowa the regular weekend snowfall came in early this evening, and we have at least four inches of the stuff and the roads across the state are iced up again like they were last weekend. In world news Blago was impeached by the Illinois House. One guy voted No. Blago stood tough in a presser and quoted Tennyson. In Gaza the fighting goes on, and on Couric CBS tonight there was a video of a Palistinian woman who said that that the Israelis had taken 20 of her relatives into a room and shot all of them. There are floods all over Washington State. More and more people are being dumped from their jobs all over the country, including Walgreens, Alcoa, and in this town Meredith Printing. Patrick Swayze is back in the hospital with pneumonia. He may not make it. On the late night news on FoxNews is a Gaza kid telling how he uses Google Earth to find where to dig tunnels to the Egyptian border. So much for those "intellectuals" who say they are too good to use the internet. Gazans know how to use the thing. Madoff was discovered the other day trying to send millions of dollars in checks to his relatives, and some million dollar diamond and jade jewelry to them. I rented a dvd of Kung Fu Panda the other day and got part way through it, and was not totally impressed with it. Should watch it Saturday night, along with the Dewey Cox movie. Everybody's a critic! I think it is snowing again outside my building. Spring will return--in March or April. This is going to be all for right now. If I hibernate this weekend because the streets are iced up again I will watch movie tapes and read and explore the web some more. And do some sleeping. You all take care. Di di mau!

The New Year Moves Onward

We are into the third day of '9, and the weather and the current war are the weekend news. Israel finally moved troops into Gaza and the fighting has been hot so far, according to TV news reports. This would be a good time to get into all my bookmarked news websites, which I have not explored for a while due to being obsessed with YouTube. The weather today is the local issue to deal with. It got cold and windy about the sun went down and all of a sudden the the streets were iced over and the wind is blowing bitterly. I walked across the street a while ago to the local convienience castle and fell sprawling twice. The roads all over Iowa are iced up, and supposedly the temp will only be 18 tomorrow. A day inside to look forward to. As of right now I am watching a vhs I have of Sullivan's Travels. Supposedly Preston Sturges' masterpiece, but I am not a complete devotee of PS. I think he tried too hard to be Brilliant. Everything is brilliant in Sullivan's, but maybe this one needs more than one watching to get all he gave us. Yesterday I rented some movies to say I had seen, even if I had little hope for each of them. Surfer, Dude was good for Woody Harrelson's surfer stoner, and some great shots of Cal. seaside scenery. and then I watched 10,000 BC, which was a dog, and then I watched Mamma Mia, which was a wretched thing, even with the ABBA music. Enough of that. As Sullivan's.. keeps going along, it seems to be getting better and better. Joel Mccrae is now on a chain gang that they must copied for Cool Hand Luke. This is going to be all for right now. You all stay warm in this winter. Di di mau!

First Day of the Year

The U of Iowa won the Outback Bowl today by pounding the U of South Carolina, and I missed watching it, and I missed the Rose Bowl parade in the morning and did not get to see Cloris Leachman as the Grand Marshal of the parade. I was up late last night and slept late this morning. No drinking(I do not drink) but tiredness. Enuf of that. Nice weather today, but cold is supposed to come back in a few days. One month till Groundhog Day. In my last blog of people who died in '8 I forgot to mention Richard Widmark and Wm. F. Buckley, and the lady who had been the manager of wigs at the Met Opera died. And the heart surgeon Dr. Debakey died. A few days ago eight snowmobilers in British Colombia were killed in an avalanche. And Susanne Pleshette died in '8 too. And the war in Gaza keeps going on. At least 400 Palestinians have been killed in the last couple of weeks. And today American forces in Iraq officially were put under Iraqi command, before the troops are supposed to be pulled out in 16 months. We will just have to see what Obama's foreign policy will be with the Clintons in the State Dept. On January 7 will be the 40th anniversary of my going into the Army. And so this fall I will have got to Nam 40 years ago. This is going to be all for right now. You all take care. Di di mau!