Grouchy and Whiny Part Two--Frigid in October

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

Grouchy and Whiny

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

Post Big Blast Columbus Day Blog

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

Big Bears Win Sunday Night Blog

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

Is There Any Goodness in the World?

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

Hot October Sunday

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

Blog With No Funny Title

Hello there, gentle readers. A beautiful day in the midwest--blue skies, high 70s heat, and a great day to pick corn. And the Des Moines street crews are out today working to rebuild our ancient street system, right in the middle of the most used sections of downtown in the morning rushhour. The streets need rebuilt, but the traffic was a total chaos this morning. S happens-roll with it and grit your teeth and avoid partial street rage.
Rush L. finally went over the edge this p.m. on his show, by calling liberals and anti-war types "traitors." The T word has been generally kept out of the talk show bloviating, except f0r one brawl last week on Hannity and Colmes, but RL may have thrown it into the dialogue lingo. There is an interesting blog I found put out by Spook 86, an ex-CIA guy, who has some interesting views. And there is an interesting blog (gwb06 blogspot) by a guy who claims he is George W. Bush-the President. Maybe it really is Him.
And this was the day that Season 1 of Mama's Family came out on DVD. I wish I could afford a number of TV show box sets, but my budget is not up to being used for too many of the things. I would like to get each season of Have Gun Will Travel and the first couple of seasons of I Love Lucy(the masterpiece seasons), and the complete series of Amazing Stories, but we will have to see what the budget can handle. I have been e-ing TV Party as to when or if The Millionaire, the Gary Moore variety show, and Brooklyn Bridge will ever be available, but none of them seem to be in the near future. And neither is Ben Casey or The Nurses. A shame for TV devotees. And I am also waiting for It's About Time (with Grunk and Shad) The Hollywood Palace, and Love-American Style.
This is going to be all for now. My fans may be wondering why I am rambling today, but I promise you all a really deep blog masterpiece some time in the near future. Di di mau!

Oh Wow, I am back blogging

Hello there! Everyone in cyberspace has been waiting for me to do another blog entry, since I have not blogged since the end of June. Have been busy working and have been having middle aged broodings, and world events seem to have overwhelmed my small-scale thoughts on What Is Going On. Maybe I can get back into the habit of typing a record of What is Happening, every so many days. The last blog I typed I mentioned something about The NYT Mess, and now I can not remember what the Mess was. Since my June 27 entry North Korea shot off some missiles into the Sea of Japan on July 4, and Israel and the Hezbollah had a war in south Lebanon, and Castro got sick and turned Cuba over to his brother, and Chavez and Nejad came to the UN and trashed W and Hugo C. called W "The Devil," and the Pope made some remarks borrowed from a Byzantine Emperor that Mohammed had done some stuff evil, and the Muslims went wild and are still rioting around the world over the comments, and today some Sunnis blew up a kerosene tanker in Sadr City and killed 3 dozen Shiite women, and today there is a rumor that OBL died of typhoid fever a month ago. I guess those are the big major events of the last three months, and suddenly I cannot remember all the other stuff, including who famous died, and what has been going on in showbiz and celebland. I may have to actually go to our city library and dig into Time to see what else has happened Big. Sorry that everything anywhere important in the world has slipped my mind tonight. The 5th anniversary of 9-11 was commemorated with respect, but the ABC movie about 9-11 stirred up a flap by liberals, because it took Clinton and his regime to the woodshed for not paying attention to catching OBL, and tomorrow on Fox will be an interview by Chris Wallace with Clinton, in which Bill looses his temper about failing to capture the maybe late terrorist.
All this stuff happening day by day is reminding me of 1968, when something Big in the world seemed to occur every day and you got every morning to see what had happened overnight.
Chris Wallace should have asked Clinton not why he could not catch Ladin, but why the gov. had been unable to catch Atta and his gang, who had been in and out of the US for at least 2 years, and someone should slash at the Media for spending more time on OJ than the story of the blind mullah and his band in '93, and there should be a story about why so much time was spent in the summer of '01 on poor Chandra Levy.
OK, I am going to publish this blog now, even though I really do not have any incredible insight into what has been going on outside my room. I am just recording what I remember about the last several weeks of history. Di di mau!

Yes, We Are Still Alive

Yes, we are still on earth--after a gap of several days of not doing a blog. The news of the world seems to be bigger than my little personal report to the cyberuniverse on my private doings, and with maybe 30 million other bloggers I probably got lost in the world population. With war, shootings, east coast floodings, midwest drought, Starr Jones' problems, Rush's viagra bust, North Korea's maybe rocket launch, the death of Frazier's Eddie, the agency financial scandal in Iowa, the Kidman wedding, the Hugh O'Brien wedding, the Pitt baby, the new NYTimes mess, and the World Cup, it has actually been a lively time on earth. Some day all of this news will be old and dusty (like reading old accounts of Ford's presidency) but some of it may end up having historical importance. Now, isn't that a really Deep Thought I just came up with. (prep at the end of a clause).

Coulter has not appeared on TV tonight (wow), but Scarborough had Sheehan on whining, and Bill O' was in rant mode tonight, and Colmes was also whining to Hannity, and I shut the TV off, and will probably go to snoozeland in a little while. I know all this does not make for a Hugh Hewitt-level blog, but that is what my current life is like, in this midsummer of '06. Private life is not moving at an exciting pace. Even the greatest creators in history must have had down days when they did nothing at all Deep (Plato supposedly died at a horse race).

After 2 weeks of not blogging, I seem to have not much to blog about, but I am curently out of the self-pity mood I was in a few weeks ago, so maybe I will have some cheerful stufff to offer all my fans and devotees the next time I come into their laptop screen world. Things will get better--or worse, considering the state of current international events. So, we will see you. Di di mau!

We Need Rain Real Soon

The ground around here is very dry and the rivers are getting low. Great that a warm summer is upon us, but we need rain. Not rain like we got in 92 and 93, but some wet stuff.

Daily life is improving a little since that last blog I printed about my June glooms, but but the local TV is full tonight of nothing but misery in the local region. There was a funeral for the first woman soldier from Iowa to get killed in Iraq, and she left a 9 year old kid behind. There were at least five car or truck crashes today along the interstate. A football player from ISU died of cancer at 24. A little girl in the metroplex has a rare brain stem tumor which will probably kill her in a few months. And after all that sad news PBS ran a bio of Cole Porter which told all about his life with broken legs and his sinking into depression before he died. And I discovered while shopping for groceries how high food prices are going, and it cost 38 bucks to fill my car tank. And I am having troubles with my landlady. And more small town factories in Iowa are closing, and the Wall Street Journal has an article about the millions of kids in America who are going hungry because their families cannot afford to buy food.

I need to get happy or at least less blue, after all that stuff, and am going to work at it. This will be all for right now, after this gloomy news rehash, and need to sleep on it. So you all wait for my next happy blogging. Di di mau!

At Last A New Blog Entry

After deleting at least 3 blogs I started over the last few weeks here is one I hope I will feel like finishing and sending out into cyberspace for my waiting fans and devotees, who have been wondering where I have been, I assume.

Yes, I know--it has been a frantic time on earth--with Zarqawi getting His, however he really got It, and lots and lots of politics being done, and today 3 guys in Gitmo killing themselves, and a hurricane in the Carib.. building up, and the Pitt baby arriving, and on and on, but I have been in a blue funk depression for 2 weeks or more, and my family is in a dysfunction, which I will spare you the details of (preposition at end of clause), and things are not going good partially in my little life, but hopefully things will get better.

After a hot summer week in the midwest, today it got cold and rainy and dreary again, right when a city outdoor winefest is going on, and tomorrow morning a bunch of aging hippies are planning to sit on the banks of our local river and chant to drive pollution away from the river. Lots of Oms and bamboo flute playing, and probably more news crews out than hippies. Should be interesting, if it actually takes place.

The World Cup Soccer finals are on now, and everyone in every other country is going wild over the things, but I can not get excited about them. My American redneckness has me counting down the days till August, when the NFL gets going again, and The Bears are back! Nothing wrong with everyone else on Earth getting deep into soccer, but American profootball is my sport. I was a great Nascar devotee for several years, but have kinda lost interest in it recently. I check out each week who won the race, but do not sit all Sunday afternoon watching the races like I did a few years ago.

Have spent much of tonight reading blogs about Zarqawi, and about the DailyKos leftwing bloggers convention in Vegas, and I need to get ready for a big project I need to take care of tomorrow but am stalling till the last minute. This sadness I am in has all but dried up much eagerness to be active at anything. What is the problem? I wish I knew. I seem to have some kind of emotional crisis right around early June every few years or so, and something not very nice always seems to happen.

Enough of that stuff. You all take care, and I will try to get back to blogging better as this month goes on, and what will happen will be faced in a manly way. Di di mau!

Midweek Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday and Monday Together

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday and Whatever

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

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

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

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

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

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

Di di mau!

Monday Night and Whatever

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moan and Groan on a Windy Friday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blog while I am Cranky

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

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

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

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

Wednesday Blog and Keep Your Chin Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reaching for the inner meaning of Monday night

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

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

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

Spring, then Winter, then Spring again

It was a wonderful warm shorts and sandals spring until yesterday, when we fell back into the 30s and got a kind of a sleet rain afternoon, and today it is getting warm again. When it gets really cold in Iowa in April people start remembering a bad sudden blizzard we got hit with in 1973, which buried the state in about 2 feet of snow the day after everyone had to get their studded snow tires taken off. So, no one could drive and we were buried for about 3 days and then the sun came out and all the snow was gone in a few days.

I found a tape the other day of the 1972 western The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, with Cliff Robertson and Robt. Duvall (as Frank and Jessie James.) I had seen a chopped up version of it years ago on late night TV, and had never seen the whole movie. Good movie, but somewhat from the hippie era in its outlook and visuals. Pretty much the same story as The Long Riders which came out a few years later. I should rent that one and watch it again. Not much else going on in reading and movie watching so far this spring. I have a rented DVD of The Ice Harvest with John Cusack I should view tonight or tomorrow. I hope Cusack can shed some of his Lloyd Dobler mannerisms and quirks he had made a career out of over the years.

Watched a segment the other night of a press conference held by Amadinejad gloating about how no one will ever push Iran around. The guy is a serious and dangerous character, but he was in front of a huge backdrop of downtown Tehran, that looked a lot like Letterman's set at the Sullivan Theatre. Hard not to teehee while watching the guy. Probably people had the same feelings watching newsreels of the Kaiser, Hitler and Mussolini.

Fox News had a segment a while ago about the families of the people on Flight 93 watching an advance screening of the movie. I don't think I can watch the movie when it is released. Everything that happened on 9-11 is still too raw to relive. I had the same situation for years when it came to watching films of JFK's funeral. I could not watch the stuff.

(This part is being written later:) One good show on the tube tonight. My Name is Earl was all about him trying to return a stolen police badge to the cop he stole it from. Silly show but funny. I tried to get through Survivor, The O.C., and Supernatural, but could not do it.

Cavuto had some economic honchos on talking about the gas crisis, and they contended that we all will just have to drive less. If you live in DC or NYC you could travel by cab, but the rest of us live in a country 3 thousand miles wide. It might be hard to just sit home and not move around the big spaces in the US.

This is going to be all for right now. More next time. Di di mau!

A Blog of a Sort To Present to the the World

It would have been interesting if Alexander Pope had had his own blog in 1730, in which he could rave about the people he was mad at, and he could have practiced his ryming couplets online, and he might have let us know what the trouble between him and Mary Wortley Montague actually was. But he just wrote lots of letters to his friends, and trashed his enemies in the Dunciad, and never got into cyberspace. We miss you, Al.

This is a nice but windy afternoon, and a long-predicted storm is supposed to be on the way. After the sneak tornado that suddenly appeared in Iowa City last week everyone is a little gunshy about the weather around this part of the heartland.

The news of the afternoon seems to be the Chinese woman who got into the press section at the White House and yelled at W and Hu. I should turn on Fox to get a story on the story, but I feel like leaving the tube off this afternoon. Will probably catch all the news at 5 p.m. Drudge has an LATimes statement by Pelosi, deploring Chinese human rights crimes. Well, where has she been since 1949? I have a feeling that China is becoming Japan of the 1930s--they are building up for a conquest campaign. Do they want to take over the world, militarily, or just economically? Does Chinese Communism amount to anything any more, or is it just an oligarchy in power? We will see.

Thursday night is the night for The O.C., and Earl. Two bad shows I am hooked on. And Survivor is also on. According to the new and improved TV Guide a guy gets his face cut up with a machete. I have not been following this edition of Survivor very closely. I know Shane is the crazy one, but I have not been able to sink my mind into this series. Something mental I guess. I have lost interest in American Chopper, and tried to watch King of Cars, with Chop trying to become the used car king of Vegas, but I can't get interested in it either. Man, is this an enthusiastic blog this time around.

I assume gas prices will hit 3 a gallon around here fairly soon. I had hopes to do some driving around Iowa this summer to see the rural parts of the state and get away from Des Moines' concrete jungle for one summer, but maybe I need to hog as much money as I can, and paying 40+ bucks for a fillup could easily drain my bank account. Magazines and videos are going out of the budget, and books as well. Maybe some simplicity and lack of googaws would do my soul some good--but it will be painful.

This is going to be all for right now. I need to take an afternoon snooze, and I know my myriad fans and devotees will want me to rest for a few hours. So, Di di mau!

Easter Sunday Night Thoughts

Somewhat gloomy and humid day today, on Easter Sunday. Tornadoes came through the midwest last night, hitting Beatrice, Nebraska and Lenox, Iowa. It is supposed to rain in Iowa on Monday. I caught up on some sleep last night, and piddled around much of today. Gas prices keep going up and up and will probably get to 3 bucks a gallon soon. Drudge was ranting on his website and on the radio tonight about the CEO of Exxon getting a retirement package of 450 million, and gas prices going up on Easter Sunday. Nejad is still ranting about destroying Israel, and Matthews and his liberal crew tonight are holding that there is nothing we can do about Iran. While searching through some blogs I found a mention of something Hitler had in '37 called the Hossbach Conference in which he gave his head generals his plans for conquering Europe and getting rid of everybody not aryan in order to achieve lebensraum. The idea from the blogs seems to be that if some leader says he is going to smash his enemies you should take him seriously. I read some stuff in McClure's old book on Abe Lincoln on Lincoln and how he dealt with Stanton, who had the whole Union Army officer crew hating him. Some similarity to Rumsfeld and the generals who want to get rid of him.

This is the birthdays of Sylvia Plathe (who would have been 74) and Nikita Krushchev(who would have been 112.) There are still some people in San Francisco, who were got together for a party, who were old enough to remember the 1906 earthquake (including one lady who is 108.)

A bad tornado last Thursday night came through Iowa City and did a job on the University of Iowa area, smashing a big church and a lot of student housing, as well as a lot of businesses around campus town.

I have been spending Easter week reading the gospels, the book of Acts, and Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus. Acts is much more interesting than I thought it would be, and 1st Timothy has some interesting stuff Paul wrote on Money. I have been using the Jerusalem Bible translation, which I have to read with my fingers crossed, but the translation does make Paul jump off the page and become a real human being, more than the King James version does.

This is going to be all for right now. It is time for bed. So, Di di mau.

Bloggin is a cummin in; lude sing cuku

I know that all 20 million bloggers on spaceship earth have been waiting for my next blog entry--and here it is. I started one a few days ago, but never got it finished, so the date on this one may be wrong. It is 11:45 p.m on 12 April right now. I am currently overwhelmed by the current events of the world, and am finally getting over that flu I had for a week or more at the end of March, but spring is finally here, and it may get up to 80 by the end 0f this week, so a certain amount of happiness is due. Iraq and Iran and the Duke U. lacrosse team rape case, and the Mexican immigrant demonstrations are the issues of the week.

There is a mess going on in Iowa right now, involving a number of people who were in charge of a state jobs training agency, who were discovered to have been making very large salaries it did not seem seemly for them to have been making. And this has opened up a lot of Iowa social class and political grudges involving a number of local political figures someone or other has had grudges against for years. The lady at the center of the scandal is a high school dropout with a GED, and several local blue collar and Italian-American politicians are getting slimed, and a local black activist is in on the situation, and it is score-settling time in Iowa, especially since at least one guy at the center of the situation has had people mad at him since some stuff he pulled during the flood of '93. Des Moines has a somewhat irritating social class system, which ever so often comes to the surface. It is now.

In 1749 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son, telling him to keep himself clean and to dress properly, or he would be a fop at 20, slovenly at 40, and stink at 50. And keep your hair powdered when you go out in public.

I am going to let my fans and readers go to bed now, even though this has been a fairly short blog entry, and it has been several days since I have typed anything. Some time I may pour out all my political and social opinions, and let Everybody have it, but it may turn out that I have opinions and no hard cold facts to suport them, and just have a lot of rants. So, you all take care. Di di mau!

As the General Blog Turns

Well, a couple hours ago it was 1:02:o3 on 4-o5-06. In a couple of months there will a time and date of 6:06:06 on 6-06-06.

My health has been improving all day and I must be finally getting over this week-long flu bout which has just about decommissioned me. I know all my fans really want to know this.

Have been looking into opera websites and chatsites and the big news in operaland is the sudden arrival on the scene of Erika Sunnegardh, a blond lady who was put into a Met broadcast Saturday of Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, and a very demanding vocal part. No one seems to have known anything about Ms. S., and she wowed the opera house audience and got wild applause and a big write-up in the NY Times, and overseas. The Met publicity machine seems to have pulled out all the stops to get the lady famous. The radio broadcast is generating great controversy as to whether the lady can really sing or not, and who she really is. The chatrooms are burning up with debate about what went on April 1.

A big flap brewing in Iowa concerning some people at the top of a state employment agency and the somewhat large salaries they have been receiving. Much less salary than several college coaches are getting, but it has struck a nerve among various state citizens. Maybe a storm in a tea pot, but a kind of a scandal. We are shocked--shocked!

You know, I am going to bed, and will continue all of this sometime tomorrow. I hope you understand. I know you will. So, Di di mau!

After the Storms Comes the Spring

OK, the title of this opus comes from the last section of Beethoven's sixth symphony. A big musical storm section, and then the sun is supposed to come out and there is a lilting folk tune that builds into one of Bs hymns of joy, and all is lovely in the world. I think B was trying to convey a When Napoleon is Gone All Will be Peace message. Anyway it is nice in the midwest tonight after a stormy weekend all over the US.

This has been the third bad-sick in bed session I have had in life since the end of '98 when I had a bad flu bout. Then in '02 I had the diabetic heart attack, and this weekend when I did another flu spell that came on Wed. night, and finally put me flat on my back, and I am still in the final stages of shaking it. So, my health is what is on my mind, even though I know Iran now has underwater missiles, and Florida whupped UCLA tonight and a stupid Indian girl won a lot of money on Howie's Deal...show. She irritated me because she looked too much like M. Lewinsky. And I know the immigration issue gets uglier as more people get to open their mouths about it.

This actually is going to be all in this blog for right now. My fingers are not working good at all, and Jimmy Kimmel is coming on in a little while, and when I am just as healthy as a peach I will be funny and will have a blog that all my countless fans will think is the happiest thing they have ever read in cybspace. So you all wait and I will be back. Di di mau!

Where Do You Hurt? Everwhere!

There is not much to report on dealing with the woes of the world. Not that human events have stopped--but I have spent 2.5 days in bed with a really wicked April Fools flu, and Fox and CBS and the other MSM have actually been shut off for much of that time, and I have been Sleeping. All day and all night, and an occassional trip to the peepee can, and then back to bed. My back hurts, my eyes are out of focus, my feet hurt, and this typing is a mess because I cannot control my fingers on the keyboard. Ain't this interesting to read? I do hope that tomorrow I will cast off what ever is making me a woeful thing, and will jump up happy and healthy. In fact my typing is getting so bad as I go along that I may just let this be my blog for the night. More tomorrow or when I get to feeling better. I had a bunch of stuff about today's Met opera broadcast, but I should check with La Cieca first. You all be good. Di di mau!

Don't Cry For Me, Blogentina

Ain't we just funny, with that really cute title at the top. That was inspired by a guy I found in the blogosfeer who said his favorite book was Finnegan's Wake, so I though a strange Jim Joyce-type phrase might be in order as an eye catcher. I looked into Finnegan's Wake one time and put it away. Somebody somewhere understands it, but I could not. Neither could Joyce's wife.

Finally we are getting some rain today, but as usual with the local weather I am complaining about it. Whatever the climate is I seem to get gripey about it; 2 cold, 2 windy, 2 cloudy, 2 icy, 2 dry, 2 hot (when it finally does get warm). Some people ain't happy with nuthin.

The big news story around here will probably be the college kid who spent 3 days living in a west-side of Des Moines Wal Mart (See Drudge for the story). I was in that Wal Saturday night and may have seen him, but there were so many people in the store crashing carts into each other and letting their kids run wild, that I just got some socks and a coffee pot and some body wash and got out of the place as soon as I could.. The story mentions that some birds flew into the produce area and were eating grapes out of a box. That should shoot the Walton family into space if they read Drudge or the Des Moines Register.

Moussaoui got up in court today and announced that he and Reid the shoe bomber were planning to crash a plane into the White House. The discussion on afternoon Fox News is about Mousaoui is a lier and or just crazy, and you can't believe a word he says.

Not fun being an Iraqi right now. Forty people killed in one car bombing, and a pile of headless bodies found in one room around Sadr City. And more GIs dead. Saturday night all the talk shows on cable took up most of prime time with new news about Natalie and whether Sloot killed her or she died from a drug overdose.

No one on cable has yet noted that the preacher murder took place in Selmer, Tennessee--which is where Buford Pusser kept law and order with his club years ago. Way back in the 1920s there was a once-famous case in Connecticut where a preacher and his girl-friend were found murdered, and the wife was put on trial. The once-famous "pig woman trial." The wife was found innocent, and no one still knows who did the murders.

NewsMax has the transcript of a Sunday night radio brawl on WABC between Alec Baldwin and Sean Hannity. Sean called the station and accused AB of supporting terrorists, and AB, before he walked off the show, was calling SH of being a former "construction worker hack..and Long Island house builder." So much for Alec Baldwin's view of blue collar workers. The yelling also got into Baldwin's weight and Kim Bassinger.

A golden day yesterday for C-Span 1 and 2 devotees. A panel on Vietnam with Dan Rather and others telling stories about how the news back then was reported. Then Chief Justice Roberts was on giving an interesting speech. Then David Horowitz taking on a bunch of college lefties, and then Wesley Clarke talking about Patton, and Tony Blair having a wild Question Time.

Fox is covering a situation in LA involving a bunch of ant-immigration bill school kids blocking a downtown freeway in the afternoon rush hour.

More later. You all take care for now. Di di mau!

A Blog of Ramblingness

This blog may be dated for Fri. 3-24, but I did not get it finished, and wiped away what I had in my draft, and so this is actually being typed on Saturday night.

A Saturday of doing errands around the DM metroplex and buying and charging, and listening to some of the Met opera of Luisa Miller (La Cieca and his band of opera queens did not like the cast). Then took a nap and piddled around on Sat. night, and read and listened to talk shows on the tube and radio.

Buck Owens passed away. He is now with most of the Hee Haw gang--Grandpa Jones, Minnie Pearle, Archie Campbell, Lulu, and Junior Samples.

A Drudge segment the other day was about a honcho of Castro who is now in exile in Miami, and is a local TV star, giving out amazing stories about the Brothers C. Fidel burns his used underwear in case someone tries to smear poison in his drawers, and Fidel and Raul have a large stash of cash squirrelled away.

The Iraq war goes on, and the newest news topic is that the Russians gave Saddam our invasion plans before we went in. And Iran is supposedly in a hurry to get its nuke made and ready. There was a report a while back that they will have the thing ready on April 8.

Some doofus shot up a house full of people partying in Seattle--offing seven people, and then himself.

I have some strong opinions about the anti-immigration reform protests taking place around the US, but I am trying to be tolerant. And that is all I am going to say in this blog being sent into cyberspace.

For the historical record; gas prices in Des Moines are now up to $2.45, and canned soup and frozen entree prices are going up and up.

I am going to terminate this blog entry now, and take a nap. Hopefully I will have a better one on Sunday night, with much more depth and more infobits about the state of the earthly body politik. I need to read some more news websites, and actually read a real newspaper. So, fans and devotees, Di di mau!

Night After the Non-Blizzard

The horrible blizzard we were supposed to get got here last night and was an inch of wet slushy snow and hard winds, but it all stopped about ten a.m this morning and the sun came forth and the slush melted on the streets and the snow evaportated and that was our first day of spring blizzard, at least in the center of the midwest.

Ran around this afternoon and this evening and did not catch a lot of the news, exept that W and Helen Thomas had a heated discussion at his press conference. The big news that the basketball coach from Northern Iowa is going to take over at Iowa State took up more local news time than the blizzard.

I rented a dvd of March of the Penguins this afternoon and hope to slide it into the slot after I get done watching Fellini Satyricon, which is a really weird movie--supposed to be a satire on ancient Rome and the decadence of the modern world in the 1960s, I think. I got 45 minutes of it watched in one sitting, and wonder how anyone in '69 sat through 2 hours of it at one stretch. The last really strange art movie I got through was The Tin Drum several years ago. Maybe I am not as attuned to European art movies as I thought I would be. I did like Danton, one of the great political movies. A French-Polish colaboration, the movie is about the French Rev. leader Danton, who I guess would rather make a speech than run the Revolution. He ends up on the guillotine in a harrowing depiction of what it was like to get your head chopped off. A movie which should be seen by all gabby politicians. And Depardieu does a great job as Danton.

Went to my vets club meeting tonight, and a guy in our group who is in the Nat Guard and is in his late 50s is due to be sent to Iraq for 18 months in June.

That is about all for tonight. Lots of stuff going on on earth, but Drudge does better at selecting important news than I can summarize in a blog. I should get a little sleep, so I need to make my nest and turn around three times before I nestle down in my nest--just like a doggie does. You all take care. Maybe a deeper blog next time I face the keyboard. Di di mau!

A Sunday Night in March in the 21st Century

Bits and pieces about a disorganized weekend. Broke a piece of a tooth, and the dentist is not in till Tuesday. I fasted yesterday and a lot of today to protect Tommy Tooth (I needed to not eat to use up some lard on my handles.) Last night watched the Iowa basketball championships on tv; very actually exciting basketball; the kids played amazing ball. This morning I watched Chris Wallace and his gang on Fox, and it looked like Britt Hume and Juan Williams and Bill Crystal were going to get up and slug one another before the show was over; very intense argument over the war.

After the talking heads were done I slid in a vhs I rented of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway. Really bad movie, but one you keep watching to see what is going to happen next. Supposed to be a satire I guess on the Theatre in the 1920s, or a satire on sacrificing Art for Money, or a satire on Woody's problems in getting movies made, or some other message Woody wants to send. Real mess of a plot, and John Cusack is totally lost at sea in this one. Bullets was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but I do not think I will watch it again for quite a while. So, this afternoon I rented Fellini Satyricon and Spanking the Monkey. Will see what I think of these two opuses (or opii). Tried to find a tape of a quirky movie called Manny and Lo, but a couple of video stores I frequent did not have it. I was going to spend the winter catching up on viewing a lot of movies I had not seen, but now it is coming spring, and I am just getting back into the movie groove, right at the time when soon being outside is what needs to be done. And, another session of watching the news will be necessary, when the paving-over of Iran starts happening. Cheerful, ain't this? And I seem to be using the dative case a lot.

I usually like Cusack as an screen actor, even if he sometimes seems to get by on his quirky mannerisms, but in Bullets he or Woody seems hopeless trying to convey the role of an idealistic playwright getting his play put on. (This is not good prose, but it is now 1 a.m and I am groggy.)

Some time on Monday we are suposed to get a late March snowstorm, but it has not arrived yet.

Found some interesting websites recently: www.mysteriouspeople has a story about Candy Jones, a famous 1950s supermodel with a split personality who was supposedly drugged by the CIA into being a spy. And www.prairieghosts has stuff on D. D. Home, a 19th century medium who supposdly could fly through the air. And the same site has a section on a famous medium named Margery who held seances in the nude and has a feud with Houdini, who tried to prove she was a phony.

After all this I am going to repair to my divan and try to sleep for a while. I hope this blog has been at least minimally interesting to my countless fans and devotees. Di di mau!

A Friday Night in March in the 21st Century

Six weeks have passed since Phil and General Lee came out and saw their shadows or didn't, so winter should be over, but it is still cold, and we badly need moisture to fall from the sky onto our very dry soil. Probably the rain will come in April. A choice between needed rain, and warm weather and shorts and sandals.

Marilyn Monroe would have been 80 years old on upcoming June 1 (born in 1926).

I found at a thrift store a used vhs tape of TV highlites of Ernie Kovacs shows. The guy was a pioneer genius at creating visual TV comedy. A shame that TV Guide regularly ignores him at a TV pioneer and networks like TVland never find the space to fit tapes of his old shows into their schedule. (Come on, TV--give us Percy Dovetonsils, and the Nairobi Trio!)

Big sports debacle in Iowa today. The Hawkeyes screwed up in March Madness and lost their lead in a game with Northwest State, and were humiliated, and the basketball coach and his whole staff at Iowa State were fired.

There may be a nasty scandal due to break at the Metropolitan Opera, dealing with the pedophilia of a famous conductor and a big Met payoff of the Law to keep the matter covered up, ongoing for a number of years. Anyway, this is a hot topic on a prominent opera-gossip website (La Cieca).

The upcoming hot story out of California may be Maria's grab for power behind Arnold's throne. She is already being compared to Evita Peron, (and a similar situation in Arkansas a couple of decades ago.)

After all of these bits, I have ignored Me, but there is not much to tell all my fans and devotees, because I have not done anything personal that is FoxNewsworthy since Monday. So, this will be all for right now till the next I blog. I need to get an oil change tomorrow--which may or may not be newsworthy, and the dirty underwear needs a washing. Take care, and we will return soon. Hand tough, Steve and Beve. Di di mau!

Going Gazhi

Hannity and Colmes and their guests tonight on Fox had a brawl about the Taliban guy attending Yale-why he is in the US anyway and whether he can be trusted not to do something insidious while he is here, and whether seeing American life might make him learn to love Americans and their values.

Some of the old writers from the British Raj era (Halliburton, Roy Andrews, Lowell Thomas) wrote about something colonial honchos had to fear from their Gunga Din-type "boys," called "going gazhi" (sic), a thing where your loyal native Boy might fall under the spell of a mullah and suddenly kill the Infidel at night or when the Brit was peeing facing Mecca or any other offensive thing to set Gunga off in a holy rage. You never could tell what might Gunga snap. A liberal Democrat dude on H&C's panel was convinced that Mr. Taliban would be so mellowed by his time in America and Yale that he would never do anything terrorist again. It did not work that way with Atta and his crew, or in liberal London, Madrid, and Amsterdam.

After a somewhat low-key winter March has turned nasty--a wave of tornadoes in the midwest and tonight a seven-inch blizzard in S. Dakota. Two twisters in a row hit Springfield Illinois yesterday and ripped up the city. No word yet on how Abe Lincoln's house fared. The U. of Kansas got torn up pretty bad.

This is going to be a short blog tonight. I wanted to write something about "going gazhi" and record the record-setting March tornado outbreak, and in a little while I should hit the Sack. I feel like I have all the mucus monsters in my head doing the conga, so I ought to try to get them out of me. They have been partying inside me all winter. No Letterman tonight and I have missed watching the roller derby women reality show. Is the series about the tattoo parlor in Vegas still on the air? Miami Inked is still on, I know. OK, Di di mau!

Counterextrablogerationalistismite

Hello, friends and fans of this blog. Hello Beve and Steve.

I accidently lied in my last blog due to misinformation; Brokenback Mountain did not come out on DVD last Tuesday. Our local newspaper apparently made an error of massive proportions by saying that it would.

This is being written at 1 a.m. on Sunday, which has been a warm shorts and sandals day and has turned cold at sundown, and we are due to have sleet today and warmth Monday. Enough to confuse the pitiful mind.

The news of the world I should report is all in Drudge, which has an interesting article from the NYT on Saadam's war plans before we invaded. He had fooled everyone, including his generals, when he told them he did Not have any wsds, and he was more worried about what the Shiites were up to than what we were planning. I found it interesting that the NYT kept calling him Mr. Hussein throughout the article.

Milosevic has died under maybe mysterious circumstances in his prison cell. (Shades of Goering.)

Anna Moffo has also passed from the earth. She was a good opera singer who actually looked good. There are some catty remarks about her in La Cieca's opera website, and a number of emails saying nice things about her.

WalMart keeps getting itself hated as the days go by. An article in the WSJ the other day reports on Big W's plans to set up its own banking system in its big box stores, and the banking establishment is fearful that the setup will drain all the money in the US out of traditional banks.

North Korea fired 2 missles into the Pacific a couple of days ago, but this made little news in the MSM.

There is a Palestinian website for kids at www.al-Fateh.net, which is in Arabic, but has some colorful graphics, and is dedicated to encouraging Pal. kids to become suicide bombers.

This is going to be all for right now. I need to pass into the kingdom of slumber for a few hours. More next time, when I return to communicate with my many fans and devotees. Di di mau!

Oscar Night '06 blog

I am not watching the Oscars tonight! I have not seen any of the movies up for any award, I cannot stand the Rivers women, and Mizrahi, so there! I usually try to see the bit where they show pictures of the movie people who have died the past year, but this time I will miss it too. A few years ago during the dead actor segment they showed a picture of John Derek; total silence from the audience. I guess he was that unpopular and/or despised.

OBL's number #2 has a new video out ranting about the West and Jews and Bush and the Mohammed cartoons et al. From a little bit I read once of one of the main surrahs in the Koran Muslims are supposed to make some effort to convert infidels they come in contact with, and if the infidels do not become converts to the True Faith they can be killed, because they rejected the Word. A lot of Islamic nastiness toward unbelievers was also once a part of Christianity during the pre-death- of- Hitler millennia. OK, you can have at me on that statement, but that is something I hold to.

I got around to watching Groundhog Day on DVD Saturday night. Bill Murray was great in it, but the movie was a little too cute and clever for its own good, especially the happy ending. American Spectator a few months ago had an article on how Grounhog Day is a favorite movie of intellectuals, who like to analyze its inner philosophical meanings.

If Bush had ordered everyone in New Orleans to get out of town before Katrina hit, and all those cars and buses had got hit by the winds while on the roads would he have been blamed for all the deaths. When everyone was ordered out of Houston many of the cars ran out of gas and one side of the freeways was not used for at least a day. What would the New Orleans evacuation have been like if a lot of people tried to use the Lake Ponch. bridge going east, or headed south into Plaqueman parish, which got smashed badly?

I have lots of things I would like to ponder upon (split infinitives all over the place tonight), but I need to do more research into the news. So, this will be all for right now. I will try to blog more for my many fans and devotees in the future. S0, Di di mau! for now.

( Here is a later posting; Crash has won the Best Picture Oscar Award, whupping Brokendown Mountain! Not to worry though; BMt. is due out on DVD this Tuesday. A film of the way people behave in the checkout line at WalMart with their copies of the thing might be interesting to view, as a study of human behavior. Allan Funt, where are you when we need you?)

(To bring us back to Reality--NewsMax has a piece reporting that Iranian leaders are saying that they plan to unveil their nuke on April 8!)

One Month in Human History

This February of 2006 will be remembered throughout what is left of the duration of human history as the month in which: VP Cheney buckshotted an elderly lawyer in a field in Texas while quail hunting; the Dems became patriotic and raised loud beejeezers over the W peoples' plan to let a company from Dubai mangage a number of US port facilities (a lot more noise than they raised over what the story was about the '93 Trade Center bombing); and Iraq finally fell into a civil war after the Shiite Golden Mosque was destroyed; and Iran kept building its nuke weaponry. Also, in one week Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, and Dennis Weaver passed from the earth. And the really strange Turin Winter Olympics were held. Also, Jimmy Johnson won the Daytona 500.

The Oscar ceremonies are upcoming this Sunday night, but I do not care, and have not seen any of the movies, and have no plans to watch the things. Does anyone remember that one year The English Patient was The Movie?

I became fascinated with looking at blogger.com/start to see all the blogs that were coming online minute by minute. In 24 hours 86,4oo blogs (one each second) can come online just on blogger.com., and supposedly there are about 24 million blogs out there.

Is there any point to this blog tonight I am sending out to my countless fans? Just that I hope that you are trying to stay happy and not catatonic with worry over the massive black hole in the center of the galaxy, in Sagittarius, which is sucking up all the matter being pulled into it. So far no one has blamed W for not trying to keep the earth from being sucked into the BH. They will, eventually.

This will be all for right now. Di di mau!

Short-Titled Blog

There is a hole in the world tonight; Don Knotts has left us. I can't think of anyone who ever had anything bad to say about him in public, and it seems that he has been around forever. Barney Fife and Ralph Furley will be remembered for a long time. There was a fabulous chemistry between Knotts and John Ritter when Furley was trying to teach Tripper about women (Jack was not really gay and Furley could not get laid with a gun to his head), that I have always thought was a high point of TV comedy. One of Knotts' interesting efforts was The Shakiest Gun in the West, where he took a character first done by Bob Hope in Pale Face and made it his own. This is rambling, and everyone will have memories of Don Knotts, but these are some of mine. He will be sorely missed as a man and as an actor.

At least 200 people in Iraq have been killed by other Iraqis or foreign insurgents since the Golden Mosque was destroyed Wed. That many people killed in four days in domestic violence in a country must be a sign of a society gone totally to Hell, and no one anywhere else took to the streets to protest the killing the way they did when the Mohammed cartoons came public.

The Winter Olympics are over. The human drama of who screwed up and who was feuding with who may end up overshadowing the athletic records. Maybe one of the problems with the whole show was that the competitors were all professionals who had another competition to go to if they hashed their olympic program; losing was not that important. Avery Brundage must be spinning in his grave. I thought it was interesting that Bob Costas admitted in TV Guide that he really know very little about olympic sports. I always suspected that. He was kept at a desk in NY.

Pindar wrote an ode dedicated to a champion boxer, who was short and ugly and fought dirty.

I have finished watching a rented DVD of Lord of War. Nick Cage plays a free lance arms dealer who sells guns all over the world. Interesting but slow moving and heavy handed movie. Some great quotable dialogue and several powerful scenes, but just not quite as good as it could be.

Interesting that Blogger is now running a list of each blog as it is published. One blog after the other continually. A way to learn how many bloggers there actually are in the world as they come online one after the other.

This is going to be all for right now. Di di mau!

Bloggerizationalistismationate

Cyberspace has been waiting for me to return to the keyboard to send a message to all my fans who have been waiting since last Sunday on pins and needles to read what I have for them--which may not be a Beethovenesque storming of the gates of the Universe, but may end up being a Marymargaretmcbride-like adventure in blogging.

The Olympics have provided a view of the varieties of human nature under pressure, more than a view of great athleticism. Feuding speedracers, angry ice dancer partners, injured skaters, hotdogging snowboarders, Bodie, snippy announcers, and some actually spectacular achievements. And Earl should be back on NBC next week.

(The rest of this blog is being typed on Friday night) Went to bed early last night and missed the figure skating, but here it is Friday night and I am watching the Games and trying to keep all the names straight of who was supposed to be Great and the who crashed and burned and who actually shined.

I suppose what was really important on earth today was the Quaeda attack on the main Saudi oil terminal, which failed, but sent oil prices into orbit. In Iraq sunnis and shiites went on a killing rampage yesterday after the golden mosque bombing, but the country is locked down today to let everyone cool off.

The mayor of London was suspended for a month after he called a reporter a concentration camp guard.

Temperature in the midwest today got up to the high 50s--in February.

This is not a great blog tonight. I am just noting what I thought was interesting on Drudge, but some time when I look back on my blogs, I might remember what happened recently. Lots of stuff going on that in the near future may suck us all into History, but trying to absorb it all and learn more details than just headlines can wear you out. Probably someone at any time in human history somewhere has said that about whatever was going during his lifetime.

More next time when I have soaked up more world events and learned more about what has gone on today. Di di mau!

A Sunday in Human History

Is there something in the aether that has made so many humanbeins have a strange day today? Iranian college students are signing up to be suicide bombers. The drivers at the Daytona 500 spent most of the race crashing into one another. The ice dancers at the Olympics were falling down all over the place. American speed skaters Davis and Hedrick are feuding with one another. Bodie got disqualified again yesterday. The ground in DC around the Jefferson Memorial is overrun with Canada geese that are ripping up the grass. (But the Italian cross country ski team, under the leadership of Zorro, won the gold in an exciting race, so something successful actually happened at Turin.) So far tonight in the ice dancing the Russian and American dancers were the only ones not to fall down. The bird flu is thought to have reached England. If they have to kill all their chickens it will a replay of a few years ago when the Brits had to kill all their cattle in a hoof and mouth disease epidemic.

The news and sports is all I have to report tonight. I didn't do anything personal that was interesting. Tomorrow is Presidents' Day, and we have the day off from work, but I have no idea how to celebrate the day. Which president should I select to honor? I like Gerald Ford because he was a fresh spirit after Nixon's dismal aura. JFK was the prez through my high school years, but I have developed some doubts as to his accomplishments. Kennedy's essence was that he was a breathe of fresh air by being fairly Young. Ike had been old, and most of the people in the 50s we were supposed to admire were old; Albert Schweitzer, Adlai Stevenson, Bernard Baruch, Harry Truman, Helen Keller, Eleanor R., Winston Churchill, et al.

This is not a very lengthy blog tonight. What has been going on somewhere else in the world is more interesting than what I have been doing today. You all take care. Di di mau!

Quit Whining or You'll Go Blind

It is 10 below tonight in lovely Des Moines and I am sitting up keeping an eye on my heating system so it does not go defunct in the middle of the night. A guy in Wyoming called KOA in Denver and said it was 25 below where he was. This cold snap is not quite as bad as the awful winter in Iowa in 1856, but it is unenjoyable. Russians supposedly love very cold weather, but I will let them have their little customs and folkways. One time in Nam in '71 the temp fell to 70 and everyone in the Mekong delta was freezing. Make sure your little calves and pigs and parakeets are warm tonight.

Much news today, but a lot of it is covered by Drudge. The old guy who got buckshotted by Cheney put his suit on and held a press conference, and is not mad and seems to be in good shape. CBS last night did a segment on Cheney's custom-made Italian rifle. At least one person on the planet must have said to someone that Lee Oswald also owned an Italian rifle, but so far I have not heard any jokes about that angle of the shooting event. And probably 1800 people were killed in the Phillipines on Leyte when a mudslide wiped out their village.

Disorganized evening this evening in my apartment. Tried to watch some of the Olympic snowboarding, and found a Marx Brothers website that has the lyrics to Lydia the Tattooed Lady. Found a World War I website that had an account I had never known before: the Germans built an electric fence clear across the northern border of Belgium. People fried themselves trying to get through the fence to get into Holland and a Belgian army stuck in Holland could not through the fence to get back into Belgium. Interesting historical account I had never heard of before. Amazing what you can read when browsing websites.

Cartoon riots are going on now in Libya (probably encouraged by Muammar K.) and a mullah in Pakistan has put a million dollar bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist.

Watched a little of Passions this afternoon.Liz confessed to Julian that she is the one who shot him, before he went on the run with Timmy, and Tabitha has put her magic bowl away and is now using a magic laptop, and her way of pounding on the keyboard is very peculiar. And on General Hospital everyone is still sick from Luke's chimp. I haven't checked out Y and R to see if Jack has discovered that Nick has been boffing Phyllis.

This is going to be all for right now. More next time we blog. Stay warm; spring will be here in a few weeks, maybe. Di di mau!

(Di di mau is Vietnamese for Move out fast, or Let's go.)

Whine and Blog and Moan and Groan

The predicted cold weather came in this morning. Buckshot snow and big winds and ice on the streets and slippin' and slidin'. Could have been worse (a New York City type blizzard) but generally miserable, and the mess is due to last for several more days. Not as bad as what the Wermacht went through in front of Moscow in 41-42, but in a couple of weeks March will get here and maybe spring will start emerging, and someday April will arrive.

NewsMax says that the liberals are just waiting for the rich old guy Cheney shot to die. And now the story is that Dick and his entourage had been drinking before the hunt. I don't remember a big press campaign to find out what had really been going on at Greg Normann's place when Clinton fell downstairs and bunged up his leg.

On General Hospital everyone is down with a deadly flu they all got from Luke's chimp. And Tracy has promised God she will become Good and not be a snake anymore. Luke doesn't think she can pull it off.

The Olympics are beginning to heat up. Lots of stuff to watch in the next week. The hot Russian kid is due to skate in a little while. Must watch this one.

This is going to be all for right now. The wind is moaning outside and I have to go to work at 2 a.m. My many fans are demanding that I blog more frequently, but, fans, I have not been Inspired by my muse this week. I know she will appear from her mist when the weather gets more pleasant. Di di mau!

Bloggin Alive

Record setting snowfall in the eastern US.

Fox News this morning did a fast showing of some of the Mohammed cartoons, which were also on a blogspot I saw the other night and forgot to bookmark; the guy with his eyes blanked out with 2 women in burkas behind him, the Arab with a bomb in his turban, and the suicide bombers lined up at the gates of Heaven as Mohammed or the gate keeper saying " we've run out of virgins, " the star and crescent moon in a guy's face. I wish someone showing the cartoons would interpret them so we could know what we are seeing.

(The rest of this blog is being typed on Love Day Fed 14, because I had to leave the blog the other night, and then I got partially sick with the flu which is going around the heartland, and I still have some of it. Sinus plug-up and drainage and a woosiness and total tiredness.)

The Saturday snowfall on the east seaboard dumped 26 inches of snow on the Big Apple--an all-time record. (Wonder how it compares with the blizzard of 1888? ) Airports totally shut down in DC, and about every other metroplex in the east, but at last report things were getting back to the normal routine. It is supposed to be 50 degrees in Des Moines today, with heavy snow and nasty winds tonight. Very clear sky at 3 p.m. as I type.

Iran and everything else has taken a backseat to Cheney spraying a guy with buckshot on a quail hunt in Texas Sunday. Drudge now reports that the old guy has had a mild heart attack. The media has gone nuts over this affair because Cheney waited a day before calling W to tell Him what had happened. Jokes all over the place about Cheyney and Quail and every angle you could think of. More as this goes along.

I watched some of the Olympics last night, but have not been able to get fired up about the thing. Did catch a womens' hockey match between Finland and Switzerland, and the women were very rough to each other. This evening I may watch more stuff and eventually I will fire up and get absorbed in the games. (Later: Bodie messed up and got disqualified from the skiing.)

This will be all for right now. I am going to smear me with Vicks and take a nap. I know you wanted to know that. Di di mau!

It's My Blog and I'll Cry If I Want To

Cold today but tolerable, but for some reason I am very frantic for spring, if though so far we have not had a classic old time winter like the grandfolks used to talk about. I still have a photo the folks sent me in early 1970 of Pa standing beside a snow drift as high as the pickup roof and the brown doggie was standing on top of the snow. At Long Binh at the time the temp was in the high 80s and the noonday sun was a bitch to be out in. (The old Brit colonials were right about the noonday sun.)

The news of the evening I suppose will be the story W revealed about how we had info that the qaeda creeps were planning to crash a plane into the highest building in LA. More in another blog as I find out the full story; have just heard the Cavuto account. And Drudge has a story that Michael Brown may be about to tell hot stuff about how Washington handled the Katrina disaster.

I did not watch the Grammies last night because I was not in the mood to listen to rockers expound their political views.

(This next section is being typed on Friday night because blogger shut down last night.) I spent a lot of this evening sleeping. This seems to have been a slow news day in the world; it wasn't probably, but Drudge does not have a whole lot on it very gripping. More cartoon riots and Mike Brown supposedly was feisty at the congressional hearing he was hailed into. I missed watching the Olympic opening ceremonies. I am having trouble getting worked up for the show this year. Will probably kick in at some time and start watching. I found a website called 7sasha.com which is an Iraqi satire-chatroom site--graphics are clever, with pictures of Timon and Pumba as decorations. What a lot of rambling I am doing. It is a chilly friday night and I do not feel good. Letterman is going to have Martha Stewart on in a little bit. Anyone in the future wanting to use this blogsite to check the historical record may be disappointed because I do not have much Deep to say about the nature of the Universe. That may come up in a future posting. Meanwhile I am taking up space in cyberspace. So, nite! Di di mau!

Let's Blog It Nice and Easy

Hello, Steve. How are you?

Ronald Reagan would have been 95 on his birthday, February 6.

We got Snow early this morning, but it was gone from the roads by afternoon. The temp. is supposed to go down to 8 degrees tonight. I am ready for spring already. Please let it be spring soon.

The Grammys are on CBS tonight and TV Guide and the local newspaper say that it is supposed to be a blockbuster, with hoardes of stars on hand, but I do not really want to see Kanye West so maybe I will watch O'Reilly, or Inked to see what Dizzle is up to. Or read some news websites-which might be the most useful for my mind. (A terrorism news website at homelandsecurityus.com had a news bit the other night that there is info that Iran is going to test its nuke bomb in March.)

I have opinions on the show at Mrs. King's funeral yesterday, but all I should say is that I did like most of what I saw. (Not one of the people who trashed Bush even remembered that he sent troops to Liberia to get Charles Taylor out of power.)

The Des Moines Register (our state Gannett newspaper) has for 2 days been running the thoughts of various Iowa Muslim spokesmen, who have been explaining that Islam "is a religion of Peace." A couple of these fellows today got around to stating that freedom of the press and other Western freedoms are not a part of Islam, and Muslims do not want any of them, because Islam is based on the Sharia, which is a system incompatible with Western values. So much for the freedoms we have developed since the Renaissance. The Register, which falls all over itself to be understanding of diversity is in a pickle trying to be understanding of a world view that wants nothing to do with individual freedoms in a society.

In 1964 the liberal media fell all over itself to explain that when Goldwater said that moderation in the defense of liberty is no vice he was wrong because liberty was a relative thing and was not absolute. Very interesting reading for anyone wanting to dig into the views of liberals during the 64 campaign.

This is going to be all for right now. I have not watched the Grammys because I have become old and what is today's hot music is beyond me. I wouldn't have thought that some time ago, but I am an old Boomer and just do not get these modern things. Di di mau!

Blogger, It's Cold Outside

Baby It's Cold Outside was composed by Frank Loesser, and Esther Williams sang it in Neptune's Daughter with Fernando Lamas, or Red Skelton. OK, it Is cold outside now. Feb has started off cold and windy, right after Phil in Punx and General Lee in Georgia and Polk County Paul in Des Moines were hauled out of their dens to see their shadows. I want more 50 degree January temps, but we may not get that this month. Oh well, that is Nature.

I was disappointed in the Super B yesterday. I thought both teams played like dorks. I liked a few of the commercials, especially the one with the nude truck mudflap girl who rode away in a pickup with Yosemite Sam. More nakedness there than Janet showed a couple of years ago, even if the mudflap girl was metal and in profile. I surfed from the Super to Animal Planet and watched a chunk of the Puppy Bowl. Cute little puppies and a cute concept. Bring the puppies back next year, unless The Bears are going to be winning in the big game on another channel. The Rolling Stones did a good 12 minute show of three of their old songs. Al least we got to see them on TV live and they showed that you can be in your 60s and not be ready to die in five minutes. I Got To See Keith!

I have not been keeping up much with Guiding Light lately because the show is the Harley Hour, and I have not got a great enthusiasm for Harley. I know Beth Ehlers is a good actress and has unconventional beauty, but I want more Reva and Jonathan.

I probably should avoid any comment on the Mohammad cartoons riots, because someone on earth may actually find this blog and accuse me of being a bigot.

Al Lewis, who was Grandpa Munster, among other things he did, died last week at 96, and Zsa Zsa Gabor is 89 today, and Fabian is 63.

I looked at some websites that had stuff about The Munsters and Al Lewis, and everybody who knew "Grandpa" seems to have loved him. He was in the Green party, and his politics were way over on the Left, but he must have been a human dynamo up to the very end. I had forgotten that he was also on Car 54, Where Are You? So, he is now in Heaven with Fred Gwynne.

This is going to be all for right now. I need to see if there is breaking news to keep up with (I split an infinitive); there usually is. Di di mau! It is now 2:10 p.m.

( This is a later note I have edited in: Joe Scarborough tonight did an interview with the editor of the Chicago Tribune on why American newspapers would not print the Mohammed the bomber cartoons. The editor hemmed and hawed and at the end Joe called him a "corporate worm." We will see how the Trib and MSNBC deal with that one.)

Blog Upon A Star; Your Blogs Come True

Catchy title ain't it? I slay me with my creativity. Winter of a sort has come to the heartland today; cold wind blowing, and maybe some snow will fall sometime this weekend.

Lots of news in the Drudge site to ponder. Rush, and the Fox News gang were heavy on "important" editorials in the NYT and the WSJ, but I have not had the chance to get and read them. The Egyptian ferryboat sinking with several hundred dead in the Red Sea was the main news topic this afternoon. Supposedly someone High in the Security system has said that Iran may be faking having nukes, or will not have them for ten years. Need to look into this info. The WSJ does have an article on how the whole world power system would change if Iran did have the things. Supposedly alphabetnejad has said that someday Iran will rule the world. Maybe the lessons of Hubris is not in the Iranian psyche.

ESPN Classics tonight showed a kinoscope of the boxing match in 1951 in which Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta pounded each other for the welterweight crown. Sugar Ray pounded Jake's head into a pulp (but did not knock him off his feet) and won the fight in the 13th round. Brutal fight but exciting to see. Now, I should rent Raging Bull, which I have never seen.

I am going to root for the Seahawks Sunday, because I want to see Seneca Wallace at his best. Actually I am still pouting because The Bears will not be in the game. Next year The Bears will be in the Super--just you wait!

I have lots of news events upon which I could opine (I did not split an infinitive) but my head spins and I get crushed by so many issues. (Wimpy attitude, I know.)

This will be all for right now. More next time. Di di mau!

Blog Me To The Moon

Here we are again, on the night before Groundhog Day, and I should be in bed, but my fans are demanding a blogging, so I must serve my public. Windy and chilly but sunny day today. I found a news bit on Drudge via livescience.com that on Jan. 26 Western Union discontinued sending telegrams forever. No TV news mention of that momentous event, but it is interesting. Carol Channing turned 85 a couple of days ago. The nitwits running Iran keep heating up the rhetoric on dont't mess with us and our nukes; the mess has the image of the clock ticking during the Cuban missle crisis, and the start of World War I. Probably vain hope that the US ruling class can deal with the crisis in a non-partisan political way, but that may be very wishful thinking.

I wish I could opine on world events in a deep way, and tell you all What It All Means, but I am less educated than some bloggers I read, and have a knowledge base which is a lot of info scraps and pieces and memories of how a number of crises were handled decades ago.

I have a sense that somewhere in the background of the current crisis are the Chinese, who may be maneuvering to get the US and the Moslems into a blasting war so at the end China is the big Power in Asia and whereever else and they can get control of Iranian oil for themselves. That is a speculation of me, and I have no documented sources for my ideas.

I wish the Bush family would tell Bill Clinton to move out of their house and stop trying to shmooze his way into the family circle.

I found an lp on sale at a thrift store of songs by Joseph Schmidt from about 1930. Schmidt was an incredible tenor in Germany who could sing like a god (he sounded a lot like Richard Tucker) but was only about 5 feet tall. Being Jewish he ended up in a concentration camp in Switzerland (of all places) and died there of "a heart attack" (under mysterious circumstances in about 1940. If some of the poor souls on American Idol could listen to some of his records they would learn the art of how to sing. Of course they could also listen to Frank, Dean, and Sammy to learn how to sing too.

This is going to be It for tonight. I have spent this blog on a quite high horse, but these are my views on various topics. You take care, and pray for wisdom from our leaders. Di di mau!