After Ike

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

Wet Thursday Night on 9-11

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

Bad Attitude Friday Night

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

Nice Wednesday Night at Home

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

Wild Friday in the World

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

Havin a Heat Wave

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

Early Saturday A.M.

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

Nature Rules Our Lives

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

Don't Know Why Stormy Weather

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

Night after the Sunday Night Storm

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

Dreary Sunday Night

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

Summer Monday Night

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

the rain is over the rain is over

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

After the Deluge

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

Tiny Little Bit of Betterness

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

Both Good and Bad News

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

Very Unhappy Stuff

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

One Weekend in June

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

Rage Rage O Summer Winds

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

June Summer Evening in the Heartland

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