You know what sucks about this whole “working” thing? Well apparently it comes with “responsibility” and “action items”. People seem to actually expect “results” from me and others; whereas in the Unemployment Era, truth be told, Hawkeye didn’t really care if I watched or not, or whether I brushed my teeth after my breakfast nachos.
I mean sure the money’s nice, but what of the slothfulness, what of the laziness?!
Well, we’re definitely in it for the long haul… or at least until the next election. President Bush made the rather definitive statement that “The enemy in Iraq believes America will run … America will never run.“
This despite the fact, of course, that casualties after hostilities were declared over have topped the number of deaths during the war. I don’t know, that seems pretty hostile to me. If the Bush-led invasion insists on continuing to spend our tax dollars on a losing proposition, at least admit that the war ain’t over. Otherwise, Joe 6-pack will feel like he’s paying for… for what? No Saddam, no WMD… no even WmD’s (Weapons of minor Destruction), and no mention of Osama bin Laden since who even knows when. It’s gotten to the point where it’s hard to even remember what we are doing there in the first place. With no clear link to 9/11, it has nothing to do with that. With gas prices still unreasonably high, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with that. It’s as if I’d just blathered on for 45 minutes, you looked at me slowly blinking, and said, “I’m sorry, what was the question?”
But I digress. Actually, I don’t… I would have to have some main topic to be digressing from; which I don’t. So to continue: In that same article referenced above, Bush was quoted as saying (to the cheers of the assembly):
Freedom is not America’s gift to the world … freedom is the Almighty’s gift to everybody who lives in this world.
Nice soundbite.
Bush may be interested to know, however, that there are only two native Christians in all of Iraq… maybe three tops. He may not be wanting to throw around the Almighty’s name so much when justifying his killings, as I would suppose that would be fairly insulting to those followers of Islam.
Bush makes me sad.
At any rate, curiosity compels me to ask those of you on the Right… or even those of you on the Left who support the war… to let me know what your thoughts are considering the current state of affairs. An average of 3 or 4 Americans (or our Allies) seem to die every day in Iraq; a level of attrition that may not be all that impressive statistically, but I would assume there are some now childless mothers and fathers that would argue differently. There are no WMD’s. There have been few significant gains in the hunt for Osama or Saddam. There has been no perceptible drop in acts of terrorism (sure we’re catching more terrorists, but then terrorism has also risen on account of our dropping unprovoked bombs on people’s heads. It’s all relative).
So how do you war-supporters feel? Do you still back the war? Do you back the war for different reasons? Do you concede that we maybe shouldn’t have done this but still support it now that we’re knee-deep in it? Have you switched sides all together? Inquiring minds want to know..
For those of you who have arrived here while searching for Chuck Henry, you’ve come to the wrong right place.
This is, indeed, a shrine to Chuck.
As you know, C-dog is the greatest newscaster of our time, routinely risking life and limb to bring you exotic dishes from around the world. He also does some sort of live reporting from time to time. I think, I’m not real sure. It’s really Travel Cafe that we here in L.A. know him best for.
Speaking of live reporting, rest assured Chuck is not dead… despite standing, burning, in the middle of California’s greatest disaster, blithely asking ashes and burned houses how they feel about being destroyed.
What’s it like, having been a mighty pine for over 50 years, to now be reduced to ash?
…
Fascinating, our prayers are with you.
Imminent death does not, apparently, perturb Chuck in the least; as his general modus operandi is to push, and then break through, the envelope of personal safety, bravely endangering his crew’s lives to follow him into the worst environments. “Do you think my perfect hair would ignite better if I was actually standing in that fireball, or is it cool if I just let my jacket burn where I am?” he’s been heard to say.
It might, at this juncture, be a good idea to mention that, should any of you ever be lucky enough to actually come in contact with Chuck Henry, you might suggest that actually perishing on camera would easily triple his already astounding ratings… and get more viewers for Travel Cafe.
The End is Near
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A haunting look into the future
(via jenguin)
I don’t think I ever mentioned it, but ADG and I got a cat together. I know, I know, embarrassing, right?
Speaking of embarrassing I just realized that… wait, lemme check… yep, I have a picture of said cat on my cam link to the left; and have had said link since September. I had put it there to show some friend’s of ADG’s what our fuzzy-wuzzy-widdle-baby looked like, and I apprently liked it so much that I’ve left it for over a month. That means that to many new and returning visitors, I’m “that guy at Floorpie… you know, the one with the cat.” (shakes head sadly)
Goodbye masculinity, I barely knew ye.
At any rate, ADG and I have a cat.
I had cats before growing up, but never one with as interesting and effective way of waking me up in the middle of the night (which, as an insomniac, is a pretty easy thing to do, but you will find the creatvity admirable as I do). The method is this:
1. Walk up body to chest.
2. Purr loudly
3. Place cat-face so nose is mere millimeters from human-face
4. Purr loudly
5. Sneeze incredibly wetly for an animal of small size, covering human-face completely while simultaneously startling human to full wakefulness.
6. Appear amused
And now, ladeez, I have written a post about cats. I am such a pimp.
At 12 noon today the sky was 6 o’clock orange and the sun provided no warmth. The “sun”, in fact, was really only a little more than vague dark-orange smudge on an otherwise hazy canvas.
Ash?
Check
Coughing?
Check
Irritated eyes?
Check
And I’m not even that close. If you’re in SoCal right now, it’s all about the fires: who you know who’s been evacuated, personal accounts of flames seen, general fire dismay, agreements on locations, etc, etc. What else could there be to talk about?
Well, there is one thing.
The NBA season starts tonight with a bunch of teams you don’t care about, plus the Los Angeles Lakers playing the Dallas Mavericks.
In what should have been akin to the 1985 Lakers Drive-to-Five season, when Kareem and Magic overcame the prior year’s championship defeat to go on and win 4 games to 2, is becoming a circus of bickering, and an overstacked roster that threatens to bite us (yes, I said us) in the end.
Don’t get me wrong, I was all for Payton and (less so) Malone joining the team. We would be unstoppable. But, what must they be thinking now? Probably what we’re all thinking, actually: Shaq is a huge 340 pound baby, and Kobe is a conflicted artist.
Does the Diesel really need to be going around telling one of the league’s most talented players how to play his game, all while whining “Mine! Mine! Mine!” when talking about the team? He does not.
Does Michael Jordan’s heir-apparent really need to sulk and jab back, distancing himself from his team and his fans? He does not.
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Just as an aside, I’m completely with Kobe on this one. Did Kobe ever once publicly criticize Shaq last year when he was overweight and continually riding the pine with his big toe issues? (he didn’t) And where, really, does Shaq get off advising the Lakers’s assist leader (as in, nearly twice as many as Shaq per game) to pass more? You big baby.
“But will we win?”, the ladeez keeping asking me.
Of course we will, baby, don’t even worry about it.
PS The lights in the parking lot came on at 2:15 today. Sky darkened due to smoke.
It was a hazy weekend in the SoCal area, making just breathing difficult from the coast to the inland areas. There is a thin layer of soot on everything… which reminds me of when my godparents sent me pictures of their backyard one year.
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The envelope came filled with half a dozen pictures and a ziploc bag full of gray. The pictures showed different views of their house and backyard with everything uniformally buried in a layer of gray. Barbecue with a layer of gray on it. Bushes, topped with gray. Gray grass, gray trees, gray fence, gray gray. Everything had been covered in gray from the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, some 160 miles away. Even the air seemed gray.
The wildfires are not exactly like that, of course, but the fires’ destruction of human structures and people has been worse in many ways; and I’m certainly choking like a volcano went off.
Not to mention that this particule natural disaster, is looking to not be natural at all, but man-made. Which makes it all the more horrible.
Speaking of which, big ups to local newscaster Chuck Henry and his balls of steel, for asking a victim what he feels about the whole fire thing, and the possibility of arson, while his house is still burning in the background.
At this moment, in the bathroom, in one stall, there are 6 toilet paper rolls in various states of use. They are stacked on the back of the toilet tank, they are sitting next to the default two, they are everywhere. I find it odd.
I drove in to a blood-red sun this morning. The reason being, you see, that SoCal is on fire.
I hear cheers from the NoCals.
Fires are a fairly regular event here in SoCal, especially with all of the mental giants out in the wilderness who think it would be funny to spark off a couple of thousand acres.
They do make for amazing sunrises, though.
Fires are one of those strange phenomenon that knock on your conscience despite their distance from you. You hear of an earthquake in Bakersfield, and you say to yourself, “Ah, hmm, that’s interesting, what else is on?” and really give it nary a second thought. This particular rash of fires is threatening homes of people I don’t know, in places I don’t frequent; but despite the impersonal distance, fire makes it’s presence known.
>There is smoke everywhere. There are dry, red eyes everywhere. There are occasional coughs everywhere. There are conversations everywhere… conversations with things like, “…haven’t seen it like that since…”, and “…saw the mountains glowing…”, and “I live in a place just like…”, and on and on with personal stories and anecdotes of all things burning. It’s eerie.
More importantly, it’s disappointing. Hopefully, no lives will be lost; but ways of life will be, and memories, and keepsakes, and those things that indicate and form lives; and all because of the hubris of a few selfish idiots.
I have a recurring “fantasy” where my house is on fire, and I try and think of what to save, and in what order. People come first, of course, followed by other living, breathing things, but what then? Invariably, the photos albums come to mind. Then my clothes for practical reasons. Then high-ticket items that I use a lot like my bike, cameras, and Palms. Geekily, I think of my computer… at least the CPU, I have all my recipes finances in there. “Speaking of finances,” I think to myself, “I should grab my file cabinet with all of the important papers that prove my existence.” After all of that, things start to get heavy, and suddenly unnecessary. My couch? I don’t need my couch in my new house-less life. My bed? Second verse, same as the first. What else then, is necessary? Books would be nice, and I’ll grab as many as I can carry, but by now the smoke is choking me, and I need to save my life while I still have it…
