Apparently the current “controversy” revolves around whether a politician may have fired a handful of political appointees for reasons that may have been political.
Is this really the most important thing we have to worry about in the world right now?
Bush himself said it best: “You know you’ve botched it when people sympathize with lawyers.”
I ate at a preppy Latin chain restaurant this evening.
Never mind which one.
A child in a stroller,
and his marginally older brother,
had settled into a booth
waiting for Mom and Dad to bring their food.
Between the register and the table,
Mom and Dad decided it was a nice evening
to eat outdoors on the patio.
Stroller-son, however, had already staked his homestead
and was not “down” with the concept of moving.
As children will,
he publicized his displeasure
with a single, temple-jarring howl of wild abandon.
(No one actually looked at him of course. That would have been rude.)
Then he wound down.
Silence ensued.
A quick upward jab of the thumbs reseated my fillings,
and I knew in my spine the meaning of “pregnant pause”:
Was the child finished? Exhausted already?
Or was he just reaching down into himself,
reloading with magnum rounds,
preparing himself for the short, one-note aria
that would stall the soda machine
and set off the car alarms in the nearer rows?
We waited in that golden span of quiet, strangers huddled in the eye of a hurricane.
The tension grew with every moment.
Time seemed to stop. Stronger men than I were already weeping with fear.
Then, an unexpected Deus ex Machina:
the door thumped closed.
We knew without looking that the child was on the other side,
and our cowering flipped instantly to bravado
knowing as we did that we were now safely beyond the child’s blast radius:
“What-evah. Talk to the hand.”
Original idea published on the Shelley Berman site, May 4, 2004.
If the global warming fringe
is so certain
of the scientific validity of its position,
why oh why
is it already resorting
to televising propoganda
with no content
save that which is designed only
to tweak the emotions?
I can’t write haiku.
The pattern is beyond me.
I just can’t grasp it.
So now gas is just about at $3 a gallon. I trust no one is shocked.
And how have we reacted to this impending crisis?
Well, let’s see. Chrysler and GM have had talks about co-producing a vehicle.
A highly efficient hybrid?
A stripped-down economy model?
Nope. Another SUV. Just what we need.
Locally, we’re doing no better. Gridlock is still wasting tremendous amounts of fuel unnecessarily.
On Tuesday, a mere ten percent of the Gainesville population voted to keep the incumbent city commissioners, based on their campaign promises to Do Something About The Traffic Problems Real Soon Now.
Since only eleven percent *voted*, unfortunately, that means the incumbents won in a landslide. Or, actually, more of a gravel dribble.
And unless my eyes deceive me, we’ve started addressing the issues caused by an over-capacity, badly broken traffic system by… drum roll please… increased traffic enforcement.
This is sort of like treating a cancer patient by slapping them until they apologize.
Clearly, of course, the frustration felt by people forced to island-hop between red lights on major thoroughfares isn’t the fault of the traffic planners. It’s some vague group of wandering gypsies known as “red-light runners”. And they must be stopped!
And what a chance to enhance revenue, to pay for all the additional officers driving around in big heavy cars while gas is $3 a gallon.
Did I mention that gas is $3 a gallon?
Does anyone think it’s going to stop there?
It’s time to stop treating these issues as though they were some sort of game. Do something, anything, right now. Put the low-impact signals into blink mode. Tweak a few more timings for better accuracy (Archer Road and 13th, anyone?) Encourage businesses to stagger their hours and their shifts. Research *real* alternatives for mass transit.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t approve any more development until we can handle the people we already have.
The Florida NPC site has posted the 2007 bodybuilding contest schedule.
I’m still incorporating the data into the searchable schedule on my site, but I did go ahead and post the list of contests I plan to attend this year.
I’ve gone from 13 last year to 10 planned this year, with three of those ten noted as tentative.
Two are tagged for distance, and the third is the Gainesville show, which wasn’t listed in the calendar. I’m following up to see if that was an oversight.
In any case, I’m quite happy with the planned itenerary thus far– I think it’s much more manageable than in years past.
Update: The Gainesville show is tentative for this year. More as I find out.
Oh, here we go again.
Daylight savings time, that aberration of an idea whose usefulness expired halfway through the last century, has actually been *expanded* by some six weeks.
Nothing can justify the brainwhack this causes to all Americans. Sleep patterns average about two hours. Changing the clock by half that is about the worst option one could imagine.
Furthermore, from a computer security standpoint, the change extends an already potentially dangerous race condition from a few hours to several weeks.
But if we’re resigned to doing this, then let’s be smart about it.
Let’s adopt a program whereby the clocks are changed every month by ten minutes in the appropriate direction.
That would maximize the (unsubstantiated assertions of) safety and energy conservation benefits and minimize the disruptive impact on the population at large.
Of course we’ll have to replace the “Spring forward, Fall back” mnemonic, but it was pretty moronic anyway. Admit it, you almost wanted to add a “Hyuck hyuck” at the end every time you said it.