Our tradewinds have disappeared for the past few days, and as a result we are seeing a lot of haze from the ongoing eruption at Kilauea on the Big Island.
Case in point, a few minutes ago. That's from the end of my driveway; there are mountains 20 miles beyond the end of that cul-de-sac.
Oh my. We see all the (known) survivors in one place (nice touch to have a Coast Guard P-3 with Barbers Point on the nose be the plane ferrying them back to Honolulu), but how do they all manage to get together?
Jack (who makes it) with Sawyer (who doesn't*) traipsing through the jungle, Kate and Sayid (who both make it) surrounded and led off by the baddies, Hurley (who makes it) with Locke (who doesn't) watching Ben (who makes it, although not as one of the Oceanic Six), all converging on The Orchid.
Meanwhile we've got a radio room or something packed full of C4 on board the ship, which has Sun and Aaron (who make it) along with Desmond and Jin (who don't) on board.
And we have all the people still on the beach waiting for Daniel to come back on the Zodiac and ferry more of them off to the freighter.
It should be quite a climax in two weeks.
*All assumptions about characters not making it subject to the movement of the island and or the whim of the writers. Personally I think some of them survive somehow, somewhere or somewhen.
Mom and I had the same thought yesterday about the children killed in the school collapses as a result of the Chinese earthquake: "How many of those were only children?"
How many parents have lost their only child, and how many are too economically tied to their jobs to have another? I doubt that Chinese employers have embraced the concepts of parental leave, flex-time, or in-house day care.
The endless obsession with process, the horse race, the "math," what they're eating, what they're wearing, what they're playing, runs on and on as if it tells us something truly important about what the citizens want and whether these candidates are giving it to them. Meanwhile we have a war, an energy crisis, global warming, economic dislocation, crumbling infrastructure, fifty million uninsured and huge debt both personal and public among many other things that government must tackle in the next four years due mostly to the massive failure of conservative governance. Apparently, the press feels that whether they wear lapel pins or misremember some event from a decade ago are the best means of finding out what the candidates do about those things. Or maybe they just don't give a damn and are entertaining themselves with high school story lines.
The local used bookstore has a $3 off sale going on at the moment, and I couldn't resist digging through its racks. I really found a winner for $6: Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall 1971. Young's voice was at its peak back then, and it's shown to its best advantage here on this 17-song acoustic performance. It's just Neil on stage with guitar or piano, and it's beautiful. The recording quality is spectacular; from the technical point of view it might be the best live album I own. Many of the songs were brand-new, and you have to be impressed with the hometown Canadian audience; you can't hear anyone squalling for familiar material, even though ten of these songs hadn't yet been released (five of them showed up on Harvest). This is part of Young's new Archives project, and the CD was released just last year.
Track list:
1. On The Way Home
2. Tell Me Why
3. Old Man
4. Journey Through The Past
5. Helpless
6. Love In Mind
7. A Man Needs A Maid/Heart of Gold Suite
8. Cowgirl In The Sand
9. Don't Let It Bring You Down
10. There's a World
11. Bad Fog Of Loneliness
12. The Needle And The Damage Done
13. Ohio
14. See The Sky About To Rain
15. Down By The River
16. Dance Dance Dance
17. I Am A Child
Here's a question for the Republican fearmongers: How is it that Barack Obama can attend a church presided over by the Christian minister Jeremiah Wright for twenty years, a relationship you fussed over endlessly for a couple of weeks last month, and yet your underground e-mail rumor-spreaders can still claim he's a Muslim?
Of all the sanctimonious bastards who debased themselves and their offices in the Clinton impeachment war, Bob Barr was one of the worst.
That said, I imagine that his announcement today that he's running for President as a Libertarian probably gives the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign a bad case of heartburn.
Good.
Side note: If you wanted to sabotage a Libertarian's chances of winning an election, would filing and running as a Libertine be effective?
If you're a mom I hope you ate as well as mine did. My sister brought over a batch of Eggs Benedict, banana pancakes, and strawberry pie, and we all pigged out while watching the Dodgers game on the tube.
Because the milk of human kindness hasn't entirely curdled in my veins, I wish Jenna Bush and her new husband all the best as they celebrate their wedding today.
It seems impossible, but the military men who hold power in Myanmar have confiscated aid meant for the country's people.
To date, Myanmar has allowed 11 airborne deliveries of aid, which experts say is a fraction of the relief needed if the scale of the disaster is even close to what the Burmese government has claimed. And much of that has come from the United Nations World Food Program, which said on Friday that the aid it had delivered — and intended to distribute to hard-hit regions along the coast — had been seized. “All the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program in Bangkok.
I recently read David Maraniss's wonderful biography of Roberto Clemente, who died in a plane crash while trying to get aid to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. One of the reasons he decided to personally ferry the goods to that country was that he'd been told that Somoza's government was diverting the aid coming in to its supporters, and he thought that his stature in Latin America was such that the dictator wouldn't dare interfere if he went along.
Jeepers. ABC's episode title was "Cabin Fever," but I'd have called it "What Child is This." Locke is observed from his days in an incubator by some creepy guy who later turns up recruiting for a "school" when Locke reaches six or seven, and then when they find the cabin Ben tells him it's now his time?
Then Jack's Dad shows up in the cabin (with Claire!) and apparently tells him to move the island.
I'm reminded of Cosby's Noah skit:
Noah
Yeah? I want you to build an ark.
Also, if I end up having to root for Ben I'm gonna be annoyed.
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Even as screwed up as HawaiianTel has been after its purchase by the Carlyle Group, I doubt that they'd receive their customer service mail at Yahoo. And if you're trying to get something out of me, the United Bank of Africa is probably not the best mail address to use.
I attempted to watch the Dodgers-Mets game yesterday, a game which featured a steal of home by the Mets' 42-year-old Moises Alou and an inside-the-park home run by the Dodgers' 22-year-old Blake DeWitt. Unfortunately, I couldn't see either event.
Oceanic Cable has two Fox Sports channels as part of its basic package: Fox Sports West and Fox Prime Ticket. Angels' baseball games are on FSN (channel 226) and Dodgers' games on FSNPT (channel 228). Yesterday the cable company fouled up big time: at 4:00pm I tuned in to FSNPT to see the start of the Dodgers game and instead saw the 7th inning of the Royals-Angels game from Fox Kansas City. Weird, I thought, so I switched to FSNW and got -- the Royals-Angels game. On the FSNKC feed I got the Royals' broadcasters; on the FSNW feed I got the Angels' broadcasters.
Now that was disconcerting.
And it didn't get corrected, at least through 10:00pm last night. This morning it has the correct feed again.
We're headed down to the dentist to see whether the teeth which had root canals recently should be protected with fillings or crowns. The morbid question then arose: what happens to the gold resulting from melting crowns upon cremation? I picture funeral directors pouring ash through sieves; the 21st-century equivalent of prospecting by panning.
If regular old burial is chosen, I suggested, 3 million years from now when archaeologists find and excavate Bush-era cemeteries they'll conclude that ours was a very affluent society, assuming gold retains its intrinsic value.
Man, these clowns have no conscience. Back in March the Boston Globe reported that KBR was avoiding paying Social Security and Medicare taxes by creating shell companies offshore. Now the Globe reports that another defense contractor, MPRI, is doing the same thing.
Apparently, this is just fine with the lobbying group which represents government contractors:
But the business community has begun to defend the practice.
"There is nothing wrong with tax avoidance, particularly for work that is done outside the United States," said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, a trade association of companies that perform government work.
Well, no, Mr. Chvotkin, except when the firm in question deliberately sets up a shell company offshore for the sole purpose of avoiding those taxes.
In 2004, MPRI joined with KBR and two other federal contractors to form Civilian Police International, a joint venture that successfully bid on a $1.6 billion State Department contract to deploy US peacekeepers around the world.
Three months after winning the contract, MPRI formed CPI Police Services Ltd. in the Cayman Islands. More than 200 Americans, mostly retired police officers, work in Kosovo and Afghanistan in full-time posts under the State Department contract, according to State Department officials.
After using an Amazon gift certificate to acquire The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac I have concluded that I've been vastly underrating Stevie Nicks as a songwriter.
One of the nice things about getting older is that all your favorite musical acts or their labels have issued "Greatest Hits" compilations, which is useful if you never bought their entire catalogue the first time around. Sure you miss some wonderful album tracks, but you can always go back and buy them one at a time from iTunes if you're so inclined.
When Jack’s health is seriously compromised, Kate and Juliet must learn to work together in order to save him and something goes wrong as Sawyer, Claire, Aaron and Miles continue their trek away from Locke’s camp and back to the beach.
Claire disappears, leaving Aaron behind? What time period is the Kate/Jack flash-forward? Before or after his suicide attempt on the bridge? Jack reminds Kate that Sawyer "chose" to stay on the island?
Five years ago, 139 American troops had died in Iraq. Now that number is 4,064. Five years ago, 542 American troops had been wounded in Iraq. Now that number is 29,395.
Five years ago, the national debt was $6.5 trillion. Now it's $9.3 trillion. Five years ago, your average gallon of gas cost $1.44. Now it costs $3.57. Five years ago, Bush's job-approval rating was at 70 percent. Now it's at 28.
Quite a legacy you've got there, Shrub. And I don't think your hagiographic library at SMU is going to fool too many people.