I arrived in Kansas City at 9:00 p.m. after having spent more time on the runway than in the air. American Airlines did a piss poor job. Hopefully I will have time to air my grievances tomorrow after work. Nighty-nite.
Are we still here yet?
It is a rare Sunday that I blog. Not that anyone cares, but I like to lay my explanations, or rationalizations if you will, all out there so that I can see them. That is why I don’t cringe at editing after I have published something. If I didn’t have to go through a major to do, I would probably print out my blog before I publish. Of course, paper can get expensive.
I did want to say that I am still here despite all the hype generated by the media over one man who spent too much time working as a civil engineer. Harold Camping, the 89-year-old retired engineer, used selected Bible passages and all the numbers left floating around in his head after a fun career of engineering to predict that May 21, 2011, would be the “Rapture.” That rapture did not take place except perhaps somewhere that the excellent recording of the same name released in 1981 by the group Blondie probably played. Wikipedia describes the song “Rapture” (Warning: Video preceded by a commercial, but worth waiting for especially the great sax and guitar) as a combination “New Wave pop, funk, jazz and rap music, with the rap section forming an extended coda.” And while I don’t care much for rap, I think this song rocks!
Whether it be rapture (the Biblical event, not the Blondie song), the End Times, the Second Coming, Judgment Day, or the Seven Seals whether opened by the Lion of Judah or subsequent to the second coming of Vernon Howell a.k.a., David Koresh, all are subject to interpretation and such dilly-dallying as did by Camping can lead to what many Christians see as “False Prophecy.” I suppose the most comforting fact that rapture did not occur Saturday, other than it didn’t take place, is that most folks of most faiths thought Camping was off the mark if not off his rocker. One Website even offers a free timer one can use as a computer widget that lists the days, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds since Camping’s last false prophecy.
Still, one must wonder if this whole End Times things went through the minds of those who experienced strong natural events Saturday such as a 6.1 earthquake off New Zealand, a 3.6 in San Francisco, the eruption of Iceland’s busiest volcano and a tornado in Kansas? Only from the tornado, of those nature-driven events, were casualties produced including a death and almost two dozen homes damaged.
Speaking of Kansas, it’s back to Kansas City for me tomorrow on business. This is Kansas City, Mo., of which I speak. If a little free time comes up perhaps I will catch a cab to take me over to the Kansas side just to say I have been to Kansas. When I last visited KC, it was snowing like we were in the northern climates instead of the extreme central continental U.S. I didn’t get to Kansas. As a matter of fact, I only traveled a block from my hotel the whole time other than the 20-minute trip to and from the airport. I did see Betty White at my hotel though. That was cool.
Scattered thunderstorms are forecast tomorrow for the KC area. That means two things. First, the possibility of delays but hopefully not cancellations. The second is the thunderstorms themselves. I could drive, of course, it would be a 14-hour trip. I definitely would need a stop for a night and continue on the next day. But that would be an extreme alternative.
Just go with the flow is all I can do. I’m pretty well packed and ready to go. Also, I’m here.
Don’t give a hoot, reboot!
It just doesn’t pay to write anything at the end of work day when one minute after the next turns to s**t. Of course, these days, it doesn’t pay me to write anything period. I can fix the latter or someone can help me, but the former is not always as easy to repair, if at all. I hate to say to be trite and try to avoid lingo, but rebooting seems like a good option.
I have fixed more computers by restarting them than all the tech support people and computer repair folks I have encountered ever helped me try to get a machine up and running properly. For those who, for whatever reason, don’t follow me perhaps because of chronology I liken it to the old-time notion of fixing things by taking a hammer to a piece of machinery and knocking the living hell of out of it.
These days everything is so fragile, of course, so you normally wouldn’t want to do that to a box of plastic and tiny integrated circuits which cost thousands of dollars and store who knows how many megabytes of your life on it, even though it might temporarily make you feel better.
Thus, I’ll be pressing restart sometime later tonight and hope the damn thing works in the morning.
Sensible for sensibilities or not. The prez makes another good call.
Should he or shouldn’t he? I speak of whether pictures of the dead version of Osama bin Laden be shown or not to the American people and all the terrorists who supported him. The president has already answered that, unless he comes back several years later and does a repeat of what he did with his own birth certificate, I think that question has been asked and answered.
Obama says the pictures won’t be shown and supposedly that is that. He has had agreement with bipartisan congressional members, a select few, who saw the photos during a briefing. Either that or those members deferred to Obama.
Like practically all other classified material, those pictures of the al Quida member will likely be shown at some time. It may be in a few years or perhaps in 20-30 years. But I am satisfied.
Having worked in the newspaper business I have observed first hand that Americans have a schizoprhenic view when it comes to seeing gory things in the newspaper or TV. I was once on the scene in Central Texas after a boy in his early teens went missing in the water while swimming. The boy had been missing for at least an hour when I walked toward the edge of the creek in which the child disappeared. At the same time a friend of the boy’s family who was at the creek when the boy went under water also walked near the edge of the water near me. Suddenly, this woman let out an ungodly scream. She glanced into the water and could clearly see as could I the boy floating underneath, tangled up into a branch protruding from the water.
Some paramedics were on the scene and they quickly scooped up the boy and began giving him CPR. I don’t know whether the actions by the medics were a reflex or just meant to take the mind off of what every one had seen. This child had been in the water for more than an hour. The water temperature was not especially cool as this was a mild April day, so hypothermic effects weren’t likely to contribute to the boy’s survival. Nonetheless, the medics’ actions were for naught.
One of our photographers snapped what I believed was a fantastic photo of the paramedics as they were rushing the boy to the ambulance after having pulled him out of the water. I saw a a proof of the photo and later the shot, and I had to say I was proud to have my story with my byline under the great action photo. But many, many readers of the paper did not like the picture. Those outraged called the paper the next morning, bitching out anyone who dared answering the phone. Finally, the publisher relented and issued an apology.
The picture of what to me, who had been a trained emergency medical technician for more than a decade, was an obviously dead child didn’t seem to be particularly gruesome. I’ve seen more than my fair share of dead folks who met an untimely end. Some of those scenes were gruesome. Now, I watch TV shows and some of my favorites such as “NCIS” have fake scene of extremely gruesome deaths. I guess that it’s good that people draw their own lines at what is real and what is “in the can,” so to speak.
My point is that my sensibilities are different that those of other people. I grimace at some of the images on NCIS and I feel that to be a healthy reaction on my part. I feel a whole lot of Americans may just as soon not make their own determination as to whether OBL went to meet his 72 virgins who doused him with a very volatile liquid.
In short, I don’t care that Obama has decided to not release the photos showing Osama bin Laden was dead. As far as I am concerned, he is toast. Let me say it for Gee Dubya: “Mission Accomplished.”
Our queens will go to the YMCA, the YMCA …
There is no escape. You will watch the wedding and all the hoopla surrounding the wedding nuptials of the future king and queen of England and you will like it!
Well, not exactly.
I could care less that the Duke Duke Duke Duke of Earl is getting married. Actually he isn’t the Duke of Earl. He’s the Prince of Whales, I mean Wales. He could be a duke after he is married to Catherine “Don’t Call Me Kate” Middleton on Friday, perhaps the Duke of Windsor or Duke of Avondale or Duke of Clarence. Yeah, Clarence. I s**t you not.
Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for William and Kate. Marriage can be a good thing, especially if you will someday be king. A king needs a queen, right? Well, not exactly.
The British are getting a holiday out of it. Who knows what else? Millions of dollars are being spent on security. What’re you going to do, huh? You got to protect your future king and queen. And current queen and prince consort. Why isn’t Phillip King? He couldn’t pass the physical. Just joking, I think it’s because a king can marry and his wife is queen in Britain but a queen’s husband can’t be king just because he married a queen. Make sense? It’s all that inbreeding. Really, bad grammar. Not the Queen’s, nor the King’s, English. Sorry. I only took two semesters of Spanish. Nevertheless, I’m sure someone will make some money out of the wedding.
What the fascination Americans have with British royalty I’m not sure. Perhaps we could spend millions of dollars for a family to dress up in quaint costumes and be ultra-socially correct. Sounds like The Village People to me. Well, at least the costume part of it.