Absurd Flu Strikes Again

The absurd flu strikes again.

Concern about Larry Craig, a toe-tapping wide-stanced congressman from Idaho, Iowa or Ohio (commentators and pundits cannot be sure which state he owns) steals print and internet headlines as well as TV and YouTube screens.

While people watch and discuss this sexadillo for hour after hour, our own B-52's from Minot, ND fly over several states with nuclear warheads…and few news agencies cover it. Thank you, Grand Forks Herald for the report...

Surely, this is a mythstery. How can it happen and why is there so little outrage?

It's possible we'll end humankind by our own mistake from hell.



King of Grim, Fractal created in Apophysis

Subprime and Greed

What were they thinking?

Where were the heads of the lenders who were making huge mortgage loans to unqualified buyers under the clever marketing tool of creative financing? While they pocketed big bucks, I watched interviews (this was several years ago) with consumers who were nonchalant about what would happen when they needed to pay more than a minimum amount of interest when required to pick up the loan principal that waited in the trap around the corner. Most of them, when asked how they'd be able to pull this off, replied they didn't think they would be able to pull it off. But in the meantime, they'd live the rich and famous lifestyle and Peter take the hind. Only a few of them didn't appear to understand what was ahead for them - contrary to what GWB claims.

So now. The subprime companies who invented this bubble of ignorance and greed are being bailed out by the Feds - yes the taxpayers' Feds - much like the clean up after the S&L fallout.

Where were they? Those people concerned with their own bucks? Those people with no concern for those who would end up picking up the pieces? If I could see this, why couldn't the smart heads, the leaders, the professed economical advisers see the obvious?

If the money changers saw the outcome and continued to stay the course, what does that say about leaders and business people?

Titanium Hips and Auto Repair

My previous auto mechanic worked for several months off and on and replaced some pricey parts only to find the problem was still active. Eventually when I was down to my last credit card, he shook his head and said, 'I hate to give up, but I have no idea where to go now.' I mentally patted myself on the back when I refrained from giving him an idea.

Next, I said to a new mechanic, 'It must be hard working on cars with all this new technology.' He replied, 'This car is far too old to have new technology.'
That repair, actually two or so, consumed my last card.

Then, the car radio antenna remained up when it should go down/off and a smart grandson disconnected it before it burned down both car and garage. Maybe I should have just let it blow. However...

What I'm looking for now is a radio person. A radio person with a penchant for dealing with old technology because I know now that I'm not as current as I thought half a dozen plastic cards back.

And, I wonder if I could end up with an old car overflowing with new technology. Is that like replacing old hip joints with titanium? Or is it simply a prayer that both my car and my teeth will outlast my breath and that there will always be one more plastic card?

Hats off to repair people everywhere!

Earthquakes Swarm

Yellowstone Park changes constantly. The earthquake that formed Hebgen Lake was felt in the Coeur d'Alene area on August 17, 1959. Several family friends lost their lives there. One of the survivors wrote an incredible book detailing the horrors of that night.

Massive land shifts occurred and I've often wondered why that was the last one that rumbled through here. The first time I crossed the Park after that 1959 earthquake, it seemed the earth tilted like a supered highway and gave me the feeling of passing through a giant vortex. Bubbling pots of mud and spitting hills of steam reveal how much lies hidden beneath the surface.

Photos and more information available here

Political Anime

tanks lug across the sand
tugging boys and girls in camo
bait for bombs and fire devices

newly defined evil hoards
the screen, deciders politicize
a stateside campus loss

remotes in casual hands
click the scene, surf to ugly betty
nodding heads return to sand

Monologue vs Dialogue

Free speech demands that each of us can spout any amount of rancor, pith and ugliness but it doesn't preclude that a price can be extracted at some point.

It's hard to believe the uproar that followed a shock jock's bomb tossed at a femme basketball team. Suddenly that sort of stupid attack registers as surprise or racist. It's also a little more than sexist. This was no rare occurrence and unless humanity changes, it will continue.

There's an us vs. them mentality that disguises itself as dialogue. Listening carefully, at least as long as the stomach can stand it, reveals that dialogue is no more than a shouting match. TV, music, comedy chambers, blogs and street corners are full of hate and righteous opinion. The loudest voice calls attention and even when it's temporarily silenced, the rage continues.

I wish that hot air and accusation could be turned into something more positive - into something that might help us see that inside each of us is a nice person trying to find his way.

We've come a long way but unless we get a grip, that journey may have brought us near the end of the road.

iRobot and Friendly Robotics

Reluctant to count myself as a lazy femme, the initial decision to purchase iRobot’s RoomBa to vacuum seemed hedonistic but when it vacuums under the couch, treadmill and bed, it’s worth its weight in gold and earns the badge of necessity. I watch and lift my feet off the floor (I learned that from others in an earlier life) when it passes by.

The low pile of the carpet in my home renders the robot so efficient, I can’t resist shouting ‘good job’ as it trundles about earning its keep. When I grudgingly haul the upright vacuum out of the closet to do a ‘deep cleaning’, there aren’t enough leftovers to dust a bag.

DirtDog, the newest addition to my iRobot’s product line, is a garage-cleaning yellow machine which doubles as a patio vacuum while promising not to fall in the pool or suck up sleeping bodies. iRobot has a Scooba for kitchen floors but its twelve-inch diameter is too large for my wee kitchen.

Friendly Robotics makes a lawn mower. I’m trying to justify this for my lawn which is about two times larger than my kid-size kitchen. While I’m waiting for this justification to take place, I dream of the day when iRobot invents iDustBa, iPaintBa, iCookBa, iMassageBa, iLaunderBa.

Maybe I’ll live long enough to become a smiling lay-about.

In a more serious vein, I’d like to add that iRobot also makes robots for military uses to help ours in other parts of the world which is something I’d love to do, but can’t. Check their site - it’s incredibly enlightening.



iHeart*iRobot - mangled fractal

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The House That Card Wrought

When there was a maroon who held a card close to his chest and flashed red herrings to confuse the beholders, the foundation of the land of theocracy resembled one built on sand.

The maroon oathed to become a uniter but his keys stuck and he divided into threes and pieces. A top card helped him keep everything under moving shells and sometimes mortars until it looked like a magician couldn't pull a hat from any cat.

A great snafu emerged when a mouth caught onto a biggest lie and began to threaten to turn back the clock if truth didn't float. The first maroon and the second maroon and no few others bet that if they played fifty-two pickup, the joker would get lost in the game and the joes wouldn't have a clue which deck held the facts.

Huge numbers of joes shouted disenchantment until the maroon (wannabe king) tossed his cards and regressed to tapping wires to keep fear on an overload. When the house collapsed, the outed andy scribed the hat contents to anybody who listened but the biggest maroon and his suits kept shouting about fighting there and not fighting here until the joes laid down again, huddled in fear and didn't believe what the third card down said.

Lo! Nearly thirty publics were surprised when the house of cards toppled even though there were enough sticks to prop it upright.

White House Ink

And in the age when schooling mostly went home to read animé and such there came out of the Big House some bad books that took on legs.

One scooter penned a piece revering bestiality even as canons were being passed by playing bigs who seemed not to know there were some pressing problems afoot.

And the big Dick's wife , mother of his strange daughter, wrote a tale of girly/girly in the old west and philandering in the next wing. In her tale, the roving guy died astride his paramour from a bad heart and she wrote as if these things were fiction.

And in another part, a sinner quilled a million squibs of non-fiction when it mostly was fiction and a flap went on about that for some time until it was found that truth and lies are doppelgangers.

And the O'man from FauxNews who had been flailed for heavy breathing about a faloofa into some skirt's link wrote a tome about an old man his age who noodled little misses and called it fiction when it surely wasn't.

And the man who ran home insecurity did webcam and sicking speak with a little girl who turned out to be the law in disguise so he went to the front of the low class, temporarily distracting from the other fouls.

One cyber store named after strong women of another age posted pages of these tatty tales so one could peruse a page or two before squandering coins for these soiled nightmares.

And so it was when the land was ruled by the fictitious proper who weren't and weren't afraid to flaunt it.

Harken

 

Several things threaten my peace of mind. Admittedly, it wasn't all that peaceful anyhow. The last six-plus years have been detrimental to my whole being. I feel democracy slipping away due to bad governance, multitudinous uninformed citizens and a single wing news system.

It's hard to imagine double-bolting the front door and feeling safe while the back door and windows are wide open.

It's difficult to imagine building a palace on someone else's property.

It's hard to imagine leaving one's own family destitute by giving contents of the vault to felons, corrupt officials and the professed enemy.

It's hard to imagine joining three sovereign nations together without asking for discussion and a vote.

It's hard to imagine building a gigantic highway through the middle of a country for the unchallenged use of illegal alien drivers.

It's hard to believe that the gummint can use the eminent domain theory to claim individuals' homes for developers.

And it's doubly hard to believe that before doing any of the above, a right mind would enrage the entire world, invade a foreign country, and arouse the ire of at least seventy percent of his bosses while accruing a multitude of enemies ~ enough to last for many generations.

It's probable that this country is being Harken'd.

On the Edge

Backbone of road
paved with dogma
marks a chart of longing,
splinters trail
the blackened night
silent as a dream.



A strange idea came to me while I listened to old dogma spouted by Stepford faces.

Instead of legislating a minimum wage, mandate a maximum.

Rape of local land and distant countries might cease when the money monopoly dispersed so plenty could re-emerge.




fractal by sue

Golden Age

Long ago, when the average death of life was about 40, there weren’t too many grandparents. And those few were often were placed in sanitoria or poor houses. A lucky few lived with unfortunate family.

The great witch doctors decided there was more money to be made if folks lived longer. After all, an early death meant the end of taxes and tithes from the deceased. Putting their heads together, an act not totally truth, resulted in a longevity/security plan. Each person from the first day of labor would contribute a designated number of rupees to be placed in an account to help with costs of aging.

The emperor decreed that this amount would remain holy, not to be commingled, until such time as each person came close to death and past financial health. And the people played along by sending money monthly, yearly and sometimes daily to swell the coffers.

The witch doctors now decided that some of that money should be spent on research to aid in longer longevity. And so it was.

And for some time, it almost worked.

However, there came a time when the research out performed the finances and because death dwindled, there came a gigantic swell of folks known as boomings. As it neared their time to settle into the golden times (from earlier fables) it was judged that the security deposit was inadequate and that it had been divided into so many pies that the actual amount was lost under the shells.

It came to pass that boomings could not reach the golden time without taking other jobs at the same time the job market dwindled. Even very elderly women served espresso from donkey carts while waiting to pass.

But the research was not all in vain. A new pill came into being and enabled booming grandpas the opportunity to start new families with very young women.

Alas, the pot grew even smaller and it was against the law to grow the pot.

And so it was.

fractal by Sue