Another weekend "whatever" post...
...totally without direction, but then again, aren't they all?


It's a wonder my computer survived: I think there is some sort of cosmic conspiracy out there to do away with this here little laptop computer, the machine with which I make fun of almost everything here in this blog. Last week, my laptop fell off a small table, onto the floor, a distance of about 2 and a half feet. The floor is carpeted...well, anyway, my computer got knocked koo-koo, but it survived. Then, last night, I had my laptop in my lap. I opened a 12-ounce bottle of cherry 7UP, and the bottle exploded...fizzed all over my keyboard. Ack! I immediately flipped the computer upside down, raised it and shook it, the idea being to keep the sugary carbonated liquid from shorting out my computer's fractured brain. And other than there being some sticky residue on the bottom of the "@" key (when I hit it, it pops back up, but makes a little "pop" sound in the process), my computer has indeed survived. Tonight, I'm drinking Gatorade. No fizz-danger there.

Water under troubled bridges: Oh my, the all-news networks are having a field day with this week's tragic bridge collapse in Minnesota. Some survived, some perished; not all of the cars have been removed from the river bottom, and already there are questions: Why did it collapse; why was the bridge "okayed" when it was previously determined it had flaws; why was money spent on a stadium in Minneapolis instead of being spent on bridges, yadda, yadda, yadda. Look, these ARE questions that need answering, but the way MSNBC (and probably other networks) are just pummeling this to death is almost distasteful. Dan Abrams points accusatory fingers at everyone, then at the close of the program, he looks into the camera widely doe-eyed, trying to convince the American public that he actually gives a damn about what's happened. Milking the story to death. This Minnesota Bridge-Collapse IS tragic. But let's pursue this with some taste and decorum. Please.

The fascinating weather on the Oregon Coast: I never cease to marvel at how fast the weather changes down here. It was gray & cloudy yesterday. It rained last night. It was partly-cloudy this morning. It was a bit less cloudy this afternoon. And late this afternoon, the clouds cleared out, leaving nothing but blue sky. I dropped everything I was doing and went to the beach. After all, you never know when the sun's gonna be out down here. I remember, a little over a month ago, the sun disappeared under the horizon at 9pm...tonite, the sun sunk under the ocean at 8:30pm. So the days are getting shorter. For that matter, "LIFE" is getting shorter. I remember an old record I used to have, written and sung by Hoyt Axton; the lyrics said, "Ten-thousand mornings and Ten-thousand sunsets, Ten-thousand chances to live the right way"...and so I'm trying to do that. You know what I like about the ocean beaches? The AIR. Clean, crisp air. Nothing like it. And there's nothing like an evening's walk at low tide.

I hope that this wasn't a tax-funded study: There was a study done recently, a big important study, involving human behavior patterns. And, I am sure scientists everywhere lived at least a portion of their lives vicariously through the subjects of this study. And, this study was monumental. And the results were monumental. Monumentally STUPID, that is. For it seems, the scientists who were undertaking this study, after much research, decided that the biggest reason people have sex is because THEY'RE ATTRACTED TO EACH OTHER. Who would have thought, huh? At the risk of sounding highly chauvinistic here, I know of an amateur country singer, Rojay North (a real egotistical jerk, by the way), who, back in the late 1970s, wrote a song called "Ugly Woman", not a song of any great reflection, tact or diplomacy. The basic premise of the song was "I never went to bed with an ugly woman, but I sure woke up with a bunch of 'em." Well, as another country yee-haw tune says, "the girls all get prettier at closing time". A case of "fractured attraction" at best. With a lot of beer. Let's just say that I don't play country music or hang out in redneck bars these days. It was fun for a while, but it ran its course long, LONG ago.

They still haven't done it, and we're tired of waiting: Alex Rodriguez, the 262-million dollar man who is currently a member of the New York Yankees (who knows where he'll end up next), is stuck at 499 home runs. He's something like 1-for-his-last 300 at-bats; he did manage to hit a single in tonite's game however. Alex has never performed well in the playoffs, when truly, the eyes of the world are upon him. Now that everyone is once again watching his every swing with baited breath, he's again having a tough time performing. (You can blame the omnipresent 24-hour sportsradio stations for pointing this out to me.) And, the same with Barry Bonds, the really giant San Francisco Giant. He's stuck at 754 home runs; he needs one more to tie and two more to break Hank Aaron's home run record. To try and be positive about this, Bonds is still getting base hits. But everyone wants the home run! I do, too, but only because the hype will die down. Hopefully, that is. Meantime, Richie Sexson of my beloved Seattle Mariners, can't buy a hit these days. He's so big and strong. And hitless in his last several hundred at bats. Several hundred, or so it seems, anyway.

Putting the pedal to the medal: Something that has always really bothered me: Whenever there's an Olympiad somewhere on the planet, the winner of an event gets a gold medal. However, when someone places 2nd, the sports media always says, "he/she SETTLED for a silver medal." Settled, my (foot)!!! What, being the second-best-athlete in the WORLD is some kind of a disappointment? I used to run marathons long ago before my body (which is a genetic dumping-ground) began going bad on me...I was a slow runner, but when I finished the marathon, a race volunteer would put a medal around my neck. And my medal was as hard-earned (if not more) than those of the two-legged human gazelles who breezed the 26.2-mile course in half the time that it took me to finish. I applaud ANYONE who tries to compete.

And finally, a headline for the times: There it is, on page A3 of today's "Register-Guard" newspaper...and I didn't really note the sheer irony of it until now. And it reads, "Congress sends ethics legislation to President Bush". Think about that. We've basically gone into Iraq at the behest of Prezzident Bush on false pretenses, A former CIA officer has been "outed" by someone close to the Prezzident's cabinet, the Vice President has all kinds of dubious connections to the Machinery of War, administration aides are advised to stonewall Congressional hearings due to recklessly invoked "Executive Privilege", the approval ratings of this administration are hovering at or near all-time lows, and everyone's basically waiting for the Bush administration to fade away on January 20th, 2009. (See countdown clock in the left margin) So, of course, Congress is going to send an ethics bill to Prezzident Bush. After all, this administration appears to have NO ETHICS OF ITS OWN. I have never been as disappointed in an administration as I am with this current one. Don't look at me. I didn't vote for him.
____________________

Back to the bridge thing for a moment: It was reported that 3,000 feet of cracks had been repaired on that Minnesota bridge before it collapsed. Today's paper said there's 70,000 'deficient' bridges around the country that need repair. That would work out to a potential 210 MILLION feet of bridge cracks here in the U.S.of A. Scary thought! That's just a projected total. It's probably worse.