Life Under the Stairs

red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in morning sailors take warning. i still do not understand this rhyme, really, since it seems like a pretty inane way of getting a weather forecast. that never seems to stop me from observing the red clouds in the morning and hoping for a storm. that probably has to do with how infrequent rain is here. i also might be going just a little crazy.

The Turkmen leader, President Berdymukhamedov opened a cancer clinic in his country by performing the first operation to remove a tumor, himself. You have no idea how much I wish I were kidding… Turkmen Head Operates on Patient. I’m so glad I live in this country, where the head of state just ingratiates himself into professional baseball, rather than healthcare…

I base a good many of my assumptions on the idea that if we’re free, then we’re free and if we’re not, then we should shut up. My personal political feelings are being tested at this moment by several proposals and the healthcare horses being built by committee in our very own congress, but that’s not what this post is actually about; it’s about the lunacy of expecting art to conform to a certain set of rules, when art is often if not almost always a commentary about life.

There is a German artist who specializes in making garden gnomes who do the Nazi salute. It’s clearly satirical having the “master race” be represented by garden gnomes, but nevertheless, in Nuremberg they are evaluating whether or not the statues break the laws banning Nazi symbols and gestures.  I would say I was surprised to learn that Germans don’t have a sense of humor, but Hogan’s heros wasn’t allowed on television in Germany, even over the Armed Forces Television Networks, until 1992.

Germany Opens Nazi Gnome Case
Hogan’s Heroes Wiki

Today is one of those days where technology has failed me. Epic fail. It has gotten so ridiculous today, that after my fabulous husband has spent 5 hours with tech support for both my job and the ISP that we still can’t figure out why the VoIP system we need to use isn’t working. Every other person on my project is having no problems, or at least no real problems to speak of, and I’m about thisclose to throwing the computer out the window. We get all dependent on our technologies and when they stop working, lives come to a stand still. I would be attempting to be productive in other ways, like mowing the lawn if it wasn’t so hot outside and I wasn’t having horrible allergic reactions to something growing out there. Maybe it’s the grasshoppers. Maybe throwing my computer out the window into the backyard jungle would solve both problems. Then I can move in with the Amish.

I need to write for a bit, and on occasion when the juices aren’t flowing, I focus on one thing that I like and one thing I don’t so that blood starts flowing there again and I get out of my blocky-funk.

I enjoy cheese, of almost any kind. I can live without the really smelly ones, but there is something very soothing about a creamy almost sticky sauce that envelopes, well anything from potatoes to pasta.  I’m also a fan of cheese in a cake form, and on nachos, in sausage and it’s excellent dripping off almost anything.

I hate summer days that are too hot. I love it when it’s warm out, about 75 degrees, maybe 80 or 85, but once it by passes the 90 mark, it’s just not comfortable anymore by any stretch of the imagination. I love being able to leave my windows open. Any season that requires holing up inside a building is too extreme for too long. The summer needs to take a break and cool off a few days, I think so I can enjoy the outside and maybe get a tan.

If I were at a press conference or any kind of public gathering with an appearance by Governor Sanford of South Carolina, I would throw rotting fruit at him. Does he really not realize that by continuing to talk about it he’s just further digging his own political grave? Does he not realize that no one is paying attention to the story but late night guys? If he just got back to work and shut his mouth, I know I’d have more respect for him.

I’m watching CNBC right now, with the Kudlow report. I’m amused by their economic observations. I’m also amused by the guy who looks like, sounds like and hunches like Larry King. It sounds to me like no one knows what the hell they’re talking about when it comes to economics.

This particular entry is just an expression of joy. Today was starting out and looked from the onset to be one of those days that your mother warned you about, but I have to say that even if you’re feeling cranky and negative, occasionally good things happen anyway.

My wonderful husband had a slow leak in a tire. The slow leak turned into a fast one, so we went to the tire place to have them look at it, and the moral of the story is that screws and nails can damage a tire beyond repair, if they go through even to make just a dent in the side wall. A happy camper I was not, for on top of not being able to fix it, they wouldn’t even put it back on the car as it was, and they didn’t have the right size tire to replace it. Even if they had, the one tire would have cost us like $100. Tires are way to damn expensive. So they put the donut on the car, and we mozied over to another tire place that had the right size tire in stock. It was still close to the $100 so after a conference, we decided instead to replace the two tires on my car that needed it, and to leave his car on the donut in the driveway for the time being. My car uses cheaper tires, and is a better option for driving long distances, and we need to go to California next week, so that was what we did. I was feeling iffy about the amount of money the tires would cost though, and wondering how all of that would come together. Well, magically, as we were cleaning out his car, we discovered some unopened mail that included a check from the insurance company. Voila! And the tires were covered.

After that fun extravaganza, we came back home, where my husband opted to fix an inflatable splash pool that I’ve been harrassing him about for a few months to get patched. He wanted to inflate it with an air pump, rather than the natural way. He went searching through the busted SUV which hasn’t run for about 8 weeks because he had tried to drive it through an inland ocean in the construction zone behind the house. He jumped it, to get the battery to let the doors open and the SUV actually turned over and caught. About 3 gallons of water came out of the tail pipes, and the inside is covered with a mossy looking mold, but it runs. It’s alive! It’s alive! The battery will probably need to be replaced, but on the plus side, we can drive it to move it around, rather than towing it.

Today is shaping up much better than originally hoped for. I don’t know if your mother ever told you there would be days like these, but mine sure didn’t talk about them much. I’m thrilled they exist.

Are you kidding me?

I’m in disbelief. Well, not actually, because if I were in disbelief, that would be stupid. Microsoft has been trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes for years. They’re just getting worse at it.

Microsoft has put out a security update that automatically installs a big security hole in Firefox. It makes it equally as insecure as Internet Explorer, and there’s no safe way to uninstall the add-on. You would have to uninstall Firefox and try to reinstall it without the add-on. And then the next time you apply your security updates, it would install the add-on again. Reason #267 why you should use Linux: Ubuntu doesn’t try to trick you into stupid things that don’t benefit anyone. And now I’m off the Ubuntu soapbox.

Seriously though, Microsoft, shame on you! Try retaining your customers by providing superb products and customer service, rather than crapping up the stuff that’s good so your stuff looks better.

MSNBC has a show on called Morning Joe which is sponsored by Starbucks, and of course, Jon Stewart felt the need to make fun of that. Who wouldn’t? Had I been aware of it, (which I was not until the Daily Show reported it, because I use the Daily Show for my news) I would have made fun of them for it too. Having corporate sponsorship creates a nasty tendency to skew journalism. Well, corporate sponsorship creates a nasty tendency to skew everything, which is part of the reason most news organizations avoid it, if at all possible. (MSNBC: let’s take a moment to make fun of that please.) Media moguls tend to own the rest. So we don’t see negative stories about Disney, Warner Brothers, Fox or the rest but we also generally don’t care that much. What I wanted to point out here is that this is one of those instances that your mother told you about when you should just ignore the guy making fun of you. If you aren’t talented in this area, and you try to make fun of him back, you will lose. Morning Joe made that mistake, by trying to make fun of Jon Stewart explaining that they were being sarcastic in their coverage of the corporate sponsor. I bet the CEO of Starbucks they interviewed was thrilled to see that. Also, don’t they realize that he’s just going to make fun of them for trying and failing miserably to make fun of him? Be offended and irate, by all means, but MSNBC doesn’t write funny jokes. Don’t try. Leave it to Comedy Central, and rather than making that stupid mistake that Jim Cramer made by trying to punch back, don’t allow it credence. Morning Joe, you now look stupider than you did before, when all you had done was sell out and become corporate stooges. Or better still, get interviewed on the Daily Show, and discover why that’s usually not a good thing for political candidates.

I’m not sure I would go so far as to call Jon Stewart a Shakespearean character, but he definitely plays the fool who can get away with telling the king he’s a moron because he’s amusing. You’ll notice that the kings don’t usually argue, and when they do, they look like idiots.
The Daily Show Episode where Jon Stewart makes fun of Morning Joe and Starbucks again.