My Friend Al

Finally. & now the Dems are at 60. Will it give them, & President Obama spines? We'll see.

Billy Mays, R.I.P.

Too bad OxiClean can't revive the dead.

Sky Saxon, R.I.P.

Obit here.

OK, OK Josh. Michael Jackson died. You can watch his videos here.

Haven't Left Yet

Minnesota must be so embarassed. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not spending a dime in Stillwater, Minnesota no matter how hip it thinks it is. Good grief.

Trip Today/Tomorrow

No acid, but leaving shortly for The Cites to have another couple of hours of tattoo work done on Marigny's arm, my left arm. Happily, I'm off the awful warfarin, less pain, less bleeding. Of course, the real reason for going are The Twins. See y'all late tomorrow night or sometime Saturday. Yes, it's going to be hot.

This photo was taken by The Kid.  I love the arm over the cat.  Tchoupi is one great cat. 

Viagra? He Don't Need No Damned Viagra

What is with these ReThugs & their apparent insatiable need of sex? Sen. Ensign, who inexplicably is still more popular than his fellow Nevadan Sen. Harry Reid, juiced up the news a week or so ago. Now, the completely immoral governor of South Carolina had an affair. Family values, anyone?

Just Wonderful

Gold! Common sense solutions to environmental problems indeed.

Medical Doctors & Money

Apparently, for some docs, it's never enough. It infuriates me that the people mentioned in the article work on the public dime, develop their inventions on the public dime, but the general public gets squat in return. & spare me the humanitarian bullshit, it's all about the money.  Maybe these docs, if they exceed their UW salary with industry "donations", ought to be forced to keep working, but without the public pay.

Heatley, president and founder of Med-Systems Inc., a Madison-based company that manufactures and markets the SinuCleanse over-the-counter saline nasal wash system, reported receiving $1.3 million from the company and working 40 days.

My emphasis.

This Is A Great Project

A levee is removed, on purpose! What a concept. Maybe this will spur more removals, & the wetlands of south Louisiana will rebuild to their historic acreage & offer their hurricane protection once again.

Yet at the same time, there is a growing awareness that Louisiana’s levees have exacted a huge environmental cost. Inland, cypress forests and wetlands crucial for migrating waterfowl have vanished; in southern Louisiana, coastal marshes deprived of regular infusions of sediment-rich river water have yielded by the mile to an encroaching Gulf of Mexico.

Taking Care Of The Veterans

Er, not so much. The federal government, in their frantic & stupid attempt to save money & privatize everything, learned nothing from Blackwater's brutal incompetence. Now, we have a surgeon who doesn't know a prostate from a bladder. So much for providing state of the art care at a VA hospital. & of course, no one is in jail, Dr. Kao still has a job.

For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off. The Rev. Ricardo Flippin, preaching at a Baptist church in Charleston, W.Va., had severe pain and later found out he had a radiation injury. Most of the seeds, 40 in all, landed in the patient’s healthy bladder, not the prostate. It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated. But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear. He simply rewrote his surgical plan to match the number of seeds in the prostate, investigators said.

*****

The V.A. put too much trust in the contractors,** said Darrell G. Wiedeman, a senior health physicist for the nuclear commission. “They claim they hired experts, the best that money could buy from the local university, so therefore they didn’t require a lot of training and oversight,” Mr. Wiedeman said at a recent meeting of the nuclear commission’s advisory board.

My emphasis. **Sound familiar?

No Surprise

Here. Dick "Dick" Cheney will probably use this poll to claim vindication for his actions while President.  Even though he claims not to believe in or listen to polls.

...a funny detail in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll: The overall popularity of the Republican Party has now dropped below even the abysmal level of approval enjoyed by Dick Cheney.

Hortensia Bussi, R.I.P.

Obit here.

Bob Bogle, R.I.P.

Obit here.

The Ventures "Walk Don't Run"

Yup, Everything's Just A-OK

You see, Bu$hCo & Dick "Dick" Cheney just loved them some environmental protection. Sadly, we will see much more of this in the future & not all of it will be the Bu$h family's fault, but most of it will be because of the world view held by the Bu$hies, among other overly-rich sons-of-bitches.

As of Wednesday, only 865 kings had been counted passing through a weir located at Mile 7 of the stream, far less than the normal average of about 5,400 kings for this time of year.
*****
As recently as 2004, nearly 58,000 kings passed the Deshka weir.

Even I, deficient at math as I am, understands 865 vs. 5400.

Harold Norse, R.I.P.

Obit here. More here.

Three Poems

Classic Frieze in a Garage 

 

I was walking thru the city past umber embassies

               & pine-lined palaces

                              fat palms beside balconies

                       the heat something

                                   you could really touch

                                     the kids with cunning

                                         delinquent faces

                                  after americano sailors

            -thinking of nerval    tends-moi le pausilippe

                  et la mer d'Italie & living

                          on the hill         posillipo          under

               a gangster's dancefloor

                                                   among goldfinches

                                         on the bay of naples

                                                  in a stone cottage

                               over tufa caves in which the sea

                               crashed in winter     sweet gerard

                                                one hundred years

                       have made the desolation greater

     the tower is really down & the sun blackened

                     beyond despair      the loudspeaker drowns

                              finches     cliffs      caves

                                      all in the hands of racketeers

        yet i have passed my time dreaming thru this

                              fantastic wreck

walking thru incendiary alleys of crowded laundry

                              with yellow gourds in windows &

                              crumbling masonry of wars

                                    human corruption

                              so thick and hopeless that i laugh

when suddenly i saw among the oil & greasy rags

                               & wheels & axles of a garage

                                the carved nude figures of

                                        a classic frieze

                                there above the dismantled

                                parts of cars!

perfect! & how strange! garage

               swallows sarcophagus!

mechanic calmly spraying

                    paint on a

                                       fender

observed in turn by lapith and centaur!

                                                       flow

                           of unthinking flesh!

                                       frank thighs! eyes

                              of aphrodite!

the myth of the mediterranean

           was in that garage

      where the brown wiry

youths saw nothing unusual

                   at their work

    among dead heroes & gods

    but i saw hermes in the rainbow

            of the dark oil on the floor

                             reflected there

           & the wild hair of the sybil

                   as her words bubbled

mad and drowned

                               beneath  the motor's roar

Island of Giglio

 

we sailed into the harbor

all the church bells rang

the main street on the crescent shore

hung iridescent silks from windows

stucco housefronts gleamed

rose, pistachio, peach

and a procession sang

behind a surpliced priest

carrying a burnished Christ

when I set foot on shore

a youth emerged from the crowd

barefoot and olive-skinned

and we climbed up rocky slopes

till dusk fell and close to the moon

at the mouth of a cave we made love

as the sea broke wild beneath the cliff

Piccolo Paradiso

let the age hang itself!  we've had

four marvelous days together

       no news reports        only music

               & no serious discussions

 

plenty of wine        the best

from the islands

     white

        falerno &  ischian

            & lacrima cristi

                                   we've made up

                              for months

                 of loneliness

                     hard work

                       nastiness

                            of 'superiors'

 

             we may not live

         very well or long

our mistakes are perhaps too great

       to bear correction

          at this midpoint

     of our lives (you're somewhat younger)

                         surely too great

to make up for the lengths we go

           to hide them

                                    e cosi...that's

                                             how it goes 

  

                      but at least

                      we're ahead of the game

                  we've stolen a march

                       on the dead       the herd 

  

if the return to grayness

sharp tempered weapons

of those who force life

into corners

       is more than we can bear

       remember this

           the wine

               the ladder

                    of stars that climb

                        vesuvius outside

                            my window

                         the waves

                           banging into smooth

                                tufa caves 

  

& the opera

              as we lay together

                                       remember

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright (c) Harold Norse 2003. All rights reserved. 

These three poems online at Abalone Moon. The last two marvelous stanzas, are something to think about after the disaster of the Bu$hCo years &, sadly, the first few months of the Obama presidency.

The Result

& yes, anonymous, less is relative, but less could be more, or less could be faster since there is less, or maybe "full of" has lost all volume & meaning? Who knows? The details....

Good

Too bad, however, that Lt. Watada couldn't have been found not-guilty. By doing this, the government doesn't need to justify this illegal, vanity war.

My Friend Al

A bit healthier in the wallet.  When will the ultimate asshat, Norm Colemen, finally realize he lost?

Luke Cole, R.I.P.

Obit here.

The A.M.A. Is Bad For America

Unfortunately, the A.M.A. has learned nothing. The knee-jerk reaction of these wealthy physicians to rely on "the market" is ludicrous. All a thinking person needs to do is look at how the market treated us the last few months to realize how anti-human the market really is. To think that health care can be humanely dispersed by market forces means many more people will die. Thanks for nothing A.M.A.

Given All That Hasn't Happened In New Orleans In The Last Few Years

This may be too little, too late.

Apparently, Mr. Nagin in showing how much time he spent on swine flu preparations, or maybe he has finally realized what a little man he has become.

Absense Makes The Large Bowel Less Redundant

In layman's language, I'm less full of shit. More to follow, if you've got the gloves.

No Surprise Here

A Latina woman knowing more about being a Latina woman than a white man? Say it ain't so. Here's all you need to know:

...an astroturf group....

Much More To Come, Wee, At Least More To Come

I'm Still Here! I Think.