August 29, 2007

• Commentary on the News

  I also have some comments on recent comments my readers have left me.  They are below the news below.
  

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  Paul David Addis has been arrested and released on bail of $25,632 for burning the Burning Man.    Excuse me, I can’t help laughing at it.  Okay, he jumped the gun.  He set the wooden straw man on fire Tuesday, during the lunar eclipse, potentially robbing all the weekend warriors among the Burners of the pleasure of watching the big guy go up in smoke.

  In the crowd watching the arson fire, ‘”Some people were chanting, ‘Let him burn, let him burn!’ and some were chanting, ‘Save the Man, save the Man!’ ” said Kyle Marx of Eugene, Ore.’ (source:  sfgate.com)  The Gate has shots of the fire being doused with water.  Organizers plan to erect a new Man before the weekend.  All is well, and Burning Man just might end up with a bigger crowd this weekend than it would have if it hadn’t gotten the publicity.  Mr. Addis is out of jail.  I wonder if he will go back for the Burn.
  

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  Senator Larry Craig has vehemently declared that he is not gay.  I know that there are some people who don’t believe him, and I know that even in this relatively enlightened era there are men and women who go to great extremes to hide their homosexuality.  Maybe Senator Craig is telling the truth there.  He didn’t say he isn’t bi.

  Regardless of his sexual orientation, the world now knows that he is a liar.  If he lied in his recent statement to the media, he’s only guilty of being just another hair-splitting political sleazebag like Bill Clinton who drew the fine distinction between oral sex and “sexual relations”.  If he lied to the judge when he made that guilty plea, then he could be guilty of perjury.
  

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  It’s not as if empty-headed bottle blonde Lauren Caitlin Upton needs the additional publicity from me; she has gotten millions of hits on YouTube and an appearance on the Today show for this answer she gave during the  Miss Teen USA pageant when asked if it makes any difference that one in five Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a map:

       “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps,” she said.
      “And I believe that our education like, such as South Africa, and, the Iraq … over here in the U.S., should help the U.S., and should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.”

  Those do appear to be dark roots — you’d think she’d have gotten a fresh bleach job for the pageant.  I didn’t see the pageant, nor the Today show.  Our TVs are only monitors for game consoles and video players.  I found this story on Google News while I was scanning for something, in addition to the two stories above, on which to comment.  It was the only other story on which I could comment without getting pissed off or maudlin.  The Boston Herald article I read trashed her even worse than I have.

  BTW, she didn’t win the title.  All is not lost.
  

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  Comments on the vandalism of my rhubarb:

  What kind of asshole attacks and thieves a rhubarb plant?? lupa

  An ignorant one, maybe, unaware of the potential damage from cutting the stalks rather than twisting them off.  A selfish one, certainly, preferring to have the rhubarb for herself rather than leaving it for the person who planted and tended it.

  Perhaps the asshole was both ignorant and hungry.  The woods are full of wild vegetables, fruit, and fungi at this season, most of them more nutritious and less toxic than rhubarb.  I’m sorta hoping, along with Gill_L and fried_green_tomatoes_2007, that the vandal/thief got a bellyache and diarrhea from it.  Those are common reactions to rhubarb.  Lots of people can’t tolerate the stuff.  I don’t eat it.  I grow it as an ornamental because it gets so spectacularly big in the long days of the Midnight Sun, and I give the harvest away at the end of summer.  My property across the highway has four big old established plants, which is where I got the root cuttings I transplanted over here this spring.  Hulk was just a baby.

  I hope your booby trap works, you might consider wet dog shit! Stinks REALLY bad.  etrnlronin

  In my fantasy, I was imagining using shit straight from the outhouse to fill the missiles for my projected catapult or trebuchet.  I know that some people think their own shit doesn’t stink, but most of us find other people’s shit stinky enough, and some of us even enjoy the odors of dog, or cow, or horse shit, for example, if the animals are healthy and we have pleasant associations with them.  Dog mushers and the handlers who work in their kennels don’t ordinarily find it unpleasant to clean up after the dogs.

  The shit-flinger is just a fantasy, and not a very healthy one at that.  For a while, my thinking was colored by the sense of violation and loss.  This spring before I planted the rhubarb, Doug and I spent several days clearing brush from the garden area and working the soil in those long-unused planting containers.  I nurtured Hulk, and his somewhat smaller companion that was also cruelly cut back, all summer.  I hauled numerous three-gallon loads of nutrient rich frog water from the tadpole pans, in a sprinkling can, along the narrow winding path through the forest, to that sunny garden plot along the southern edge of this corner lot we live on.

  Our residence faces the street along the eastern side of the lot, and I can’t see the garden from here.   Without destroying that bit of  forest, I can’t keep an eye on the garden, so some remote protection would be required if I want to prevent a similar raid next year.   A booby trap came to mind.  Impediments to that solution include laws against booby traps and against attacking people with human excrement.  I would also hesitate to set such a trap lest I myself, my son, or some innocent animal inadvertently trigger it.  For lots of reasons, it’s not a workable idea, but I can dream….

  I do plan, when I’m done here, to make a sign, “To the miscreant who vandalized my rhubarb: ….”  I haven’t finalized the text yet.  It would probably be wise and prudent to write something out, get the strong feelings out of my system, and then edit it down to something that is concise and stinging without being inflammatory or legally actionable.

  

  • 4:12 pm
  • 2 Comments