Tet yet tet yuk yet yuk

Roughly translated from Cantonese this expression says, "Kick one kick, move one move." It applies very well to the type of laziness I am afflicted with and as a result I hear it constantly, usually in a verey exasperated tone. I don't think of myself as physically lazy. If there's something to do, I'm pretty willing to get up and do it. I just don't want to think about it. What I truly am is mentally lazy.

For instance I'll wash the dishes. I'll wash them all and put them away. But if the counter hasn't been wiped down and its got food gunk all over it, unless I'm reminded that I should do it, it never occurs to me. I think about how I got my task done instead of thinking about how the kitchen is still messy.

I'm easily distracted. I'm just wired that way.

Going Hawaiian

Sometimes when I see one of my past entries I think, "Gosh, I'm already a grumpy old guy. I'm just like Abe Simpson." But at least consider yourself somewhat spared because when I am grumpy it's usually terse grumpy and not some long winded rambling thing that would suggest oncoming senility. I'm sure we've all seen that before in other people's blog.

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica again. I find it interesting that in that world where there are only 40,000 humans still left fighting for survival each day, that they exhibit all the frailities and insecurities of the human psyche except one. They have forgotten racism. There are black, whites, hispanics, and Asians living in a world where they don't judge each other by the color of their skin. There only prejudice is against the evil Cylons trying to destroy them. Because Cylons are machines, humans refer to them as frakin toasters. Maybe someday with the advance of artificial intelligence in our world, that will become the next way we choose to divide ourselves from each other.

Okay, I was reading a piece the other day by Goeffry Nunberg the famous linguist. He pointed out that if we call people Asian-American or African American we should really be referring to white people at European American. However the word, caucasian is still in vogue for white people even though it's an inaccurate archaic descripter. He concedes that through the years pc words have gone in and out of fashion as people try to define themselves and each other so that there's not much logic to the designations anymore. Are the geographic monikers really better than skin color definitions? Does caucasian sound more scientific? Does it lead people to think differently because of that psuedo-scientific posturing?

So I've been thinking, I'm going to lose the word caucasian. When referring to white people, I think I'll be adopting the Hawaiian term, "Haole."

Vick got off.

The investigation was dismissed without anyone ever describing what the particulat matter was. Maybe justice is more blind if you happen to sell jerseys.

The president is already forgotten.

Don't pay attention to anything the VP says either.

Dream State of the Union

Junior long ago lost his credibility. The only real question is how much credibility will remain in the office of President after he departs. Simple lies. Inability to understand complex truths. Grandiose messiah delusions. He's a broken clown and no one would miss him if he did used his talk tonight to announce his resignation. There have been a dozen references to Junior's speech tonight in the news, but we've all stopped listening.

Less efficiancy.

Writing used to be holing up in the computer room one or two nights a week with me, Jimmy Cliff and a blank computer screen. These days, it's me, the TV and a baby that needs attention. Brief spurts between commercials, or baby fussings, and my brain cramps. I think it'll be this way for a while. Which means I'll start a lot more things than I'll finish, but I'll keep trying. Maybe I'll end up smarter and having more to write about in the near future.

A small amount of dark particulate

He's got a contract for $137 million and Michael Vick tries to take a small amount of dark particulate with a pungent aroma closely associated with marijuana onto a plane. I know Vick is supposed to be a franchise type player and an incredible athlete, but if I paid his checks I would seriously question whether or not this guy had enough intelligence to read without moving his lips after this incident. And I'm not talking about the drug use. That's beside the point.

Did he not hear about the beef up in security? If you can't bring more than a couple ounces of breast milk onto a plane, do you really think they'll not find something leafy green?

And he's got plenty of cash. If he really needs the high, what he should be doing is hiring some slob to be his mule/left tackle and carry it around for him to take the penalty. Preferably someone under 18 so the mule only goes to juvie.

Maybe I've been watching too much of the Wire recently.

Ghost Players

In one version of heaven I play baseball all the time AND I have non-steroid induced talent for the game.

A co-worker told me about her brother in Iowa the other day. He's from the part of the country where the baseball flick Field of Dreams was filmed. Twenty years after the film, this brother and the locals are still going out to play baseball in those corn fields.

The local hotel establishment will tell these "Ghost Players" when special guests arrive to see the movie site, for example, a father with his dying son. The players will get dressed up in their 1900 uniforms and walk out through the corn and play some baseball, often inviting the guests to participate. Then the players will disappear through the corn fields.

I know there's a portion of people reading this who will immediately think this is really cheesey and people in Iowa need something better to do, but I'll say I think it seems pretty magical. Pretty cool.

I doubt if Kinsella ever thought this would happen when he wrote his book. I've read everything by this guy. Very entertaining.

Latest Discovery

I'm only about 80 pages into my first novel by Ann Patchett, a book called Bel Canto, but I have found someone else who writes magic. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work someday.

Shifting Deck Chairs on the Titanic

The truth is 20,000 more troops is not going to change the course of a lost war. If so, we would have won last year when there were approximately 20,000 more troops in Iraq. In questioning today, Condi called it an "augmentation" and not an "escalation" and that denial is a story. I guess Junior is more focussed on generating news than results.

Still Clueless

Junior is going to talk about adding more US troops to Iraq today. More deaths. Is there a plan? What are those troops supposed to do other than provide Junior some political cover for the next two years? I wonder how low his ratings and the war ratings would have to go before he would do the right thing. If 99.9% of people said that this war was wrong, that he was wrong and it was just him and Cheney sitting in a life raft somewhere, could he admit to his mistakes. Maybe then he'd admit he was the most disasterous President ever.