Posted by Stacey at 01:41 PM

click to hear bella snoring. you remember bella, don't you? here she is:

Posted by Stacey at 12:27 AM

i know, i know i've been neglecting the blog. so much going on here. too busy to write.

bill flew to florida on the ninth, was picked up by the jackal at the airport. quick stop at his place and his workplace, and they were on the road back to cleveland. the crazies drove straight through and were at j's new place in tremont by 10:30 saturday morning. bill and i have been off and on helping him get settled. spent today doing more of the same. dead tired and hurting, we are. the highlight of the day was watching and TRYING to help bill and jax get a queen-sized box spring up a stairway sized for at most a full-size box spring. they wound up having to cut the box frame nearly in half. bill has to fix up a little of the ceiling plaster, too. arghhhhh.

the day before yesterday, jackson got a call from his old manager in florida, rosie, that j's best friend and coworker, katie, was on life support in the hospital. 29 years old, and her mom went in to wake her for work and found her not breathing. today, they took her off life support. j's been a wreck off and on and has not wanted to answer any calls from florida today. he just called me and said there are 9 messages, and he's not sure if he wants to listen to them tonight. too sad.

he's been handling all this really well and with the support of his people up here.

tonight, bill and i spent well over an hour freezing our butts (and noses. and ears. and...) off sitting up at a local park with the car sunroof open watching the lunar eclipse. it was awesome. i hope you got a chance to see it. it was pretty cloudy about an hour before, and we didn't think we'd get a chance to watch it. but it cleared up nicely, and the night sky was beautiful! basically, it looked like a giant single piece of kix cereal floating in mid air. way cool. we sat and talked about the -- bill just said, "here's mine" so i turned to my right and read bill's post up on his computer screen, and he wrote about this, so i won't rehash. but it was a lovely, lovely evening.

my dear cousin, janice, wrote me an e-mail this evening asking me if i have thought about writing about a happy marriage. she's got me thinking. i do believe i have a successful (so far), functional (mostly), and happy (more happy days than unhappy days). and at this point (almost 34 years), i do believe that's pretty good. i've said before (but that won't stop me from saying it again) that i'm still crazy about the guy. and i feel loved. i do. and i know i can depend on him to work with me and for me on anything we need to do to deal with whatever comes our way. we enjoy the hell out of each other's company. but we've had some verrrry difficult times and some verrry unhappy days. i think that you have to expect that in life and in marriage. we married because we were crazy about each other and knew that we wanted to build a life together. we wanted to commit to that and to each other. for us, that is what marriage means. marriage is important to us.

but i also have very dear friends who are in a committed, non-married relationship. and it seems to work well for them. but marriage is what bill and i wanted. marriage is different for everybody. we have what we want, and includes that marital commitment to each other. it works for us.

end of proselytizing.

we picked up stuff at our storage unit today (some stuff to bring to jackson's, some to bring home and go through). and when we finally got home after 6 p.m., i started looking through the boxes. garbage pile, shred pile, more stuff for jackson, some for matt, and plenty o' crap (and not so crap) for us. school pictures, hockey pictures, report cards, notes, calendars, newsletters that i wrote or edited, lots of fun stuff. bill stuck up on the bulletin board between us a u. s. mail postal rate card that the post office would place in the mail chute information slot in one of the buildings that we worked in (it was early in our marriage, and i don't remember from where we swiped the thing -- probably a federal crime, pffft). it says:

"AIR MAIL . . . 8 CENTS PER OUNCE
FIRST CLASS . 5 CENTS PER OUNCE"

heh.

i'm sure there's more i've neglected to tell you, but it will have to wait for another time. i'm beat. night-night, sleep tight. don't let the bed bugs bite.

p.s. i also found a preschool picture of matt in the homemade optimus prime costume i made for him. i'm going to post it here when i have the time and energy.

Posted by Stacey at 06:49 PM

i posted this originally on 5/20/04, and am posting it again because huckabee looks to be winning republican primary votes today. can't stand the fucker. i'm soooo sick of the debate -- what are you republican assholes really afraid of?

the gay marriage "thing" is a big news item again lately. and jax wrote about a possible suicide in our area where rumors are flying at the high school that the boy was questioning his sexuality and worried that "god wouldn't love him." now, i do NOT know anything at all about this boy at the high school, but it just got me thinking about this whole thing again. i'm gonna lay it all out for you. my thoughts. MY beliefs.

#1. homosexuality has always been. always will be. hear me again. there will ALWAYS be a certain percentage of the human race that are homosexual. always.

#2. homosexuality DOES NOT EQUAL pedophilia. there are heterosexual pedophiles, homosexual pedophiles, priest pedophiles, teacher pedophiles, and garbage collector pedophiles. the adjective has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the noun. non-predator homosexuals (just like non-predator heterosexuals) want other homosexuals. tell me you haven't heard a hetero guy say something "admiring" about a lesbian. most people shrug it off. no big deal. but if a homosexual says the same thing about a hetero, boy oh boy, does the crap fly. this is not predatory behavior, people. get over it. nobody's trying to recruit straight people over to the other side.

#3. this is the big one for me. if you accept that there will be a certain number of human beings who will be homosexual (#1) and that homosexuals are not predatory by nature (#2) [if you don't accept these premises, you're pretty much hopeless. and brain dead. in my humble opinion.] given these FACTS -- oh yes they are FACTS - how can we say to a human being: if you realize that you are homosexual, understand that you will never have the right to love and commit to another homosexual person in the same way that WE can. WE are normal. YOU are a horrible mistake. YOU must live unloved and unfulfilled as a human being. live in OUR world. in OUR WORLD, only heterosexuals may marry. that's OUR sacred right. i don't know about you - but *i* believe that there's room for all kinds of people.

so YOU have a choice. two alternatives.

ONE: you do not accept facts. therefore - you are ignorant.

TWO: if you accept the facts, but believe that marriage is only for heterosexuals, you're just a mean, close-minded bastard. allowing homosexuals to marry doesn't demean you or your marriage. your position against gay marriage demeans you.

and this: don't tell me what your bible/priest/dogma/religion tells you. you need to accept the FACT that we are not a christian, jewish, muslim, wiccan, satanist - whatever you are - nation. that is what separation of church and state means.

imho.

edit: i see that the comments are getting into religion.

there are differences between a religious marriage and a legally sanctioned marriage. religious marriages are recognized legally, but the converse is not necessarily true. look at the catholic sacrament of marriage. there are very specific values and steps that must be accomplished in order to be married in the catholic sense. and the legal concept of divorce is not recognized in the catholic church. unless a catholic marriage has been annulled, it cannot be dissolved.

why is it so hard to distinguish between the two? why cannot homosexuals be married legally without it "demeaning" the sacrament of the catholic church. or any other church's belief system. if a couple does not meet the criteria of a religious marriage -- fine. they're not asking for that. neither did we.

i don't see a problem with the dichotomy. maybe that's just me. a lapsed catholic. one who left the church when a MAN (ok, a priest) denied my little sister absolution at confession because in the eyes of the catholic church, our mother and her husband were still married to their first spouses (they only went through LEGAL divorces). what that had to do with my sister's prayer for absolution, i'll NEVER understand. i guess this guy misinterpreted some scripture? could this be possible? so don't TELL ME WHAT YOUR BIBLE SAYS. i don't care what some men say jesus told them. i don't care. i don't believe jesus was the son of god. i don't deny you the right to your religious version of marriage -- as long as you're not hurting anybody. get your religious views out of my life.

but there MUST be a legal institution of marriage. maybe if the majority of people in this MOSTLY CHRISTIAN nation behaved in a christian manner regarding marriage and offspring, the law wouldn't have to be involved. cuz i don't think that the high divorce rate can be linked to only non-christians. i'm just guessing here -- there are a hell of a lot of christians not behaving very christ-like in their divorce and child-support proceedings. so my advice here to religious leaders: clean your own house before you come to MINE and tell ME what's wrong in MY HOUSE.

so don't talk to me about RELIGION. talk to me about the law. and the values of a compassionate, accepting, LOVING culture that we pretend to be. gah.

Posted by Stacey at 10:07 PM

after bill read my repost of the other day, he picked up a loaf of wonder bread for us (me) at the grocery store. lately, i've been trying to eat only whole grains, or mostly whole grains; and this can be pretty tough given the fact that we are lucky enough to have some wonderful artisinal breads stocked just a few steps away from our building at the little "grocery" store. thankfully, constantino's has some really, really good whole grain fresh bread, too. i resist temptation, though, not as much as i should.

so ... i'm baking a cake tonight (shut UP, matt and mel!)* and the wonderbread is calling me. it's pleading with me -- "eat me. eat me" in its pitiful wonderbread voice. first i think, american cheese? nuh uh. peanut butter? mayyybee. egg salad? whoa. that would be AWESOME, but i just used up my last 2 eggs in the cake. i got it -- tuna fish. oh yeah, that's it.

i think about how it's lent, and i'm having tuna fish. and it's not even friday! when WE were kids, catholics couldn't eat meat on ANY friday -- not just fridays during lent. pope john the 23rd (i think it was him, and yeah -- that's right. i wrote it in "arabic" numerals, NOT roman numerals. it slides off the tongue easier, doncha think?) made life much, much easier for catholics. you catholics nowadays are pussies! you don't have to keep your heads covered in church (women), the mass is recited in english (!), and you don't have to have fish sticks or tuna casserole every freaking friday of your life. i mean, there's such a concept as too much of a good thing. and now i'm thinking maybe THIS is why i'm wanting a tuna fish sandwich! cell memory! except it's not cell memory, cuz it's just plain memories.

so i head to the pantry for the tuna fish. what? you don't keep your tuna fish in the pantry? and herein lies the point of this post. as i was opening up the can to make my tuna fish "salad," (recipe: 1 small can of tuna fish, add mayo to achieve the consistency your sensibilities allow. that's it. no freaking onion. no freaking celery. no freaking seasonings.) i started thinking about canned tuna. if you're of a certain age, it's what you were raised with (it is that with which you were raised. i know proper grammar -- i just don't wanna sound like a snob. that and the authentic voice thing. heh). i'm guessing i was in my mid twenties before i really thought about the fact that tuna can actually come fresh. or frozen. i think i may have ordered it a couple of times in a restaurant since then. i'm pretty sure of it. but i've not once purchased it to bring home and cook.

it just seems unnecessary. the kind of tuna i use is already cooked. i can be a pretty snobby gourmand when i want to be, but not when it comes to tuna fish. i've served canned tuna in many meals over the years to my family (all hated by the three males): tuna casserole, the cold tuna salad with the tri-color noodles (i think i thought the pretty colors would distract them), the cold tuna bow tie pasta salad with cannellini beans. all meals only i loved. i indulge my tuna-fish cravings now with the much loved tuna salad (recipe above) on wonder bread. and the occasional bow tie pasta/tuna salad with cannellini beans. just enough for only me.

i'm not catholic anymore, basically because i'm not a christian anymore, and the church kind of insists on that. that and the holy TRINITY, even. which i NEVER understood. so the tuna fish thing gets to be indulged only when i feel like it.

i felt like it tonight, and it was goooood.

*there is a rumor going around in my family that i bake far too many cakes. as if!

Posted by Stacey at 04:33 PM

oh i'm looking for my missing muse
looking for my missing muse
hi de ho, here i go,
looking for my missing muse*

in order to entertain (heh) my 5 loyal readers who've been e-mailing me asking if i'm still alive, i'm reposting an old post from september, 2004.

*apologies to shel silverstein.

wonderbread. it's not possible to feel ambivalent about wonderbread. the haters even go so far as to deny that it is, indeed, bread. i am not a hater. even today, wonderbread is amazing stuff. a fresh loaf of wonderbread - nothing compares. when your mom brought that fresh loaf out of the bag (the loaf maintains the loaf shape much better when packaged upright in a paper grocery bag. the plastic bags destroy a good loaf of wonderbread, rendering it useless for most culinary delights other than wonderballs), you HAD to have a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. with the bread (one slice only) folded over - NEVER CUT. never. if you worked the milk and sandwich right, you might be able to avoid having to scrape most of the sandwich off the roof of your mouth with a spoon.

the next best thing to the peanut butter sandwich was two slices of american cheese in between two slices of bread. again, the milk was mandatory. the bread stayed fresh for four or five days at least (i'm not going to ruin my memories by researching the ingredients and the reasons for this). after that, it was toast or grilled cheese sandwiches with campbell's tomato soup.

it's funny how a sound or a smell or a taste brings you right back to another time and place. wonderbread brings me back to brooklyn acres. a housing project in cleveland (brooklyn) administered by the veterans administration to provide low-cost housing for veterans of world war II and their families. i don't know exactly how long we lived there; i was born there, and we stayed until the family fell apart when i was about 6. i think my family lived there for about 10 to 12 years.

my father was a veteran of the navy, having enlisted at 17, serving in the pacific, and earning a purple heart. i don't know the details. he was a hero to us for a while.

there were four girls and my mother and father living in that tiny house. i remember the back "porch" -- really just a couple steps leading up to the back door. the overhang over the door made it a porch to us. the porch from which we hung blankets from the overhang to serve as our stage curtains when we put on our "shows." i have no idea what these "shows" were about. all i remember is that i always insisted that i be the one to wear the deep red corduroy skating skirt with the pink satin lining (go ask your mother what i'm talking about).

the summers were the best. the v.a. building across the street was where we paid our rent, got our shots and medical checkups, and played in the playground while our parents were taking care of business inside. it was also where the v.a. staff sponsored and held children's fairs, contests, parades, and anything else they could think of to do with us to entertain us. i remember bubble blowing contests, bike parades, coloring contests, races, and LOTS of parties. i remember standing in line for our polio shots for hours, while the staff handed out balloons and coloring books and crayons.

the grownups were like mysterious giants to me. we weren't really very well taken care of by my parents. we pretty much took care of ourselves. i remember being left alone when i was 4. well not really alone - if you count my 3-year-old sister. the neighbors were always around for us if we needed them. they fed us and took care of our needs a lot. when i was 5, i attended afternoon kindergarten. i got ready (by myself) and began my mile and a half walk to school by crossing the busy street that ran along the back of our house. i ran and fell on the curb. the car that passed by me stopped to help. i was very badly scraped. i had fallen face first onto the curb, and my face was a bloody mess. mrs.o'malley came out and picked me up and nursed me all afternoon until my older sisters came home from school. and my dad came home from wherever he was. probably a bar or the race track. my mom always worked as a bar maid, she must have been bartending a day job then.

i loved the o'malley family. 10 kids, a mom who didn't work, a loving, always-employed dad, and walter, my best friend. when i wasn't with my sisters, i was with walter. we lived on one corner. the o'malleys were catty-corner to us. the schneiders (their dad was a DOCTOR! and the kids weren't allowed to play with ANYBODY in the projects) were across the street from us on one corner, and paul and paulette's family (i can't remember their last name - just that i had a HUGE crush on paul who looked like paul anka to me) lived on the fourth corner.

every once in a while my parents would host a party. probably 30 more adults crowded into this little house, only possible because there would be a bunch of the men outside smoking, drinking beer, and telling stories. there would be DANCING in the house. yes, DANCING. adults all danced back in those "olden" days. the women would be wearing tight, slim skirts, high heels, and pearls. the men in their suits! and they'd dance. the cha cha. the samba. and slow dancing. in our tiny living room. we four girls would be sneaking out of bed all night long to watch until we were caught. and then we'd sneak back again.

i guess we were poor. i don't really know. i know my parents were always behind with the cheap rent. i know they somehow had enough money to pay for their alcohol. i know my godfather helped. he sent money a lot. that was when mommy grocery shopped. and brought home wonderbread, peanut butter, and american cheese, along with the beer. she'd buy bologna (baloney), too.

wonder balls. formed by taking a fresh piece of wonderbread, eating off the crusts, and forming the soft, soft interior into a ball with your hands. you'd either eat the ball right away or have a wonder ball fight. then you'd eat it. it wasn't gross to us back then.

baloney. ahh. baloney. lunchmeat of the gods. and entertaining, too. kitchen ceilings in 1940's and 1950's houses were different back then. they were smooth. and shiny. they'd be painted with high-gloss white enamel paint so they could be washed. [have you EVER washed a ceiling?] we'd take a slice of baloney, hold it flat in the palm of our hands, and throw it straight up to the ceiling. it would stick. until the weight of the slice of baloney pulled it down enough to release the vacuum and allow it to fall. it was great. except for the round grease marks left on the ceiling that we never thought to clean up on our own. mommy would walk into the kitchen and IMMEDIATELY notice that we had been "throwing baloney at the ceiling again" and THEN we'd clean it up. and be in beeeeg trouble.

the smallest things in your life make an imprint, and you don't have any idea what will come back to you. i love thinking that this date may be a pre-anniversary of great importance to me some day. maybe my first grandchild will be born on this date. something awesome. i look for clues in old date books, year books, newsletters on what those past days may have portended for me/us. i like to think about how people we meet today may someday play vital parts in our lives.

bill and i were FINALLY allowed to go and watch jax play at open mic jam night at mccarthy's pub last night. i've heard jax play. but not with a band. jesus christ, he's good. i mean really good. he played some stevie ray vaughn, some hendrix, and the ubiquitous band song from my day, deep purple's "smoke on the water." i started off with my mouth hanging open in awe, bill said i kept turning around saying "holy fuck!" i don't remember that. i remember turning around to bill during the hendrix song and saying " we made that!" and then i started thinking during "smoke on the water" about the thousands of times we heard that song when we were kids and how crazy it is / blessed we are to be able to sit here and hear it again. like this. so many years - and "moments" - later.

life is sweet.

Posted by Bill at 09:16 AM

We've heard and seen enough about the primary elections. Obviously, the media think that we've heard and seen too much about dead and maimed bodies in Iraq. Time for a break in the action --

It's nice to see that some people have respect for the law. A little west of here, Victoria Wilson actually sold 45 of the 90 cats living in her house to comply with the law limiting the number of cats per household to four. Four.

In southern Ohio, one early morning, Timothy Caudill broke into a bar. Believing that Tim had a substance abuse problem, instead of sending him to prison, the judge sentenced Tim to a locked-down drug and alcohol rehab center. Tim completed the program there and is on probation. While in rehab, Tim bought a Lil Debbie oatmeal cream pie -- mmmmm, goo-o-o-o-od -- from a vending machine; and, being the decent fellow that he is, Tim shared it with a one of the other recovering addicts. Well, his "friend" wasn't allowed to eat the snacks. The prosecutor got wind of Tim's seriously aberrant behavior and wanted the judge to throw Tim in prison for 9 months ("Why you in here, man?" -- "Ummm, I gave a piece of my *ahem* Lil Debbie oatmeal cream pie to my roommate ..." -- "Bend over.") The judge gave him 30 days and ordered him to pay $1,500.

In Cleveland, Jeremy Waters' (that's an alias, by the way) wife had been been bugging him for over a year to paint the house. Being a good husband, and with Mother's Day upon us, he started the big job of scraping the house and painting it. He bought a Wagner heat gun to make the scraping job easier and a Wagner power painter to save time on painting. Well, it turns out that Jeremy can return the Wagner power painter. He doesn't have to paint the house -- the contractors will do that -- since the fire he started with the heat gun did a lot of damage to the house.

Happy Mother's Day!

Posted by Bill at 11:28 PM

Dave was our tour guide. We were on a bus with 45 other people set to ride around Manhattan for 8 1/2 hours to see the sights.

There were two guys from India, a couple from Chicago, a group of women from Scranton, PA, a family from Paris, a young couple from Brooklyn on their first -- and probably last -- date, a few women from Erie, PA, some people from someplace in Georgia, but I couldn't figure out if they were from the country or the state, and then there were the "Koreans," Dave called them. They were from somewhere in New Jersey, born and raised in the U.S., but Dave grilled them for nearly 20 minutes -- I'm sure we missed a lot of the sights -- about Korea. The driver of the tour bus was named Pancho -- or that's what Dave kept calling him. Pancho said, just before we left the tour bus, that "If I had a gun, I'd shoot him" about Dave.

Now, Dave does not play the harmonica very well -- or as well as he thinks he does. He didn't play any of the three harmonicas he brought with him very well. And I'm sure that in real life, that is, away from his tour guide job, he is at least as obnoxious as he was on the tour, if not more so. He is a well-traveled man, I will concede, because we heard something about the 42 countries he has visited around the world -- and not much about Manhattan.

So, if he was not blowing into one of his three harmonicas or showing us his photos of him riding camels with Bedouins several times, apparently so we would not forget easily, or talking about Istanbul, which was called Constantinople, you know, and Paris, in French, of course, or Cincinnati, which he thought would enamor the two Clevelanders to him, or any of the other ports of call he mentioned, he did point out the ice-skating pond at Rockefeller Center that wasn't there because it was springtime and passed around a rock he claimed was right from Central Park.

He could have been more timely in pointing out the various sights of Manhattan. He paused the mutant Harmonikat routine long enough to tell us that if we would have looked down that street we just passed, we would have seen the Chrysler Building; although, he did tell the driver to stop so that he could point out an apartment building in which he once lived in Greenwich Village. He was on the fifth floor and used the fire escape to get in and out. He took us for a walk down Wall Street and near Trinity Cathedral; so, I saw where Alexander Hamilton is buried and the nondescript New York Stock Exchange building.

Dave shined at the waterfront. He was in his element -- the waterfront. He was a seaman, inspired to sign on after he read Moby Dick. He pointed out something about Herman Melville, but I didn't catch it because he forgot to turn on his microphone. The quiz -- we wiped up on the quiz -- first line of Moby Dick, name of the first mate, who made the coffin -- no prizes, though. We boarded a boat for a tour of New York Harbor and the East River, checking out Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge, among other things. There's a pizza place near the Brooklyn side of the bridge, which Dave said was excellent; and I wish we would have stopped there for lunch instead of where we were headed after we got off the boat.

I don't recall the name of the place that served lunch; but it wasn't the bad lunch that accelerated the downward spiral, it was our guide, Dave. We're in fucking New York -- there should be some good food, not a dry burger on a bun with Ore-Ida fries badly made -- but then there as Dave. I get this second-hand because I went to get Stacey's what-Dave-called-quesadillas. Dave announced that the people who ordered the quesadillas should get up to get them: so, I went up. Dave apparently wasn't happy with that arrangement because he saw Stace sitting there. She heard him say, "Momma?" And you have to understand here that Dave must have been approaching 80 years on the planet, give or take a couple. "Momma?" he said again, and Stace didn't pay him any heed because why should she.

"Momma?" the voice got closer, until she looked up and Dave, his gray hair flying away from his head in all directions, stood over her, "MOMMA?" I heard her say, "WHAT?!!!" from the food table across the restaurant. The man should consider himself very lucky that she didn't reach up and slam his head on the table or run him through with her Leki Wanderfreund. That was it, as far as she was concerned. The fucking tour was over. Dave was a fucking lunatic, apparently thinking that his contemporaries are the only people who have a monopoly on assistive devices to keep their balance while they walk. Fucker. Then he announced, "Any more silverhairs want to go up first, go on!" Who the hell was he talking about, the couple from Chicago? I don't know.

All I know, lunch was not pleasant. The food sucked. And my lovely wife wanted to kill Dave.

We headed uptown. Dave did show us a couple things. Grand Central Terminal. WE should have told Pancho to let us off at the Waldorf, but we didn't. Mistake. This was the ride by Rockefeller Center and Carnegie Hall and Central Park. He wanted Pancho to stop to see if Yoko Ono came out of The Dakota, but Pancho ignored him. Dave recounted the Lennon killing to us.

We headed into Harlem. We drove up and down some streets; Dave described the rowhouses. Then we headed over to The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Stace stayed on the bus. I wandered around myself inside the church, which was being restored, away from Dave. Stace found out that Pancho wanted to shoot Dave and that the first date wasn't going well. I came out and wanted to head over to the Hungarian bake shop across the street, but returned to the bus. Speaking of the bus, I thought that if we were going to be looking up at tall buildings, the bus would have a glass roof or no roof or be one of the double-deckers we saw, but no -- it was a fucking bus to go on a cross-country trip.

I got back to the bus -- I don't know where we were going next and didn't care at that point. We decided to leave Pancho to shoot Dave in front of two fewer witnesses. We grabbed a cab and headed back to the Waldorf, getting there before Starbucks closed, and sat down to relax, watch new arrivals at the hotel, and enjoy one of the last performances of the singer/piano player in the lobby until we left for LaGuardia, in time for further adventures.

Posted by Bill at 09:21 AM

And war goes on. Not the war in Iraq. War. We have one candidate, who will have our troops in Iraq for 1000 years. He's the one who is confused about whether he was talking about the current war in Iraq or the Gulf War -- yeah, I can't believe that almost 50% of the people polled want him in the White House (But it's hard to believe that only 71% of people recently polled think the job Bush is doing is not satisfactory; so, I have little hope for the country and am looking to buy an island somewhere.).

We have another candidate who would obliterate Iran -- presumably, with much of the American stockpile of nuclear bombs, because that's my connotation of "obliterate," being of the generation that grew up hurrying, when the alarm sounded, to the William Foster School janitor's office, which was designated the "Fallout Shelter - Cap. 60" by the yellow and black signs, or crouching under our desks, if we were not lucky enough to be the designated "60" on that day.

Enough of that political stuff. We all, save one, know that the economy is in the dumper; we all know that the U.S.A. has lost its luster among the nations in the world; we all know that things aren't going the way we had hoped they would go for us and our children; we all know the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel has canceled the weekends engagement of the songstress who plays Cole Porter's piano at the cocktail terrace. The list goes on and on, but I have digressed.

WAR. One in five of those who return alive from Iraq, about 350,000, will suffer from depression and post traumatic stress disorder, of which 70% will not seek any treatment whatsoever, which means there will be a lot more casualties of war from suicide, murder, drug addiction, homelessness -- the list goes on and on.

That's a part of the Bush legacy. That's a result of Congress' inaction. That's the result of American ethnocentrism.

Posted by Bill at 10:00 PM

George W. Bush has managed to run up a huge debt. It makes me wonder if he's done it because of things he learned hanging out with people in and around Crawford.

Charles Fuller tried to cash a $360,000,000,000 (yes, that's 360 billion) check at a Fort Worth bank.

Here's the puzzling thing. If the check would have been made out to him, would the bank teller have cashed it? It was a problem, it seems, only because the "personal check was not made out to Mr. Fuller."

Posted by Bill at 09:35 AM

Just got an e-mail from Amazon.

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has shown an interest in men's apparel, you might like to know about the following offer:

Men's Bottoms $39.99 and Under Direct from Amazon.com

What? Who wrote this? Those are pictures of pants.

I never heard a guy call those BOTTOMS. I never heard anyone call those things bottoms. Those things are PANTS.