tornado vid

This is a tornado shot in Oklahoma yesterday. Aside from the frantic idiocy of the guy shooting the video, it's an amazing clip.

Like meditation

If you can put up with six minutes of eurotron techno, this is riveting.

You'll go blind if you become the best debater

So now we have each party debating 18 months out to winnow it down to clear idiots versus somewhat veiled idiots.

The dems did it, and now the other guys.

And I just read the NYTimes coverage. This paragraph made my jaw literally drop open. I simply cannot believe someone raises their hand to say, "I don't believe there is anything on this earth older than about 6,000 years. Including the earth." But they do. On TV. And hope to win the presidency.

There were revealing moments that went past the well-rehearsed lines by all the candidates. Three of the candidates — Mr. Huckabee, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in evolution.

How far up the hole of your own ass do you have to be to proclaim something like this, yet still hope to be president of the United States? I don't care if a person believes it. I support them for being so forthright. I've always respected eccentricity. I just can't believe you go into this forum, speaking so clearly, and expect to get lots and lots of votes. That is perhaps the most true eccentric.

It's going to get nutty.

Go To Sleep

Putting the Ass in Disaster

By Elisabeth Bumiller

May 1, 2003 -- President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment.

The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily and -- above all -- to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home….

''This is the formalization that tells everybody we're not engaged in combat anymore, we're prepared for getting out,'' a senior administration official said…

week end

I need to heed the days of rest.

I did a long ride yesterday, and it hurt way more than it should at this point in my 'training' for the STP. But that's because I haven't been 'training.'

Today, after a breakfast of two ibuprofen tablets, I spent the morning moving toward the finishing touches of the deck. Once that was done, my neighbor woman came over - a great inspiration of what your home and garden can look like - and inspired me to actually fill the steel planters that I had built weeks ago for bamboo. So we went bamboo and dirt shopping.

The result is calming. One day it will actually look done. And I won't feel like a broken old man anymore.