Things in Japan just keep getting worse, with a fourth nuke plant in trouble, more fires and explosions, significant radiation releases, and, despite all the assurances I heard throughout the day, conditions at one plant look to be teetering on the catastrophic, as workers who were trying to fight a meltdown by pumping in water have been told to get the hell out. Yes, things appear rather dire indeed (either that, or they’re getting better – everything I look at seems to contradict the last thing I looked at). As if that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve unleashed Diane Sawyer on the poor folks over there, to react with a kind of stunned astonishment not seen since Bill O’Reilly went to a Harlem restaurant with Al Sharpton at the Japanese patiently waiting in lines for gas and food.

Fortunately, humans are awfully resiliant (and by resiliant, I mean stupid with short memories), and this will soon be long forgotten. Before long, nuclear power will once again be touted as a safe, clean alternative energy source. Don’t believe me? Remember that oil well that spewed into the Gulf for months? If you do, you’re not a Republican, since they’re once again beating the drum for expanding offshore drilling as a way for us to lower gas prices and attain energy independence. Yep.

Well, I wound up taking yesterday off, and worked on cleaning up the basement, and re-piping one of my sump pump lines. So, 100 feet of inch and a half pipe and one new shop vac (a nice one, too – very quiet) later, that seems to be working out pretty OK. Except there’s an awful lot of water. I’m starting to wonder if the old well (they had city water put in shortly before I bought the place) isn’t leaking someplace and running under the house. Not much I can do about it right now, but this is way too much water.

Anyhow, whilst whiling away the hours working on this, I had NPR on, which I rarely spend all day listening to these days. They had a reporter fresh back from Libya who was complaining that they had no sources cultivated there, and it was like “going back to Journalism 101, talking to lots of people and checking and rechecking sources.” :omg: How horrible for her. Having to actually be a journalist. She reminded me of dubya lamenting about what a hard job being preznit was.

The rest of NPR’s day, of course, consisted of Japan talk (except for an hour with Edward Albee – that’s “All-bee, goddamn it” – on Diane Rehm, who was all giggly and awe-filled, as she so often is). For the most part, the Japan talk consisted of how this would all affect “the markets.” Of course, they were all quick to fall all over themselves insisting that the “primary” concern was for the loss of life, but….

A local retired art teacher has a project ongoing to show solidarity with the Japanese by folding a thousand paper “cranes.” Yeah, that’ll help. Maybe they can burn the goddamn things for heat as they slowly freeze to death in the dark. Or, hey, why not make them out of rice paper so they can eat them?

Well, I was just forced to give up on the Macbook, and switch to the trusty Dell Inspiron, which keeps on ticking despite being, what, must be close to six years old by now. It’s not quite as “cool” and trendy as the Macbook, but it sure seems a lot more reliable (Wi-Fi works better, too). The trackpad on the Mac is getting worse, and it appears to be a software thing, ‘cuz rebooting (oh, sorry, “resetting the PRAM” – Macs never require a reboot) fixes it temporarily. I don’t know if it’s the latest update (and what’s up with that, anyway? The damn thing seems to have an update every time I turn it on, and most of them are, like 300MB downloads, and they ALL require a restart) or what, but in the past week, I’ve rebooted the goddamn thing more than I have every other computer I’ve ever owned since Windows 95 days.

Then again, maybe it’s a hardware thing. I’ve read an awful lot about this problem (surprise, surprise – it’s not unique), and there is also some speculation as to the battery in the “unibody” swelling up, and making the trackpad go nuts. I’ve tried all the settings changes (big one is to disable dragging – ‘cuz, like, who would need that?), and they “seemed” to help, but then after a while, not so much.

Where’s that snotty Mac kid from the commercials? I’d like to punch him in the nose.

Oh well, time to get ready to get ready.